“Do whatever I can, Al. And that’s a fact. You and the Organization’s been good to me.”

“Mighty glad to hear that, Demaris. Come over here, got something to show you.” Al draped his arm around Demaris’s shoulder in a companionable fashion, guiding him over to the transparent wall. “Now ain’t that a sight?”

Demaris looked out. New California itself was hidden behind the bulk of the asteroid, so he looked up. Crinkled sepia-coloured rock curved away to a blunt conical peak. Three kilometres away, hundreds of thermo dump panels the size of football fields hung down from the rock, forming a ruff collar right around the asteroid’s neck. Beyond that was the non-rotating spaceport disk, which, like the stars, seemed to be revolving. An unnervingly large constellation of Adamist starships floated in a rigorously maintained lattice formation just past the edge of the disk. Demaris had spent the entire previous week helping to prep them for flight; and the constellation only represented thirty percent of the Organization’s total warship fleet.

“It’s, er . . . pretty fine, Al,” Demaris said. He couldn’t make out Al’s thoughts too clearly, so he didn’t know whether he was in the shit or not. But the boss seemed pleased enough.

“Pretty fine!” Al appeared to find this hilarious, roaring with laughter. He slapped Demaris’s back enthusiastically. The other lieutenants smiled politely.

“It’s a fucking great ritzy miracle, Demaris. One hundred per cent proof. You know just one of those ships is packing enough firepower to blow the entire old U.S. Navy out of the water? Now that’s the kinda thought makes you shit bricks, huh?”

“Right, Al.”

“What you’re seeing out there is something no one else has ever tried before. It’s a fucking crusade, Demaris. We’re gonna save the universe for people like us, put it to rights again. And you helped make it happen. I’m mighty grateful to you for that, yes, sir. Mighty grateful.”

“Did what I could, Al. We all do.”

“Yeah, but you helped with getting those star-rockets ready. That takes talent.”

Demaris tapped the side of his head. “I possessed someone who knows; he don’t hold nothing back.” With great daring he gave a gentle punch to Al’s upper arm. “Least, not if he knows what’s good for him.”

A split-second pause, then Al was laughing again. “Goddamn right. Gotta let em know who’s calling the shots.” A finger was raised in caution. “But, I gotta admit; I got one hell of a problem brewing here, Demaris.”

“Well, Christ, Al, anything I can do to help, you know that.”

“Sure, Demaris, I know that. The thing is, once we start the crusade they’re gonna fight back, the Confederation guys. And they’re bigger than we are.”

Demaris dropped his voice an octave, glancing from side to side. “Well sure they are, Al; but we got the antimatter now.”

“Yeah, that’s right, we got that. But that don’t make them any smaller, not numbers wise.”

Demaris’s smile was a little harder to maintain. “I don’t see . . . What is it you want, Al?”

“This guy you’re possessing—what’s his name?”

“The goof calls himself Kingsley Pryor, he was a real hotshot engineer for the Confederation Navy, a lieutenant commander.”

“That’s right, Kingsley Pryor.” Al pointed a finger at Leroy Octavius.

“Lieutenant Commander Kingsley Pryor,” Leroy recited, glancing at the screen on his processor block. “Attended University of Columbus, and graduated 2590 with a degree in magnetic confinement physics. Joined Confederation Navy the same year, graduated from Trafalgar’s officer cadet campus with a first. Took a doctorate in fusion engineering at Montgomery Tech in 2598. Assigned to 2nd Fleet headquarters engineering division. Rapid promotion. Currently working on the navy’s project to reduce fusion rocket size. Married, with one son.”

“Yeah,” Demaris said cagily. “That’s him. So?”

“So I got a job for him, Demaris,” Al said. “A special job, see? I’m real sorry about that, but I can’t see no way out of it.”

“No need to be sorry, Al. Like I said, anything I can do.”

Al scratched the side of his cheek, just above three thin white scars. “No, Demaris, you ain’t listening. I fucking hate it when people do that. I got a job for him to do. Not you.”

“Him? You mean Pryor?”

Al gave the ever-impassive Mickey a helpless grimace. “Je-zus, I’m dealing with fucking Einstein here. YES, shit-for-brains. Kingsley Pryor, I want him back. Now.”

“But, but, Al, I can’t give you him. I am him.” Demaris thumped his chest frantically with both hands. “I ain’t got anybody else to ride around in. You can’t ask me to do that.”

Al frowned. “Are you loyal to me, Demaris, are you loyal to the Organization?”

“What kind of a fucking question is that? Course I’m fucking loyal, Al. But it still don’t mean you can ask that. You can’t!” He whirled around as he heard the smooth snik of a Thompson being cocked. Luigi Balsmao was cradling one of the machine guns lightly, an affable smile on his thickset face.

“I am asking you, as a loyal member of my Organization, to give me back Kingsley Pryor. I’m asking you nicely .”

“No. No fucking way, man!”

The scars on Al’s reddening face were frost-white. “Because you acted loyal to me I give you the choice. Because we’re gonna liberate every one of those ass-backwards planets out there, you’re gonna have a zillion decent bodies to choose from. Because of this, I give you the opportunity to avoid zero-tau and prove your honour like a man. Now for the last goddamn time, read my lips: I want Pryor.”

Kingsley Pryor didn’t even know why he was crying like a baby. Because he was free? Because he’d been possessed? Because death wasn’t final?

Whatever the reason, the emotional fallout was running through him like an electrical discharge. Control was impossible. However, he was fairly sure he was crying. Lying on cool silk sheets, a billowingly soft mattress below his spine. Knees hooked up under his chin with arms wrapped around his shins. And in darkness. Not the sensory deprivation of the mental imprisonment, but a wonderful genuine dusk, where a mosaic of grey on grey shadows delineated shapes. It was enough for a start. Had he been plunged directly into countryside on a sunny day he would probably have fried from sensory overload.

A swishing sound made him tighten his grip on himself. Currents of air stirred across his face as someone sat on the bed beside him.

“It’s all right,” a girl’s melodic voice whispered. “The worst part’s over now.”

Fingers stroked the nape of his neck. “You’re back. You’re alive again.”

“Did . . . Did we win?” he croaked.

“No. I’m afraid not, Kingsley. In fact, the real battle hasn’t even begun yet.”

He shivered uncontrollably. Too much. Everything was too much for him right now. He wanted, not to die (Gods no!) but just to be away. Alone.

“That’s why Al let you out again. You have a part to play in the battle, you see. A very important part.”

How could a voice so mellifluous carry such an intimation of catastrophe? He used his neural nanonics to retrieve a strong tranquillizer program and shunt it into primary mode. Sensations and palpitating emotions damped down. Something was not quite right about the neural nanonics function, but he couldn’t be bothered to run a diagnostic.

“Who are you?” he asked.

A head was laid down on his shoulder, arms embracing him. For a moment he was reminded of Clarissa, the softness, the warmth, the female scent.

“A friend. I didn’t want you to wake up with them taunting you. That would have been too horrible. You need my touch, my sympathy. I understand people like no other. I can prepare you for what is to come: the offer you can’t refuse.”

He slowly straightened himself and turned to look at her. The sweetest girl he’d ever seen, her age lost between fifteen and twenty-five, fair hair curling buoyantly around her face as she looked down at him in concern.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her.

“They’ve captured Clarissa,” she said. “And dear little Webster, too. I’m sorry. We know how much you love them. Demaris Coligan told us.”

“Captured?”

“But safe. Secure. Non-possessed. A child and a woman, they could not be hurt, not here. Al welcomes the non-possessed to his Organization. They’ll have an honoured place, Kingsley. You can earn that for them.”

He struggled to resolve the image which the name Al stirred in his mind. The fleshy-faced young man in a strange grey hat. “Earn it?”

“Yes. They can be safe forever, they need never die, never age, never endure pain. You can bring them that gift.”

“I want to see them.”

“You could.” She kissed his brow, a tiny dry lick with her lips. “One day. If you do what we ask, you will be able to return to them. I promise that. Not as your friend. Not as your enemy. Just one human to another.”

“When? When can I see them?”

“Hush, Kingsley. You’re too tired now. Sleep. Sleep away all your anguish. And when you wake, you will learn of the fabulous destiny which is yours to fulfill.”

Moyo watched Ralph Hiltch walk down the road out of Exnall, the girl lying in his arms. Together they made a classical image, the hero rescuing his damsel.

The other armour-suited troops closed around their leader, and together they slipped off the road, back into the cover of the trees. Not that the snarled-up trunks of the old forest could hide them; Ralph’s fury acted like a magnesium flare to the strange senses which Moyo was only just accustoming himself to.

The ESA agent’s anger was of a genus which perturbed Moyo deeply. The resolution behind it was awesome. After two centuries incarcerated in the beyond, Moyo had assumed he would be immune to any kind of threat ever again. That was why he had cooperated with Annette Ekelund’s scheme, no matter how callous it was by the standards of the living. Possession, a return to the universe he had thought himself banished from, brought a different, darker slant on those things he had cherished and respected before—morality, honour, integrity. With such an outlook contaminating his thinking, he had considered himself invulnerable to fear, even aloof from it. Hiltch made him doubt the arrogance of his newfound convictions. He might have been granted an escape from the beyond, but remaining free was by no means guaranteed.

The boy whom Moyo held in front of him began to squirm again, crying out in anguish as Ralph Hiltch vanished from sight. His last hope dashed. He was about ten or eleven. The misery and terror whirling inside his head was so strong it was almost contagious.

His resolution fractured by Hiltch, Moyo began to feel shame at what he was doing. The craving which the lost souls in the beyond set up at the back of his mind was worse than any cold turkey, and it was relentless. They wanted what he had, the light and sound and sensation which dwelt so richly in the universe. They promised him fealty forever if he granted it to them. They cajoled. They insisted. They threatened. It would never end. A hundred billion imps of obligation and conscience whispering together were a voice more powerful than his.

He had no choice. While the living remained unpossessed, they would fight to fling him back into the beyond. While souls dwelt in the beyond they would plague him to be given bodies. The equation was so horrifically simple, the two forces cancelling each other out. Providing he obeyed.

His rebirth was only a few hours old, and already independent destiny was denied him.

“Do you see what we can do?” Annette Ekelund shouted at the ranks of her followers. “The Saldanas reduced to bargaining with us, accepting our terms. That’s the power we have now. And the first thing we must do is consolidate it. Everyone who was assigned to a vehicle, I want you ready to leave as soon as the marines withdraw; that should be in a quarter of an hour at the most, so be ready. If we even appear to lack the courage to go through with this, they’ll unleash the SD platforms on us. You felt Hiltch’s thoughts, you know it’s true. Those of you holding a hostage, get them possessed right now. We need all the numbers we can muster. This isn’t going to be easy, but we can capture this whole peninsula within a couple of days. After that we’ll have the power to close the sky for good.”

Moyo couldn’t help but glance up. Dawn was strengthening above the barbed tree line, thankfully eradicating the stars and their hideous reminder of infinity. But even with daylight colours fermenting across the blackness the vista remained so empty, a void every bit as barren as the beyond. Moyo wanted nothing more than to seal it shut, to prevent the emptiness from draining his spirit once again.

Every mind around him had the same yearning.

Moans and shouting broke his introspection. The hostages were being dragged back inside the buildings. Nothing had been said about that, there was no prior arrangement. It was as though the possessed shared a communal unease at inflicting the necessary suffering in full view of each other and the low-orbit sensor satellites. Breaking a person’s spirit was as private as sex.

“Come on,” Moyo said. He picked the boy up effortlessly and went back into the wooden frame bungalow.

“Mummy!” the boy yelled. “Mummy help.” He started weeping.

“Hey now, don’t panic,” Moyo said. “I’m not going to hurt you.” It didn’t make any difference. Moyo went straight through into the living room, and opened the big patio doors. There was a lawn at the rear, extending back almost to the harandrid trees which encircled the town. Two horticultural mechanoids roamed anarchically over the trim grass, their mowing blades digging into the loamy soil as if they’d been programmed to plough deep furrows.

Moyo let go of the boy. “Go on,” he said. “Run. Scoot.”

Limpid eyes stared up at him, not understanding at all. “But my mummy . . .”

“She’s not here anymore. She’s not even her anymore. Now go on. The Royal Marines are out there in the forest. If you’re quick, you’ll find them before they leave. They’ll look after you. Now run .” He made it fiercer than he had to. The boy snatched a quick glance into the living room, then turned and shot off over the lawn.

Moyo waited to make sure he got through the hedge without any trouble, then went back inside. If it had been an adult he held hostage, there would have been no compunction, but a child . . . He hadn’t abandoned all of his humanity.

Through the living-room window he could see vehicles rumbling down the road. It was a strange convoy which Annette Ekelund had mustered; there were modern cars, old models ranging across planets and centuries, mobile museums of military vehicles. Someone had even dreamed up a steam-powered traction engine which slowly clanked and snorted its way along, dripping water from leaky couplings. If he focused his thoughts, he could make out the profile of the actual cars and farm vehicles underneath the fanciful solid mirages.

There had been a coupe Moyo had always wanted back on Kochi, a combat wasp on wheels, its top speed three times the legal limit; but he never could quite manage to save enough for a deposit. Now though, it could be his for the price of a single thought. The concept depressed him, half of the coupe’s attraction had been rooted in how unobtainable it was.

He spent a long time behind the window, wishing the procession of would-be conquerors well. He’d promised Annette Ekelund he would help, indeed he’d opened five of Exnall’s residents for possession during the night. But now, contemplating the days which lay ahead, repeating that barbarity ten times an hour, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. The boy had proved that to him. He would be a liability to Ekelund and her blitzkrieg coup. Best to stay here and keep the home fires burning. After the campaign, they would need a place to rest.

Breakfast was . . . interesting. The thermal induction panel in the kitchen went crazy as soon as he switched it on. So he stared at it, remembering the old range cooker his grandmother had in her house, all brushed black steel and glowing burner grille. When he was young she had produced the most magnificent meals on it, food with a tang and texture he’d never tasted since. The induction panel darkened, its outline expanding; the yellow composite cupboard unit it sat on merged into it—and the stove was there, radiant heat shining out of its grille as the charcoal blocks hissed unobtrusively. Moyo grinned at his achievement, and put the copper kettle on the hot plate. While it started to boil he searched around the remaining cupboards for some food. There were dozens of sachets, modern chemically nutritious food without any hint of originality. He tossed a couple into the iron frying pan, compelling the foil to dissolve, revealing raw eggs and several slices of streaky bacon (with the rind left on as he preferred). It began to sizzle beautifully just as the kettle started to whistle.

Chilled orange juice, light muesli flakes, bacon, eggs, sausages, kidneys, buttered wholemeal toast with thickly cut marmalade, washed down with cups of English tea—it was almost worth waiting two centuries for.

After he was finished eating, he tailored Eben Pavitt’s sad casual clothes into the kind of expensive bright blue suit which the richer final year students had worn when he was a university freshman. Satisfied, he opened the bungalow’s front door and stepped out into the street.

There had never been a town like Exnall on Kochi. Moyo found it pleasantly surprising. From the media company shows he had always imagined the Kulu Kingdom planets to have a society even more formal than his own Japanese-ethnic culture. Yet Exnall lacked any sort of disciplined layout. He wandered along its broad streets, sheltered by the lofty harandrids, enjoying what he found, the small shops, gleaming clean caf

Moyo wasn’t alone exploring his new environment. Several hundred people had stayed behind after Annette Ekelund had left. Most of them, like himself, were ambling around, not quite meeting the eye of their fellow citizens. Everyone was party to the same guilty secret: what we did, what was done for us to return our souls into these bodies. The atmosphere was almost one of mourning.

The strollers were dressed in the clothes of their era and culture, solid citizens all. Those who favoured grotesquerie and mytho-beast appearances had departed with Ekelund.

He was delighted that several of the caf

The new proprietor was behind the counter, a balding man with a handkerchief knotted around his neck and wearing a blue and white striped apron. He was wiping the counter’s shiny wooden top with a dishcloth. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “And what can I get you?”

This is ridiculous, Moyo thought, we’re both dead, we’ve been rescued by some weird miracle, and all he’s interested in is what I want to eat. We should be getting to know each other, trying to understand what’s happened, what this means to the universe. Then he sensed the alarm burbling up in the proprietor’s thoughts, the man’s terribly brittle nature.

“I’ll have one of the doughnuts, of course, they look delicious. And have you got any hot chocolate?”

The proprietor gave a big smile of relief, sweat was prickling his forehead. “Yes, sir.” He busied himself with the jugs and cups behind the counter.

“Do you think Ekelund will succeed?”

“I expect so, sir. She seems to know what she’s doing. I did hear she came from another star. That’s one resourceful lady.”

“Yes. Where do you come from?”

“Brugge, sir. Back in the twenty-first century. A fine city it was in those days.”

“I’m sure.”

The proprietor put a mug of steaming hot chocolate on the counter along with a doughnut. Now what? Moyo wondered. I haven’t got a clue what kind of coin to conjure up.

The whole situation was becoming more surreal by the second.

“I’ll put it on your bill, sir,” the proprietor said.

“Thank you.” He picked up the mug and plate, glancing around. There were only three other people in the caf

“I was just going,” she muttered.

“Don’t, please.” He sat opposite her. “We ought to talk. I haven’t talked to anyone for centuries.”

Her eyes looked down at her coffee cup. “I know.”

“My name’s Moyo.”

“Stephanie Ash.”

“Pleased to meet you, Stephanie. I don’t know what I should be saying, half of me is terrified by what’s happened, the other half is elated.”

“I was murdered,” she whispered. “He . . . he. He laughed when he did it, every time I screamed it just made him laugh louder. He enjoyed it.” The tears were flowing openly again.

“I’m sorry.”

“My children. I had three children, they were only little, the eldest was six. What kind of life would they have knowing what happened to me? And Mark, my husband, I thought I saw him once, later, much later. He was all broken down and old.”

“Hey there, it’s over now, finished,” he said softly. “Me, I got hit by a bus. Which is a tricky thing to do in Kochi’s capital city; there are barriers along the roads, and safety systems, all kinds of protective junk. But if you’re real stupid, and loaded, and part of a group that’s daring you to run the road, then you can jump in front of one before its brakes engage. Yeah, real tricky, but I managed it. So what use was my life? No girl, no kids; just Mum and Dad who would have been heartbroken. You had something, a family that loved you, kids you can be proud of. You were taken away from them, and that’s a real evil, I’m not saying it isn’t. But look at you now, you still love them after all this time. And I’ll bet wherever they are, they love you. Compared to me, Stephanie, you’re rich. You had it all, the whole life trip.”

“Not anymore.”

“No. But then this is a fresh start for all of us, isn’t it? You can’t allow yourself to grieve over the past. There’s too much of it now. If you do that, then you’ll never do anything else.”

“I know. But it’s going to take time, Moyo. Thank you, anyway. What were you, some kind of social worker?”

“No. I was at university studying law.”

“You were young, then?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I was thirty-two when it happened.”

Moyo bit into his doughnut, which tasted as good as it looked. He grinned and gave the proprietor an appreciative thumbs up. “I can see I’ll be coming back here.”

“It seems silly to me,” she confided.

“Me too. But it’s the way he’s chosen to anchor himself.”

“Are you sure it was law, and not philosophy?”

He smiled around the doughnut. “That’s better. Don’t go for the big issues right away, you’ll only get depressed, start small and work along to quantum metaphysics.”

“You’ve lost me already, when I did work I was just a councillor at the local junior day club. I adored children.”

“I don’t think you were just anything, Stephanie.”

She sat back in the chair, toying with the tiny coffee cup. “So what do we do now?”

“Generally speaking?”

“We have only just met.”

“Okay, generally speaking, try and live the life we always wanted to. From now on, every day is going to be a summer’s day you’ve taken off work so that you can go out and do the one thing you’ve always wanted to.”

“Dance in the Rubix Hotel,” she said quickly. “It had the most beautiful ballroom, the podium was big enough for a whole orchestra, and it looked out over the grounds to a lake. We never went to a function there; Mike always promised he’d take me. I wanted to wear a scarlet gown, with him in a dinner jacket.”

“Not bad. You’re a romantic, Stephanie.”

She blushed. “What about you?”

“Oh, no. Mine are all pretty basic male daydreams. Tropical beaches and girls with perfect figures; that kind of thing.”

“No, I don’t believe that. There’s more to you than simplistic clich

“Well . . . I suppose there is mountain gliding. It was a rich-kid sport on Kochi. The gliders were made out of linked molecule films, only weighed about five kilos, but they had a wingspan of about twenty-five metres. Then before you could even get in to one you had to have your retinas and cortical processor implants upgraded so that you could actually see air currents, determine their flow speed; the whole X-ray vision trip. That way you’d be able to pick out the wind stream which could carry you to the top.

“The clubs would set out courses over half a mountain range. I watched a race once. The pilots looked like they were lying in a torpedo-shaped bubble; the linked molecule film is so thin you can’t even see it unless the sun catches it just right. They were skiing on air, Stephanie, and they made it seem like the easiest thing in the world.”

“I don’t think either of us is going to be living our fantasies for a while.”

“No. But we will, eventually, when Ekelund takes over Mortonridge. Then we’ll have the power to indulge ourselves.”

“That woman. God, she frightened me. I had to hold a man hostage while she spoke to the soldier. He was pleading and crying. I had to give him to someone else afterwards. I couldn’t hurt him.”

“I let mine go altogether.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was a boy. I think he got to the marines in time to be evacuated. Hope so, anyway.”

“That was good of you.”

“Yeah. I had the luxury this time. But if the Saldana Princess sends her troops in here to find us and claw us back, I’ll fight. I’ll do everything I can to stop them from evicting me from this body.”

“I hear mine,” Stephanie said. “She’s inside me, lonely and afraid. She cries a lot.”

“My host’s called Eben Pavitt, he rages the whole time. But underneath he’s scared.”

“They’re as bad as the souls in the beyond. Everyone is making demands on us.”

“Ignore them. You can do it. Compared to the beyond, this is paradise.”

“Not really. But it’s a good first step.”

He finished his chocolate, and smiled. “Do you want to come for a walk, see what our new town is like?”

“Yes. Thank you, Moyo, I think I would.”