The sight had repelled Joshua before. Now it frightened him. The sheer potency it intimated was appalling.

Joshua flicked back to the images coming in from the Lady Mac ’s extended sensor clusters. The spaceplane was five hundred metres away, its wings already folded back. He played the starship’s equatorial ion thrusters, and moved in, bringing the docking cradle around to engage the latches in the spaceplane’s nose cone.

Sitting in his pilot’s seat, watching the performance through the narrow windscreen, Ashly was, as ever, amazed by Joshua’s ability to control the huge spherical starship’s motions. The docking cradle which had telescoped out of the hangar bay swung around gracefully until it was head-on, then slid over the squashed-bullet nose. Naturally the alignment matched first time.

Various clunking sounds were transmitted through the stress structure, and the spaceplane was slowly drawn inside the Lady Mac ’s narrow cylindrical hangar. Ashly shuddered as another warm, sticky, smelly globe of fluid landed on his ship-suit. He didn’t make the mistake of trying to swat it, that just broke the larger portions into smaller ones. And you could inhale those.

“Eight of you are going to have to stay inside the spaceplane cabin,” Sarha datavised as the hangar’s airlock tube mated to the spaceplane.

“You’re kidding me,” a dismayed Ashly replied.

“Bad luck, Ashly. But we’re maxing out our life support with so many people on board. I really need the spaceplane’s carbon dioxide filters.”

“Oh, God,” he said miserably. “Okay. But send in some handheld sanitizer units, and quickly.”

“They’re already in the airlock waiting for you.”

“Thanks.”

“Send out the smallest children first, please. I’m going to cram them into the zero-tau pods.”

“Will do.” He datavised the flight computer to open the airlock hatch, then left his seat to talk with Father Elwes about which children should go where.

Lady Macbeth ’s two undamaged fusion drive tubes ignited as soon as the spaceplane was stowed inside the hull. She rose away from the planet at a steady one gee, heading up towards a jump coordinate which would align her on Tranquillity’s star.

Far behind her, the middle section of the red cloud rippled and swirled in agitation. A tornado column swelled up from the centre, extending a good twenty kilometres above the twisting currents of cumulus. It flexed blindly for several minutes, like a beckoning—or clawing—finger. Then the Lady Macbeth ’s sensor clusters and thermal dump panels began to retract into their jump positions below the hull. Her brilliant blue-white fusion exhaust shrank away, and she coasted onwards and upwards for a brief minute until an event horizon claimed her.

The questing finger of cloud lost its vigour, and slowly bowed over in defeat, its glowing vapour reabsorbed into the now quiescent centre of the shroud. The leading edges continued their advance.

The view from Monterey’s Hilton was as spectacular as only a three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar building could provide. Al Capone loved it. The Nixon suite was on the bottom floor of the tower, giving it a standard gravity. New California glided slowly past the curving, radiation-shielded window which made up an entire wall of the master bedroom. The planet gleamed enticingly against the jet-black starfield. His one disappointment was that from here the stars didn’t twinkle like they used to when he watched them at night above his summer retreat cottage at Round Lake. That aside, he felt like a king again.

The Hilton was a sixty-storey tower sticking out of the Monterey asteroid, orbiting a hundred and ten thousand kilometres above New California. Apart from Edenist habitat starscrapers (which it was modelled on), there were few structures like it in the Confederation. Tourists could rarely look down on terracompatible planets in such a fashion.

Which was stupid, Al thought, big business could make a packet out of hotels like the Hilton. But he couldn’t spend all day looking at New California. He could sense his Organization’s top lieutenants waiting patiently outside the suite. They’d learned quickly enough not to interrupt when he wanted his privacy. But they did need orders, to be kept on their toes. Al knew just how fast things would fall apart if he didn’t ride them hard. The world might be different, but the nature of people didn’t change.

As if on cue, Jezzibella purred, “Come back here, lover.”

Well maybe some people did, women never acted like her back in the 1920s and thirties. Then, they were either whores or wives. But Al was beginning to suspect there weren’t many girls quite like Jezzibella in this century, either.

One minute all cute and kittenish, the next an animal as strong and demanding as himself. Al had his energistic strength now, which meant he could do some pretty incredible things with his wang. Things which even Jezzibella hadn’t known about. Performances which made him proud, for a while anyway, because they were the only times he could make her beg him for more, to keep going, tell him how stupendous he was. Most of the time it was the other way around. Shit, she even kissed like a boy. Trouble was, after he’d done all those fantastic things to her hot-rod body, she wanted them done again, and again, and again . . .

“Please, baby. I really liked the Egyptian position. Only you are big enough to make that work.”

With a halfhearted sigh Al left the window and walked back to the sunken bed she was lying on. The oomph girl had no shame, she was absolutely naked.

He grinned and let the front of his white robe fall open. Jezzibella hooted and applauded as his erection rose. Then she flopped back, character shifting in an instant. Al looked down on a scared-for-her-cherry schoolgirl.

His entry was fierce, without any attempt at finesse. It made her cry out in disbelief, pleading for him to stop, to be kind. But she couldn’t resist, no girl could, not a lover like him. In minutes his vigorous pumping had turned her cries to rolling moans of delight, her snarl to a smile. Her body was responding, the two of them moving in a slick acrobatic rhythm. He made no attempt to control himself, to wait for her, he climaxed when he was ready, oblivious to anything else.

When his drowsy eyes opened, he saw her staring drunkenly up at the ceiling, the tip of her tongue licking her lips. “That was a good fantasy fuck,” she drawled. “We’ll have to do that one again.”

Al gave up. “I gotta get going. I gotta sort the boys out, you know how it is.”

“Sure, baby. What are you going to get them to do?”

“Christ, you dumb broad. I’m running the whole fucking planet now. You think that just falls into place? I gotta million problems need looking at. Soldiers, they need orders or they go sour.”

Jezzibella pouted, then rolled over to grab the processor block which lay on the side of the bed. She typed on it, and frowned. “Al, honey, you must pull in that field of yours.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, and made an effort to calm his thoughts. It was the best way to make the electric gadgets work.

Jezzibella whistled in appreciation as she read the data running down the block’s screen (she’d long since given up trying to datavise when she was in Al’s presence). According to the information assembled by Harwood’s office, there were nearly forty million possessed on New California now. Hooking up with Al, that wild impulse back at the San Angeles spaceport, looked like being the smartest move she’d ever made. This was the anarchy ride she’d been hunting for most of her life. The buzz of power she got from being with Al—very literally one of life and death—stimmed her higher than any adulation the fans gave during a concert.

How could anyone know that a gangster from the past would have such a genius for assembling a power structure which could hold an entire planet in bondage? But that was what he’d done. “You just gotta know what strings to jerk,” he’d told her on the flight up to the orbiting asteroids.

Of course all forty million possessed weren’t perfectly loyal to him, they weren’t even recruited into the Organization. But then neither had the vast majority of Chicago’s citizens sworn fealty to him. Nonetheless, willing or not, they had been his vassals. “All we gotta do is have an Organization in place and ready when the possessed start to emerge,” he explained. “Back in Chicago, they called me a mobster because there was another administration trying to run things parallel to mine: the government. I lost out because the fuckers were bigger and stronger. This time, I ain’t making that mistake. This time there’s only gonna be me from the word go.”

And he’d been true to his word. She’d watched him at work that first day, just after they’d captured the orbiting asteroids and the SD network, sitting quietly in the background of the Monterey naval tactical operations room which the Organization soldiers had taken over as their headquarters. Watching and learning just what she’d gone and gotten herself involved in. And what she saw was the building of a pyramid, one constructed entirely from people. Without once losing his temper, Al issued orders to his lieutenants, who issued them to their seconds, and so on down the line. A pyramid which was constantly growing, absorbing new recruits at the bottom, adding to the height, to the power of the pinnacle. A pyramid whose hierarchy was established and maintained with the coldly ruthless application of force.

The first targets to be blasted into lava by the SD platforms had been government centres, everything from the Senate palace and the military bases right down to county police stations. (Al really hated the police. “Those cocksuckers murdered my brother,” he’d growl darkly when she questioned him on it.) Even little town halls in country smallvilles were reduced to cinders after they opened for business in the morning. For eight hours, the platforms had fired energy pulses down on the hapless, helpless planet they had been constructed to defend. Any group who could organize resistance was systematically wiped out. After that, the possessed were free to sweep across the land.

But Al’s Organization people were among them, directing the onwards march, finding out exactly who had returned from the beyond, when they came from, what they did in their first life. Their details would be sent up to the office which Avram Harwood had set up in Monterey, where they would be studied to gauge their potential usefulness. A select few would then be made an offer which—“They just can’t refuse,” Al chortled jubilantly.

They were a tiny minority, but that was all it ever took to govern. No rival could ever develop. Al had seen to that; he had the firepower to support his Organization if anyone stepped out of line. And when he captured the SD network, he acquired the ultra-hardened military communications net which went with it, the only one which had a chance of remaining functional in the territories of the possessed. So even if there were objectors among the newly emerged possessed (and there certainly were), they couldn’t get in contact with others who thought along the same lines to create any decent kind of opposition.

In the end Jezzibella had felt privileged. It was a pivotal moment of history, like watching Eisenhower dispatching his D-day forces, or being with Richard Saldana as he organized the exodus from the New Kong asteroid to Kulu. Privileged and ecstatic.

More statistics ran down the processor block’s screen. There were over sixteen million non-possessed left in the areas where the Organization ruled supreme. Harwood’s office had declared they should be left alone to keep the utilities and services going, and by and large the Organization ensured they were left alone—for now. How long that would last, though, Jezzibella had her doubts.

Transport was also being orchestrated to invade the cities and counties which remained uncontaminated. According to the tactical estimates there would be a hundred million possessed living on New California by this time tomorrow. The Organization would achieve absolute control of the entire planet within a further three days.

And yesterday all she’d had to entertain her were a couple of fresh, gawky kids and the tiresome antics of the entourage.

“It’s looking pretty fucking fantastic, Al,” she said. “Guess you’ve got what it takes.”

He slapped her buns playfully. “I always have. Things here ain’t so different from Chicago. It’s just a question of size; this is one fuck of a lot bigger, but I got savvy Avvy’s boys to help sort out that side of things, keeping track and all. Avvy didn’t get to be mayor of San Angeles the way Big Jim Thompson made it into city hall back in Chicago. No, sir, he’s got a flair for paperwork.”

“And Leroy Octavius, too.”

“Yep. I see why you wanted to keep him now. I could do with a load more like him.”

“To do what?”

“To keep going, of course. At least for a few days more.” He slumped his shoulders and rubbed his face in his hands. “Then it’s really gonna hit the fan. Most of the dumb asses down there want to do this magic disappearing act. Je-zus, Jez, I ain’t so sure I can stop them.” Eight times in the last day he’d ordered Emmet Mordden to use the SD platforms to sharpshoot buildings and city blocks over which the wisps of red cloud were forming. Each time the culprits had taken the hint, and the luminous swirl had vanished.

For the moment he was on top of things. But what was gonna happen after he’d won the planet was giving his brain a real hard time. It was going to be difficult stopping the possessed from vanishing inside the red cloud, because he was the only one among them who didn’t want that to happen. Once he’d delivered the whole planet to them, they’d start looking around at what was stopping them from achieving their true goal. And some wiseass with an eye on the main chance would make his bid. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“So give them something more to do,” Jezzibella said.

“Sure, right, doll. Like after the entire fucking world, what else am I gonna give them, for Christ’s sake?”

“Listen, you keep telling me this whole setup is going to end once the possessed pull New California out of the universe, right? Everyone’s going to be equal and immortal.”

“Yeah, that’s about it.”

“That means you’ll be nothing, least nothing special.”

“That’s what I’m fucking telling you .”

Jezzibella shifted again. This time she was like nothing he’d seen before: a librarian or schoolmarm. Not the remotest bit sexy. Al sucked some breath through his teeth, the way she did that was just plain unnerving—her not having the energistic power, and all.

She leaned over and put a hand on each of his shoulders, stern eyes inches from his. “When you’re nothing, all your lieutenants and soldiers become nothing, too. Deep down they’re not going to want that. You’ve got to find a reason—a fucking good reason—to keep the Organization intact. Once they grab that angle you can keep things humming along sweetly for quite a while yet.”

“But we’ve won here. There isn’t a single excuse to keep going the way we have.”

“There are plenty,” she said. “You simply don’t know enough about the way the modern galaxy works to make any long-range plans, that’s all. But I’m going to cure that, starting right here. Now listen closely.”

New California’s planetary government had always taken a progressive view on flinging tax dollars at the local defence establishment. Firstly, it provided a healthy primer for industry to pursue an aggressive export policy, boosting foreign earnings. Secondly, their navy’s above-average size gave them an excellent heavyweight political stature within the Confederation.

Such enthusiasm for defence hardware had resulted in a superb C3 (command, control, and communication) setup, the core of which was Monterey’s naval tactical operations centre. It was a large chamber drilled deep into the asteroid’s rock, below the first biosphere cavern, and equipped with state-of-the-art AIs and communications systems, linked in to equally impressive squadrons of sensor satellites and weapons platforms. It was capable of coordinating the defence of the entire star system against anything from a full-scale invasion to a sneak attack by a rogue antimatter-powered starship. Unfortunately, no one had ever considered the consequences should it be captured and its firepower turned inwards on the planet and orbiting asteroids.

The Organization lieutenants had split into two fractions to run their operations centre. There was Avram Harwood’s staff who dealt purely with the administration and management details of the Organization, essentially the new civil service. Then there were those, a smaller number, working under the auspices of Silvano Richmann and Emmet Mordden, who were operating the military hardware they’d captured. The law enforcers. Al’s laws. He’d given that task to the possessed alone, just in case any non-possessed tried to be a hero.

When Al and Jezzibella walked into the centre the huge wall-mounted hologram screens were showing satellite views of Santa Volta. Grizzled spires of smoke were rising from several of the city’s blocks. Graphic symbols were superimposed over the real-time layout as the organization advanced its troops. Silvano Richmann and Leroy Octavius stood in front of the colourful screens, heads together as they discussed the best strategy to crack open the population. Filling the eight rows of consoles behind them, the communications team was waiting patiently.

Everyone turned as Al strode forward. There were grins, smiles, whoops, sharp whistles. He did the rounds, pressing the flesh, joking, laughing, thanking, offering encouragement.

Jezzibella followed a pace behind him. She and Leroy quirked an eyebrow at each other.

“So how’s it going?” Al asked a scrum of his senior lieutenants when he’d finished his processional.

“We’re more or less sticking to the timetable,” Mickey Pileggi said. “Some places put up a fight. Others just roll onto their backs and stick their legs in the air for us. We got no way of knowing in advance. Word’s getting out that we aren’t possessing everyone. It helps. Causes a shitload of confusion.”

“Fine from my angle, too, Al,” Emmet Mordden said. “Our sensor satellites have been monitoring some of the deep space message traffic. It’s not easy, because most of it is directional tight beam. But it looks like the rest of the system knows we’re here, and what we’re doing.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Al asked.

“No, sir. We caught nearly forty per cent of New California’s navy ships in dock when we took over the orbiting asteroids. They’re still there, and another twenty per cent is on permanent assignment to the Confederation Navy fleets. That just leaves a maximum of about fifty ships left in the system who could cause us any grief. But I’ve got every SD platform on situation-A readiness. Even if the admirals out there get their act together, they know it would be suicide to attack us.”

Al lit a cigar, and blew a stream of smoke towards the screen. The near-orbit tactical display, Emmet had called it yesterday. It looked pretty calm at the moment. “Sounds like you’re handling your slice of the action, Emmet. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, Al.” The nervous man bobbed in appreciation. “As you can see, there’s no spacecraft activity within a million kilometres of the planetary surface, except for five voidhawks. They’re holding themselves stable over the poles, seven hundred thousand kilometres out. My guess is they’re just watching us to see what’s happening.”

“Spies?” Al inquired.

“Yes.”

“We should blow them all to shit,” Bernhard Allsop said loudly. “Ain’t that right, Al? That’ll give the rest of those frigging Commie Edenists the message: Don’t spy on us, don’t fuck with us or it’s your ass.”

“Shut up,” Al said mildly.

Bernhard twitched apprehensively. “Sure, Al. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Can you hit the voidhawks?” Jezzibella asked.

Emmet glanced from her to Al, and licked his suddenly sweaty lips. “It’s difficult, you know? They chose those polar positions carefully. I mean, they’re out of range of our energy weapons. And if we launch a combat wasp salvo at them, they’ll just dive down a wormhole. But, hey . . . they can’t hurt us, either.”

“Not this time,” Al said. He chewed his cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right. “But they can see what we’re about, and it’ll frighten them. Pretty soon the whole goddamn Confederation is going to know what’s happened here.”

“I told you they’d be trouble, Al baby,” Jezzibella said, on cue. Her voice had shunted down to a tart’s whinny.

“Sure you did, doll,” he said, not taking his eyes off the tactical display. “We’re gonna have to do something about them,” Al announced to the room at large.

“Well, hell, Al,” Emmet said. “I’ll give it a go, but I don’t think . . .”

“No, Emmet,” Al said generously. “I ain’t talking about five crappy little ships. I’m talking about what’s lining up behind them.”

“The Edenists?” Bernhard asked, hopefully.

“Partly, yeah. But they ain’t the whole picture, are they, boy? You gotta think big , here. You’re in a big universe now.” He had their complete attention. Damn, but Jez had been right. Typical.

“The Edenists are gonna broadcast what we’ve done here to the whole Confederation. Then what do you think is gonna happen, huh?” He turned a full circle, arms held out theatrically. “Any takers? No? Seems pretty goddamn obvious to me, guys. They’re gonna come here with every fucking battleship they got, and grab the planet back off us.”

“We can fight,” Bernhard said.

“We’ll lose,” Al purred. “But that don’t matter. Does it? Because I know what you’re thinking. Every goddamned dumb-ass one of you. You’re thinking: We won’t be here. We’re gonna be out of this stinking joint any day now, safe on the other side of the red cloud where there ain’t no sky and there ain’t no space, and nobody dies anymore. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that what’s brewing inside those thick skulls of yours?”

Shuffled feet and downcast eyes was the only response he was offered. “Mickey, ain’t that right?”

Mickey Pileggi developed an urgent wish to be somewhere else. He couldn’t meet his boss’s interrogatory stare. “Well, you know how it is, Al. That’s a last resort, sure. But shit, we can do like Bernhard says and fight some first. I ain’t afraid of fighting.”

“Sure you ain’t afraid. I didn’t say you were afraid. I didn’t insult you, Mickey, you rube goof. I’m saying you ain’t thinking level. The Confederation Navy, they’re gonna turn up here with a thousand, ten thousand starships, and you’re gonna do the smartest thing you can do, and hide. Right? I would if they came at me with all pieces shooting.”

The left side of Mickey’s face began to tic alarmingly. “Sure, boss,” he said numbly.

“So you think that’s gonna make them give up?” Al asked. “Come on, all of you. I want to know. Who in this room believes the big government boys are just gonna give up if you make New California disappear? Huh? Tell me. They lose a planet with eight hundred million people on it, and the admiral in charge, he’s just gonna shrug and say: Well fuck it, you can’t win them all. And go home.” Al stabbed a finger at the little purple stars of light representing the voidhawks on the tactical display screen. A slim bolt of white fire lashed out, striking the glass. Glowing droplets sprinkled out. A crater bowed inwards, distorting and magnifying the graphics below. “Is he FUCK,” Al bellowed. “Open your goddamn eyes, shitheads! These people can fly among the stars for Christ’s sake. They know everything there is to know about how energy works, they know all about quantum dimensions, hell they can even switch off time if they feel like it. And what they don’t know, they can find out pretty fucking quick. They’ll see what you’ve done, they’ll follow where you take the planet. And they’ll bring it back. Those cruddy longhairs will look at what happened, and they’ll work on it, and they’ll work on it. And they ain’t never going to stop until they’ve solved the problem. I know the feds, the governments. Believe me, of all people, I fucking know. You ain’t never safe from them. They don’t ever fucking stop. Never! And it won’t matter diddly how much you scream, and how much you cuss and rage. They’ll bring you back. Oh, yeah, right back here under the stars and emptiness where you started from. Staring death and beyond in the face.” He had them now, he could see the doubt blossoming, the concern. And the fear. Always the fear. The way right into a man’s heart. The way a general jerked his soldiers’ strings.

Al Capone grinned like the devil himself into the daunted silence. “There’s only one fucking way to stop that from ever happening. Any of you cretins figured that out yet? No? Big surprise. Well, it’s simple, assholes. You stop running scared like you have been all your life. You stop, you turn around to face what’s scaring you, and you bite its fucking dick off.”

For five centuries after the first successful ZTT jump, governments, universities, companies, and military laboratories throughout the Confederation had been researching methods of direct supralight communication. And for all the billions of fuseodollars poured into the various projects, no one had ever produced a valid theory let alone a practical system to surmount the problem. Starships remained the only method of carrying data between star systems.

Because of this, waves of information would spread out like ripples through the inhabited star systems within the Confederation. And as the stars were not arranged in a tidy geometrical lattice, such wavefronts became more and more distorted as time went on. News companies had long since refined a set of equations defining the most effective distribution procedure between their offices. On receiving a hot item (such as the appearance of Ione Saldana), an office would typically charter eight to twelve starships to relay the flek depending on when and where the story originated. Towards the end of the distribution coverage, the information could well arrive in one system from several directions over the course of a fortnight. The nature of the starships employed also had a strong influence on the timing, depending on the marque of ship used, how good the captain was, component malfunctions, a hundred diverse circumstances all contributing to the uncertainty.

Laton’s appearance had naturally received an overriding precedence from all the Time Universe offices receiving Graeme Nicholson’s flek. But Srinagar was over four hundred light-years away from Tranquillity. News of the Yaku ’s existence, and who it was carrying, arrived several days after the Yaku itself had departed from Valisk.

Laton!

Rubra was astonished. They might have been fellow Serpents, but that hardly made them allies. So for the first time in a hundred and thirty years he expanded his affinity and grudgingly contacted the Edenist habitats orbiting Kohistan to tell them the starship had docked briefly.

But Laton did not come inside,he assured them. Only three crew came through immigration: Marie Skibbow, Alicia Cochrane, and Manza Balyuzi.

Skibbow was definitely sequestrated, and the other two are likely recipients,the kohistan consensus replied. Where are they?

I don’t know.it was a humiliating, dismaying admission, especially to make to his former peers. But Rubra had immediately made the connection between Marie Skibbow and Anders Bospoort, in whose apartment Dariat’s corpse had been found. Such a chain of events worried him enormously. But his supposedly infallible memory storage facility had failed him utterly. After Marie and Anders had gone down the starscraper that first time they had simply vanished from his perception; and the sub-routine in the starscraper hadn’t noticed their absence. Nor could he locate them now, not even with his perception sub-routines expanded and upgraded with a new batch of safeguards.

Do you require our assistance?the kohistan consensus asked. Our neuropathologists may be able to analyse the nature of the distortion in your sub-routines.

No! You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Getting into my mind again. Poking around to see what makes me pulse.

Rubra—

You shits don’t ever give up, don’t ever stop.

Given the circumstances, do you not think it would be sensible to put old antagonisms behind us?

I’ll deal with it. By myself. They can only fuck with my peripheral routines. They can’t touch me.

As far as you know.

I know! Believe me, I know. I’m me; same as I ever was.

Rubra, this is only the beginning. They will try to infiltrate your higher-order thought routines.

They won’t succeed, not now I know what to watch for.

Very well. But we must recommend to the Srinagar system assembly that starships are prohibited from docking with you. We cannot risk the prospect of any contamination spreading.

Suits me fine.

Will you at least cooperate with us on that?

Yes, yes. But only until I’ve tracked down the three Yaku crew and exterminated them.

Please be careful, Rubra. Laton’s proteanic virus is extremely dangerous.

So that’s what you think I’ve got, why my routines are failing. Bastards!