27

The two friends walked together along the top of Ketton island’s cliff, taking a few minutes alone together to say goodbye. Their parting would be permanent. Choma had chosen to join with Tinkerbell, sharing that entity’s voyage across eternity; while Sinon, almost uniquely among the serjeants, had decided to go back to Mortonridge.

I promised my wife I would return, that I would rejoin the multiplicity once more, he said. I will keep my word to her, for we believed in Edenism together. By doing this I will strengthen our culture. Not by much, I will be the first to admit, but my conviction in us and the path we have chosen will contribute to the overall conviction of the multiplicity and Consensus. We must believe in ourselves. To doubt now would be admitting we should never have existed.

And yet what we are doing is the pinnacle of Edenism, Choma said. By transferring ourselves into Tinkerbell’s version of the multiplicity we are evolving the human condition, moving on from our origin with confidence and wonder. This is evolution, a constant learning curve, there is no limit to what we can find in this realm.

But you will be alone, isolated from the rest of us. What is the point of knowledge if you cannot share it? If it cannot be used to help everyone? The beyond is something the human race must face in union, we must know and accept our answer as one. If Mortonridge taught us nothing else, it was that. Towards the end I had nothing but sympathy for the possessed.

We are both right. The universe is big enough to allow us that.

It is. Though I regret what you are doing. An unusual development. I think I have become more than I was supposed to in this body. I believed such emotions would be impossible when I volunteered to join the Liberation.

Their development was inevitable, Choma said. We carry the seeds of humanity with us no matter what vessel our minds travel in. They were bound to flourish, to find their own route forward.

Then I am no longer the Sinon who emerged from the multiplicity.

No. Any sentient entity who has lived, has changed. I will have a soul then. A new soul, one that is different to the Sinon I remember.

You do. All of us do.

Then once again I will have to die before I transfer myself back to the multiplicity. What I bring to the habitat is only such wisdom as I can muster. My soul doesn’t follow my memories, so the Kiint say.

Do you fear that day?

I don’t believe so. The beyond is not for everyone, knowing there is a way through, or round, as Laton claims, is enough to give me confidence. Though there is some trepidation stirring within me.

You will overcome, I am sure. Never forget it is possible to succeed. That thought alone should guide you.

I will remember.

They stopped on the crest of a mound and looked out over the island. Long lines of people were picking their way over the cracked earth, the last refugees from the buried town heading towards the cliff top where Tinkerbell was pressed against the rock. The giant crystal’s opalescent light sent ripples of gentle colour slithering over the drab ground. Air had coiled into a topaz nimbus all around it.

How apt, Sinon said. It looks as though they are walking off into the sunset.

If I have a regret, it is that I won’t know how their lives finish. They will make a strange group, these souls who are going to occupy serjeant bodies, their complete humanity always beyond their grasp.

When they came out of the beyond, they claimed all they wanted was sensation again. They have that now.

But they are genderless. Not to mention sexless. They can never know love.

Physical love, perhaps. But that certainly isn’t all the love there is. As with you and I, they will become whole in their own way.

I feel their disquiet already, and they haven’t even reached Mortonridge yet.

They can learn to adapt to what lies ahead. The habitats will welcome them.

Nobody has ever become an Edenist against their will before. Now you have twelve thousand bewildered, angry strangers grumbling away into the general affinity band. Most of them with a cultural background that will act against easy acceptance.

With patience and kindness they will find themselves again. Think what they have been through.

At last we come to the true difference between ourselves. I am restless and eager for the future, a voyager. You are ruled by compassion, a healer of souls. Now you see why we have to part.

Of course, and I wish you well on your splendid voyage.

Likewise. I hope you find the peace you search for.

They turned, and walked back slowly along the rocky line of the cliff. Tiny crystalline entities whisked about overhead, never pausing in one place for more than a moment. They had covered the whole island, making sure that every possessed knew there was now a way back, and what staying here meant. It was the end of Ekelund’s rule. Her troops had abandoned her, banding together defiantly to walk out of Ketton. Her threats and fury only hastened their departure.

Five long queues waited before Tinkerbell’s looming surface, winding through the scattered remnants of the headland camp. Two of them made up from serjeants. The remainder (and keeping their distance) were the possessed. They waited in a strange subdued mood, their anticipation and relief that the nightmare was about to end tempered by the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

Stephanie was waiting right at the tail end of the longest queue of possessed, along with Moyo, McPhee, Franklin, and Cochrane. Tina and Rana had been amongst the first through. The crystalline entities had stabilized Tina, apparently repairing the damage to her internal organs. But they all agreed the woman’s body ought to be seen by human specialists as soon as possible. For herself, Stephanie decided she should be amongst the last. It was the responsibility thing again, she wanted to know everyone else was okay.

“But you’re no’ responsible for them,” McPhee had said. “They all flocked to Ekelund’s banner. It’s their own bloody stupid fault they’re here.”

“I know, but we’re the ones who tried to get Ekelund to stop, and failed miserably.” She shrugged, knowing how feeble she sounded.

“I’ll wait with you,” Moyo said. “We’ll go through together.”

“Thank you.”

McPhee, Franklin, and Cochrane looked at each other, and said what the hell. They all joined the queue, standing behind Soi Hon. The old eco-guerrilla was in his trademark dark jungle fatigues, with his felt bush-ranger hat tilted back as if he’d just finished an arduous job. He eyed them with wry amusement and bowed to Stephanie. “I congratulate you on remaining true to your principles.”

“I don’t think it really matters, but thank you anyway.” She sat on one of the many boulders, resting her wounded hip.

“Out of all of us, it was you who achieved the most.”

“You held off the serjeants.”

“Not for long, and only to further an ideal.”

“I thought you valued ideals.”

“I do. Or I used to. That is the problem with this situation. The old ideals don’t have any relevance here. I applied them as did the political forces behind the Liberation. Both of us were very wrong. Look what we did to people, how many lives and homes we ruined. All that effort poured into conflict and destruction. I used to say I belonged to the land.”

“I’m sure you thought you did what was the right thing.”

“Indeed I did, Stephanie Ash. Unfortunately, I didn’t think enough, for it was not the right thing to do. Not at all.”

“Well hey, it don’t matter no more, man,” Cochrane said. “The fat babe’s been singing out loud for a while now. We’re like going home.” He offered Soi Hon his joint.

“No thank you. I do not wish to introduce poisons to this body. I am simply its custodian. I may soon even be held accountable for any ills I have inflicted. After all, past the end of this queue we shall be facing them again, will we not? And we will only be equals.”

Cochrane gave him a sour look and dropped his joint, grinding it into the mud under his heel. “Yeah, right, man,” he grunted.

“What about Ekelund?” Stephanie asked. “Where’s she?”

“Back at her command post. She refused the offer to return.”

“What? She’s crazy.”

“Undoubtedly, yes. But she sincerely believes that once the serjeants have gone, then this land will be free. She intends to found her paradise here.”

Stephanie looked back at the patch of scabrous land that was Ketton.

“No,” Moyo said firmly. “She has made her own decision. And she certainly isn’t going to listen to you of all people.”

“I suppose not.”

Even at the rate of one possessed every few seconds, it took over seven hours for everyone to be repatriated. The procedure was simple enough. Where Tinkerbell touched the cliff face, several oval tunnels had opened up, leading deep into her interior. Their walls shone with a soft aquamarine light that grew progressively brighter until it eventually filled the cleft. You just walked through, vanishing into the light.

Stephanie wasn’t the very last in. Moyo and McPhee had quietly and insistently stood behind her. She smiled in good-natured surrender and passed over the threshold. The air thickened in conjunction with the light, slowing the movement of her limbs. Eventually it felt as though she was trying to walk through the crystal itself. There was an insistent pressure exerted against every part of her. She felt the force move through her flesh, enabling her to speed up again. The aquamarine glow faded away, showing that her body had become transparent, a pattern of light conducted by crystal. When she looked round she saw the body she’d possessed standing behind her. The woman was holding her hands up, an expression of revulsion and satisfaction straining her face.

“Choma?” Stephanie asked. “Choma, can you hear me? There’s something I need to do.”

“Hello, Stephanie. I thought this might happen.”

Occupying a serjeant’s body was the simplest thing. One waited for her, immured in crystal, completely passive with its big head bowed. It didn’t matter which direction she walked in, she was always walking towards it. They merged, and it thickened around her, returning the opaque aquamarine light. The sensations were peculiar; the exoskeleton had no tactile nerves, yet it was somehow rigged to provide proof of contact. Her soles were definitely pressing down on a surface, air drifted over her as she moved forwards. The aquamarine light cleared from her eyes, allowing her to focus with remarkable clarity.

She walked out of the oval tunnel, back onto the crusty trampled-down mud of Ketton Island. The rivers of coloured light which emanated from Tinkerbell’s internal coruscations meandered over the ground. Nothing else moved.

It was a long slog back across the island to its central town. Even in the serjeant’s robust body it took her an hour and a quarter. Tinkerbell departed when she was a third of the way there, arching away above her in a opalescent blaze, then shrinking at an improbable speed. Stephanie began to pick up her pace. The air was stirring, slowly expanding again now the serjeants had gone, a gentle breeze gusting out over the edge of the cliff. Their wishes remained for a while, of course, impregnated on the fabric of this realm. But without their active presence to reinforce them, what was normality here began to return.

It was a lot brighter when Stephanie trotted up to the boundary of the town. The air had thinned considerably now, allowing the continuum’s persistent blue-white glare to shine down with unrestrained power. Every step sent her gliding a couple of metres above the ground. Gravity had reduced by about twenty per cent, she guessed.

Ekelund’s headquarters were prominent at the very centre of the razed town, the big tent perched atop a mound, faintly luminous. She came out as Stephanie bounced her way up the slope, lounging against the tentpole, smiling softly.

“It’s a different body, but I’d know those thoughts anywhere. I believe we’ve had our last goodbye, Stephanie Ash.”

“You have to leave. Please. You’ll destroy Angeline Gallagher’s body and her soul if you stay here.”

“Finally! It’s not my well being you’re concerned about. A small victory for me, but I consider it significant.”

“Come back to Mortonridge. There are still some serjeant bodies available to host your soul. You can live a life again, a real life.”

“As what? Trite little housewife and mother? Even you can’t live your old life again, Stephanie.”

“I never believe that a baby’s future is preordained. After birth, you’re on your own to make what you can from life. And we are being born again in these serjeant bodies. Make what you can of it, Ekelund. Don’t kill yourself and Gallagher out of misplaced pride. Look around! The air’s all but gone, the gravity’s failing. There’s nothing here anymore.”

“I am here. This island will bloom again once it’s free of your influences. We came here to this realm because it offered us the sanctuary we needed.”

“For God’s sake, admit you are wrong. There’s no shame in it. What do you think I’m going to do, stalk you and gloat?”

“Now you get to it. Which of us was right. That’s what it’s always been between you and I.”

“There is no right. An entire army flocked to your banner. I had a lover and five mismatched friends. You win. Now, please, come back.”

“No.”

“Why not? At least tell me that.”

Annette Ekelund’s stubborn smile flickered. “For the first time ever, I have been me. I haven’t had to defer to anybody, to ask permission, to conform to what society expects. And I’ve lost that.” Her voice shrivelled to a hoarse whisper. “I led them here, and not one stayed. They didn’t want to stay, and I didn’t have the strength to force them.” A tear emerged from her left eye. “I was wrong. I got it wrong, God damn you!”

“You didn’t bring anybody here. You didn’t order us. We came because we desperately wanted to. I was a part of it, Annette. When we lay there on the mud after the harpoon strike, and the serjeants were going to throw us into zero-tau, I helped. I was so frightened that I poured every drop of my power into leaving Mortonridge behind. And I was glad when we got here. We are all to blame. All of us.”

“I organized Mortonridge’s defence. I brought about the Liberation.”

“Yes, you did, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. It could even have been me. We’re not responsible for the way to the beyond being opened up. Ever since that began, the outcome was inevitable. You’re not to blame for fate, for the way the universe is put together. You’re not that important.”

Annette had to suck hard to fill her lungs with air. The sky had become very bright. “I was.”

“So was I. The day we took the children over the firebreak, I’d accomplished more than Richard Saldana ever had. That was how I felt. I loved it, and I wanted more of it, the way my group looked up and respected me. Typical human failing. You’re nothing special, not in that way.”

“Smug, smug, smug, God I hate you.”

Stephanie watched the dry flakes of mud lift gently from the ground, flicked up by the last wisps of air. They floated around in a lazy cloud, rebounding off each other, slowly moving higher. There was no gravity left, the only thing keeping her feet on the ground was sheer willpower. “Come with me.” She had to shout, the air was all but gone. “Hate me some more.”

“Would you die with me?” Annette yelled back. “Are you that fucking worthy?”

“No.”

Annette yelled again. Stephanie couldn’t hear her, the air had gone. Choma, Tinkerbell, come and get us. Quickly please.

Annette was clawing at her throat, gulping wildly as her skin turned dark red. Her desperate motions pushed her away from the ground. Stephanie kicked off after her and grabbed a thrashing ankle. Together they tumbled away from the top of the mound. The universal white light had turned the mud fields a glaring silver; crinkled cliff tops ignited into magnesium splendour. Ketton island melted away into the glaring void.

Stephanie and Annette soared ever onwards, drowning in light.

“Are they really worth it?” someone asked.

“Are we?”

Cold aquamarine light clamped around them.

Luca didn’t have to guide the horse; it simply followed the route he’d taken so many times before, plodding along without hesitation. A great circle round the middle of Cricklade estate: through the upper ford in Wryde stream, around the east side of Berrybut spinney, over Withcote ridge, taking the narrow humpback bridge below Saxby farm, the fire track through Coston wood. It gave him a good overview of his land’s progress. On the surface it was as good as any previous year; the crops were later by a few weeks, but there was no harm in that. Everyone had pulled together and made up for the lost weeks following the possession.

As they bloody well ought to, by damn. I sweated blood getting Cricklade back on its feet.

And now there was enough food for everybody, the coming harvest would enable them to see the winter months out without undue hardship. Stoke County had emerged from the transition exceptionally well. There certainly wouldn’t be any more marauders, not since the battle of Colsterworth station. Good news, considering the reports and rumours trickling out of Boston these days. The island’s capital hadn’t been so fast to embrace the old ways. Food there was becoming scarce; the farms immediately round the outskirts it were being abandoned as citizens roamed across the countryside in search of supplies.

The idiots weren’t capitalising on their existing industrial infrastructure by producing goods to trade with the farming communities for food. There was so much the city could provide, basic stuff like cloth and tools. That needed to happen again, and soon. But the indications he’d got from Lionel and the other traders weren’t good. Some factories were up and running, but there was no real social order in the city.

It’s actually worse than when the Democratic Land Union was out on the streets, agitating for their claptrap reforms.

Luca shook his head irritably. There were a lot of his thoughts roaming free these days. Some of them obvious, the ones he relied on to keep Cricklade going; others were more subtle, the comparisons, the regrets, odd mannerisms creeping back, so comfortable he could never drive them out again. Worst was that eternal junkie ache to see Louise and Genevieve again, just to know they were all right.

Are you such a monster, an anti-human, you would deny a father that? A single glimpse of my beloved girls.

Luca put his head back and yelled: “You never loved them!” The piebald horse came to a startled halt as his voice carried across the verdant land. Anger was his last refuge of self, the one defence which Grant could never penetrate. “You treated them like cattle. They weren’t even people to you, they were commodities, part of your medieval family empire, assets ready to marry off in exchange for money and power. You bastard. You don’t deserve them.” He shivered, crumpling down into the saddle. “Then why do I care?” he heard himself ask. “My children are the most important part of me; they carry on everything I am. And you tried to rape them. A pair of little children. Love? Do you think you know anything about it? A degenerate parasite like you.”

“Leave me alone,” Luca screamed out.

Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?

Luca gritted his teeth, thinking about the gas Spanton used, the way Dexter had tried to make them worship the Light Bringer. Building up a fortress of anger, so his thoughts could be his again.

He tugged on the reins, wheeling the horse round so he faced Cricklade. There was little practical point to this inspection tour. He knew the condition the estate was in.

Materially they were fine. Mentally . . . the veil of contentment furled around Norfolk was souring. He recognized the particular strain of forlorn resentment accumulating over the mind’s horizon. Cricklade had known it first. All across Norfolk, people were discovering what lay beneath their external perfection. The slow-maturing plague of vanity had begun to reap its victims. Hope was withering from their lives. This winter would be more than the physical cold.

Luca crossed the boundary of giant cedars and urged the horse up over the greensward towards the manor house. Just seeing its timeless grey stone façade, inset with white-painted windows, brought a peaceful reassurance to his aching thoughts. Its history belonged to him, and so assured his future.

The girls will carry on here, will keep our home and family alive.

He bowed his head, embittered by his deteriorating will. Anger was hard to maintain over hours, let alone days. Weary, weepy dismay was no defence, and those emotions were his constant companion these days.

There was the usual scattering of activity around the manor. A circular brush ejecting a puff of soot as it rose out from the central chimney stack. Stable boys leading the horses down to graze in the east meadow. Women hanging sheets out to dry on the clothes lines. Ned Coldham—Luca couldn’t remember the name of the handyman’s possessor—painting the windows on the west wing, making sure the wood was protected from the coming frosts. The sound of sawing drifting out through the chapel’s empty windows. Two men (claiming to be monks, though neither Luca nor Grant had ever heard of their order) were slowly repairing the damage Dexter had wrought inside.

There were more people bustling about in the walled kitchen garden at the side of the manor. Cook had brought a team of her kitchen helpers out to cut the shoots of asparagus ready for freezing. It was the fifth batch they’d collected from the geneered plant this year.

Johan was sitting beside the stone arched gateway, a blanket over his knees as he soaked up the warmth of the omnidirectional sunlight. Véronique was on a chair beside him, with baby Jeanette sleeping in a cradle, a parasol protecting her from the light.

Luca dismounted and went over to see his erstwhile deputy. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Not so bad, thank you, sir.” Johan smiled weakly, and nodded.

“You look a lot better.” He was putting on weight again, though the loose skin around his face remained pallid.

“Soon as they gets the glass finished, I’m going to start getting some seeds set,” Johan said. “I always like a bit o’ fresh lettuce and cucumber in me sarnies during the winter. Wouldn’t mind trying to grow some avocado as well, though it’ll be next year before they fruit.”

“Jolly good, man. And how’s this little one, then?” Luca peered into the crib. He’d forgotten just how small newborn babies were.

“She’s a dream,” Véronique sighed happily. “I wish she’d sleep like this at night. Every two hours she wants feeding. You can set your clock by her. It’s really tiring.”

“Sweet little mite,” Johan said. “Reckon she’s gonna be a proper looker when she grows up.”

Véronique beamed with easy pride.

“I’m sure she will,” Luca said. It pained him to see the way the old man was looking at the baby; there was too much desperation there. Butterworth wanted confirmation that life carried on as normal here in this realm. It was an attitude that was growing among a lot of Cricklade’s residents, he’d noticed lately. The kids they were looking after had been receiving more sympathetic attention. His own resolve to stay at the estate and ignore the urge to find the girls was becoming harder to maintain. It was a weakness he could date back to the day Johan had collapsed, and then accelerating after the battle of Colsterworth station. Every step he took on the sandy gravel path around the manor seemed to press blister-sized lumps deep into the flesh of his soles, reminding him of how precarious his life had become.

Luca led his horse into the stable courtyard, guilty and glad to leave Johan behind. Carmitha was over by her caravan. She was folding up freshly washed clothes and packing them into a big brass-bound wooden trunk. Half a dozen of her old glass storage jars were standing on the cobbles, full of leaves and flowers, their green tint turning the contents a peculiar grey colour.

She nodded politely at him. He watched her as he took the stallion’s saddle off; she moved with a steady determination that discouraged interruption. Some thought had been finalized, he decided. The trunk was eventually filled, and the lid slammed down.

“Give you a hand with that?” he offered.

“Thanks.”

They lifted the trunk in through the door at the back of the caravan. Luca whistled quietly. He’d never seen the inside so tidy before. There was no clutter, no clothes or towels slung about, all the pans she had hanging up were polished to a bright gleam, even the bed was made. Bottles were lined up on a high shelf, held in place by copper travelling rings.

She shoved the trunk into an alcove under the bed.

“You’re going somewhere,” he said.

“I’m ready to go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I’ve no idea. Might try Holbeach, see if any of the others made it to the caves.”

He sat on the bed, suddenly very tired. “Why? You know how important you are to people here. God, Carmitha, you can’t leave. Look, just tell me if someone’s said or done something against you. I’ll have their bloody nuts roasted very slowly over a furnace.”

“Nobody’s done anything yet.”

“Then why?”

“I want to be ready in case this place falls apart. Because that’s what’ll happen if you leave.”

“Oh Jesus.” His head sank into his hands.

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know. I took a ride round the estate this morning to try and make up my mind.”

“And?”

“I want to. I really do. I don’t know if it’ll make Grant back off, or if it’s going to be a complete surrender. I think the only reason I haven’t gone already is because he’s equally torn. Cricklade means an awful lot to him. He dreads the idea of it being left unsupervised for a whole winter. But his daughters mean more. I don’t suppose that leaves me with much choice.”

“Stop fishing for support. You always have choice. What you should ask yourself is, do you have the strength to make and sustain the decision.”

“I doubt it.”

“Humm.” She sat on the antique chair at the foot of the bed, looking at the despondent silhouette in front of her. There is no border any more, she decided, they’re merging. It’s not as fast as Véronique and Olive, but it’s happening. Another few weeks, a couple of months at the most, and they’ll be one. “Have you considered you might want to find the girls as well? That’s where your problem starts.”

He gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

“All that decency Grant’s wicked little mind is eroding. You haven’t lost it yet, you’re still feeling guilty about Louise and what you tried to do to her. You’d like to know that she’s all right as well.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t think straight any more. Every time I speak I have to listen hard to the words to find what’s me and what’s him. There’s still a difference. Just.”

“I’m tempted to be a fatalist. If Norfolk isn’t rescued for a few decades, you’re going to die here anyway, so why not give in and live those years in peace?”

“Because I want to live them,” he whispered fiercely. “Me!”

“That’s very greedy for someone who’ll do that living in a stolen body.”

“You always hated us, didn’t you.”

“I hate what you’ve done. I don’t hate what you are. Luca Comar and I would have got on quite well if we’d ever met, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, right.”

“You can’t win, Luca. As long as you’re alive he’ll be there with you.”

“I won’t surrender.”

“Would Luca Comar really have killed Spanton? Grant would, without hesitating.”

“You don’t understand. Spanton was a savage, he was going to destroy everything we are, everything we’ve worked to achieve here. I saw that in his heart. You can’t reason with people like that. You can’t educate them.”

“Why do you want to achieve anything? It is possible to live off the land here. We can, us Romanies. Even Grant would be able to show you how. Which plants to eat. Where the sheep and the cattle huddle in winter. You can become a hunter, dependant on no one.”

“People are more than that. We’re a social species. We gather in tribes or clans, we trade. It’s the fundamental of civilization.”

“But you’re dead, Luca. You died hundreds of years ago. This return will only ever be temporary, however it ends: in death or in the Confederation rescuing us. Why do you want to build a cosy civilization under those circumstances? Why not live fast and stop worrying about tomorrow?”

“Because that’s not what I am! I can’t do that!”

“Who can’t? Who are you that wants a future?”

“I don’t know.” He started sobbing. “I don’t know who I am.”

There were fewer people in Fort Forward’s Ops Room these days, a barometer of the Liberation’s progress and nature. The massive coordination effort required for the initial assault was long gone. After that, the busiest time had been following the disastrous attack on Ketton when they had to change the front line assault pattern, splitting Mortonridge into confinement zones. It was a strategy which had worked well enough. There certainly hadn’t been any more Kettons. The possessed had been divided up, then divided again as the confinement zones were broken down into smaller fractions.

From his office, Ralph could look out directly at the big status screen on the wall opposite. For days after Ketton he’d sat behind his desk watching the red icons of the front line change shape into a rough grid of squares stretched over Mortonridge. Each square had gone on to fission into a dozen smaller squares, which became rings and then stopped contracting. The sieges had begun, 716 of them.

It left the Ops Room with supervising the mopping-up operation across open land. The Liberation command’s main activity was now managing logistics, coordinating the supply routes to each siege camp and evacuating the recovered victims. All of which were handled by different, secondary, departments.

“We’re redundant,” Ralph told Janne Palmer. She and Acacia had stayed behind after the early-morning senior staff meeting. They often did, having coffee together and bringing up points which didn’t quite warrant the attention of a full staff meeting. “There’s no fighting left,” he said. “No bad decisions that I have to take the blame for. This is all about numbers now, statistics and averages. How long it takes the possessed to finish eating their supplies, balancing our medical resources and transport facilities. We should just turn it over to the accountants and leave.”

“I’ve not known many generals to be so bitter about their victories,” Janne said. “We won, Ralph, you were so successful that the Liberation has become a smooth operation where no one is shooting at us.”

He gave Acacia a quizzical look. “Would you describe it as smooth?”

“Progress has been smooth, General. Individuals have of course suffered considerable hardship out on the front line.”

“And on the other side as well. Have you been monitoring the state of the possessed we’re capturing when those sieges fail?”

“I’ve seen them,” Janne said.

“The possessed don’t actually surrender, you know. They just become so weak the serjeants can walk in unopposed. We broke twenty-three sieges yesterday, that produced seventy-three dead bodies. They just won’t give themselves up. And the remainder—Christ, cancer and malnutrition is a bad combination. Once we’d put them through zero-tau, seven actually died on the emergency evac flight back to Fort Forward.”

“I believe there are now enough colonizer ships in orbit to cope with the casualty rate,” Acacia said.

“We can store them in the zero-tau berths,” Ralph said. “I’m not so sure about treating them. They may wind up waiting in stasis for quite a while until there’s a hospital place for them. And that’s even with all the help we’re getting from Edenist habitats and our allies. Dear God, can you imagine what it’ll be like if we ever manage to haul an entire planet back from wherever it is they vanish them away to?”

“I believe the Assembly President had asked the Kiint ambassador for material aid,” Acacia said. “Roulor said that his government would look favourably to helping us with any physical event which was beyond our industrial or technical ability to cope with.”

“And Ombey’s medical situation doesn’t count as a crisis?” Janne asked.

“Treating the de-possessed from Mortonridge is not beyond the Confederation’s overall medical capability. That would seem to be the criteria the Kiint have set.”

“It might be physically possible, but what government is going to let a ship full of ex-possessed into their star system, let alone parcel them out among civilian hospitals in the cities?”

“Human politics,” Ralph grunted. “The envy of the galaxy.”

“That’s paranoia, not politics,” Janne said.

“It translates into votes, which makes it politics.” The Ops Room computer datavised a stream of information into Ralph’s neural nanonics. He glanced through the window to see one of the red rings up on the status screen turn a deep mauve. “Another siege over. Town called Wellow.”

“Yes,” Acacia said. Her eyes were shut as she eavesdropped on the serjeants actually ringing the clutter of sodden, mashed-up buildings. “The ELINT blocks monitoring its energistic field reported a massive decline. The serjeants are moving in.”

Ralph checked the AI’s administration procedures. Transport was being readied, with a flight of Stonys being assigned to the camp. Fort Forward medical facilities were notified. It even estimated the number of zero-tau berths they’d need on the orbiting colonizer starships, basing it on the last SD sensor satellite’s infrared sweep. “I almost wish it was the same as the first day,” Ralph said. “I know the possessed put up a hell of a fight, but at least they were healthy. I was ready for the horrors of war, I was even coping with sending our troops into action knowing they’d take casualties. But this isn’t what I expected at all, this isn’t saving them any more. It’s just political expediency.”

“Have you told the Princess that?” Acacia asked.

“Yes. She even agreed. But she won’t allow me to stop it. We have to clear them out, that’s the only consideration. The political cost outweighs the human one.”

The rover reporters assigned to the Liberation were all billeted in a pair of three-storey programmable silicon barracks on the western side of Fort Forward, near the administration and headquarters section. Nobody minded that, it placed them close to an officers’ mess, which at least allowed them to get a drink in the evening. But as far as providing them with an authentic experience of troop quarters went, you could take realism too far. The ground floor was a single open space that was intended as a general recreation and assembly hall, with a total furniture complement of fifty plastic chairs, three tables, a commercial-sized induction oven and a water fountain. It did at least have a high-capacity net processor installed for them to stay in touch with their studio chiefs. Beds were upstairs, in six dormitories with a communal bathroom on each floor. For a breed used to four-star (minimum) hotels, they didn’t acclimatize well.

The rain started at eight o’clock in the morning while Tim Beard was downstairs having breakfast. There were three choices for breakfast at Fort Forward: tray A, tray B, and tray C. He always tried to get down in time to grab a tray A from the pile by the door, which was the most filling, so he didn’t have to eat lunch; trays D, E, and F violated all kinds of human rights declarations.

He pushed the tray into its slot in the oven and set the timer for thirty seconds. Drizzle pattered down in the big open doorway. Tim groaned in dismay. It would make the humidity hellish for the rest of the day, and if he travelled down into Mortonridge itself he’d have to used the anti-fungal gel that evening—again. Another day in the clutches of decay, watching a decaying Liberation. The oven bleeped and ejected his tray. The wrapping had split, mixing his porridge with his tomatoes.

There were a couple of chairs left at one of the tables. He sat down next to Donrell, from News Galactic, nodding at Hugh Rosler, Elizabeth Mitchell, and the others.

“Anyone know where we’re cleared for today?” he asked.

“Official Stonys are taking us down to Monkscliff,” Hugh said. “They want to show us some medical team just in from Jerusalem, got a new method of cramming protein back into the malnutrition cases. Direct blood supplement, slam protein back into your cells. Hundred per cent survival rate. It’s going to be real useful when the last sieges end.”

“I want to try and get back down to Chainbridge,” Tim said. “The army set up a big field hospital there. There’s been some Gimmie suicides. They couldn’t handle being saved.”

“Gimmie the winning side,” Elizabeth muttered. “God damn typical, or what.”

“No,” Donrell said complacently. He smiled round at his colleagues. “You don’t want any of that, you want to visit Urswick.”

Tim hated the smug tone, but Donrell was one of the best at ferreting information. A neural nanonics check told him Urswick was a siege town that had been liberated yesterday afternoon. “Any reason?”

Donrell grinned and made a show of lowering a triangle of toast into his mouth. “They ran out of food over a week ago. That means they had to eat something different to last out so long.” He licked his lips.

“Oh Jesus,” Tim winced. He shoved his breakfast tray away. But it would make one fantastic story.

“Who the hell told you that?” Elizabeth asked; there was a disturbing eagerness in her voice.

Tim was preparing a disapproving look for her when he saw Hugh look up suddenly.

“One of the mercs I know,” Donrell said. “She had a buddy in the Urswick support troop. At the start of the siege the infrared sweep showed a hundred and five people in there. The serjeants liberated ninety-three.”

Hugh was glancing round the hall, frowning, as if his name was being called.

“Could be some of your basket cases, Tim,” Elizabeth suggested. “They couldn’t handle the memory.”

Hugh Rosler stood up and walked towards the open door. Donrell gave a rough laugh. “Hey, Hugh, you want some of my sausage? Tastes kinda strange.”

Tim gave him an annoyed look, and hurried off after Hugh.

“Something I said?” Donrell shouted after them. The whole table was chuckling.

Tim caught up with Hugh just outside. He was ignoring the rain, walking purposefully across the mesh road.

“What is it?” Tim asked. “You know something, don’t you? One of your local contacts datavise you?”

Hugh gave Tim a slight sideways smile. “Not quite, no.”

Tim scampered along at his side. “Is it hot? Come on, Hugh! I pool, don’t I? Your best sensevises are down to me.”

“I think you just got your story back.” Hugh slowed, then turned quickly and started jogging along the gap between a couple of barracks.

“Christ’s sake,” Tim muttered. He was soaking, but nothing would make him give up now. Hugh might be a provincial hick working for a nothing agency, but he was always on the level.

There was a four-lane motorway on the other side of the barracks, with a junction right in front of them. Two loops of mesh road led round to one of Fort Forward’s hospitals. Hugh hurried out onto the motorway, right in front of an automated ten-tonne truck.

“Hugh!” Tim screamed.

Hugh Rosler didn’t even look at the truck. He held up a hand and clicked his fingers.

The truck stopped.

Tim gaped, not believing. It didn’t brake. It didn’t skid to a halt. It just stopped. Dead. In the middle of the road. Fifty kilometres an hour to zero in an instant.

“Oh mother of God,” Tim croaked. “You’re one of them.”

“No I’m not,” Hugh said. “I’m the same as you, I’m a reporter. It’s just that I’ve been doing it a lot longer. You pick a few useful things up.”

“But . . .” Tim hung back on the edge of the motorway. All of the traffic was slowing to a halt, red hazard strobes flashing brightly.

“Come on,” Hugh said cheerfully. “Trust me, you don’t want to miss this. Start recording.”

Tim belatedly opened a neural nanonics memory cell. He stepped out onto the motorway. “Hugh? How did you do that, Hugh?”

“Transferred the inertia through hyperspace. Don’t worry about it.”

“Fine.” Tim froze. A glimmer of emerald light was shining in the air behind Hugh. He gurgled a warning and raised his hand to point.

Hugh turned to face the light, smiling broadly. It expanded rapidly to a pillar five metres wide, twenty tall. Raindrops sparkled as they fell around it, acquiring their own verdure corona.

“What is that?” Tim asked, too fascinated to be frightened.

“Some sort of gateway. I don’t actually understand its compositional dynamic, which is pretty remarkable in itself.”

Tim gathered up his reporter’s discipline and focused on the cold light in front of him. There were shadows moving deep inside. They grew larger, more distinct. A serjeant stepped out onto the glistening road. Tim upped his sensorium reception, waiting in awe.

“Urgh,” the puissant serjeant exclaimed in a shrill voice. “What a simply awful homecoming, darling. It’s absolutely weeing down.”

Ralph got out to one of the seven emerald gateways ninety minutes after they opened. The between time was a frantic rush to make sense of what was happening and respond appropriately. It saw the Ops Room brought back to full strength as officers ran in from all over the building to take up their stations.

That the radiant green columns were some form of wormholes was easy enough to establish. The exact status of the people walking out of them was more problematical.

“The serjeants do not contain Edenist personalities,” Acacia exclaimed. “General affinity is a babble of voices, they declaim without adherence to simple convention. Clarity has become impossible.”

“Then who are they?”

“I believe they are ex-possessors.”

By then several serjeants with their original Edenist personalities had come through the gateways, helping to clarify the situation, telling every Edenist in or orbiting Ombey that they were the refugees from Ketton island. Even so, Ralph activated the incursion strategy, drawn up in the weeks preceding the liberation in case a wild foray by the possessed penetrated Fort Forward’s perimeter. All ground and air traffic across the camp was shut down, all personnel confined to barracks. Duty marines were rushed to the gateways. The one thing he had to confirm was that the possessors now in serjeant bodies hadn’t retained their energistic power. Once that was proven, he allowed the full-alert status to drop a level. Both he and Admiral Farquar agreed that the SD platforms would continue targeting the gateways. They might be benign now, but who was to say that would last.

For all its strangeness, the situation was a problem of logistics again. The humans who came staggering out of the gateways were in the same kind of physical condition as every other ex-possessed, badly in need of medical treatment and decent food. It couldn’t be coincidence that each gateway had opened just outside a hospital; but their numbers and rate of arrival were putting a severe strain on the immediate medical resources.

As to the serjeants, the one contingency Ralph and his staff had never planned for was acquiring over twelve thousand ex-possessors in non-threatening guise. Ralph initially classified them as prisoners of war, and the AI reassigned three empty blocks of barracks as their accommodation. Marines and mercenaries on leave at the camp were formed into guard squads, confining them to the buildings.

It was a stall manoeuvre; Ralph didn’t know what else to do with them. They had to be guilty of more than just being in the enemy army. Other charges would have to be brought, surely? Kidnap and grievous bodily harm, at least. And yet, they were the victims of circumstance—as any lawyer would be bound to argue.

But just for once, the problem of what to do with them afterwards wouldn’t be his. He didn’t envy Princess Kirsten that decision.

Dean and Will reported to the Ops Room to act as Ralph’s escort when he was finally ready for his inspection. The closest gateway was less than a kilometre from the headquarters building itself. Even with the marine squads orchestrated by the AI, the area around it was predictably chaotic. Huge crowds of spectators from all over the camp, including every rover reporter, milled round the gateways to snatch a byte of the action. Dean and Will had to elbow people aside to let Ralph through. At least some degree of order had been established by the time they reached the gateway. The marine captain in charge had established a hundred-metre perimeter. Inside that, marines were deployed to form two distinct passages to shepherd the returnees away. One led back to the nearby hospital entrance, the other finished up at the parking lot, where trucks waited to drive serjeants away to their detention centres. As soon as a figure walked out of the shimmering green light, an assessment team decided which passage they were destined for, a decision backed up by nervejam sticks. All protests were simply ignored.

“Even our remaining original serjeants are going to the detention barracks,” Acacia told Ralph as they shoved their way through the perimeter. “It makes things easier. We can sort them out from the ex-possessors later on.”

“Tell them, thanks. I appreciate it. We need to keep things flowing here.”

The marine captain squelched over to Ralph’s little group and saluted. Rainwater dripped steadily off his skull helmet.

“How’s it going, Captain?” Ralph asked.

“Good, sir. We’ve got a valid supervision routine up and running here now.”

“Well done. You get back, do your job. We’ll try not to get in the way.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Ralph spent a couple of minutes watching quietly as the people and serjeants came flooding out of the green light. Despite the humidity and warm rain, he felt cold trickling through his chest.

Strange, I can accept a wormhole or ZTT jump across light-years as perfectly normal, but a portal leading out of this universe is like a phobia. Is this too divine for me, physical proof of a realm where celestials exist? Or the opposite, proof that even the human soul and omnipotent creatures have a rational basis? I’m looking at the end of religions, the fact that we were never visited by any messenger from any creator god. A fact presented in a fashion I can never ignore. The loss of our race’s spiritual innocence.

He could see that the ex-possessed humans that came through were surprised, a dim-witted confusion present on every face as the dreary rain started to soak their clothes. The serjeants lumbered out, their bewilderment less obtrusive, but none of them seemed in full control of their moments during the initial few moments.

Several members of the science investigatory team were wandering round the gateway, waving sensor blocks at it. Most of the army’s scientific staff were down on the peninsula, trying to make sense of the energistic ability. Diana Tiernan was one of the few people content with the sieges, explaining how it gave the physicists a chance to study the power outside the laboratory. Ralph had left her back in the headquarters building, desperately trying to arrange for instruments and personnel to be flown back to Fort Forward.

“That’s Sinon,” Acacia exclaimed. “He’s an original.”

Ralph saw a serjeant who lacked the unsteadiness of the others. The assessment team of marines and medics pointed him at the passage of armoured marine troopers. “You sure?” Ralph queried.

“Yes.”

Ralph hurried up to the assessment team. “Okay, we’ll take this one.”

The marine captain’s exasperation was throttled back at the interference. “Yes sir.”

A thoroughly chastised Ralph led Sinon away. They wound up standing between the gateway and the perimeter ring of marines. His own staff gathered round. “This crystal entity you encountered back there, did it tell you how we could solve the overall problem?” Ralph asked.

“I’m sorry, General. It took the same attitude as the Kiint. We must generate our own solution.”

“Damnit! But it was willing to help de-possess bodies.”

“Yes. It said it judged us by our own ethics, and that such a theft was wrong.”

“Okay, what kind of conditions were you facing in that realm? Did you see any of the other planets?”

“The conditions were what we made of them; the reality dysfunction ability was paramount. Unfortunately, even wishes have limits. We were cast out alone on that island, without any fresh air or food. Nothing could change that. The entity implied that our planets would be considerably more fortunate, not that we saw any. That realm is too vast for any chance encounter. The entity even hinted it may be more extensive than our own universe, though not necessarily in its physical dimensions. It is an explorer, it went there because it believed it would expand its own knowledge.”

“So it’s not paradise?”

“Definitely not. The possessed are wrong about that. It’s a refuge, that’s all. There’s nothing there which you don’t bring to it yourself.”

“So it is entirely natural?”

“I believe so, yes.”

After the burst of confusion at the start of the exodus, the marines exerted complete control over everyone who came through the gateways. They were on top of the situation, and stayed there right up until the last four serjeants came through. The marines immediately ushered them towards the trucks waiting in the parking lot as they’d done with all the others.

“No way,” Moyo said. “We’re waiting for her.”

“Who?” the marine captain asked.

“Stephanie. She must have gone back somehow.”

“Sorry, no exceptions.”

“Yo, dude,” Cochrane said. “She’s like our righteous leader; and she’s doing her last good deed. So where do you cats come off acting like colonel asswipe?”

The captain wanted to protest, but somehow the sight of a serjeant wearing slim purple sunglasses and a paisley-patterned backpack stopped the words from coming out.

“I mean, she’s like out there all alone battling the last and greatest of the hobgoblin queens, to save your soul. The least you can do is act thankful.”

“It’s closing,” McPhee shouted.

The gateway was contracting, shrinking back to a small sliver of emerald shimmering a metre above the surface of the road. The physicists shouted excitedly, datavising fresh instructions to the considerable sensor array they’d assembled round the transplanetary rift.

“Stephanie!” Moyo yelled.

“Wait,” Cochrane said. “It’s not shutting down completely. See?”

A small remnant of green light continued to burn steadily.

“She’s still there,” Moyo said desperately. “She can still make it. Please!” he appealed to the marine captain. “You have to let us wait for her.”

“I can’t.”

“Hang on in there,” Cochrane said. “I maybe know someone who can help here.” Ever since he’d arrived back on Ombey there had been a thousand alien voices whispering away to each other at the back of his mind. Sinon, he yelled at them. Hey, big dude, you around these parts? It’s me, your ol’ buddy Cochrane. We like need some high-powered help right now. Stephanie’s being cosmically stupid again.

Acacia took the problem directly to Ralph. He might have been firm about it, but the Edenist mentioned Annette Ekelund.

“Let them wait,” Ralph datavised to the marine captain. “We’ll set up a watching brief.”

An hour and twenty minutes later the gateway expanded briefly to let three humanoid figures stagger out. Stephanie and Annette, in their serjeant bodies, supported a trembling Angeline Gallagher between them. They handed her over to the small medical team, who rushed her into the hospital.

Moyo raced over and flung his arms around Stephanie, his mind leaking a torrent of distress into the general affinity band.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he cried. “After all that, I couldn’t stand it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. A physical embrace was almost impossible, their hard skulls clacked together loudly as they attempted to kiss.

The rover reporters who’d hung on to the bitter end dodged round the marine guard to close on the strange party.

“Hi there you dudes, I’m Cochrane, one of the like superheroes who got the kids out across the firebreak. That’s Cochrane. C-O-C-H . . .”

It was quiet in the detention barracks. Not that the serjeants slept, they didn’t need to. They were lying on their bunks or walking round the hall downstairs, being interviewed by the rovers, catching up on AV news shows (mainly featuring themselves). Most of all, they were getting used to the fact they were back in genuine bodies, and owned them one hundred per cent. Apprehension and marvel at their latest turn in fortune had left them stupefied.

Ralph walked through one of the barracks, escorted by a watchful Dean and Will. The marine guard was allowing the serjeants to move around freely, all except one. There were five armed troopers standing outside the door to the office the bitek construct was secured in. Two stood to attention as Ralph approached, the others kept focused on their job.

“Open the door,” Ralph ordered.

Dean and Will came in with him, expressions informing any serjeant they’d love it to try taking them on. It was read by the room’s sole occupant, who was sitting passively behind a table. Ralph sat down opposite.

“Hello, Annette.”

“Ralph Hiltch. General, sir. You are becoming a depressing recurrent feature in my life.”

“Yes. And it is a life now, isn’t it? How does that feel, coming back from the dead as a real person?”

“This is what I always wanted. So I can’t complain. Though I expect I’ll eventually become ungrateful about the lack of this body’s sexuality.”

“You’ll be even more unhappy if I fail, and the possessed come marching over the horizon to capture your fine new body for a lost soul to host.”

“Don’t be so modest. You won’t fail here on Ombey, Ralph. You’re too good at your job. You love it. How many sieges are left now?”

“Five hundred and thirty-two.”

“And falling, I believe. That was a good strategy, Ralph. A good response to Ketton. But I still would have loved to see your face when we took that chunk of landscape out from under your nose.”

“Where did that stunt get you? What did you achieve?”

“I got a body, didn’t I. I’m alive again.”

“Only by chance. And you didn’t help a lot from what I hear.”

“Yes yes, Saint bloody Stephanie the hero of the flying isle. Is the Pope going to give her an audience? I’d like to see that, a bitek abomination with a soul that’s escaped from purgatory having tea at the Vatican.”

“No. The Pope’s not seeing anybody anymore. Earth is falling to possession.”

“Shit! Are you serious?”

“Yes. Last I heard, there were four arcologies infested. It might even have fallen by now. So you see, I won, but you were right after all. This will never be decided here.”

The serjeant sat up straighter, its recessed eyes never moving from Ralph. “You look tired, General. This Liberation is really wearing you down, isn’t it?”

“You and I both know there is no paradise now, no immortality. The possessed can never have what they wanted. What will they do, Annette? What will happen to Earth when it arrives in that sanctuary realm and none of their food synthesis machinery works? What then?”

“They’ll die. Permanently. Their suffering will end.”

“Is that what you’d call a final settlement? Problem over.”

“No. I had that opportunity. I didn’t take it.”

“The beyond is preferable to death?”

“I’m back, aren’t I? Would you prefer me to be on my knees?”

“I’m not here to gloat, Annette.”

“Then what are you here for?”

“I am the supreme commander of the Liberation forces. For the moment that gives me an extraordinary degree of power, and not just in military terms. You tell me if there’s any point to my being here. Can this be settled on Mortonridge, or has everything we’ve both endured all been for nothing?”

“You’re in charge of a weary army facing a dying enemy, Ralph; that’s not a platform for revolution. You’re still trying to validate your glorious war by searching for a noble conclusion. There is none. We are a sideshow. An incredibly expensive, fabulously dramatic entertainment for the accessing masses. We distracted their attention while the real men and women of power decided what our fate was going to be. Political policies determine how the human race confronts this crisis. War doesn’t have that ability. War has only one outcome. War is stupid, Ralph. It is the desecration of the human spirit, martyring yourself for someone else’s dream. It is for people who do not believe in themselves. It is for you, Ralph.”

The security level one sensenviron conference room never changed. Princess Kirsten was already seated at one end of the oval table as the image of white nothingness walls formed around Ralph, seating him at the other end. Nobody else was present.

“Well, what a day,” Kirsten said. “Not only do we get all our people back safely, we wind up with fewer lost souls to plague the living.”

“I want to stop it,” Ralph said. “We’ve won. What we’re doing now has become utterly pointless.”

“There are still over quarter of a million possessed on my planet. My subjects are their victims. I don’t think it’s over.”

“We have them confined. As a threat they’ve been neutralized. Of course we’ll maintain their isolation, but I’m asking that we stop the actual conflict.”

“Ralph, this was your idea. The sieges have stopped all the shooting.”

“And replaced them with Urswick. Is that what you want, your subjects eating each other?”

The image of the Princess showed no emotional response. “The longer they remain possessed, the bigger their cancers grow. Those bodies will die unless we actively intervene and rescue them.”

“Ma’am, I am going to issue an order that food and basic medical supplies are handed over to the possessed currently under siege. I will not rescind it. If you do not want it issued, then you will have to relieve me of my duty.”

“Ralph, what the hell is this? We’re winning. Forty-three sieges collapsed today. Another ten days, a fortnight at the most, and it’ll all be over.”

“It is over here, ma’am. Persecuting the possessed that remain is . . . disgusting. You listened to me before—God, that’s how this whole thing began. Please give the same consideration to what I’m saying now.”

“You’re saying nothing, Ralph. This is a media war, a propaganda exercise, that’s what it always was. With your cooperation, I might add. We must have total victory.”

“We already have it. This is more. We found out today that it’s possible to open a gateway to the realm where the possessed flee to. Nobody understands it, the physics behind it; but we know it’s possible now. We will be able to replicate the effect ourselves some day. The possessed can’t hide away from us any more. That’s our victory. We can make them face up to what they are, what their limits are. That way we can go on to find a solution.”

“Expand that for me.”

“We now have the power of life and death over the possessed under siege, especially now the Confederation navy is working on anti-memory. By concluding the sieges with their capitulation, we’re wasting our position, our tactical advantage. Ekelund said this crisis will never be decided here on Ombey, by us. I used to believe her. But today changed that. We are in a unique position to force the possessed to cooperate and help us find a solution. There is a solution—the Kiint found one, the crystal entities found one, we even think the Laymil found one—not that mass suicide would be valid for humans. So give the remaining possessed food, let them recover, and then start negotiating. We can use the Ketton island veterans to go in and open up a dialogue for us.”

“You mean the serjeants, the ex-possessors?”

“Who better. They have first-hand experience that the sanctuary realm is nothing of the sort. If anybody can convince them, those serjeants can.”

“Good God. First you want the kingdom to adopt bitek, now you’d have me allied with the lost souls themselves.”

“We know what being antagonistic to them brings us. A fifth of a continent devastated, thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of cancer victims. This has been suffering on a scale we’ve not had since the Garissa genocide. Make it mean something, ma’am, make some good come out of it. If it’s possible, if there is the slightest chance that this might work, you cannot ignore it.”

“Ralph, you are going to be the death of my senior advisors.”

“Then they can come back from the beyond and persecute me. Am I free to give the order?”

“If any of these possessed use this as an opportunity to try and break out, I want them in zero-tau within a day.”

“Understood.”

“Very well, General Hiltch, give your order.”

Al had moved to a suite a couple of floors up the Hilton where all the utilities still worked. The doctors needed a reliable electrical supply, fancy phone lines, clean air, that kind of crap. They’d turned the new suite’s bedroom into a treatment room, raiding Monterey’s hospital for equipment and medical packages. More stuff had been flown up from San Angeles. Stuff that gave Al the creeps: bits of other people, living organs and muscles and veins and skin. Emmet had run a planet-wide search for a pair of compatible eyes, eventually tracking them down to a storage vault in Sunset Island. A priority flight had brought them up to Monterey.

The doctors said it was going well. Jez was out of danger. They’d replaced her blood and grafted on skin and tissue where Kiera had burned down to the bone, implanted the new eyes. Once the operations were over, they’d covered her in medical packages. Now it was just a question of time until she healed over, they’d assured him.

They didn’t like Al visiting too much. Jez looked so helpless smothered in that green plastic substance he got all worked up, which screwed up the packages. So he didn’t get too near, just hung out by the door and watched over her. Like a guy should do for his dame. It gave him time to think a lot.

Mickey, Emmet, and Patricia came into the suite’s lounge. Al had one of the stewards hand round drinks as they sat round the low brass and marble table, then ordered everyone else out of the room.

“Okay, Emmet, how long till they get here?”

“I figure some time in the next ten hours, Al.”

“Fair enough.” Al lit a Havana and blew a long trail of smoke at the high ceiling. “On the level, can we fight them off?”

Emmet took a sip of the bourbon and replaced the glass on the table, studying it keenly. “No, Al, we’re going to lose. Even if they only use the same level of force as they did against Arnstat, we’ll lose. And they’ll be carrying enough combat wasps to fire two or three times as many at us. Everything in orbit above New California will be wiped out. The ships can jump away. But they’ve got nowhere to go except for the last couple of planets we infiltrated. And I’m not too sure they’ll even manage that. We think the Navy’s voidhawks pursued a lot of our guys from Arnstat and blew them up after they’d jumped away. There weren’t too many made it back here.”

“Thanks, Emmet, I appreciate you being straight with me. Mickey, Patricia, what’s the word among the soldiers?”

“They’re getting jumpy, Al,” Patricia said. “No two ways about it. There’s been enough time for what that bitch Kiera said to start registering. The Organization’s put us on top, but that makes us a target. We know we can’t take over another planet again, New California is all we’ve got. A lot of them want to go down there.”

“But we’re holding them, Al,” Mickey said. His nervous tic was palpitating away. “I don’t take no shit from any of my people. They’re loyal. You made us, Al, we’ll stay with you.”

His blind enthusiasm made Al smile faintly. “I ain’t asking no one to commit suicide for me, Mickey. They wouldn’t do it anyway; they all came out of the beyond, remember. They ain’t gonna go back just because I ask nice. Party’s over, guys. We had fun for a while, but we’ve reached the end of the road. I got a bum rap from history once, I ain’t having that again. This time people are gonna say I did the best for everyone. They’re gonna show me some genuine respect.”

“How?” Patricia asked.

“Because we’re going out in style. It’s gonna be me who stops the slaughter. I’m gonna make the Navy an offer they can’t refuse.”

The Ilex was one of the voidhawks who had taken up an observation position two million kilometres out from New California in the wake of the mass hellhawk defection from the Organization. The Yosemite Consensus had soon found out about Almaden. Hellhawks had been delivering non-possessed survivors to the habitats, a repatriation deal for rebuilding the asteroid’s nutrient refinery, they said. Consensus hadn’t finished reviewing the implications of that yet; it seemed unlikely that they could maintain the machinery for more than a few years. However, that the hellhawks so actively sought to avoid combat was a particularly welcome development. Capone’s actual motives for allowing and even assisting such an action were highly questionable.

Whatever the true reason, it left Yosemite with an excellent opportunity to re-establish its observation of New California and the Organization fleet. Ilex had been assigned to review the low-orbit SD network in preparation for the arrival of Admiral Kolhammer’s attack force. They deployed their spyglobes and waited for them to complete the long fall down below geostationary orbit. There was still an hour to go before the little sensors started to return useful data when a communication beam from Monterey was aligned on them.

“I wanna talk to the captain,” Al Capone said.

Auster immediately informed the Yosemite habitats. Their Consensus came together, reviewing the situation through his eyes and ears. “This is Captain Auster. What can I do for you, Mr Capone?”

Al grinned, and turned to someone out of view. “Hey, you got that on the dime, they’re as prissy as the Limeys. Okay, Auster, we all reckon that the Navy is due here any minute now. Right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny such an event.”

“Bullshit, they’re on their way.”

“What do you want, Mr Capone?”

“I need to talk to the guy in charge, the admiral. And I need to do that before he starts shooting. Can you fix that for me?”

“What do you wish to talk to him about?”

“Hey, that’s between me and him, pal. Now can you set that up, or do you wanna sit back and let a whole load of people get slaughtered? I thought that was against your religion or something.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Illustrious emerged in the centre of the voidhawk defence sphere formation, 300,000 kilometres above New California. Admiral Kolhammer waited impatiently for the tactical display, cursing the delay while the warship’s sensors deployed.

Lieutenant Commander Kynea, the voidhawk liaison staff leader, called out: “Sir, local voidhawks have received a communications request. Al Capone wants to talk to you.”

It wasn’t something Motela Kolhammer was expecting, but the probability was always there. Capone didn’t have to be a genius to work out where the attack force was heading after Arnstat.

The tactical display was coming on line, supplemented by information from the Yosemite voidhawks. The news that the hellhawks had departed was extremely welcome. Though even without them New California had a prodigious defence network; its strength had determined the ultimate size of the attack force. So far, none of the platforms had fired.

“I’ll listen to him,” Kolhammer said. “But I want our deployment to continue as planned.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Illustrious aligned one of its communication dishes on Monterey.

“So you’re the admiral, huh?” Al Capone asked once the link was established.

“Admiral Kolhammer, Confederation Navy. Currently commanding the attack force emerging above New California.”

“I guess I must have frightened you people, huh?”

“Guess again.”

“I don’t think so. I got it right first time, pal. There’s one fuck of a lot of you. That means you’re running scared.”

“Interpret our emergence how you choose. It is of no relevance to me. Did you wish to surrender?”

“Blunt son of a bitch, ain’t you?”

“I’ve been called many things, that’s one of the milder observations.”

“You killed a lot of people on Arnstat, Admiral.”

“No. You did. You backed us into a position where we had no alternative but to respond appropriately.”

Al grinned brightly. “Like I said, I frightened you. That’s a big tough decision your Assembly must have made, sacrifice an entire planet just to whack me. Taxpayers ain’t gonna like that, no sir. You’re supposed to be protecting them. That’s your duty.”

“I’m very aware of my duty to the Confederation, Mr Capone. I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“Have it whatever way you want. Thing is, I’ve got an offer for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re gonna shoot off a shitload of artillery at us, right. I mean, it’s gonna be like the fucking Alamo in here.”

“You’ll discover my intentions soon enough.”

“We’ve got over a million people up here, more if you count all us poor lost souls; but certainly a million flesh-and-blood bodies. Plenty of women and children, too. I can prove that; there’s stuff my technical guys can send you, lists and records and such. Do you really want to kill them all?”

“No, I do not wish to kill anybody.”

“That’s good, we can talk about that.”

“Talk quickly.”

“Pretty simple; I ain’t gonna jive-ass you. You’ve already decided you’ll give up New California just to get rid of me. Well, I gotta tell you, I’m real flattered. That’s one hell of a price to put on a single guy’s head, you know. So in return, I’m gonna do you a favour. I’ll send all my people down to the planet, all the possessed here in Monterey and the other asteroids, everyone in the fleet, the whole goddamn lot of them. Then when we’re all down on the ground, we’ll take the planet away. This way nobody gets hurt, and you get back all the hostages I’m keeping up here. I’ll even throw in the antimatter as well. How does that grab you, Admiral?”

“It grabs me as fundamentally unbelievable.”

“Hey shit-for-brains, you want a bloodbath that bad and maybe I’ll just give the order to butcher all the hostages right now, before your weapons ever reach us.”

“No. Please don’t. I apologise. What I should have asked was, why? Why are you making this offer?”

Al leaned in closer to the sensor transmitting his image to the Illustrious. “Look, I’m just trying to do what’s right here. You’re going to kill people. Maybe I pushed you into that, maybe not. But now it’s here, I’m trying to stop it, I ain’t no goddamn maniac. So I offer you a way out that leaves both of us looking good.”

“Let me get this straight, you are proposing to ferry every possessed down to the planet, disarm your fleet and hand back the asteroids?”

“Hey, slow but smart. You got it. In return for letting us keep our bodies, we leave and don’t bother you again. That’s it. End of story.”

“Moving that many people down to the planet would take some time.”

“Emmet, my guy, he says about a week.”

“I see. So while my ships sit out here doing nothing, what guarantee can you make that you’re not simply trying to pull another Trafalgar strike against us under cover of this withdrawal?”

Al gave him the look. “That’s fucking low, pal. What’s to stop you shooting when we’re halfway through evacuating and I got fewer ships to give my people covering fire?”

“In other words, we have to trust each other.”

“Bet your ever-loving ass.”

“Very well. My ships will not launch any offensive while your evacuation is in progress. And Mr Capone?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“No problem. You just be sure and tell everyone back home that I ain’t no cracker-barrel fishball. I got me some style.”

“Of course you have. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

Al leaned back in his chair and switched off the super telephone machine. “No, guess you wouldn’t,” he said contentedly.

Jezzibella stood in the bedroom doorway. She wore a blue towelling gown loosely over her green wrappings, helping to make her look slightly more human and not so much like a plastic version of the Tin Man out of Oz.

He shot to his feet. “Hey, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

“It doesn’t make any difference if I’m lying down or not. The packages work either way.” She walked slowly across the lounge, barely flexing her knees. Lowering herself into the chair was difficult. Al made a real effort not to go over and help, he could see how much doing it all by herself meant. Toughest girl in the galaxy.

“So what have you been doing?” she asked. The voice was muffled through the slit in her mask package.

“Putting a stop to all this crap. My guys, they can scoot down to the planet and get home free.”

“I thought so. That’s very statesmanlike of you, baby.”

“I got a reputation to keep, you know.”

“I know. But Al, what happens when the Confederation finds out how to bring planets back? I mean, that’s what all this was about, wasn’t it? Standing up to them on their home ground.”

He reached over the table and gripped her hands. The fingers were sticking out from the end of the packages, allowing him some genuine contact with her skin. “We lost, Jez. Okay? We were so goddamn good, we lost. Go figure. We frightened them too much. I had to make a choice. The fleet can’t fight this admiral off. No way. So letting the planet go is the smart way to deal with it. The way I see it, my guys get years more living in their bodies. At least. And the Confederation longhairs ain’t gonna risk bringing them back until they’ve found a way of giving us new bodies, or something. They’d just start the whole thing over. Who knows, maybe New California can vanish from the next universe, too. There’s a lot of things can happen. This way, nobody dies, we all win.”

“You’re the best, baby. I knew it right from the start. When do we go down?”

Al squeezed her fingers a little tighter, looking into her face. He could just see her new eyes through the green package, like she was wearing swimming goggles, only they were full of liquid. “You can’t, Jez. Christ, your medical stuff only just works up here. Where New California’s headed, who knows what’s going to go bust. You’re healing up real good now, all the docs say so. But you need more time to get perfect. I ain’t gonna allow nothing to interfere with that.”

“No, Al, I’m going with you.”

“Wrong. I’m staying here. See, we’ll still be together.”

“No.”

“Yeah.” He sat back, and waved an arm round in a gesture that took in the whole asteroid. “Done deal, Jez. Someone’s got to stay here and keep the space weapons going while the guys fly down to the planet. I don’t trust that motherhumping admiral none.”

“Al, you can’t operate the SD platforms. For fuck’s sake, you don’t even know how to work the hotel air conditioner.”

“Yeah. But the admiral don’t know that.”

“They’ll catch you. They’ll expel you from that body. It’ll be the beyond for the rest of time. Please, Al. I’ll work the SD platforms. Be safe. I can live as long as I know you’re safe.”

“You’re forgetting something, Jez: everyone forgets, except maybe good old brown-nose Bernhard. I’m Al Capone. I ain’t scared of the beyond. Never was. Never will be.”

The voidhawk from New California arrived just as First Admiral Aleksandrovich’s flyer touched down. It meant he could walk into the Polity Council meeting primed with some good news—always a good negotiating position to be in.

His first surprise came at the Polity Council chamber door. Jeeta Anwar was waiting outside for the navy delegation.

“The President has asked me to inform you that no aides are required for this session,” she said.

Samual Aleksandrovich gave Keaton and al-Sahhaf a bemused glance. “They’re not that dangerous,” he said jovially.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Jeeta said.

Samual considered making a fuss; he didn’t like that kind of surprise being thrown at him. If nothing else, it told him the coming meeting was going to be unusual, and probably disagreeable. Having his aides with him couldn’t stop that. “Very well.”

The second surprise was how few ambassadors were sitting around the big circle of antique sequoia in the council chamber. Three in total, representing New Washington, Oshanko, and Mazaliv. Lord Kelman Mountjoy was also present. Samual Aleksandrovich gave him a cautious nod as he sat to the left of Olton Haaker.

“I don’t believe you have a quorum here,” he said mildly.

“Not of the Polity Council, no,” President Haaker said.

Samual didn’t like the man’s stilted voice; something was making the President very nervous. “Then please tell me what this meeting is.”

“We are here to formulate future policy towards the possessed situation,” Kelman Mountjoy said. “It’s not something the old Confederation is capable of addressing satisfactorily.”

“The old Confederation?”

“Yes. We are proposing a restructuring.”

Samual Aleksandrovich listened in growing dismay as the Kulu foreign minister explained the reasoning behind the core-Confederation idea. Stopping the slow spread of possession, strengthening the defences of the key star systems. Establishing a solid, economically stable society capable of finding an overall solution.

“Do you propose including the Edenists?” Samual asked when he’d finished.

“They were not receptive to the concept,” Kelman said. “However, since they have a reserve position along very similar lines, their ultimate inclusion is highly probable. We would have no problem continuing to trade with them, as they are by and large immune to the kind of infiltration that results from quarantine-busting flights.”

“And they supply every Adamist world with energy,” Samual said scathingly.

Kelman managed not to smile. “Not all,” he said softly. Samual turned to the President. “You cannot allow this to happen, it is economic apartheid. It transgresses every ethic of equality which the Confederation represents. We must protect everybody alike.”

“The Navy isn’t even capable of doing that now,” Olton Haaker said sadly. “And you’ve seen the economic projections my office compiled. We cannot afford the current level of deployment, let alone sustain it for any reasonable length of time. Something has to give, Samual.”

“In effect, it’s already given,” Kelman said. “The attack on Arnstat and New California was an admission that we can no longer afford to indulge the current status quo. The Polity Council chose, and you agreed, that we had to lose those planets in order to help safeguard the rest. The core-Confederation is the logical conclusion of that development. It safeguards our entire race by ensuring that there will always be a part of it free from possession and able to search for a solution.”

“I find it interesting that your proposal safeguards only your part of the human race. The rich section.”

“Firstly, by ending the unrealistic level of subsidy our worlds extend to stage-two star systems, they will also contract and therefore become safer. Secondly, there is no point in the richer star systems impoverishing and weakening themselves when to do so will not result in a solution. We have to address the real facts, and do so with resolution.”

“The quarantine works. In time, and if everyone pools their intelligence data, we can end the illegal flights. There is no more Organization; Capone has surrendered New California to Admiral Kolhammer.”

“These arguments are the ebb and flow in the tide of obsolete politics,” Kelman said. “Yes, you’ve nullified Capone. But we’ve now lost Earth. Mortonridge has been effectively liberated, but at a shocking price. Zero-tau can de-possess someone, but the released body will be plagued with cancer and tie up our medical facilities for years. This has all got to stop. A line must be drawn under the past in order to free our future.”

“You approach this as if possession is the whole problem,” Samual said. “It is not, it is a spinoff from the fact we have immortal souls and some of them are entrapped in the beyond. The answer to this—how we learn to live with such knowledge, whatever it is—must be embraced by the entire human race; from some delinquent mugger on a stage-one colony planet right up to your king. We have to face this as one. If you split us up, you cannot reach and educate the very people who are most likely to be blighted by this revelation. I cannot agree to this. I will not agree to this.”

“Samual, you have to,” the President said. “Without funding from the core-Confederation worlds, there can be no Navy.”

“Every planetary system funds the Confederation Navy.”

“Not equally, they don’t,” said Verano, the New Washington ambassador. “Between us, the worlds proposing to form the core-Confederation provide eighty per cent of your overall funding.”

“You can’t just split . . . Ah! Now I understand.” Samual gave Olton Haaker a contemptuous look. “Did they offer you the new presidency in exchange for pushing the transition? You might call this coalition the core-Confederation, but in effect you’d all be withdrawing from the actual Confederation. There is no continuation, certainly not in legal terms. Every one of my officers renounced their national citizenship upon joining; the Confederation Navy is responsible to the Assembly in its entirety, not special interest blocs.”

“A hell of a lot of your fleets are made up from national detachments,” Verano said hotly. “They will be taken back along with fleet bases. You’d be left with ships you couldn’t support in star systems you couldn’t defend.”

Kelman held up a hand, raising his index finger, which silenced the ambassador. “The Navy will do as you say, Samual, we all acknowledge that. As for legality and ownership, ambassador Verano has a point. We have paid for those ships.”

“And the core-Confederation would become the new law,” Samual said.

“Precisely. You want to protect humanity, then become a realist. The core-Confederation will be brought into existence. You understand politics probably better than most of us; you would never have been appointed First Admiral otherwise. We have decided this is the best way our interests are served. We are doing it so that ultimately a solution will be achieved. It’s in our own petty selfish interest to make sure a solution is found, God knows I have no wish to die now I know what awaits. If nothing else, you can trust us to put unlimited resources into the problem. Help us safeguard our boundaries, Admiral, bring the fleet over to the core-Confederation. We are the guarantee of ultimate success for our whole race. That is what you were sworn to protect, I believe.”

“I do not need reminding of my honour by you,” Samual said.

“I apologise.”

“I will need to think about this before I give you an answer.” He rose to his feet. “I will also consult my senior officers.”

Kelman bowed. “I know this is difficult. I’m sorry you were ever put in such a position.”

Samual didn’t speak to his two aides until he was back on the Marine flyer and heading up to the orbiting station that was serving as his new headquarters.

“Can the remaining star systems afford to keep the Navy going by themselves?” al-Sahhaf asked.

“I doubt it,” Samual said. “God damn it, they’ll be left absolutely defenceless.”

“A neat piece of applied logic,” Keaton said. “They are going to be left defenceless anyway. If you don’t bring the Navy to the core-Confederation, then you will have achieved nothing for them, and weakened the core-Confederation at the same time.”

“Are you saying we should go along with this?”

“Personally sir, no I don’t. But it’s the oldest political squeeze manoeuvre there is. If we’re left out in the cold we can achieve nothing. If we join up, then there’s the opportunity to influence policy from inside, and from a considerable position of strength.”

“Lord Mountjoy isn’t stupid,” al-Sahhaf said. “He’ll be willing to negotiate with you in private. Perhaps we can maintain the CNIS throughout the class-two star systems, continue to provide the governments intelligence on possessed movements.”

“Yes,” Samual said. “Mountjoy would favour that, or something very similar. It’s the ebb and flow of politics.”

“Do you want to meet him, sir?” Keaton asked.

“That almost sounds as though you’re putting temptation in my way, Captain.”

“No, sir!”

“Well, I don’t want to meet him. Not yet. I am not prepared to see the Navy disbanded and junked through my stubbornness. It’s a powerful force to counter the possessed at a physical level, and that must not be lost to the human race. I need to talk this through with Lalwani, and see if the Edenists would consider supporting the fleet. If they can’t, then I’ll meet Mountjoy and discuss handing it over to the core-Confederation. We must remember that military force ultimately exists to serve the civilian populace, even though we might despise their choice of leaders.”

The intensity of the cold was astonishing. Waves of it slithered right through every part of the escape pod, washing the heat away. The temperature sink was so profound it began to alter the colour of plastic components, bleaching them like a dose of ultra violet light. Tolton’s breath condensed into a layer of iron-hard frost on every surface.

They’d taken the survival clothing from the supply lockers, and he’d put on as many layers as it was physically possible to do. He looked even fatter than Dariat, his face shrouded by thick bandages of cloth he’d wound round and round to protect his ears and neck. His exposed skin had acquired its own sprinkling of frost, each eyelash resembling a miniature icicle.

The pod’s power cells were draining away as fast as the heat. At first the environmental circuit had chugged away merrily, heating the air and extracting the water vapour. Then they ran a simple analysis and realized that at their current rate of use the cells would be empty in forty minutes. Dariat slowly shut down all the pod’s systems, like navigation and communications, and thrusters. Then when Tolton was snug in two heated suits and all his insulated clothes, he switched off everything except the carbon dioxide scrubber and a single fan. At that consumption rate, the power cells should have lasted two days.

Tolton’s heated suits went through their inventory of power cells a lot quicker than they’d expected. The last one was exhausted fifteen hours after they’d entered the mélange. After that he started drinking soup out of self-heating sachets.

“How much longer is the hull going to hold out?” he asked between juddering sips. He was wearing so much clothing he couldn’t bend his arms, so Dariat had to hold the sachet nipple to his lips.

“Not sure. My extra senses aren’t up to that kind of work.” Dariat beat his own arms against his chest. The cold didn’t affect him as badly, but even so he’d clad himself in several woolly sweaters and some thick track suit bottoms. “The nulltherm foam has probably gone by now. The hull will just evaporate away until it’s so thin the pressure from the mélange implodes us. It’ll be quick.”

“Pity. I could do with feeling something. Bit of pain would be a nice sensation right now.”

Dariat grinned over at his friend. Tolton’s lips were jet black, the skin peeling away.

“What’s wrong?” Tolton croaked.

“Nothing. Just thinking, we could try firing one of the rockets. Maybe that would heat the pod up a bit.”

“Yeah. It would push us out to the other side quicker, too.”

“ ’Bout time that happened. So, if you could have anything you wanted waiting for us, what would it be?”

“Tropical island, with beaches stretching on for kilometres. Sea as warm as bathwater.”

“Any women there?”

“Oh God yes.” He blinked, and his lashes stuck together. “I can’t see anything.”

“Lucky you. Do you know what a sight you are?”

“What about you? What do you want waiting on the other side?”

“You know that: Anastasia. I lived for her. I died for her. I sacrificed my soul for her . . . wel, her sister anyway. I thought she might be watching at the time. Wanted to make a good impression.”

“Don’t worry, you already have, man. I keep telling you, a love like yours is going to make her giddy. The chicks really dig that kind of mad devotion crap.”

“You’re the most insensitive poet I’ve ever met.”

“Street poet. I don’t do the roses and chocolates routine, I’m too much of a realist.”

“I bet roses and chocolates pay more.” When there was no answer, Dariat took a close look at Tolton’s face. He was still breathing, but very slowly, air whistling past the fangs of ice crusting his mouth. There were no shivers any more.

Dariat rolled back onto his own acceleration couch and waited patiently. It took another twenty minutes before Tolton’s ghost rose up out of the bloated bundle of fabric. He took one astounded look at Dariat, then put his head back and laughed.

“Oh shit, will you grab a load of this. I’m the soul of a poet.” The laughter degenerated into sobbing. “The soul of a poet. Get it? You’re not laughing. You’re not laughing and it’s fucking funny. It’s the last funny thing you’ll ever know for the rest of all eternity. Why aren’t you laughing?”

“Shush.” Dariat’s head came up. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear them? There’s a billion trillion souls out there. Of course I can fucking hear them.”

“No. Not the souls in the mélange. I thought I heard someone calling. A human voice.”