“I hear you’re losing it, Dariat,” she said curtly. “I’ve been patient with you so far, because you’ve been very useful to us. But if there’s another incident like the one in the service tunnel, then I shall consider that usefulness at an end.”

“If you don’t have me here to counter Rubra, then it’s going to be you who’ll wind up losing your temper. He’ll blast every possessed back into the beyond if you let your guard down for a second. He doesn’t care about the people whose bodies we’ve stolen.”

“You are becoming a bore, Dariat. And from what I hear that wasn’t a temper loss, more like a psychotic episode. You’re a paranoid schizophrenic, and people find that unsettling. Now concentrate on how to flush Rubra out of the neural strata by all means, but stop trying to spread dissension or it’s going to go hard on you. Clear?”

“As crystal.”

“Good. I do appreciate what you’re trying to do, Dariat. You’re just going to have to learn a softer approach, that’s all.” She gave him a factory-issue sympathetic smile.

Dariat saw one of the xenoc triangle birds perched on a tree behind her, watching the scene in the glade. The smirk which rose on his real lips was hidden by the energistic mirage-form he cloaked himself with. “I expect you’re right. I’ll try.”

“Good man. Look, I don’t want to be forced out of Valisk by him any more than you do. We’re both onto a good thing here, and we can both maintain our status providing we just keep calm. If this recording works we should have recruits flocking to join us. That way we can shift Valisk to a place where Rubra’s neutered. Permanently. Just keep him from causing too much trouble before then, and leave the rest to me, okay?”

“Yeah, all right. I understand.”

She nodded dismissal, then took a steadying breath and turned back to the recording team. “Are you ready yet?”

Khaled Jaros glared at the recalcitrant sensor block in his hand. “I think so, yes. I’m sure it will work this time. Ramon has reprogrammed it so that only the primary functions are left; we won’t be able to get olfactory or thermal inputs, but the AV reception appears to be holding stable. With a bit of luck we can add some emotional activant patterns later.”

“All right, we’ll try again,” she said loudly.

Under Khaled’s directions the group of sybarite youths took up their positions once more. One couple started necking on the grass, another pair sported in the water. The little children stubbed their cigarettes out, then ran around in dizzy circles, giggling and shrieking. “Not so loud!” Khaled bellowed at them.

Kiera took up her own position leaning against the boulder at the side of the sparkling water. She cleared her throat, and forked her hair back with her left hand.

“Undo another couple more buttons, dear, please,” Khaled instructed. “And bend your knees further.” He was staring straight into an AV pillar on one of the blocks.

She paused irately, and thought about it. The solidity of the camisole buttons wavered, and the hoops fell off allowing the flimsy fabric to shift still further apart. “Is this quite necessary?” she asked.

“Trust me, darling. I’ve directed enough commercials in my time. Sex always sells: primary rule of advertising. And that’s what this is, no matter what you want to call it. So I want legs and cleavage for the boys to drool over, and confidence to inspire the girls. That way we get them both feeding from our palm.”

“Okay,” she grumbled.

“Wait.”

“Now what?”

He looked up from the AV pillar. “You’re not distinctive enough.”

Kiera glanced down at the slope of her breasts on show. “You are making a very bad joke.”

“No no, not your tits, darling; they’re just fine. No, it’s the overall image, it’s so pass

Kiera stared at him.

“Please, love? Trust, remember?”

She concentrated again. The appropriate fabric materialized around her ankle, a silk handkerchief tied in a single knot. Blood red, and see if he caught the hint.

“That’s wonderful. You look wild, gypsy exotic. I’m in love with you already.”

“Can I start now?”

“Ready when you are.”

Kiera took a moment to compose herself again, aiming for an expression which was the epitome of adolescent coyness. The water tinkled melodically beside her, other youths smiled and held each other close, children raced past her boulder. She grinned indulgently at them, and waved as they played their merry game. Then her head came around slowly to look straight at the sensor block.

“You know, they’re going to tell you that you shouldn’t be accessing this recording,” she said. “In fact, they’re going to get quite serious about that; your mum and dad, your big brother, the authorities in charge of wherever you live. Can’t think why. Except, of course, I’m one of the possessed, one of the demons threatening ‘the fabric of the universe,’ your universe. I’m your enemy, apparently. I’m pretty sure I am, anyway; the Confederation Assembly says so. So . . . that must be right. Yes? I mean, President Haaker came here and looked me over, and talked to me, and found out all about me, what I want, what I hate, which is my favourite MF artist, what frightens me. I don’t remember that time when I spoke to him. But it must have happened, because the ambassadors of every government in the Assembly voted that I’m officially to be denounced as a monster. They wouldn’t do that, not all those bright, serious, wise people, unless they had all the facts at their disposal, now would they?

“Actually, the one lonely fact they had, and voted on, was that Laton killed ten thousand Edenists because they were possessed. You remember Laton. Some sort of hero a while back, I’ve been told, something about a habitat called Jantrit. I wonder if he asked the individuals on Pernik island if they wanted to be exterminated. I wonder if they all said yes.

“They’ve done to us what they do to kids the universe over, lumped us together and said we’re bad. One thug hits somebody, and every kid is a violent hooligan. You know that’s truth, it happens all the time in your neighbourhood. You’re never an individual, not to them. One wrong, all wrong. That’s the way we’re treated.

“Well, not here, not in Valisk. Maybe some possessed want to conquer the universe. If they do, then I hope the Confederation Navy fights them. I hope the navy wins. Those sort of possessed frighten me as much as they frighten you. That’s not what we’re about, it’s so stupid, it’s so obsolete. There’s no need for that kind of behaviour, that kind of thinking, not anymore. Not now.

“Those of us here on Valisk have seen what the power which comes of possession can really do when it’s applied properly. Not when it’s turned to destruction, but when it’s used to help people. That’s what frightens President Haaker, because it threatens the whole order of his precious world. And if that goes, he goes, along with all his power and his wealth. Because that’s what this is really all about: money. Money buys people, money lets companies invest and consolidate their markets, money pays for weapons, tax money pays for bureaucracy, money buys political power. Money is a way of rationing what the universe has to offer us. But the universe is infinite, it doesn’t need to be rationed.

“Those of us who have emerged from the dead of night can break the restrictions of this corrupt society. We can live outside it, and flourish. We can burn your Jovian Bank ration cards and liberate you from the restrictions others impose on you.” Her smile tilted towards shy impishness. She held a hand out towards the sensor block, palm open. Her fingers closed into a fist, then parted again. A pile of ice-blue diamonds glittered in her palm, laced with slim platinum chains.

She grinned back at the sensor block, then tipped them carelessly onto the grass. “You see, it’s so simple. Items, objects, goods, the capitalist stockpile, exist only to give joy; for us living in Valisk they are an expression of emotion. Economics is dead, and true equality will rise out of the ashes. We’ve turned our back on materialism, rejected it completely. It has no purpose anymore. Now we can live as we please, develop our minds not our finances. We can love one another without the barrier of fear now that honesty has replaced greed, for greed has died along with all the other vices of old. Valisk has become a place where every wish is granted, however small, however grand. And not just for those of us who have returned. To keep it to ourselves would be a cardinal act of greed. It is for everyone. For this aspect of our existence is the part which your society will despise the most, will curse us for. We are taking Valisk out of this physical dimension of the universe, launching it to a continuum where everyone will have our energistic power. It’s a place where I can take on form, and return the body I have borrowed. All of us lost souls will be real people again, without conflict, and without the pain it takes for us to manifest ourselves here.

“And now I’ll make our offer. We open Valisk to all people of goodwill, to those of a gentle disposition, to everyone sick of having to struggle to survive, and sick also of the petty limits governments and cultures place on the human heart. You are welcome to join us on our voyage. We shall be leaving soon, before the navy warships come and their bombs burn us for the crime of being what we are: people who embrace peace.

“I promise you that anyone who reaches Valisk will be granted a place among us. It will not be an easy journey for you, but I urge you to try. Good luck, I’ll be waiting.”

The white cotton changed, darkening into a swirling riot of colour, as if skirt and camisole were made from a thousand butterfly wings. Marie Skibbow’s smile shone through, bringing a natural warmth all of its own to the watchers. Children flocked around her, giggling merrily, hurling poppy petals into the air so that when they fell they became a glorious scarlet snowstorm. She let them take her hands and hurry her forwards, eager to join their game.

The recording ended.

Despite being nearly fifty years old, the implant surgery care ward boasted an impressive array of contemporary equipment. Medicine, along with its various modern sidelines, was a profitable business in Culey asteroid.

The annex to which Erick Thakrar had been assigned (Duchamp hadn’t paid for a private room) was halfway along the ward’s main hall, a standardized room of pearl-white composite walls and glare-free lighting panels, the template followed by hospitals right across the Confederation. Patients were monitored by a pair of nurses at a central console just inside the door. They weren’t strictly necessary, the hospital’s sub-sentient processor array was a lot faster at spotting metabolic anomalies developing. But hospitals always adopted the person-in-the-loop philosophy; invalids wanted the human touch, it was reassuring. As well as being profitable, medicine was one of the last remaining labour-intensive industries, resisting automation with an almost Luddite zeal.

The operation to implant Erick’s artificial tissue units had begun fifteen minutes after his removal from zero-tau. He’d been in surgery for sixteen hours; at one point he had four different surgical teams working on various parts of him. When he came out of theatre, thirty per cent of his body weight was accounted for by artificial tissue.

On the second day after his operation he had a visitor: a woman in her mid-thirties with unobtrusive Oriental features. She smiled at the ward’s duty nurse, claiming she was Erick’s second cousin, and could even have proved it with an ID card if she’d been pressed. The nurse simply waved her down the ward.

When she entered the annex two of the six beds were unoccupied. One had the privacy screen down to reveal an elderly man who gave her a hopeful talk-to-me-please look, the remaining three were fully screened. She smiled blandly at the lonely man, and turned to Erick’s bed, datavising a code at the screen control processor. The screen split at the foot of the bed, shrinking back towards the walls. The visitor stepped inside, and promptly datavised a closure code at it.

She tried not to flinch when she saw the figure lying on the active shapeform mattress. Erick was completely coated in a medical package, as if the translucent green substance had been tailored into a skintight leotard. Tubes emerged from his neck and along the side of his ribs, linking him with a tall stack of medical equipment at the head of the bed, supplying the nanonics with specialist chemicals needed to bolster the traumatized flesh, and syphoning out toxins and dead blood cells.

Two bloodshot, docile eyes looked out at her from holes in the package smothering his face. “Who are you?” he datavised. There was no opening in the package for his mouth, only a ventlike aperture over his nose.

She datavised her identification code, then added: “Lieutenant Li Chang, CNIS. Hello, Captain, we received your notification code at the Navy Bureau.”

“Where the hell have you people been? I sent that code yesterday.”

“Sorry, sir, there’s been a system-wide security flap for the last two days. It’s kept us occupied. And your shipmates have been hanging around the ward. I judged it best that they didn’t encounter me.”

“Very smart. You know which ship I came in on?”

“Yes, sir, the Villeneuve’s Revenge . You made it back from Lalonde.”

“Just barely. I’ve compiled a report of our mission and what happened. It is vital you get this datapackage to Trafalgar. We’re not dealing with Laton, this is something else, something terrible.”

Li Chang had to order a neural nanonics nerve override to retain her impassive composure. After everything he’d been through to obtain this data . . . “Yes, sir; it’s possession. We received a warning flek from the Confederation Assembly three days ago.”

“You know?”

“Yes, sir, it appears the possessed left Lalonde before you got there, presumably on the Yaku. They’re starting to infiltrate other planets. It was Laton who alerted us to the danger.”

“Laton?”

“Yes, sir. He managed to block them on Atlantis, he warned the Edenists there before he kamikazed. The news companies are broadcasting the full story if you want to access it.”

“Oh, shit.” A muffled whimper was just audible from behind the package over his face. “Shit, shit, shit. This was all for nothing? I went through this for a story the news companies are shoving out? This?” An arm was raised a few centimetres from the mattress, shaking heavily as though the package coating were too burdensome to lift.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered.

His eyes were watering. The facial package sucked the salty liquid away with quiet efficiency. “There’s some information left in the report. Important information. Vacuum can defeat them. God, can it defeat them. The navy will need to know that.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure they will.” Li Chang hated how shallow that sounded, but what else was there to say? “If you’d like to datavise the report to me I’ll include it on our next communiqu

“You’d better check my medical record,” Erick said. “And run a review on the team who operated on me. The surgeons are bound to realize I was hardwired for weapons implants.”

“I’ll get on to it. We have some assets in the hospital staff.”

“Good. Now for Heaven’s sake, tell the head of station I want taking off this bloody assignment. The next time I see AndrVilleneuve’s Revenge with piracy and murder. I have the appropriate files, it’s all there, our attack on the Krystal Moon .”

“Sir, Captain Duchamp has some contacts of his own here, political ones. That’s how he circumvented the civil starflight quarantine to dock here. We could probably have him arrested, but whoever that contact is, they aren’t going to want the embarrassment of a trial. He’d probably be allowed to post bail, that’s if he doesn’t simply disappear quietly. Culey asteroid is really not the kind of place to bring that kind of charge against an independent trader. It’s one of the reasons so many of them use it, which is why CNIS has such a large station here.”

“You won’t arrest him? You won’t stop this madness? A fifteen-year-old girl was killed when we attacked that cargo ship. Fifteen!”

“I don’t recommend we arrest him here, sir, because he wouldn’t stay under arrest. If the service is to have any chance of nailing him, it ought to be done somewhere else.” There was no answer, no response. The only clue she had that Erick was still alive came from the slow-blinking coloured LEDs on the medical equipment. “Sir?”

“Yes. Okay, I want him so bad I can even wait to be sure. You don’t understand that people like him, ships like his, they’ve got to be stopped, and stopped utterly. We should fling every crew member from every independent trader down onto a penal planet, break the ships down for scrap and spare parts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go away, Lieutenant. Make arrangements to have me shipped back to Trafalgar. I’ll do my convalescing there, thank you.”

“Sir . . . Yes, sir. I’ll relay the request. It might be some time before you can actually be transferred. As I said, there is a Confederation-wide quarantine order in effect. We could have you taken to a more private area and guarded.”

Again there was a long interval. Li Chang bore it stoically.

“No,” Erick datavised. “I will remain here. Duchamp is paying, perhaps my injuries along with the repairs his ship needs will be enough to bankrupt the bastard. I expect Culey’s authorities regard bad debts as a serious crime, after all that’s money which is at stake, not morality.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The first ship out of here, Lieutenant, I want to be on it.”

“I’ll set it up, sir. You can count on me.”

“Good. Go now.”

Feeling as guilty as she’d ever done in her life, she turned quickly and datavised the screen to open. One quick glance over her shoulder as she left—hoping to ease her conscience, hoping to see him relaxing into a peaceful sleep—showed his eyes were still open at the bottom of their green pits; a numbed angry stare, focused on nothing. Then the screen flowed shut.

Alkad Mzu exited the Nyiru traffic control sensor display as soon as the wormhole interstice closed. At fifty thousand kilometres there hadn’t been much of an optical-band return, the visualization was mostly graphics superimposed over enhanced pixel representations. But for all the lack of true visibility, there was no fooling them. Udat had departed.

She looked out through the observation lounge’s giant window which was set in the rock wall just above the asteroid’s docking ledge. A slender slice of stars were visible below the edge of the bulky non-rotational spaceport a kilometre and a half away. Narok itself drifted into view; seemingly smothered in white cloud, its albedo was sufficient to cast a frail radiance. Faint elongated shadows sprang up across the ledge, streaming away from the blackhawks and voidhawks perched on their docking pedestals. They tracked around over the smooth rock like a clock’s second hand. Alkad waited until Narok vanished below the sharp synthetic horizon. The swallow manoeuvre would be complete now. One more, and the resonance device she had secreted on board would be activated.

There wasn’t really any feeling of success, let alone happiness. A lone blackhawk and its greedy captain were hardly compensation for Garissa’s suffering, the genocide of an entire people. It was a start, though. If nothing else, internal proof that she still retained the ardent determination of thirty years ago when she had kissed Peter goodbye. “Au revoir , only,” he’d insisted. An insistence she’d willed herself to believe in.

Maybe the easy, simple heat of hatred had cooled over the decades. But the act remained, ninety-five million dead people dependent on her for some degree of justice. It wasn’t rational, she knew, this dreadful desire for revenge. But it was so sadly human. Sometimes she thought it was all she had left to prove her humanity with, a single monstrously flawed compulsion. Every other genuine emotion seemed to have disappeared while she was in Tranquillity, suppressed behind the need to behave normally. As normal as anyone whose home planet has been destroyed.

The dusky shadows appeared again, odd outlines stroking across the rock ledge, matching the asteroid’s rotation. Udat would have performed its third swallow by now.

Alkad crossed herself quickly. “Dear Mother Mary, please welcome their souls to Heaven. Grant them deliverance from the crimes they committed, for we are all children who know not what we do.”

What lies! But the Maria Legio Church was an ingrained and essential part of Garissan culture. She could never discard it. She didn’t want to discard it, stupid as that paradox was for an unbeliever. There was so little of their identity left that any remnant should be preserved and cherished. Perhaps future generations could find comfort among its teachings.

Narok fell from sight again. Alkad turned her back on the starfield and walked towards the door at the back of the observation lounge; in the low gravity field her feet took twenty seconds to touch the ground between each step. The medical nanonic packages she wore around her ankles and forearms had almost finished their repair work now, making her lazy movements a lot easier.

Two of the Samaku ’s crew were waiting patiently for her just inside the door, one of them an imposing-looking cosmonik. They fell in step on either side of her. Not that she thought she really needed bodyguards, not yet, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance. She was hauling around too much responsibility to risk jeopardizing the mission over a simple accident, or even someone recognizing her (this was a Kenyan-ethnic star system, after all).

The three of them took a commuter lift along the spindle to the spaceport where the Samaku was docked. Chartering the Adamist starship had cost her a quarter of a million fuseodollars, a reckless sum of money, but necessary. She needed to get to the Dorados as quickly as possible. The intelligence agencies would be searching for her with a terrifying urgency now she’d evaded them on Tranquillity, and coincidentally proved they were right to fear her all along. Samaku was an independent trader; its military-grade navigational systems, and the bonuses she promised, would ensure a short voyage time.

Actually transferring over the cash to the captain had been the single most decisive moment for her; since escaping Tranquillity every other action had been unavoidable. Now, though, she was fully committed. The people she was scheduled to join in the Dorados had spent thirty years preparing for her arrival. She was the final component. The flight to destroy Omuta’s star, which had started in the Beezling three decades ago, was about to enter its terminal phase.

The Intari started to examine the local space environment as soon as it slipped out of its wormhole terminus. Satisfied there was no immediate hazard from asteroidal rubble or high-density dust clouds it accelerated in towards Norfolk at three gees.

Norfolk was the third star system it had visited since leaving Trafalgar five days earlier, and the second to last on its itinerary. Captain Nagar had ambiguous feelings about carrying the First Admiral’s warning of possession; in time-honoured fashion Adamists did tend to lay a lot of the blame on the messenger. Typical of their muddled thinking and badly integrated personalities. Nonetheless he was satisfied with the time Intari had made, few voidhawks could do better.

We may have a problem,Intari told its crew. The navy squadron is still in orbit, they have taken up a ground fire support formation.

Nagar used the voidhawk’s senses to see for himself, his mind accepting the starship’s unique perception. The planet registered as a steeply warped flaw in the smooth structure of space-time, its gravity field drawing in a steady sleet of the minute particles which flowed through the interplanetary medium. A clutter of small mass points were in orbit around the flaw, shining brightly in both the magnetic and electromagnetic spectrum.

They should have departed last week,he said rhetorically. at his silent wish Intari obligingly focused its sensor blisters on the planet itself, shifting its perceptive emphasis to the optical spectrum. Norfolk’s bulk filled his mind, the twin sources of illumination turning the surface into two distinctly coloured hemispheres, divided by a small wedge of genuine night. The land which shone a twilight vermillion below Duchess’s radiance appeared perfectly normal, complying with Intari ’s memory of their last visit, fifteen years ago. Duke’s province, however, was dappled by circles of polluted red cloud.

They glow, Intari said, concentrating on the lone slice of night.

Before Nagar could comment on the unsettling spectacle, the communications console reported a signal from the squadron’s commanding admiral, querying their arrival. When Nagar had confirmed their identity the admiral gave him a situation update on the hapless agrarian planet. Eighty percent of the inhabited islands were now covered by the red cloud, which seemed to block all attempts at communication. The planetary authorities were totally incapable of maintaining order in the affected zones; police and army alike had mutinied and joined the rebels. Even the navy marine squads sent in to assist the army had dropped out of contact. Norwich itself had fallen to the rebel forces yesterday, and now the streamers of red cloud were consolidating above the city. That substance more than anything had prevented the admiral from attempting any kind of retaliation using the starships’ ground bombardment weapons. How, she asked, could the rebels produce such an effect?

“They can’t,” Nagar told her. “Because they’re not rebels.” He began datavising the First Admiral’s warning over the squadron’s secure communications channels.

Captain Layia remained utterly silent as the datavise came through. Once it was finished she looked round at her equally subdued crew.

“So now we know what happened to the Tantu ,” Furay said. “Hellfire, I hope the chase ship the admiral dispatched kept up with it.”

Layia gave him an agitated glance, uncomfortable notions stirring in her brain. “You brought our three passengers up from the same aerodrome as the Tantu ’s spaceplane, and at more or less the same time. The little girl was caught up in some sort of ruckus: a weird fire. You said so yourself. And they originally came from Kesteven island, where it all started.”

“Oh, come on!” Furay protested. The others were all staring at him, undecided but definitely suspicious. “They fled from Kesteven. They bought passage on the Far Realm hours before the hangar fire.”

“We’re suffering from glitches,” Tilia said.

“Really?” Furay asked scathingly. “You mean more than usual?”

Tilia glared at the pilot.

“Slightly more,” Layia murmured seriously. “But nothing exceptional, I admit.” The Far Realm might have been an SII ship, but that didn’t mean the company necessarily operated an exemplary maintenance procedure. Cost cutting was a major company priority these days, not like when she started flying.

“They’re not possessed,” Endron said.

Layia was surprised by the soft authority in his voice, he sounded so certain. “Oh?”

“I examined Louise as soon as she came on board. The body sensors worked perfectly. As did the medical nanonics I used on her. If she was possessed the energistic effect the First Admiral spoke of would have glitched them.”

Layia considered what he said, and gave her grudging agreement. “You’re probably right. And they haven’t tried to hijack us.”

“They were concerned about the Tantu , as well. Fletcher hated those rebels.”

“Yes. All right, point made. That just leaves us with the question of who’s going to break the news to them, tell them exactly what’s happened to their homeworld.”

Furay found himself the centre of attention again. “Oh, great, thanks a lot.”

By the time he’d drifted through the various decks to the lounge the passengers were using, the squadron admiral had begun to issue orders to the ships under her command. Two frigates, the Ldora and the Lev , were to remain in Norfolk orbit where they could enforce the quarantine; any attempt to leave the planet, even in a spaceplane, was to be met with an instant armed response. Any commercial starship that arrived was to be sent on its way, again failure to comply was to be met with force. The Intari was to continue on its warning mission. The rest of the squadron was to return to 6th Fleet headquarters at Tropea in anticipation of reassignment. Far Realm was released from its support duties and contract.

After a brief follow-on discussion with the admiral, Layia announced: “She’s given permission for us to fly directly back to Mars. Who knows how long this emergency is going to last, and I don’t want to be stranded in the Tropea system indefinitely. Technically, we’re on military service, so the civil starflight proscription doesn’t apply. At the worst case it’ll be something for the lawyers to argue about when we get back.”

With his mood mildly improved at the news they were going home, Furay slid into the lounge. He came through the ceiling hatch, head first, which inverted his visual orientation. The three passengers watched him flip around and touch his feet to a stikpad. He gave them an awkward grin. Louise and Genevieve were looking at him so intently, knowing something was wrong, yet still trusting. It wasn’t a burden he was used to.