And I Shall Be Your Light, an eureka seven fanfic

DISCLAIMER: This is an (alas) unlicensed work of fan fiction. I do not own the copyright to Eureka Seven, the characters of the anime series or its setting. Bandai Entertainment and Bones Studio have the legal rights to anything directly relating to the wonderful Eureka Seven -- though all my original characters as well as all lyrics and poetry are solely mine.

This story is a sequel to and continuation of the events chronicled in my earlier Eureka Seven followups, Out of the Nest (1) and Loss of Life (2) which can be found here on this site.

And I Shall Be Your Light

(3)

A story from the world of Eureka Seven

John Wagner

One

High in the thin, frigid night air above the sleeping province of Fredonia, the IPF SL-1200 attack ship Moonlight rose to meet a vast dark arrowhead that occluded the stars for nearly two kilometers on either side. Jimmy Emerson, the Moonlight's young pilot, sweated over his console in the darkened command bridge, pouring his fierce concentration into the readouts as they approached the massive Mikasa-class battlecruiser looming overhead.

"Point two kilometers," he muttered, more to himself than to Holland, who sat silently in the commander's seat behind him. "Point one-five...point one...slowing to point-oh-one kilos relative vertical velocity...matching forward velocity with the Yamashima..."

To his right, Hap Fukoda, at the co-pilot's pod, called out his own readings. "Trapar density holding at four point seven. Wind velocity forty kilos per hour. Turbulence detectors show a boundary layer one meter thick around the Yamashima's ventral docking area...oops, boundary layer being disrupted as they lower the docking tube. Watch it, Jimmy, that ship could get a little unstable."

"Roger that, Hap. Delta relative vertical dropping to point-oh-oh-eight..."

"Message from Yamashima," came Annette's voice from behind and just to Holland's left, at the communications officer's console.

"Let's have it," said Holland Novak, his lean face hollow and demonic in the orange upward glow of his command panel.

She patched the ship-to-ship communications into the bridge intercom. "Moonlight, this is Yamashima, do you copy?"

"This is Holland on the Moonlight. We copy, Yamashima, what's up?"

"We just had some work done on the main docking corridor, and it looks like it'll be causing more chop down there than we expected. Do you want to scrub and wait till morning for the rendezvous?"

Holland cut off the intercom for a moment. "What d'you say, Jimmy? You're the pilot."

"How bad's the turbulence, Hap?" Jimmy asked, his blue eyes never straying from the instrument array.

"Not bad, but irregular. Whoever repaired that corridor unit must've failed to put some of the aerodynamic fairing back on. It's interrupting the boundary layer in unpredictable ways every time the wind gusts."

Standing at the back of the dark bridge, Renton Thurston, hand-in-hand with his wife Eureka, watched, feeling the silent tension rise. Both of them understood that if the massive Yamashima should drop suddenly, even by a few meters, the effect to a light attack ship like the Moonlight would be comparable to a boulder colliding with a butterfly.

"How important is this meeting, Holland?" asked Jimmy, bringing them closer with invisible twitches of his sensitive hands.

"From what I was told, it's going to be our most important job since we retrieved Eureka and Renton. But you're still the pilot -- this is your call to make."

Jimmy nodded, once. "We're gonna make contact, then. Hap, I want you to tell me every time the wind gusts; I'm gonna take us to the docking latches between gusts."

Holland opened the intercom switch once again. "Yamashima, have the docking operators standing by with all navigation lights. We're coming up."

"Roger that, Moonlight. Guides on; beacons activated; pads extended. Watch yourself, guys."

All around them in the unrelieved blackness, the sky exploded with light. Floodlights mounted on the Yamashima's underside flared to life, aimed at the ventral docking area, while the long, flexible arms of docking clamps groped downward like striped fingers, each with its bright red guidance light glowing at the tip. Directly above them, visible through the exposed overhead viewpanes, a metallic tube ten meters in diameter lowered itself from the ship, its end angled ninety degrees to mate with the Moonlight's sternward catapult doors.

With infinite patience and concentration, Jimmy brought the Moonlight forward in tiny increments, while beside him, Hap called out the turbulence-generating wind gusts. "Now...now...now -- another quick one -- now..."

A virtual screen bloomed in the air above the pilot's console, showing a blue flashing "X" on the Yamashima's hull; the docking target. The Moonlight's navigation computer superimposed a red cross-hairs upon the image. Renton knew that when the cross-hairs matched up with the target lights, they would be in perfect horizontal alignment. No sound violated the utter silence on the bridge except Jimmy's status reports and Hap's metronomic announcements of the turbulence spikes.

"Now...now...now... Looks like about five-second intervals...now...now..."

"Got it, Hap. Drifting forward relative delta-vee twelve centimeters per second...ten centimeters...six centimeters...two..." A soft gong chimed from the console as the cross-hairs and the docking target reached perfect alignment. "Okay, locking longitudinal position into the computer...damn, the Yamashima bobs almost two meters with every breeze...look out..."

The huge warship dropped violently downward toward them, then lifted immediately back up as its autopilot adjusted for the interruption to the air/trapar flow. "Make that two and a half meters," muttered Jimmy. "Keep calling the gusts, Hap..."

"Now...now...now..."

Jimmy's hand tightened on the vertical flight controller, then released it. Instead, he reached for the joystick of what Renton recognized as the vertical thruster control. He and Eureka understood at once, and they held to each other, hardly daring to breathe.

"Now...now...now..."

The Yamashima bobbed down again, nearly three meters this time, and just as its autopilot corrected the motion to bring the bulk of the ship back up, Jimmy hit the vertical thrusters. With a roar, the Moonlight caught up to the Yamashima just centimeters before the peak of its oscillation; the docking arms seized them by their wings and forward boom, hugging the ship to the pads with scarcely a tremor. From the rear, they heard the hiss and clank of the connecting corridor magnetically mating itself to the stern catapult gate.

"Docking confirmed, Moonlight," came the awed voice from above. "We've got you safe in mother's arms. Welcome to the Yamashima, ladies and gentlemen."

"Shutting down main engines," announced Jimmy. "Thruster feed valves closed. Flywheels spinning down to standby; initiating refueling sequence...nozzles from the Yamashima in place...automatic fueling beginning...power interfaces connected and drawing power from the host ship." Only then did he wipe his streaming brow with the back of one arm and turn backward. "Okay, we made it!"

The cabin lights came up at once; Renton and Eureka clapped their hands in appreciation of his spectacular flying, joined immediately by everyone who'd been watching, until the entire bridge rang with applause.

"Great work, Moond...er, Jimmy!" cried Holland, releasing his restraining belt and slapping his pilot on one sweat-damp shoulder. "Outstanding, the way you used the thrusters to bring us up, instead of the control surfaces."

Jimmy unleashed a face-splitting smile before accepting Annette's fervent kisses. "Yeah, well, if I'd tried to use the ailerons so close and with that much turbulence, we'd have hit the bottom of the Yamashima with the boom when the ship tilted upwards. Thanks, Holland."

"Right. Now change out of that soggy shirt and join the rest of us upstairs. We're all going to find out just what's so important about this meeting with Juergens."

Two

The entire crew of the Moonlight -- including Yuki, baby in arms -- tramped up the spiral stairs inside the docking tube, there to be met by a smartly-saluting lieutenant in the duty fatigues of the IPF. His eyes went wide when he caught sight of Eureka in her short blue gown, but he said nothing, only led them all to a deck elevator that opened on what Renton guessed to be the same level as the bridge.

He found the sheer size of the Yamashima a bit intimidating; the enormous ship was virtually a flying office building in which it seemed anyone might become lost. Touching Eureka's emotions with his mind, he found there only a distant curiosity masking some much deeper disquiet. She's just remembering her days with the military again, he decided, and smiled in the most comforting way he knew.

The officer stood to one side and gestured them into a large conference room, harshly lit, its painted-steel walls lined with exposed girders and wiring conduits. From all directions they felt the hard vibration of the engines, layered with assorted metallic groaning and clanking from all directions. This thing makes the Moonlight look like a luxury cruiser, he thought, helping Eureka to her seat beside him at a round plastic-topped table more than three meters across. It's military, in a way that the Moonlight isn't. I can't picture Holland ever working on a ship like this.

A bulkhead door at the opposite end of the room swung open, admitting Admiral Guenter Juergens in the duty uniform of an IPF officer. To Renton's surprise, Dr. Gregory Egan walked at his side, his narrow brush of red-brown hair floating high above even Juergens' officer's cap. The Tresor research scientist had shed even more weight since Renton had seen him last, and the reduction in his diameter seemed only to emphasize his unusual height all the more. "Hello, Dr. Egan," he called across the table.

Egan dipped his head, peering through the glare of the overhead lamps. "Renton? Very good to see you again, my boy. And Eureka, too; good evening to you both. It's been, what, three weeks now since the disaster at Tresor? I understand you have all been working diligently on spreading the truth among those benighted souls in the Federation who have not yet been exposed to it." He seated himself beside Juergens, folding his long-fingered hands before him and smiling toward Mischa, who looked back with guarded affection.

"We just finished our latest video interview with Eureka and Renton today," said Stoner, passing Egan a copy of the latest printed edition of RayOut across the table's smooth surface. "It'll be on the satellite uplink in two days." The magazine's cover sported his magnificent photograph of Eureka rescuing the bleeding Renton in mid-air, flying upward toward the sun in a brilliant haze of trapar flames. At the bottom of the page, a lurid red headline screamed: THE FEDERATION TRIES -- AND FAILS AGAIN -- to MURDER our young Coralian ambassadors! See Page Two! "Next month's issue will deal with the attack on Tresor," he promised.

"That was a sad business," said Juergens, by way of bringing the meeting to order. "And now we have a chance to strike back. We've got a job for you all that should give you at least as much satisfaction as exposing the lies and propaganda of the oligarchy." His gray-peppered hair caught the light like spun steel.

Holland nodded, pale eyes narrow. "We're ready to hear about it. But first an introduction's in order. You both know all the crew of the Moonlight, but Gekkostate's got a new member. This is Tomika Aruno, our ground-weapons specialist. But we've agreed to call her 'Tommy,' since..."

"Since she's defected from the Federation Landestroopers, and is officially listed as dead after the assault on Tresor. She wants to prevent any retribution against her family; yes I've already been informed."

"By who?" Tommy wanted to know. Renton thought she seemed more than a bit alarmed. "Admiral," she added out of long training.

"By IPF Intelligence only, so please calm yourself. Your secret is still safe." He pressed a button on the tabletop and gestured toward the door. "In fact, that gives me the perfect opportunity to introduce the other members of this panel, both of whom, I think, are known to you." Standing, he gestured to the two who entered. "Please take your seats at our side now," he urged. "Ladies and gentlemen, please greet IPF Intelligence Captain Dominic Sorel and his wife Anemone."

"Anemone!" cried Eureka, almost laughing with delight.

Renton looked the odd pink-haired girl over closely, having met her before only under less-than-ideal conditions. Fractionally taller than Eureka, slightly bustier, a bit more pointed in the face, she moved with a contained yet constant twitchiness as though she itched all over but dared not scratch. Her lavender-pink Coralian eyes that seemed to him so very out of place on any face but Eureka's were narrower, more intense, even unsettling. But for all that, she carried an innate elegance about her, somehow managing to make the simplicity of her plain dark skirt and white blouse a masterpiece of tasteful understatement. Smiling widely, she waved back and took the seat offered her by Juergens.

Her shaggy-headed husband Dominic appeared little changed, except for the triple-stars-on-striped-background of a captain on each shoulder of his dark uniform. "Glad to see you again, Renton," he called as he seated himself. "Hello, Eureka -- and all of you! It's been more than a year, but I hear you've all been up to good things."

"And about to get better, I gather," said Holland. "What's IPF Intelligence got to tell us that's so urgent?"

Dominic dropped the pleasantries at once, pulling out a green folder from beneath the table and opening it before him. "It's our understanding that you're bound for Thuu Bak in the near future."

"That's right. Eureka and Renton have been contacted by Norbu from some Coralian higher reality. He's advised us to go there and look for Viyuuden, the new Vodarek high priest. In fact, I'd have contacted you guys about him anyway before long, since we were never able to catch up to him in the days when I was doing the Federation's dirty work."

"Great!" Dominic produced a delighted smile, as though this were the finest news he'd heard all week. "Then, if you're willing, you can combine that expedition with our own needs, and we can do some real damage to the Federation at the same time."

"What's the deal?" asked Matthieu, lifting one eyebrow.

"The 'deal,'" said Egan, "is this: Thuu Bak province is very distant from the Federation capital and from the former Council of Sages -- which has now been forcibly replaced by the Council of Military Emergency. Though it has always paid nominal homage and taxes to the Federation, Thuu Bak traditionally considers itself semi-autonomous, and there have been several strong independence movements in the past."

"One of which Unit Seven put down by murdering hundreds of people," said Eureka, her face revealing nothing. Only Renton could feel the bottomless pool of remorse behind her admission.

"Correct. And with the recent upheavals in the planetary government, the oligarchy has been far too busy to maintain its usual surveillance in that province. As a result, a group calling itself the 'Voice of the People' has taken up the call for independence from the Federation once more."

Holland smiled thinly. "And who's encouraging them?"

"We are. A little, at least. We badly need to get existing provincial governments to declare allegiance to our shadow government, the World Parliament. And we can offer Thuu Bak's present government a much greater degree of self-determination than the Federation would ever allow. The exaggerated threat represented by the VOP will help convince them to come over to our side."

Hilda shook her head. "I don't get it, though. Why's this so important to us? I don't understand."

"I do," Renton cut in before either Egan or Dominic could answer. "I remember not long after I first came aboard the Moonlight, how surprised I was that Gekkostate had to take on so many shady jobs to keep paying the bills. I never realized how much money it takes to keep even a pirate ship going. You guys want the tax money from Thuu Bak to go to your World Parliament from now on, instead of the Federation."

Dominic looked back at him, pleased. "Exactly right. If we're ever to stand a chance of overthrowing the oligarchy, we need the support of the tower province-states -- both political and financial. The IPF fleet alone is very expensive to run, and the truth is, our sources of income are running low. Thuu Bak's the ideal place to start."

"I can agree with that," said Yuki, stroking the baby's soft cheek. "But how can Gekkostate help with any of this?"

Egan pressed the tips of his fingers together. "Very simply, by flying the Moonlight in to the capital city of Samit Prakkun and allowing the Admiral and myself to have a long talk with the provincial governor and his council. They will then know that the World Parliament cares enough about them to dispatch a famous rogue warship on a diplomatic mission, yet is willing to gain their support by persuasion, rather than force of arms. And meanwhile, you are free to pursue Viyuuden in any way you think best. You and Gekkostate are outside the direct military chain of command, so you are not, of course, obligated to accept the proposal. Therefore, I ask it of you. What do you say, Holland? Do we have your cooperation?"

An expectant silence fell while all eyes turned Holland's way. "I don't see any reason why not," he finally said. "Anybody object?" Though more than one skeptical eye looked back at him from around the table, none raised any real opposition. "Okay, who's to go along? You and Juergens?"

"The Admiral is needed here, on active duty. The passengers will be myself and Mr. and Mrs. Sorel, who will act as representatives at social events during my negotiations."

"And do a bit of spying on the side," grumbled Axel Thurston, who had known his share of intrigue during a long lifetime.

Dominic agreed readily. "That's right. Any useful information Anemone and I can pick up comes right back to IPF headquarters, where it'll do the most good."

"Spy all you like," said Holland. "As long as we find Viyuuden, that's your business." He stretched luxuriously and yawned. "Was there anything more to talk about? No? In that case, we'll get back down to the Moonlight and set up three more bunks for you guys. That way, we can get a quick start in the morning. Admiral, if you'd like to sleep in comfort for a change, you're welcome to come and spend the night."

Juergens laughed and stood to signal the meeting's end. "A generous offer. But I've spent too many years getting used to sleeping on steel slabs to let that tempt me. Thank you all for your promptness under difficult conditions, and good night."

Three

Renton and Eureka did not return to their cabin at once. After re-entering the Moonlight with the other crewmembers, they visited the children's' room to make certain all three were asleep, then made their way to the windowed chamber near the stern that had originally been designed as a gunner's nest but now served as a small observation lounge for off-duty personnel. The lights barely glowed at one-quarter power here, to conserve energy drain on their host ship, and with the Moonlight's engines shut down, the only sound was the hollow rush of air along the hull.

"You were kind of uncomfortable in that meeting," said Renton. "Is something wrong?"

She folded her arms and moved close to a pane looking downward to the dark land, away from the warship blocking the sky above them. "Not with the meeting, no. But you're right that I've been uneasy. And I'm not certain why."

"Then it's not about the things you used to... About Eureka Seven, I mean." Renton came behind her, sliding both arms beneath her wings and holding her about the waist.

"No." Eureka settled back in his arms with a grateful smile, her furled wings slowly curling and uncurling. "It's not that. I feel like...like I'm waiting for something. And I don't know what it is, and that makes me worried."

"Something about going to Thuu Bak?"

"Not the place itself. It has bad memories of the things that Unit Seven did there, but... I just don't know."

"Well, maybe..."

"Uh-oh, sorry, I didn't know anyone else was in here."

They turned to see Matt Stoner just inside the doorway, looking embarrassed but not at all regretful. "Naw, it's okay," said Renton, releasing her with one last affectionate squeeze. "We weren't gonna be here long, anyway. We just didn't feel exactly right after that meeting."

Stoner shook his head and slumped into the nearest chair, staring at the blackness beyond the window. "You weren't the only ones. All that hot wind about a 'World Parliament' and shadow governments and taxation and that other crap... We didn't begin Gekkostate for boring and constricted goals like that. We just wanted to save the world. And now that it's been saved..." He turned both palms up, as though checking for rain. "I can't help feeling that sooner or later, I'm going to be out of a job. I don't know where a crusading journalist trying to make up for his past sins fits into anything as commonplace as tax collecting."

"What exactly are your past sins?" Eureka asked, moving closer. "You were never in the military, were you?"

Frowning, he mashed his ever-present red beret more closely on to his head, until it drooped over one ear like a sleeping cat. "I was a war correspondent attached to the Eighth Aerial Wing of the Federation Sky Fleet. You know what that means? It means I was the designated government media mouthpiece. I was the one who put the best, most favorable spin on anything the Fleet did, and looked the other way when it was atrocity time. It was my job to keep the public sold on supporting the war. In the long run, I may well be responsible for more deaths than you and Holland put together." He looked her in the face, the darkness behind his eyes raw and unconcealed. "Don't ever get the idea that you combat guys are the only ones with atonement problems, Eureka."

"No, I suppose not. I should have asked long ago, though."

"You had plenty of troubles of your own," Renton reminded her. "We all did."

"Is this contrition ritual for members only, or can anybody come in and beat their chest?" Tommy walked in, barefoot and wearing a knee-length nightgown of flower-print cotton.

Stoner turned on a winning smile and sat up a bit straighter. "I'd definitely hate to see a chest like that take a beating. Pull up a chair, though, and we can all flagellate each other till we're purified. Say, that's quite an outfit for a soldier."

"I'm sick to death of dressing like a soldier. I never wanted to be one anyway." She sat herself on the nearest of the several low couches with her feet curled beneath her, leaning on one arm. "Anyway, that's quite an outfit for a journalist. All the war correspondents I ever saw wore combat fatigues, like the rest of us brainless, sexless trained dogs. It made them feel like one of Our Heroic Troops; helped keep them writing the right kind of stories." She twirled one strand of her dark pigtails back and forth around one finger as she spoke, sometimes yanking so hard that Renton thought she might pull it out.

"What did you want to be?" asked Eureka, watching her curiously.

"I don't... I'm not sure." She looked to Eureka's lavender Coralian eyes like a woman staring into a spotlight. "Maybe what I'd most... Aw, it sounds too stupid."

"This is Gekkostate," said Stoner, with poker-faced irony, "where you're always among sympathetic friends. Just ask Renton." Renton smiled at him, mildly embarrassed to find himself still capable of feeling a bit elated over being able to appreciate a world-weary in-joke among the Gekkostaters.

Tommy never noticed. "Well... Ever since I joined up, it's kind of seemed to me like the one person around here I really admire is...Yuki. I mean, she's got it all, doesn't she? A great husband, a cute kid, dynamite looks, brainy, talented... She used to be in Federation Intelligence, didn't she?"

"Yeah, that's right," said Renton.

"Then she even made out better in the military than I did -- not that that matters. Anyway... I got drafted out of my life by the Federation before I could even go to my first dance. I've been in the Troopers since I was eighteen; my hitch still had another two years to run. I'm twenty-one now, so that's a big piece of my life. So as long as we're talking about fighting for justice and all that noble stuff, I want my own piece of justice out of the lousy Federation."

"Justice," said Stoner, "is what we want for other people. For ourselves, we want mercy."

Tommy regarded him warily. "Well...yeah, I guess that's true, isn't it? I never thought of that way. Who...who are you, anyway, Stoner?"

Sensing that such a profound question was likely to lead him into hours of metaphysical digression, Renton took Eureka's hand and tilted his head toward the door. "You guys can decide that for yourselves; we're gonna go to bed."

"Good night, both of you," said Eureka, offering no resistance whatever. "We'll see you tomorrow."

"You know, I've been realizing since we came back to the Moonlight, just how little I know of these people I traveled with for so long," Eureka mused as she swiped her keycard in the lock to their room.

Renton stepped in after her, pulling her to him in the darkness and kissing her, relishing the warmth of her lips. "Like I told you, you had lots of other things to worry about, then. Don't go feeling guilty or anything. Do you maybe think that's what's been bothering you?"

"No." She rubbed her face against his chest as he gently stroked the edges of her wings, bringing out little sparkles of trapar beneath his fingertips. "No, this only occurred to me back there, talking to Stoner. I really don't know what's so disturbing, only that it's been growing for some time...for three weeks, I think, since the night of the attack on Tresor."

Whether intuition, sensitivity to her emotional makeup or some deeper flash of thought and feeing between them, Renton could not say. But at that moment, the answer came to him, clear and certain. "Since Ariadne," he whispered.

Four

"Thanks for the hospitality, Admiral," Holland told the ship-to-ship intercom link as he watched the bright new morning from the command bridge. "Any hostiles in our immediate flight path?"

"None that any of our long-range sensor scouts have detected. You should be clear all the way across Gruenbergen and for at least another seven hundred kilometers into Hikousen. Farther south than that, the IPF doesn't have much of a presence -- but then, neither does the Federation. Good hunting, Moonlight."

Renton, standing with Eureka and the children at the overhead railing above and just behind the bridge, leaned over Maurice's head. "Hang on tight, kids," he said, keeping his voice low.

"Why, Papa?" asked Linck.

"The Moonlight's gonna drop away from the docking latches of the big ship any second now. Can you hear Jimmy bringing the main engines up to speed? When we fall away, there'll be... Oops."

With a twinge of weightlessness followed instantly by a violent push to the rear, the Moonlight fell out of the Yamashima's vast shadow and into the free blue, boosters roaring as they climbed away, probing for the nearest north-south Ley Line. "That was fun!" laughed Maeter, clapping her hands while she picked herself from the floor.

Eureka produced a thin smile and helped her to her feet. "It was, wasn't it? All right, go on down to the Engineering deck for your lessons, now. And don't pester Jobs and Woz to start until they're through running their debugging on the ship's systems."

Maurice nodded gravely before joining the other two. "We won't, Mama. See you later."

"We really should go down to the hangar deck and check the Type Seven, don't you think?" she said to Renton once the children had gone. "We haven't put it through any of the preflight checks since it was serviced at Tresor, and we never know when it might be needed."

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess so." He turned from the railing, the blaze of sunlight flooding his eyes, and for a breathless moment it seemed to him that Eureka herself was ablaze with a beauty and a brilliance too overwhelming for mortal sight. Then the ship's course altered minutely, the sun dropped to their starboard side, and the illusion faded. "L-listen, you go on down ahead of me, will you? I want to talk to Dominic for just a second first. It won't take more than a couple minutes."

"All right. But please don't be long." With only a curious glance, she descended the stairway from the overhead deck and disappeared toward the passageway leading to the LFO hangar in the ship's stern.

Regretfully, Renton watched her disappear, then hurried down to the main deck and back along the corridor to the first wing of the crew quarters. With the Moonlight still rolling and yawing as it found its course to Thuu Bak, he stumbled more than once during the journey before arriving at the sliding metal door to cabin twelve. He knocked and waited patiently, then reached to knock again when the door hissed back on its pneumatic activator, revealing a very bleary-faced girl with long, unkempt pink hair. She wavered there in a black bodysuit, both hands pressed to the doorframe to steady her. "Yeah?" she asked, looking him over with eyes frighteningly like Eureka's.

"Anemone? Um, listen I'm sorry to bother you, but I sort of need to talk to Dominic. Would you mind telling him I'm here?"

She leaned closer, near enough for the peculiar antiseptic scent on her startling hair to penetrate Renton's awareness. "Renton...Thurston. You're a lot taller than I remember you. You are taller. Yeah, we meet again, don't we, and for a change it's not looking at each other from the cockpits of a couple of LFOs."

"Yeah, I'm glad that's over with. You really were an amazing flier, though. About Dominic...?"

She lifted her nose, looking down at him in a vaguely offended manner. "Damn right I was. I was the best LFO pilot the Federation's money could buy. I was..." She shook her head; her breathing grew rapid. Renton took her by one arm, frightened that she might collapse there on the threshold, but Anemone steadied herself, blinked several times and smiled. "Sorry you had to see that. I'm all right now, honest. For a while, anyhow. You just came at a bad time, that's all; the pills take a while to kick in. How about if you show me where the galley is? I'm starving."

By now thoroughly confused, Renton agreed, and led her the short distance to the Moonlight's common dining area. The crew had already eaten breakfast two hours earlier, leaving them alone in the small cafeteria, its dense aroma of scrambled eggs and burnt toast still resisting the efforts of the air-purification system. "The, uh, leftovers are always put into freeze-dried storage, but I can reconstitute some for you if you want," he offered.

"No, don't go to that much trouble," she sighed, leaning over the empty stainless-steel food trays just outside the kitchen area. "What's quick?"

Renton searched the preprocessed racks. "Toasted cheese sandwiches and grapefruit juice."

"Okay, sounds fine. Put some sweetener in the juice, though, would you? That stuff's way too tart for me. Dominic's off in conference with Dr. Egan; he won't be free for a while yet."

"With Egan?" asked Renton, running a tall glass of grapefruit juice and putting it into the quick-cooling thermocouple cylinder. "What for?"

She grunted out a mirthless laugh. "That's what he'd like to know. He was pulled into this job at the last minute, and he's unhappy working with so little information...what're you staring at?"

"Oh, sorry -- it's your eyes. They look so much like Eureka's eyes."

"They are Eureka's eyes," Anemone said, harsh and low.

As a child in Bellforest, Renton had sometimes taken a short-cut home late at night, on a route past the rougher bars, after reffing under the light of the moon. He'd heard that same raw melancholy hoarseness from the throats of men who'd lost everything -- or thought they had. "I don't think I under --"

"Gene-sequencing." She reached out and snatched his forearm, her grip surprisingly strong. "Did you know I was once human?"

"I don't... Well, I know the Federation did some kind of genetic manipulation to you, to make you able to fly that weird LFO of yours quicker than anyone else. But other than that...no, I never knew the details. I don't think anybody on the Moonlight ever did." A soft chime sounded behind him and he reached into the irradiator for the plastic-wrapped packet, steaming as he plucked it free with quick, darting fingers. "Here's your sandwich. Watch out, it's hot."

Anemone made no effort to pick it up. "I was a war orphan with Despair Sickness, or so the surviving records that Dominic could track down said. By then, the Federation'd started to figure out that people with Despair weren't actually sick at all; we were just in tune with the Coral somehow. So they gathered a bunch of us up from hospitals all over the place, and started doing...experiments. They cut us and conditioned us and stuck us full of needles and electrodes. And DNA. At some point when Eureka was still at Tresor, they must've gotten DNA samples from her..."

"Her DNA's not human!" he shouted, not quite knowing why. The ship banked again, tilting the level of juice in Anemone's glass at a crazy angle. "It's impossible to join it to a human DNA chain; everybody says so. The Coralian Mind was trying to imitate a human DNA structure with her, but they did it their own way, with all kinds of impossible changes. Nobody's ever been able to understand it, let alone duplicate it. The only other person with DNA like hers is...me."

She looked closely at him then, with real interest. "Is that right? Well the Federation didn't have your advantages, so they used everything they knew to try and make our human bodies adapt to Coralian imitation-human DNA. And they all --" she flung open the fingers of one hand "--died. All of'em. The lucky ones died in their sleep; most of 'em took a lot of screaming, with pieces of 'em falling off or dissolving, before they went."

"But why not you?" Renton quietly pried her hand from his arm and took it in his own. It's so much like Eureka, when she gets into one of her black moods over her Unit Seven days. "How come you lived?"

"They...they never knew. I was the fluke. My medical records were all destroyed during the counterexplosions after that stinking monster Dewey bombed the Coral. And I'm glad." Strands of her pink hair clung to a forehead now glossy and damp. "I don't even remember half of what they did to me, Renton, but I wish I could rip the parts that I do remember out of my brain like spoiled food out of a lunch box, and throw them away to rot. The operations...some of them, they didn't even use anesthesia, because they were afraid it'd trigger organ rejections. And the drugs to increase my reaction time and make me more receptive to taking orders. Always, the drugs." She shook her head and Renton thought she must surely cry now, but she did not. "They finally ate away my memory, did you know that? I don't know where I came from, how old I am, or even my own damned name. My batch all had flowers for code names: Petunia and Rose and Lotus and Clover...all dead. But Anemone survived, I survived, so they could pump still more DNA into me, to change my genetic structure, hoping to make me even more Coralian. All kinds of DNA, even from animals..."

At last she shuddered with a convulsive sob and fell into his arms. Disgusted and overwhelmed by pity, he held her tightly, feeling her steel herself against the tears, fighting herself like two girls battling for possession of the same body.

"I...I never told anybody that part, except Dominic." Anemone pulled back far enough to look into his face, wearing the most vulnerable smile he had ever seen. "I guess...I guess you and him are just the kind of guys you can trust at first sight. I only, well, wanted you to know why I sometimes don't get out of bed very early, or I get a little loud, or act a little crazy. See, it didn't all just go away with that slime Dewey. Those memories... See, over this last year, I've been trying to wean myself off the antidepressants that the IPF doctors prescribed for me. They're some heavy-duty stuff, and I don't want to be leaning on them for the rest of my life. I'm working on it, but it's so slow... Without Dominic, I don't know how I'd ever..." She hugged him gratefully, wiping her tears on his sweater. "Anyway, sorry I tried to kill you guys so many times. I was insane, then, and it's been a rough road back. Thanks lots for letting me cry on your shoulder while my pills ramp up."

He held her to his chest, patting her back as she regained control, his resolve to do everything in his power to destroy the Federation renewed again by her ghastly revelations. So she really does have some of Eureka's DNA, then, he mused, a question, an important question, rising in his mind. "Anemone...did you ever hear of someone named...?"

Renton froze, all at once aware of the shadow of someone standing in the galley door, silently looking in.

Eureka.

Five

Holland stood above the big digital map projected before them at the rear of the bridge. "Now, here is Thuu Bak, and the capital city, Samit Prakkun, is about two hundred kilometers farther to the southwest."

"The temple we bombed back in the days was at Guatolo Bay," said Matthieu. "How far's that from Samit Prakkun?"

"We pretty much bombed out the whole damned province." Holland spoke in an unnaturally level monotone, unsuccessfully hiding his shame over the part he and the rest of Seven Squad had played in the Federation's grisly attempts to decimate the distant province. "We never touched Samit Prakkun, though; the Federation wanted it intact. Guatolo Bay is over here, on the east rim of the Prandit Inland Sea."

"So I guess it won't be a good idea to take the LFOs in, then, would it?" asked Jimmy. With the ship's course locked into the planetary energy flow along the Ley line, the autopilot would hold them straight and true without his intervention.

Yuki grimaced. "Not very likely. Those people'd go crazy just at the sight of an LFO these days. We've got to keep the LFOs in the hangar deck unless there's some hell of an emergency."

"I completely agree, Mrs. Novak." Dr. Egan appeared from the starboard-side corridor, a distinctly annoyed Dominic trailing behind. "Any attempt to use LFOs in a public way would only trigger a violent insurrection by the more hot-headed elements in the Voice of the People. The World Parliament is not interested in seeing lives lost in any attempted palace revolutions."

"Seems to me this 'World Parliament' is getting a little high-handed itself, wouldn't you say?" Stoner folded his arms, looking up at the towering Egan with narrow-eyed suspicion. "Shouldn't we be unequivocally on the side of the faction that represents the true will of the people?"

Dr. Egan seemed in no way annoyed. "Mr. Stoner, the pages of human history are blood-red with revolutionaries who claimed to represent the 'will of the people.' Almost inevitably, the segment of 'the people' whom they truly represent is limited to themselves; all others are regarded as either serfs to be subjugated or enemies to be exterminated. To the World Parliament, the VOP is useful only as a veiled threat, a horde of dragons to which the present Thuu Bak government will feel itself vulnerable should they not decide to ally themselves with us. Your well-known idealism does you credit, Mr. Stoner, but do not let your justified hatred of the Federation lead you to the error of assuming that all who oppose it are morally stainless."

"I'm more worried about the moral state of those who want to replace the Federation," he shot back at once. "How do we know we're not going to get anything but a new Federation calling itself by some grand name like, oh, say... the 'World Parliament?'"

Egan made a token bow. "It will be the task of crusading idealists such as yourself to prevent that from happening." He turned back toward Holland, who had remained silent and watchful during the brief debate. "There are several military-sized hangars just outside the city to the north. One has been reserved for this vessel; Captain Sorel will pilot our party to the center of government in a local shuttle, leaving you to employ the Moonlight's shuttle for your own purposes. When our business is completed, we shall return to the ship and await you. Do you find this plan suitable?"

"Suitable enough. As long as neither the Moonlight nor the crew are endangered -- and especially our two most important passengers -- that sounds all right with me. You and Dominic and Anemone going to be all right alone, or should a couple of us go along?"

"Thank you; I think we shall be safe enough on our own. And now I must return to my quarters to work on my proposal to the current Federation Governor of Thuu Bak. Until later, ladies and gentlemen."

Egan exited the bridge in his slow, ponderous way, and once he was gone, everyone laughed softly except Dominic. "He's driving me crazy with that pomposity of his," the young officer complained. "He won't tell me what this 'World Parliament' of his is, or what kind of mandate he has from them, or what kind of a deal he's trying to make with the Thuu Bak government. I don't even think he really needs me and Anemone at all."

"Ahh, he's always thought pretty highly of himself," laughed Hap from his co-pilot's console, "but 'Doctor Bear' is a heavy-caliber kind of thinker. Don't let it get under your skin that he doesn't think you're his equal. He doesn't think anybody is his equal."

"Maybe he's right," Annette said. "He is the number-one research scientist in Tresor."

Dominic undid the buttons at the high collar of his IPF uniform, rubbing at his neck. "That doesn't make him a diplomat." He pulled off his service cap and stuffed it into one pocket. "When do we reach Samit Prakkun?" he asked Holland.

"Current estimate is about ten o'clock tomorrow morning." He settled back into the central command chair, hands behind his head, already lost in thought. "Meanwhile, relax and enjoy your stay."

Six

Renton backed away from Anemone as though she had just become red-hot. "Er, hi, Eureka. Look, this isn't how it..."

"I know it isn't." Walking into the galley, she bestowed a serene smile upon Anemone. "I know you love me, Renton; I felt jealousy once before and it nearly killed us both. I'll never make such a mistake again. But Anemone, what's the matter? You've been crying."

Wanting very much to spare Anemone the pain of repeating her story, Renton flashed the memory to Eureka with a quick flare of his forehead node. "It's been kind of rough for her," he added.

Eureka gave a little gasp and stood frozen, her eyes round with horror. "How terrible! I never knew it was so bad for you. I hope you're overcoming it."

"Well, sort of..." She looked from Eureka to Renton and back again. "It's true, then, isn't it? Those things on your faces. You two can..."

"Share thoughts and feelings, yeah." said Renton. "Sometimes even join our minds together, but it always feels kind of strange afterwards."

Long pink strands of hair clung to the black fabric of the bodysuit as she shook her head. "I'll be damned. Listen, what're you two going into the interior of Thuu Bak for?"

"The Coralians...gave us something," said Renton. "We need the Vodarek priests to help us distribute it." Before she could ask more, he quickly changed the subject. "Anemone...did any of the other girls where you were... I mean did you ever hear of one named 'Ariadne?'"

She scowled, not bothering to conceal her distaste for the prospect of sifting through memories she would rather discard altogether. "No, never. Why?"

"We've, uh, heard that name, and it seems like it might have something to do with another human-Coralian somewhere."

Anemone drank long and greedily of the grapefruit juice. "You mean there was another one who survived like me? I'll have to put that one to Dominic. If anybody'd know, it'd be him." She grabbed the hot sandwich, picking at the plastic wrap with her teeth. "Listen, I'm going to look for him now. Maybe we can all get together before we land tomorrow, okay?"

Stoner, carrying a stack of well-worn books, came into the galley at the opposite end, apparently in animated conversation with Tommy. The moment of privacy had come to an end.

"Sure," said Renton, taking Eureka's hand as they left the galley. "See you later."

"Come with me to the hangar," whispered Eureka when they were alone in the Moonlight's corridors once more.

"Okay. Why's it a secret, though?"

"You'll see when we get there." she hesitated. Then looked toward him very intently. "Renton...is she...pretty? Anemone, I mean."

"Anemone? Um, well...look, Eureka, I told you we weren't..."

"I know you weren't. You needn't blush so much; I just want to know -- is Anemone pretty?"

Already, he wished strongly that he had never decided to knock on Anemone's cabin door, but nothing less than complete honesty would do. "Well...yeah. A little wild-looking, but yeah, I'd say she's pretty. Not as pretty as you, though."

"But she's different from me. She's...bigger."

"Yeah, she's definitely a little taller than you are. Doesn't make any difference, though -- you're still much, much nicer than she is. Don't tell her I said so, though. How come you're asking?"

Eureka frowned, as she often did when attempting to work out some puzzling question. "There's still such a lot I don't understand about being human. Maybe I never will understand it all. What about Annette and Tommy? Are they pretty, too?"

"Sure they are. And yeah, I know they don't look alike. Hey, Eureka, what's this all...?"

"I just want to know. Right now, I need to show you something." All around them spread the gaping hangar deck of the Moonlight, its single small shuttlecraft and three LFOs -- now folded into ground-mode configuration -- waiting with patient silence in their designated spaces. Eureka led him to the Type Seven, and both of them scrambled up the footholds on its smooth sides and into the wide cockpit. "There," she announced, "it's still doing it."

Renton's eyes immediately locked onto the triangular green cylinder of the Compac Drive in its interface socket just below the readout panel. Though the Type Seven was on standby power only, the Compac Drive glowed brightly, the bubble effect characteristic of full engagement rippling upward through its green fluid. And through the bubbles danced a scrolling stream of letters, bobbing and wavering like pennants in a breeze: ARIADNE.

He sucked in his breath through clenched teeth. "It's started showing up here, too?"

"Yes. Before, it was only in that old Compac Drive that Axel gave to Maurice, and only every few days. But when I came in here yesterday, this one was shining and running that name, and I couldn't get it to stop. I even tried pulling the interface unit from its socket, but it still glows with that name."

"Is Maurice seeing it any more often now?"

Eureka shook her head. "I think so. I haven't asked him, for fear of upsetting him."

But he knew at once that the one upset by the repeated appearances of the enigmatic name could only be Eureka herself. "It's really strange, yeah. But why does it bother you so much?" As he moved closer to her in the broad, curving seat, the Compac Drive pulsed even more strongly, filling the cockpit with its brilliant green trapar-light.

"I don't know, I don't know! You said you saw this same sort of thing spelling out my name before you met me, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah..." He understood her point, having quietly wondered the same thing. For months before she had fallen from the sky and into his life forever, Renton had seen Eureka's name spelling itself out in his own Compac Drive. The sight of Maurice sitting cross-legged on his bunk, contemplating the bright green letters marching before his fascinated eyes chilled Renton's heart. It was all too much like somehow peering into the darkness of his own naïve past at an unformed Renton, restless and unaware of what sweet terrors yawned before him. "So you think the Coral is creating another one like you? Well, that's not so bad, is it?"

"No. Not so bad. Except that..." She looked away from him, staring at the glowing interface unit with its insistent message. "Renton... What if... What if the Coral is planning on replacing me?"

Seven

"Jobs" Stevens, one of the two engineers responsible for maintaining the Moonlight's complex data systems, stretched and yawned as he climbed up from the windowless room deep in the ship where the various system consoles surrounded him and his partner, Woz. Though he loved the elegant logic of control-software engineering, something within Jobs occasionally demanded escape to a less-structured world. That something led him to shave his head and affect an excruciatingly elegant wardrobe. Lately -- Jobs could never quite pinpoint precisely when -- it grew stronger and required more frequent attention. Just now, it manifested itself in an overwhelming need to see the sun.

Emerging onto the main midships deck, he almost laughed aloud at the dazzling high-altitude sunlight roaring through the starboard windows, restrained only by the protective UV barrier of their autofiltration glass. Heaven above, and the earth beneath. And in between the two realms lies -- what? Not just Mankind any more. Mankind and the Coral, two utterly different intelligences staggering together toward something that neither can clearly see. Eureka and Renton are the tools chosen by the Coral to bring about that partnership. And the Moonlight is no less of a tool in the process, a tool made up of every one of us mismatched mystics who keep her alive. Chasing a dream we only barely understand, caught up in the thrill of it all, running from a past that sickens us to a future we can't yet imagine.

As he passed the galley entrance, Jobs caught sight of Matt Stoner, fuming beneath his red beret, exchanging animated words across a table and two coffee mugs with Tommy, the vivacious ex-Federation trooper who'd joined Gekkostate only weeks before. It had occurred to Jobs on several occasions since then that he'd never really met her or spoken at any length with her. It occurred to him at this instant that he wanted to, very much.

"May I join this debate?" he asked, edging nearer to their table. Inwardly, he cringed; instead of the smooth opening line he'd planned, it came out shallow, smug and sophomoric.

Tommy looked up, apparently noticing him for the first time. "Who're you?"

"Jobs Stevens, control system engineering. I, er, work here."

"Oh. Yeah, I remember, now. It's not that much of a debate, so sit down. What kind of a name is 'Jobs,' anyhow?"

He lowered himself to the floor across from her, folding his legs zazen-style beneath him. "My real first name is 'Job,' with a long 'O.' Somehow it became 'Jobs' over the years. Job was a character in an ancient myth, renowned for his patience and loyalty; I'm afraid I didn't display much of either when I left the Federation to join Gekkostate. What's the hot topic?"

Stoner spoke before Tommy could answer. "Since you ask, it was how reliable the old stories we have about Thuu Bak are likely to be." He lifted a faded book from the tabletop, its cover water-stained and frayed. "Travels in the Southernmost Provinces, by Myoshi Okada. Written 250 years ago, and describes some of the quaint traditions of the countryside around Samit Prakkun."

"Like the ghosts," said Tommy with a smirk that Jobs thought looked remarkably good on her full lips.

"There are ghosts?"

Stoner glowered at both of them and stabbed one finger at the book. "That's what the author believed. She talks about green flames seen in the jungles..."

"There are jungles, too?"

"...along with strange temples and a lot of chanting. She also mentions 'weird religious devotees' -- as if all religions weren't weird -- wearing robes."

Jobs brightened at once. "The Vodarek, of course. Interesting. It seems that they've been around much longer than I ever realized. And they have -- or had, at least -- a temple hidden away somewhere? Sounds like the very place we're looking for. Does Holland know this?"

"Not yet. I'll get around to telling him. Look, I'm willing to bet that the Voice of the People is hiding out in those jungles, waiting for their chance to smash the corrupt Federation puppets running Thuu Bak."

"We don't know that they're corrupt or puppets," Tommy objected. "If they're willing to meet with Egan, they can't be all that cozy with the Federation."

"Don't be such a dupe of the Federation propaganda machine! Everything the Federation's ever touched turns to corruption. Look, if they weren't exploiting the people, they'd have engaged in a dialogue with the VOP long ago." He leaned forward across the table, one sleeve of his gray sweatshirt dangerously nudging his coffee cup. "This is our big chance to strike hard at the Federation. Somehow, we need to offer direct support to the VOP revolutionaries."

Jobs now began to understand the nature of the argument into which he had innocently blundered. "Be that as it may, we've got to let Holland know about this temple in the jungle right away. If you'll let me borrow that book, I'll..."

Stoner slammed the covers shut, unleashing a billowing puff of mold-scented dust that hung in the air between them. "I told you, I'll tell him." He downed his remaining coffee in a single swallow, rose to his feet with a grunt and tucked the book and its companions beneath one arm. "Tommy, you want to come along?"

"Me? No, I guess not. I'm going down to check out the Moonlight's personal weapons before we land. Me and Axel're planning on cleaning and lubing all of them."

He nodded, once, with a glance toward Jobs, then stamped out of the galley without a word.

"Funny kind of guy," mused Tommy after Stoner had left. "Is he always like that?"

"I'm...not sure," Jobs said, straining to appreciate the delightful way her green V-necked pullover shirt fit in so many remarkable places. "To tell the truth, I don't really know him very well. I'm not sure how well any of us on this ship know each other. We were originally bound together by the need to save the world -- or at least to give Eureka and Renton the chance to save it. We did, and they did. And now I'm less certain all the time what keeps us here."

The remarkable sadness in his strangely youthful eyes caught at Tommy's heart in unexpected ways. "Maybe it's just that you don't have anywhere else to go." She stood, too quickly, brushing the dust of Stoner's books from her fatigue shorts. "See you around...Job."

Eight

"Replacing you?" Renton could barely bring himself to believe Eureka could be serious. "That's the craziest thing I've ever heard! Why should the Coral want to replace you?"

"I don't know," she shouted back. "But...look at the mess I've made of so many things, though: I let myself be used as a mass murderer; I was so stupidly jealous of you being able to pilot the Nirvash that I ignored you for weeks; I was too selfish to see how you were suffering when you realized you were killing people in battle; I turned away from you when you tried to tell me that you loved me. And I tried...tried to kill myself, to dissolve back into the primal scub. If you hadn't come after me, I would have succeeded. If I valued my own life so little, why should the Coral think any more highly of me?"

"But you're different, now, Eureka. That's all over and done with..."

"Is it? Just look at me! I was almost unable to fight back against the Federation troops who were trying to kill us at Tresor! So full of doubts and fears that you might have been murdered in front of me before I could bring myself to do something! The Coral's first experiment -- with Sakuya -- failed, and she was left bodiless until Norbu could return to her. What if it now thinks I'm a failure, too?"

Renton regretted having been so quick to make light of her tender nightmares, for he knew well that Eureka's highly unusual "birth" and early life had left a part of her permanently scarred. Learning to accept that fact as a part of their relationship formed a major step in his own maturing process. He made himself reply calmly, almost casually. "You mean the 'failure' who saved the whole world and brought the Coralians enlightenment? Come on, Eureka, you know how happy they were when the Nirvash said good-bye to us. I just don't know what you're worrying about. Why don't you let me...?" He reached out to her with his thoughts, but she deflected the touch of his probing mind.

"No, you're right, it's all too silly. I'd be embarrassed to have you see it." She glanced down at the insistently glowing Compac Drive, then quickly away. "What was it you wanted to see Dominic about?"

"Oh, that. I wanted to ask him if he knew anything about what Dr. Egan's up to with this negotiations and taxes and 'World Parliament' stuff. But according to Anemone, Egan hasn't told Dominic much of anything, either. It's all kind of funny, isn't it? I mean, he talks about using Dominic and Anemone as spies, but when you think about it, any of us in Gekkostate would have done just as well for a simple job like that."

The greenish light of the Compac interface unit cast weird shadows upward on her smooth cheeks. "That's true, isn't it? He's a clever and subtle man, and he does tend to see people as, well, parts of a machine. It wouldn't be like him to bring them along for no real reason. I...think I'd like to go, now."

He turned the canopy-release handle and the transparent dome lifted free above them. The two of them clambered out and to the floor, where Eureka stood looking about the hangar at nothing in particular, rubbing at her eyes. "Should we start packing some gear for when we land in Thuu Bak?" Renton asked, already guessing what her answer would be.

"No...not just yet. I'm feeling a little tired..."

"You're feeling upset and worried." Allowing her to deceive herself would only bring her greater depression later on.

"Well, yes." She smiled in a shy, awkward way. "I'll get over it, but I think I'll feel better if I have a short nap just now. Would it be all right if you came to meet me in our room at eleven-thirty? Then we can go to lunch together and start packing afterward."

He kissed her, holding her warmth to himself, reluctant as always to have her anywhere but at his side. "That'll be great. And stop worrying, okay? Whenever this 'Ariadne' comes, we'll be ready for her, you and me."

"All right, Renton. Be sure and wake me if I'm still asleep. I'll see you later."

Still uneasy, he waved good-bye and wandered slowly across the hangar, his mind bulging with a thousand thoughts, all of them centered about Eureka. How can I best help her with this? I guess just by doing what I've been doing, encouraging her, getting her to face it instead of giving in to it. She's had enough things to worry about in her life, without having to get upset over stuff that's really not worth worrying about at all. How can I cheer her up? Hey, I know -- as soon as we land, I'll buy her a bag of --

As he emerged from behind the corner of the Type 909 LFO in the next bay, Renton spotted Axel and Tommy, sitting on a dropcloth strewn with the personal weapons used by the crew during various emergencies, along with piles of cleaning rags and several cans of solvents and lubricants. "Grandpa!" he called, hurrying to them.

The elder Thurston looked up from his work, smiling. "Hello, Grandson. Come to help us put these things into decent shape? I don't know what this bunch of lazy pirates thinks 'maintenance' means, but not a one of these guns shows any signs of it. You already know Tommy, here, I think?"

"Yeah, I do; hi, Tommy." He sat himself down cross-legged on the tarp, and out of long habit, absently began the disassembly of an SFAR's ignition unit. "You look different today, Grandpa."

"No glasses. Don't need'em any more, see? Mischa tells me it's one of the first signs of the backward aging that you and Eureka're bringing to the world." With sure, deft fingers, Axel removed the rifle's propellant chamber, examining it with a scowl that deepened the wrinkles of his shrewd face. "Just like I expected -- this thing's got corrosion spots in here. Say, where is Eureka? It's not often I see one of you without the other."

"She, uh, didn't feel well. She went back to our room to lay down for a couple of minutes. Grandpa...I never asked you this before, but...if you don't mind telling me...what was it like between Dad and Mom? I mean, I never even met Mom, and you never talked too much about her when I was living in Bellforest, and I've always kinda wondered. How did they get along? Were they, well, real close, like Eureka and me?"

Axel seemed to find something that demanded his entire attention in the corroded propellant chamber, attacking it with bronze brush and solvent as though he meant it to shine like the moon. "You're not a kid any more. You're old enough by now to know the truth: it wasn't so good. Those two just never really seemed on the same wavelength. Adrock was always off slaving away on some crazy project or other, his head in the clouds. All Veronique wanted was to have a home and a family, but that kind of presupposes a husband, doesn't it? And hers was always off at Tresor, or Farnigale, or Fallon Island, or some other damned Federation research post, spinning his dreams, never really knowing a thing about what her dreams might've been. He barely took two weeks off when your sister was born. Only reason he stuck around longer after you came was that Veronique was dying by then. After she was gone, he left you and Diane with me, and that was the last either of you saw of him." His eyes wandered, seeing things neither Renton nor Tommy could imagine. "I loved your father dearly, Renton, believe me. And he became a true hero, as everybody knows. A great man...but not much of a husband, nor a father."

"When I saw him, in the Coralian tenth dimension, he didn't talk to me. He smiled, but he didn't say a word."

The older man grunted, indicating that he found this no great surprise. "I don't know what he could say to the son he'd never really known. Truth is, the two of you aren't much alike. Just compare at the way you and him were, when you were around Eureka: Adrock kept her at a distance; treated her like some kind of avenging angel, come to judge Mankind for all its sins. Never really saw her as just a confused girl who needed some help finding her way in the world." He smiled at last, then, and clapped his hand -- still pungent with bore solvent -- to Renton's shoulder. "Now, you, on the other hand, fell in love with her right off the bat, and did everything a man could do for the woman he loved. That was what was most important to you, Grandson. And by doing that, why, you became an even greater hero than your father."

Axel laughed, breaking the strained mood. "What're you asking about all this ancient history for, anyway? Natural enough for you to be wanting to know, but you don't look to me like somebody who's just getting curious about his family tree."

"I don't..." Renton wrestled with the more pressing ideas he'd been formulating since returning to the world of Gekkostate. "I've been thinking, Grandpa. Thinking hard. You knew Eureka when you worked at Tresor, didn't you? Before I was born?"

"Axel worked at Tresor?" asked Tommy, incredulous.

"Damn right I worked there! Blazes, girl, d'you think I've been a backwater mechanic all my life? I didn't waste seven hard years getting those degrees in mechanical engineering just because I thought technical journals make good bedtime reading! But to answer your question, Grandson, I didn't exactly know Eureka, but I saw her more than a few times. The first archetypes'd just been discovered, see, and I was part of the team working on the 'bio-activated exoskeleton' project, which is what we called LFOs before there were LFOs. When they turned her loose on what afterwards became the Nirvash, why, that was the beginning of it all."

"Uh-huh. So then, you recognized her when she crashed down on our house, that day in Bellforest, didn't you? You knew who she was, what she was. Didn't you ever think that was kind of funny, Grandpa? Or that the Nirvash just happened to break down over our place that day I met Eureka? I mean, three generations of Thurstons, and we all met her?" Renton found he'd been squeezing the SFAR subassembly hard enough to cut into his palm. He dabbed away the blood with the corner of a cleaning rag.

"Yeah." Axel reached for a swab soaked in carbon-softener to wipe residue from the chamber he'd just brushed smooth and clean. "I wondered if you'd ever catch on to that. Yeah, I thought about it all right. Holland came to me to get the Amita Drive, so that's why the Moonlight was there. But there was no good reason why the Nirvash should've had trouble just then. I had my suspicions right away that it had to be more than just some crazy coincidence. But even now, I don't know any more about it than you do. Something bothering you? Something...come up between you and Eureka, maybe?"

"Huh? What makes you say that? No, I just... I don't know, the more I learn about the Coralians, the more I get this idea that they don't leave a whole lot to chance. And that they know a whole lot more than they let on. I guess it's pretty crazy, but suppose they've been watching us -- you and my dad and now me -- ever since Eureka came into the world?"

"Jeez, what a scary thought," said Tommy.

"Yeah. It makes me kind of afraid that maybe there're things going on that nobody really understands. Including me. I don't... See, I don't want Eureka to be in any kind of, well...danger, if you know what I mean."

Axel watched Renton carefully as he worked. "Any kind of danger in particular, Grandson?" asked Axel.

"I don't know." He only shrugged, unsure now if he had done the right thing in raising the subject. "Maybe I'm just paranoid. It's been nothing but danger for us, ever since we met." He fiddled absently with the SFAR ignition unit a few minutes longer, then stood. "Maybe I'll go up and talk to her now. See you later, Grandpa, and thanks. 'Bye, Tommy."

He knew perfectly well that the two of them would talk about him in low, serious voices once he was gone, but none of it mattered. Renton understood, now, that the most important thing at this moment was not probing his family history to see how his father had handled the responsibilities of marriage, nor airing fragile webs of fear that likely had no roots in fact at all. The most important thing right now was to be with Eureka.

His mind clear at last, Renton hurried by the shortest route to their cabin, already constructing in his mind the best way to reassure her. He slid his keycard downward in the lock, resolved and ready, his carefully-outlined speech already on his lips...

...only to be shattered by Eureka's screams.

Renton crashed into the room before the door could fully open, shouldering it roughly aside, crouched and ready for anything.

Her gown in a heap on the floor, her eyes open and staring, she sat rigidly upright on their bed, screaming, over and over. Renton ran to her at once, dropping to the edge of the mattress, pulling her to him, her wings fluttering like a trapped bird's. "Eureka! What's wrong? What happened?"

"Renton?" Wildly, she stared about her, panicky and confused, as if she expected to find herself somewhere else altogether. "Renton...you're here."

"Sure I am, everything's okay, I came back early, don't worry. What's the matter? Did I startle you when I came in?" Behind him, the door hissed shut automatically. He slipped his hand beneath her wings to the curve of her waist, kissing her hair as the two of them held each other. A curtain covered the single windowport in the room, yet even as his eyes accommodated themselves to the dim lighting, he could still see no cause for her outburst.

"Startle me? No... No, but...I laid down to take a nap, and...there were people all around me. Thousands of them, and I couldn't see their faces..."

"Thousands is an awful lot to squeeze in this little room. There's nobody here now. Do you mean you had a dream?"

Eureka's mouth fell open in astonishment. "A dream? Is that what it was? I've had a dream?"

"Yeah, it sounds that way. You mean you've never dreamed before? I never knew that. What was it about?"

"About?" She pulled away, sitting upright on the quilted spread as her wings grew still and dropped to their furled position along her back. "I'm not really sure. I was alone in some huge room...or maybe it was a mountaintop, because there weren't any walls, and just some kind of greenish light all around. And all the people, so many, standing around. Even though I couldn't see them, I knew they were there. Looking at me, waiting."

"Uh-huh. Waiting for what?"

"I don't know. Are all dreams like this?"

"Only the bad ones." Renton smiled as he nuzzled her downy hair again, but his own heart grew troubled. "Look, Eureka...I don't... I mean, I want to tell you that it doesn't mean a thing, and that it was all just a dream and you can forget it. And I still don't think it means anything bad. But there's something really strange about...about everything. And I think maybe it's getting stronger as we..."

She settled into his arms once more, filling him with her warmth. "As we get closer to Thuu Bak."

"Yeah. If we didn't have to go, and if I didn't trust Norbu so much, I'd think hard about turning back -- or at least holding off till we can talk it over a lot more." The smoothness of her skin rippled hot beneath his touch, so very alive.

Eureka brought one gentle wingtip forward and stroked his cheek, leaving little trails of glimmering trapar-shine. "But we must go," she whispered, touching his lips with hers. "And so we must look out for each other, always each other. To love and protect each other...to love..."

Nine

Holland looked very much the captain of a renegade airship this bright morning, standing beside his command seat at the bridge, arms folded. "We'll be making touchdown in about an hour. I've made the decisions about who's going into the interior of the jungle and who's staying with the ship, so if anyone has any objections, now's the time to get them out in the open." He began to walk slowly around the bridge, hands behind his back, the relentless equatorial sun throwing sharp shadows across his face as he passed beneath the overhead viewports. "Yuki is going to be in command of the ship while I'm away. Jimmy will stay here, because as pilot, we need him to get the Moonlight out of here in a hurry in case the Federation comes calling. We might also need him to come and rescue us if we get into trouble."

"Are you expecting trouble?" asked Renton, at Eureka's side.

"If you two had been here for the briefing we had just after lunch yesterday, you'd know that there's a chance that a few of the Voice of the People rebels might be using the jungle as cover. Where were you, anyway, and what were you up to?"

"Uh, packing," lied Renton.

"Checking our personal weapons," Eureka said in the same instant.

Both of them maintained faces as rigid as wooden dolls. Yuki smiled in a sly, knowing way, but said nothing, and Holland continued: "In the future, plan your...packing and your weapons checks for a better time. Annette will also be staying with the ship, to monitor all communications, and to serve as a relay between Dr. Egan and us with our personal communicators, not to mention with the IPF, if need be. Jobs will be going with us while Woz remains here, looking after the ship's systems. Hilda, we need at least one experienced LFO pilot here, in case..."

"...of trouble, yeah," she agreed. "Okay, me and the 808'll be ready if you need us."

"Thanks. But Matthieu, I want you along with us because you had a lot of ground combat experience before you moved on to LFO training. Likewise for Hap, maestro Ken-Goh and for Tommy, who's about to get her first taste of the kind of fun and games we have in Gekkostate. Axel, you'll stay with the ship to fix anything important that breaks, especially the LFOs. Stoner...well, we'll want our star reporter on the job, keeping the pages of RayOut full. Everyone okay with those assignments? Good."

He dropped back into the command seat and glanced at the readouts before continuing. "Here's how it'll go: there'll be a reception party from the Samit Prakkun government to meet us at the city's airport. They'll come to pick up Dr. Egan after some public formalities, and then take him to the capital where he'll get into the serious negotiations."

"While Dominic and me snoop," said Anemone around a stifled yawn.

Egan, in a short-sleeved white linen shirt and light trousers, pressed his fingertips together and made a prissy smile. "As to that, Mrs. Sorel, I must inform you that there has been a...change of plans. We were rather expecting a round of social engagements during which you and your husband could mingle and gather information. It seems now that the locals have no such events planned for our visit, which they would evidently prefer to keep as businesslike as possible. I shall therefore be taking Mischa along in your stead, to mix among Thuu Bak's scientific and governmental professionals."

Outrage glowed all over Dominic's boyish face. "You mean you brought us on this ride for nothing?" He was far too professional to carry his resentment any further, but the cramping of his dark eyebrows beneath the IPF uniform cap spoke worlds.

"I think not, Captain Sorel. If Holland does not object, I believe you and your wife would be ideal additions to the expedition party he has just outlined. Both of you are intelligent, imaginative, courageous and possess considerable combat experience. You would be of great value to any enterprise. Would you not agree, Holland?"

The captain of the Moonlight watched this brazen reversal with the kind of sardonic respect he would have granted to a carnival pitchman. "Uh, certainly. Dominic and Anemone, if you want to come with us, we'd welcome you."

Dominic tore his black eyes from Egan's impassive face to give Holland a single nod. "All right. All right, then, we will. Anything to get away from this nonsense. Okay with you, Anemone?"

"Sure. Sure, fine with me," she said, displaying no particular disappointment. "I could use the fresh air anyhow."

Taking her by the hand, Dominic marched them both from the bridge, storming down the starboard corridor in a fine rage. Eureka and Renton glanced to each other, their forehead gems sparkling, but said nothing that might fan the flames still higher.

"Well, then," went on Holland as though nothing of significance had happened, "to get on with things, those of us who're going on the trip to find the Vodarek temple will wait till the sun starts to set a bit, then board the shuttle. We'll fly about forty kilometers out to the edge of the Taksin Forest, then make camp for the night. In the morning, we'll start on foot into the interior."

Woz pulled an earsonde from beneath his mop of brown hair and shook his head. "Did I hear that right? On foot? Why not take the shuttle all the way in?"

"Because the Vodarek aren't too keen on outsiders flying over their temple complex -- and, as we all know, some of us right here in this crew are at least partially responsible for that. Dr. Egan tells me that they've put up an interference shield of some kind that does strange things to electronic devices and Compac interfaces. We wouldn't want to be in a shuttle whose navigation and control systems suddenly decided not to work."

He gave a soft whistle. "A disruption shield? That first Coralian messenger, Sakuya, was able to do something like that, but these guys at the temple are all human, right? Where do they get that kind of capability?"

"From the Coralians, Dr. Wassel," Egan answered in his polite but lofty way, "or so we must assume. What technology those beings may wield, we can only guess. At the very least, Holland is correct in that the expedition party must approach in the most nonthreatening way possible."

Jobs rubbed at his chin in thought. "Walking seems pretty inefficient. What about trucks or motorcycles?"

"All motorized vehicles make use of electrical circuitry, Mr. Stevens, whether as driving motors or control processors or ignition systems -- or any of the other numerous electromagnetic subsystems." He frowned as though at a stubbornly insoluble equation. "And I can scarcely think of any modern vehicle that does not incorporate a Compac drive of one sort or another. No, I fear that your suggestion, though logical, is out of the question. The Vodarek wish to ensure that all visitors approach on foot, so on foot it must be."

"Now, there's something you should all be aware of if you aren't already," said Holland, swiveling around to take in the entire group. "We're fairly close to the equator here, so be warned that Samit Prakkun and the surrounding countryside is hot. Nighttime temperatures outside the city vary from around twenty degrees Centigrade on a cool night to more like twenty-five. At this time of year, the daytime highs are around forty-three degrees, but can go to forty-eight or sometimes even higher. We don't have any clothing suitable for that kind of heat onboard, so I recommend that everyone who's going to be heading for the Vodarek temple go into the city after Dr. Egan and Mischa leave the ship after we land and do some clothes shopping. We won't be able to carry a hell of a lot with us, so make sure whatever you buy is as light and cool as possible and that there's enough to last you for two to four days. Also pack sunglasses and plenty of UV-blocking sun lotion. Any more questions?"

Tommy lifted her hand politely, like a soldier at a military briefing. "What about water? How can we carry enough water for four days of that kind of heat?"

"Good question, but we should be in fine shape. Dr. Egan tells me that although the upper level of topsoil above the coral surface is hot and dry at this latitude, there's plenty of underground water not far down. The trail we'll be following has a lot of wells, and natural springs are common. We won't have to..."

"I'm getting the landing beacon from the Samit Prakkun guidance network," announced Jimmy from the forwardmost station of the bridge. "Taking us down to two kilometers altitude, on the beam."

"Samit Prakkun control is on the line," Annette said. "I'm sending them our ID codes for landing clearance."

At the co-pilot's station, Hap raised one hand, his fingers curled into the "OK" sign. "Trapar density a little lower than normal, but plenty adequate. No trace of hostiles anywhere in sensor range; skys're clean, Leader."

"Okay." Holland turned forward, his entire attention now focused on the Moonlight and its approach. "Everybody prepare for landing in about twenty minutes. Dr. Egan, get your things together and be ready for the brass band at the airport. Mischa, I'd like to talk to you for a minute or two after we touch down, if you don't mind. Gidg... -- I mean, Annette -- get the air controllers on Jimmy's line so we can arrange landing-pad guidance and get a hangar number."

Those in the assembled group not immediately connected with the landing preparations drifted quickly away, some to their quarters, others to viewports, where they could watch this sun-blasted new land approach. From the air, Samit Prakkun had the hard, bright appearance of a bucket of frosted candies dumped in the middle of a lush green carpet reaching to the horizon. None of the usual coral extrusion bluffs jutted up through the landscape here, to mar the smoothness of the terrain.

Renton judged the city to be roughly circular, about twelve kilometers across, subdivided by a wild network of writhing streets that seemed to have been laid out by tossing an unraveled ball of twine on a map. The part of him conditioned by over a year of running from the Federation saw the city as a trap, from which quick escape on foot or by wheeled vehicle would be impossible; the part still capable of being charmed by exotic locales wanted to explore its marketplaces and historical spots with Eureka at his side.

The Moonlight banked sharply around the city as it lost altitude, and details grew clearer: people on bicycles, thousands of them, staring up at the approaching warship as they rode; big public buildings built in a roughly pyramidal style, with angular rococo trim at the edges of the roofs; smaller buildings of four, three, two stories and even single-level structures -- private dwellings? -- all constructed from the same shining white stone. And yet to Renton, the strangest thing about Samit Prakkun was its complete lack of a central tower, the first city he had ever seen without the distinguishing feature of all sizable human settlements since the end of the Great Exodus into space.

He felt the twitch in his stomach that always accompanied the transition from forward flight to thruster-powered descent as he and Eureka peered downward to watch the airport rising slowly up beneath them. In front of one hangar, a small crowd of a hundred or so locals stood, all looking, he thought, as if they were ready for a day at the beach. The men wore only short white trousers -- some few sported white capes of some lightweight material -- with the women all in variants of what looked to him to be white bathing suits, mainly of the two-piece variety. A smaller number -- he was quite sure they were female -- did without the top halves altogether. All the clothing appeared to be woven from the same light, brilliant-white, material.

"Let's get back to our cabin and get ready," he said to Eureka, excitement and interest beginning to build in him for the first time. "That way, as soon as we land and Dr. Egan and Mischa leave the ship, we can all go out and..."

Her eyes fell. "Renton...I can't go out there, with you or anyone else."

"Huh? Why not? You mean because of the heat? Well, we'll just get you something even lighter than that little blue gown of yours. That's why we're going out in the first place, like Holland said."

"No, Renton." Eureka turned from the viewport with a wistful smile. "It's not the heat. It's...me." She raised her wings to their fullest extent behind her, their translucent streaks of red and blue catching the sunlight and refracting it into a thousand little liquid rainbows. "Once people see these, I'll be recognized at once. And even the few who don't know who I am are going to think that a girl with wings is a little unusual, don't you think? We'll be mobbed, I'm sure of it."

He flushed with shame at his own stupidity in not having anticipated the problem. Dammit! Eureka's self-conscious enough without me making her feel like some kind of freak! How could I be so dumb? "Well... Wait a minute. I just got an idea; don't you worry about anything, I think we can handle this."

"Really? But what do you...?"

"No, I want it to be a surprise." He took her hand and led her toward their room as the shudder of the landing gear contacting the airport's touchdown pad rumbled through the ship. "For right now, we've just gotta get back to the bridge and watch, so we'll know when it's all over outside."

She blinked at him, uncomprehending. "What for?"

"It's gonna be a surprise; I'll explain afterwards. Come on."

Ten

Dr. Mischa Svarovsky postured before the mirror in her cabin, regarding her reflection with a highly critical eye as she tugged the various bits of her lightest summer dress into alignment. You've spent too damned many years frowning, Mischa, and now those lines have become permanently etched into the corners of your mouth. You're only forty-one, but look at you, like some scowling babushka rocking on her front porch and glaring at the kids who tiptoe past. You always were far too serious. Even in medical school, the other interns kept mistaking you for a staff surgeon. Old before your time. And now you're growing younger, being given a second chance. What are you going to do with it, Mischa? Are you going to manage your new life any better than you did the old one?

From the cabin door came a knock, firm and solid; the unmistakable signature of a man. "Come in, Gregory," she called.

The door whispered open and Holland stepped in, glowing in a short-sleeved blaze-orange shirt and gaudy flowered bathing trunks. "Sorry, it's only me. I wanted to talk before you and Dr. Bear became the celebrities of the hour, remember?"

"Oh." Mischa could feel the warmth of a blush steal its way across her cheeks. "I'd forgotten. Forgive me, Holland, I'm usually more reliable."

"Usually the most reliable of us all." He made no move to sit down. "Listen, I need your professional opinion on something -- do you think Renton and Eureka are going to be able to handle a long trip on foot, in the kind of heat that's out there?"

She rummaged in a tiny box of earrings, choosing the best ones for the occasion, annoyed for the first time that she had so few from which to pick. "Oh yes, definitely. Since their transformation, they've become extremely rugged, physically. They barely sweat at all; their internal systems have become efficient to an amazing degree. And they very seldom urinate or defecate, so dehydration won't be a problem. I've begun to wonder if we'll all eventually become that way. Certainly, I've noticed some measurable...well, reduction...in my own functioning."

"You too?" laughed Holland, illuminating the subdued little room. "I thought I was getting constipated or something! I'll have to tell Yuki -- she was worried about the baby. Okay, that's a load off my mind. About Eureka and Renton, I mean." He turned back for the door, then hesitated. "Tell me...do you have any idea what Dr. Bear is up to? There's got to be more than meets the eye. Somehow this whole thing all seems far too impetuous for his style, if you know what I mean. He's so..."

"Meticulous, logical, structured, never leaving anything to chance. Yes, I know, far better than you. And I agree that we've not been shown all that's on his mind." She scowled at him, caught herself doing it, then relaxed her face once again. "His thoughts are subtle beyond anything the rest of us can imagine, Holland. His mind's as intricate as one of our control systems, maybe more so. Now that I think of it, I wonder if that wasn't one of the reasons we...parted. He was always going down so many pathways where I couldn't follow." With a shake of her head, she snatched herself back to the present. "Never mind all that; I'm sure you didn't come here to be my counselor. Renton and Eureka will be just fine, no matter how great the heat, as long as you all follow common-sense precautions. I've studied her for over seven years, here and at Tresor, and I'm just as baffled by her -- and now by her husband -- as ever, but I've no doubt they'll be fine. I'm...I'm not even certain, now, how much longer they're going to need us. A little while more, I think, and...what then?"

"Good morning, Holland," came a deep, booming voice from the corridor. Dr. Egan dipped his head to peer inside, his crest of hair touching the upper edge of the doorway. "Mischa, my dear, are you ready? The people from the provincial government are waiting at a reviewing stand outside. We mustn't keep them."

"Hello, Doctor," said Holland, looking over Egan's formal white-linen dress suit with quiet amusement. "You did a hell of a job shedding all that weight, and a good thing, too -- ship's sensors show that it's already thirty-seven Centigrade out there."

Egan inclined his head minutely. "Thank you. I estimate another ten kilograms' loss will bring me to my optimum body mass. Ah, Mischa, you look even more delightful than usual. I should be proud if you were to join me as we emerge into the heat of Thuu Bak -- and the still greater heat of diplomacy."

She took his arm, and the two of them swept from the isolation of Mischa's cabin like royalty, Holland watching as they marched in splendid procession down the long, sun-brilliant corridor to the catapult ramp.

---

Tommy Aruno stood at the windows of the ship's rear observation deck, looking out at the ranked musicians of Samit Prakkun in their sandals and white shorts, blaring out some ponderous fanfare as Dr. Egan and Mischa climbed a flower-bedecked wooden stairway to the reviewing stand, arm-in-arm against the blindingly blue morning skies. "There they go," she said to Stoner, watching from behind her.

"Ah, but where? To advance the glorious cause of the 'World Parliament?' Or just to outdo the Federation they're trying to replace? Methinks Gekkostate needs to be saved from its own success."

She turned back over one shoulder, uncertain if he was joking or not. "By who?"

But Stoner only patted his red beret and smiled "The press is always on the side of the people," he said, and hurried away.

---

After about half an hour of waiting for the welcoming speeches of various self-important provincial government functionaries outside to finish, Renton rolled his eyes with relief and hurried back up to the room he and Eureka shared. There, he rummaged through a small hamper containing his few belongings, coming up with a pair of black swimming trunks and an old pair of ref boots. Not quite the local costume, he reflected as he changed into them, but it would have to serve for the moment.

Stuffing his wallet into the tight little pocket of the swimsuit, he made his way down to the hangar deck, creeping along the corridors and past the dormant LFOs, ears alert for any of the crew that might be about. From outside, he heard the rasping hiss of a shuttle's thrusters and knew that it was time. The wavelike shimmer at the forward opening to the catapult told him that the cooling system's thermal barrier was straining to deal with the sharp temperature gradient between inside the Moonlight and outside, but he had no intention of departing through such an easily-observed exit. Instead, he found one of the small service ports along the hangar bay's starboard side and undid its manual latch. The doorway swung back and he jumped the three meters or so to the landing pad below.

Already jolted by the impact of the drop, Renton gasped as though he'd stepped into the open door to a furnace. When Holland had lectured them about the intense heat, he'd given no indication of the utter, searing dryness of Thuu Bak's molten air. Each breath seemed to suck the moisture from Renton's lungs, from the surface of his skin, from his eyes, from everywhere. He staggered to the Moonlight's starboard wing landing gear, leaning against the tire, feeling the heat radiating eagerly at him from all directions, even here in the shade of the wing. And yet as he struggled there against faintness and nausea, he felt something in his body alter itself, adjusting him somehow to the baking ambient temperature. In less than a minute, he found that, though he remained very much aware of the burning heat, the dizzy giddiness was gone, his breathing now no longer a painful rattle. Renton shaded his eyes against the blaze of sunlight on the runway, wishing he had thought to bring sunglasses. Quickly, he brushed his hair down over the Coralian jewel in his forehead and squinted about him, aligning himself with the view he'd seen from the air. The town would be about a kilometer...that way.

Renton caught the high, thin song of a tractor's turbine and knew that at any minute the ground crew would be coming out to haul the Moonlight into its hangar. It wouldn't do; he wanted this errand to be a surprise. With one last look around, he wandered in an unhurried way out to the now-deserted wooden stage where, moments before, Dr. Egan and Mischa had endured the official rituals of the Thuu Bak diplomats. Hoping that anyone spotting him would take him for a lingering spectator, he walked as casually as possible across the runway surface, toward the nearest gate in the airport fence. Several minutes later he passed through unchallenged and released a grateful sigh, as though it had all been some deadly secret mission instead of...

He turned back one last time, looking toward the now-distant Moonlight through the dense, turbulent heat waves rolling and boiling above the runways, nearly as thick as ocean surf. And in that moment, he saw -- thought that he saw -- someone moving beneath the starboard wing, pale and furtive, darting in and out of the shadows just as he himself had. Renton squinted again, cupping both hands above his eyes, but the glare was simply too great, the heat waves too intense, to make out any more details. If there ever really was anybody to begin with.

He turned away and loped toward the town as rapidly as the relentless oven that was Samit Prakkun would allow.

Yuki looked up from changing the baby as the door to their rooms slid shut behind Holland. "I'm back," he announced, leaning against the door and gazing listlessly toward the floor.

"You don't sound any too happy about it," she said.

He dropped himself into the small couch at the center of the room, sprawling and unresisting. "You've got it backwards -- I am happy to be here. What I'm not happy about is the prospect of running off into the jungle. I don't know what the hell's the matter with me lately; I seem to be losing my taste for playing this role of penitent Robin Hood, sticking it to the Federation with a jolly twinkle in my eye."

"You never did it for fun. You're doing it to make sure Eureka and Renton can fulfill whatever mission the Coral has planned for them." She sat at his side, tenderly lowering the baby to the cushion next to her.

"Yeah, I haven't forgotten. But how much longer are they going to need our help, I wonder. Mischa seems to think they'll soon be ready to strike out on their own. What if she's right? What happens to Gekkostate then? We all ought to be thinking about what comes after. If anything."

"Will you go back to the military then? Take a commission in the IPF?"

Holland shrugged uncomfortably and leaned forward, elbows on knees. "That'd make the most sense, I guess. But somehow, after all these years on our wild ride with Gekkostate, it'd feel like crawling into a straitjacket. I don't know if I'm really any good at taking orders and saluting any more."

"You'll find the right way," she said, curving one arm around his slumped shoulders. "You've always had the knack for knowing when to jump ship and latch on to something even better. Not like Charles Beams, who settled down at the end of a nice, comfy leash as the Federation's hired killer. You always know when it's time to move up to the next level. When that time comes again, you'll feel it."

Holding her, he remembered once more just how very close he had once come to losing her, and wanted, more than ever, to stay right here by her side, watching their son grow into the promising new future that lay ahead for all humanity -- if Eureka and Renton could carry out the Coralian's obscure and subtle plans. And, for now, at least, they would still need his help. "It's time for me to start packing," he sighed, standing. "Where're all my old reffing shorts?"

"Renton!" cried Eureka, jumping quickly back from their bed with a sudden flutter of paper pages. "What are you doing here? I didn't expect you back so soon."

He stepped through, still wearing the boots and black bathing trunks he'd dug out of his personal effects. As the door shut behind him, he dropped the bag he'd brought back from town on the floor. "It wasn't even an hour and a half; I guess that's not so soon. I went into Samit Prakkun before everybody else. It took me a while to find the stores and the marketplaces in the city. Were you doing something important?"

"No, no. Nothing. Just trying to gather some things together for our journey. What do you have in the bag?"

"Stuff for you." Renton brightened at the prospect of giving her a surprise. "This's the first one."

She studied the long train of white cloth he held out to her, looking very uncertain. "What...is it?"

"It's a cape." He swung it about his own bare shoulders by way of illustration. "Sometimes people wear them here. You can put it on over your wings, so nobody recognizes you for a Coralian. 'Course there's still your eyes, but you'll need to wear sunglasses anyway. And comb your hair down over the jewel."

"Oh! Now I can go out shopping with the others! Thank you, Renton!" Delighted, she threw her arms about him, in the process dropping the heavy magazine she'd been clutching behind her back.

"Hey, what's this?" Renton bent to pick it up, shocked to find a lavishly photographed and well-thumbed copy of Wild Cutie Honeys spread there like an angry chicken. "Uh...have Matthieu or Jimmy been here?" he asked, still unsure whether to smile or not.

She snatched the magazine back, nearly ripping the aggressively uninhibited cover girl in half in the process. "It's mine. I found it in the galley. I was...studying it."

"You were studying...? What for? If you're interested in how to take pictures, you oughta ask Stoner for..."

"No, not that." Eureka frowned down at the edgeworn pages in an unsatisfied way, holding them up for him to see. "Tell me, Renton, do you think that these girls are pretty?"

"Uh, well...most of them aren't exactly my type, you know. A couple of them look like they're okay, I guess. Some guys'd call them pretty. How come you ask?"

"I'm just trying to understand." She tossed the magazine into a corner with a nonchalance that fooled Renton not one bit. "There are still so many things I don't understand. You told me that Yuki is pretty and so is Annette, but they don't look like any of these pictures."

"Well, listen, everybody's different," he began, struggling to make sense of this strange confrontation -- before deciding it would be impossible to properly handle it without some long and uninterrupted thought first. Adroitly, he shifted gears. "Anyway, here's the other thing I brought you."

"Another bag? What's in it...? Oh, raisins! I love raisins! And such big ones, too! Thank you, Renton!" Eureka threw her arms tightly about him. "You're so... Yes, who is it?"

"Jimmy's got an electric baggage cart from the hangar," came Hilda's voice from beyond the door, "and we're all going into town for traveling gear. You want to come along?"

"Yes, thank you, Hilda! We'll be right there! Come on, Renton, please come with me. We'll be together this time."

Renton cast one last puzzled glance back at the inscrutable inhabitants of Wild Cutie Honeys before allowing her to tug him out the door and toward Samit Prakkun's market district once again. Already, his thoughts were turning to the future, to the long and unsure jungle road to Viyuuden.

Eleven

Beneath the unfamiliar equatorial stars, the expedition to the Vodarek temple gathered beside the hangar now housing the dormant Moonlight. A small and rather obsolete shuttlecraft from the Samit Prakkun airport waited in darkness before them, stuffed with their minimal gear, Jobs at its controls.

"Time to pull out," announced Holland, still in his flowered ref shorts. "Everybody into the passenger compartment."

"I wish I was coming with you," Yuki said, kissing him a regretful good-bye.

He held her briefly. Their true farewells had been said earlier. "Naw. Everybody knows that 'Yuki' melts in hot weather. Junior needs you here, and so do we. Just make sure that the Moonlight comes on the double if we get ourselves in trouble out there."

"Just you make sure you stay out of trouble this time." She looked toward Renton and Eureka, filing past in the lineup for the shuttle. "My name means 'snow' in one of the classical languages of ancient Earth, y'know," she added for their benefit.

"Uh, that's cool," said Renton. "See you in a couple of days." The hot wind that never seemed to drop swept across the runways, only slightly diminished by the dying of the sun. To the north glittered the lights of Samit Prakkun; to the west, the approach beacons for runway seven made a spectral blue trail into the night. Something of the essential strangeness of this country, so far from his native hemisphere, came to Renton at that moment, and he held tightly to Eureka, shrouded in her white cape, as the pair of them filed inside.

The shuttle's cabin smelled of cleaning solvents, paint and thruster fuel, but its blessed coolness more than compensated. A double row of barely-padded seats ran down each side, separated by a central aisle. They took the two behind Stoner and Tommy, and held hands in the dim red cabin light, waiting.

Last to enter was Holland, scratching off the final item on his preflight checklist. He pulled the folding stairs up behind him, closed the pressurized door and twisted its handle to the locked position, then leaned forward into the pilot's section. "Okay, Jobs, we're good to go."

Almost at once, the vertical thrusters fired, jerking the ship into the air, squashing them into their seats, shaking the cabin with a sustained ripping-canvas roar. The wings unfolded with a great deal of clanking and crashing, and the main thrusters at the rear blasted to life, hurling them southeastward. Renton smiled bravely at Eureka, squeezed her hand, settled back against the hard seat and closed his eyes.

The book. The book, it said.

What book? she asked, without words, frightened, curled in the cave in the cold dark.

Ariadne, it said. Ariadne will write in her book.

Why? What was wrong with my book?

It said -- they said -- You do not understand. You are only the beginning. You have been...

But her silent screams shrilled through Renton's thoughts, blurring away the rest. He jerked awake, slumped and cramped in his seat, his hand still in Eureka's as she moaned and twitched beside him. "Wake up," he whispered, shaking her by the shoulders. "Wake up, Eureka. You're dreaming again. Wake up."

She gave a wordless moan and flipped her eyes open, frightened and staring. Her mouth worked silently a few times, and she sat up, confused, fearful, clinging to Renton's hand with the strength of terror. "Renton. Renton? It was another dream. I..." She threw herself to him with both arms, holding him fiercely, the jewel on her forehead pulsing and throbbing.

"I know. You were so upset that I could see it in my own mind. It woke me right up. But it's okay now. It's over." The words hung stiff and false between them; he had felt the clarity of her fear as well as the intense realism of the wordless voices and their cryptic hints about the mysterious "Ariadne." "Look, Eureka, you've got yourself so scared about this that it's giving you nightmares. Whoever this 'Ariadne' is, she won't replace you."

Eureka shifted to the mind-to-mind connection between them. But was it really just a dream? I don't think so. I felt the thoughts of the Coral once before, when I tried...tried to kill myself. Their thought felt like this did, so distant and slow and sideward. You're just trying to make me feel better, Renton. You can't know any better than I for what reason they're creating Ariadne.

In the darkness of the noisy cabin, he grimaced. All right, I can't. But it just doesn't make any sense to think that just because the Coralian is sending another messenger, it means they want to push you aside. You've gotta be logical over this. I love you, so sure, I want to make you feel better. But I don't have to lie to do it. When Ariadne comes, we'll welcome her the way Sakuya welcomed you. Everything's gonna be okay, Eureka.

"I suppose you're right," she said with no very strong conviction, slipping back into her seat and looking about the shadowy cabin to see if anyone else had heard or seen. Ahead of them, Tommy snored uncomfortably, her head slouching toward Stoner, who stared directly forward, upright and awake but lost in his own thoughts.

"We've come two hundred and fifty kilometers," announced Jobs, his voice thin and coarse over the cabin intercom system. "We're as close to the EM interference zone as it's safe to get, so I'm taking us down to find a campsite. Everyone prepare for a landing."

The shuttle dropped, a bit too rapidly for Renton's innards, down through the moonless night before its landing thrusters kicked in with a poorly synchronized bang. The wings folded, grinding and clattering, and even before their latches engaged fully, the ship hit the ground, bouncing twice on its hydraulic landing struts. A long walk still lay ahead of them, but no one minded at all.

"Crap on a cracker, Jobs!" Matthieu complained, staggering to his feet as the cabin lights came up. "Where the hell'd you learn to fly? At a carnival?"

Jobs pulled himself from the pilot's seat, weaving back into the cabin, fingers trembling. "Don't blame me -- it's this antiquated piece of junk the Thuu Bak government gave us. We should've brought our own shuttle, from the Moonlight. I hope the Bakkians think more of Dr. Egan than they do of us, or his mission's already a failure. Let's go, everybody out."

"We need no encouragement," rumbled Ken-Goh, stamping out the forward door with one hand on his abdomen.

Outside, Renton and Eureka looked around them by the hazy starlight. A few trees and squat, fluffy bushes poked through the cover of crisp, sun-blasted grass, and fifty meters or so to their left, a rutted dirt road unraveled itself southeastward. The terrain here rose to low, rolling hills, their outlines black and indistinct, evidently home to the jungles about which Holland had warned them. Out here, far from Samit Prakkun, the hot wind blew in uncertain gusts, rich with the scent of exotic growing things. "I like this place," whispered Renton.

Eureka nodded, still holding his hand. "Me, too. It's hot, but it's so peaceful, like the mountains where we had our shelter. No wonder the Vodarek built their temple out here."

"I'm tired," said Anemone, arms folded, looking back at the dark, silent shuttle. "Let's have something to eat and go to bed. If we're gonna be walking all day tomorrow, we should get some sleep."

Tommy twisted the latch handle on the cargo bay and began digging out backpacks, personal sidearms and load-bearing harnesses. "You've got the right idea, kiddo. Everybody grab your gear; I'll set up the radiant stove and we can chow down before sack time."

The bedrolls were out within minutes, and Holland stirred up a pot of vacuum-dried soup over the nexus of the infrared grill. Renton took only a few spoonfuls while Eureka munched contentedly from her bag of fat, rich raisins as they all sat in a semicircle before the shuttle, wrapped in thought. The shuttle's cooling thrusters creaked now and then, but otherwise the only sound came from the soft rustle of wind over dry grass.

"I've gotta say," Holland ventured after a while, "this is the longest any of the Gekkostate crew has been quiet in one sitting since everyone passed out drunk that night in Morsama."

"We were not all drunk," said Ken-goh through a mouthful of ramen. He wore only a thin athletic shirt and briefs, and Renton realized he had never before appreciated just how physically powerful the gunnery officer was. He gave the appearance of a man who could take down a Federation cruiser with his bare hands alone.

Matthieu drank deeply of his water cup, reminiscing of times when more potent liquids had flowed past his fingers. "Well, some of us were, Maestro. I know I'd hafto've been awful drunk to sing Love Under a Green Sky in public."

Hap smiled fondly. "Was that you? You weren't bad, at least when you had a liter of Imperial Marquis in you. Too bad we don't have anybody in Gekkostate who can sing without a bloodstream full of antifreeze."

"Speak for yourself, flyboy," said Tommy, downing the last of her soup, wiping off her chopsticks and stowing them in her messkit.

"Can you sing, then?" Dominic asked. He and Anemone sat close together, and he occasionally handed her pills from colored bottles in a little carrying case.

"I...used to, back at home. I think the only song I remember all the way through is a lullabye, though."

"I'd like to hear it," said Renton.

Dominic nodded agreement, his black hair ruffling in the wind. "So would I. Would you please sing it for us?"

"I... Okay. It's been a long time, though. Too long, I guess. Here goes."

She sat very straight, took an expansive breath -- to which Stoner gave particular attention -- and began to sing in a clear soprano:

Summering,

in the arms of slumber.

You were born to receive the light.

One by one, spoons and cups fell silent as the assembled Gekkostaters looked from one to the other, surprised and delighted and moved, in a way most of them had long forgotten.

Paint the skies,

With a brush of wonder.

Warm the day and embrace the night.

And then, to the complete astonishment of them all, a male voice joined itself to hers, accompanying her in a confident tenor that somehow lent strength to her own voice without overwhelming it. No one could quite believe it when they saw that it came from...Jobs.

When I touch your cheek I know,

All too soon I will see you grow.

But my dear one you'll always be.

My dear one you will always be...

Into the passionate final verse they launched themselves, discovering resonant improvisational harmonies yet never losing the melody, weaving two-part chords around each other as they sang of the ancient pain of releasing one's child into a hostile world.

Though your years,

May be touched by thunder.

Love will still,

Shine within your sight.

For my dear one you'll always be.

My dear one you will always be.

When the song faded to its poignant end, an avalanche of silence stunned them all, as the little group slowly came to terms with what they had witnessed. Eureka began to clap, loudly and happily, followed by Renton, and then all of them joined in, spiced with whistles and cries of raucous appreciation.

Tommy, her appealing face growing even redder than could be accounted for by the glow from the infrared grill, smiled and shrugged. "Aw...thanks, guys. Anyhow, that was a song my mother made up. She useta sing it for my little brother...and for me."

"I honestly hate to tell you," said Jobs, standing and running another cup of water from their reservoir, "but she didn't make it up. It's an aria from a classical operetta called Anaximander, written during the Great Exodus." Seeing the baffled looks from the others, he went on between sips: "My own parents wanted me to be a classical singer, you see. It was a great disappointment to them when I went into electrical engineering instead. May I refill your cup? I spent enough hours doing it to know that singing's thirsty work."

"Uh, yeah, thanks, Job. Yeah, I'd like that."

Holland's hard, lean face softened for a moment, into the semblance of the young refboarder Renton had seen in his oldest photographs. "How little we all know each other," he said, half to the others, half to the stars. "Together through so much, and we don't really know each other at all."

Ken-Goh stood and stretched, like a weightlifter warming up. "Perhaps the time is coming when we shall. I thank you, Tommy and Jobs, for that moment of beauty. I'll sleep the more soundly tonight because of it. Good night to you all."

Twelve

Renton and Eureka unwrapped themselves from each other's arms and pushed aside the thermocouple-powered exhaust fan at the corner of their tiny tent to peek out the end flap. Already, only a few minutes past full dawn, the sun flamed brassy and relentless in a molten sky, promising worse to come as their march into the interior progressed. Renton tugged on his pair of sandals and the brief white Thuu Bakkian shorts he'd bought the day before and crawled out. To his surprise, the grass that had been dry, almost scorched, the night before now lay soft and green beneath his feet, evidently adapted to a cycle of dew-moist mornings and intensely hot afternoons.

"Morning," said Tommy, the only other one up and out of her tent. She crouched over her backpack, methodically stuffing her tightly-rolled gear into the smallest space possible.

Renton tried not to stare at her hot-weather costume of an undersized halter made from some thin camouflage-patterned fabric and what appeared to be the bottom half of a fashionably racy black bathing suit. Neither of them could be called a match for her heavy military boots, but he doubted that any of the male team members would be complaining. "Morning," he said back, looking around as others squirmed out of their narrow tent shelters, much like a nest of ill-tempered caterpillars reluctantly becoming moths. "Are we gonna make any breakfast?"

"Nope." She zippered up the pack, hefting it experimentally for balance, her taut muscles standing out with the clarity of an anatomical diagram. "Soon's this bunch of slobs crawls out of bed --"

"I heard that," coughed Holland, glaring out at her.

"-- we need to get on the road, quick. Once we're under cover of that jungle ahead of us, the sun won't be so much of a problem. I'm guessing maybe ten kilos before we're walking in the shade." She clapped her hands several times, loudly. "Everybody up! Let's have all our gear stowed away and ready to pack out in twenty minutes!"

"Renton!" called Eureka. "Will you help me with folding up our tent?"

He turned back toward her voice, and found himself unable to speak for several long seconds. When she had placidly informed him the day before that Yuki and Annette were "redesigning" her new Thuu Bak sunwear outfit, his imagination had formed a fairly clear picture of what the likely final result would be.

The reality left his imaginings far behind. This diminutive hip-hugging white skirt, he was sure, did not in any way disappoint Eureka's preference for very short hemlines. The halter, though, had obviously been a problem because of her wings. With no way to fasten any normal top in the rear, Yuki and Annette had simply given up and eliminated the rear strings altogether, resulting in little more than a sort of skimpy white bib with a sharp neckline, tied about her neck but having no rear fastening whatever. With a wary eye to the ever-present wind, Renton resolved to stay even closer to Eureka than usual.

Tommy nudged him from behind. "What're you staring at? You hypnotized or something?"

"It's Eureka," he gulped. "She's so gorgeous. Have you ever seen anybody so beautiful in all your life?"

Pausing in the fastening of various personal weapons to her backpack, she regarded him with a mix of curiosity, amusement and awe. "Jeez, you're a funny kid. You're the first guy I've ever met who's lovesick over his own wife."

"What's funny about it?" Renton demanded, never taking his eyes from Eureka as she settled a wide-brimmed sun hat on her head and wiggled her feet into a pair of heavy-soled Bakkian sandals.

"Well... Nothing, come to think of it. Nothing at all. I think I like you two more all the time; don't ever change, you hear? Hey, everybody else! Rise and shine! On the double!"

Anemone oozed into the light, squinting and scowling and muttering under her breath about a headache. Dominic followed, the tiny case containing her various medications held under one arm. Renton wondered briefly if her presence on this expedition had been an entirely good idea, then hurried back to help Eureka.

With Tommy hounding everyone like a veteran drill sergeant, all of them had their gear stowed away and on their backs well within her decreed departure time of twenty minutes. The road, they now saw by full daylight, showed faint signs of vehicle rutting, though none of the grooves were sharp enough to have been made recently.

"What d'you make of it, Hap?" asked Holland as they progressed at a fast walk.

"Egan said this area never gets any rain, so this dirt's pretty hard. Ten years ago or maybe more, some trucks mighta used this road, but since then, nothing heavier than carts or feet. No sign of tire tread marks anyplace."

"That would be consistent with the Vodarek abandoning significant contact with the outside world," said Ken-Goh, tugging down the bill of his duty cap to better shield his face from the sun. Alone of the group, he carried a heavy SFAR fastened to his pack by quick-release bindings.

Tommy adjusted the polarity of her sungoggles upward. "I wonder, though, if the rebels've used this road. Me and Yuki heard plenty of talk about them in the market square yesterday. See, Samit Prakkun doesn't use a Tower to generate electrical power from a Ley Line intersection like the other States -- they've got solar accumulators to pick up their electricity from sunlight during the day, then store it overnight. I guess that's the main reason they're more independent from the Federation than the other States. Anyway, that VOP bunch comes in from the jungle now and then to blow up accumulators."

Stoner's face took on a hard grin. "Striking where the ruling elites are most vulnerable is the only recourse left to the people when their collective will is denied." To Renton, listening from farther up the column, it had the singsong ring of a quotation from one of Stoner's many obscure books.

"Oh yeah? Destroying things for kicks and killing anybody who gets in their way isn't my idea of 'the will of the people.' It's not the Federation the VOP's attacking, it's the city and anybody who lives in it. Six people got killed the last time they 'struck' an accumulator station, and I don't mean any Federation LFO squads, either. They were just nobodies walking near the building when the VOP fired ground-to-ground IMPDs into the walls. Were they your 'ruling elites?'"

"In times of war, sometimes the innocent get hurt," Stoner said, though with less volume and bravado than before.

Holland looked as if he might have added more, but held his silence. All the same, a cloud of tension had formed within the little group. No one spoke again for a long while.

With an hour still ahead of them till lunchtime, they reached the edge of the jungle. Renton found himself both puzzled and a bit let down by the vegetation, which ran largely to huge, strangely curling pine trees with clustered needles half a meter long and lush flowering bushes covered in immense oval blue-green leaves. By contrast with the naked sunlight outside, it felt almost cool here in the abundant shade. "Is this what a jungle is really like? I always thought, from reading books, that it'd be really damp, with all kinds of tropical stuff growing in it. This's more like an ordinary forest gone crazy."

"When the Coral first absorbed all the life on Earth's surface," explained Jobs, walking not far behind, "a great deal of the native plant life was lost forever. Then when our ancestors came back from space, they brought with them plants from other worlds. Not to mention mutated versions of originally Terrestrial plants. The new flora tended to fill up ecosystems that the remaining native plants couldn't exploit -- like this hot, dry region." From somewhere not far off, an eerie chuckling, cooing cry sounded out of the convoluted overhead branches. "Animals, too," he added.

Dominic's hand automatically strayed to the RPP at the belt of his white shorts. "Anything dangerous?"

"Not according to the people I talked to in Samit Prakkun. None of the carnivores are big enough to attack humans."

"We do a good enough job of that ourselves," said Holland. "Come on, let's get another couple of kilometers covered before we stop for a break."

The noontime rest period came as a welcome relief to all of them. Even though Renton was sure they had made less than fourteen kilometers during the long morning, the oppressive heat made it seem far longer. He and Eureka sat together beneath a many-stemmed cluster plant with limp, shovel-shaped leaves and small white flowers smelling of ginger.

"I didn't have any more dreams last night," whispered Eureka to Renton between raisins.

"Yeah, I know. Are you okay in this heat? It's not quite as bad here under these weird trees, but all the same this country's really hot."

"I'm fine, just like you. It's uncomfortable, but not dangerous. I wonder how the children are doing. Here, have some raisins."

He took a handful from her bag. "Thanks. The kids're okay, I'm sure of it. I just wish we'd get to this temple soon. It feels...I dunno, funny, somehow. Like there's something in the air. Here, let me pull your top over; it's slipping a little to one side."

"You've been looking at it all morning."

"I've been looking at you all morning. You're so pretty, Eureka."

"Thank you. What's Stoner doing? He keeps staring into the jungle all around. I've been feeling the same thing you have, as we get closer to the temple. Do you suppose the others can feel it too?"

"No." He loosened the straps on one of his heavy sandals. "I'm pretty sure it's something only you and me can feel. He's just nervous is all."

Eureka had pulled her shoulder-length hair into a high ponytail before beginning the march, and now reached behind her head to adjust it and retighten the metal clip holding it in place, a process that Renton watched attentively. "It's Ariadne we sense, isn't it?"

"Maybe. I wish you'd stop being so afraid of her." Unscrewing the top of his thermal canteen, he poured a few centimeters of water into its cap. "We don't seem to need much water, but you better drink a little before we start up again. What Mischa told us was right; whatever the Coralians've done to us keeps us from getting thirsty like you'd expect in this dry heat."

She accepted the water and passed the cup back. "Thank you. The Coralian Mind is powerful, Renton, and strange. Even I can't follow their thought. They can do whatever they want."

"Everything except 'replace' you. What makes you think things like that, anyway? Why don't you let me...?" His mind reached out to hers, but instantly she closed herself off from the touch.

"No...you're right, it's all silly. I'd only feel more foolish to have you see it in me. I've put enough of my fears and regrets into your heart; there's no need for you to take on any more."

"But I want to."

Tears glistened at the corners of her lavender eyes, evaporating almost at once in the ruthless heat. "I know. Oh, Renton, I never want to be away from you..."

Eight or ten meters away, Holland squatted near the road, punching switches on his personal communicator and looking unhappy. "No response. I'd say we're within the EM interference zone already."

"Lucky thing we didn't risk flying any further last night," said Jobs.

Tommy looked up from burrowing in her pack. "Lucky thing you were at the controls. Want an R9 bar?"

"Military rations? Sure, why not. Thanks."

Hap jumped to his feet and stared off into the jungle. "What was that?"

All through the little clearing, sidearms appeared. Renton stationed himself before Eureka, holding his own RPP up and ready as they waited, silent, watchful. Then something dark moved in the trees overhead and everyone swung their weapons in the same direction, like a flock of seagulls pointing into the wind. "Hold your fire!" shouted Holland, raising his hand.

A tense moment passed, and a shaggy gray creature resembling an oversized housecat with short-fingered hands scrambled across a branch, looked down at them with distaste and hurried away into the leaf cover with a hissing cry. They all glanced sheepishly at each other as they stowed their weapons, but Renton's suspicions were slower to fade.

Anemone rocked back and forth, shaking with shrill laughter. "Talk about trigger-happy gunslingers! I'd better make sure I don't sleepwalk tonight"

"Good idea," agreed Holland. "Okay, everybody, the sooner we're out of this jungle, the sooner we can all stop jumping at shadows. Pack up and let's move out."

Thirteen

They spoke little among each other, walking on through their silent green tunnel. Though they were now shielded from the direct sun, the breeze could no longer reach their bodies, and no one wasted energy on needless conversation. In the brief windows of sky through the dense leaves above, they caught occasional flashes of flying creatures that might have been birds, gliding low above the treetops. After the first few sightings, no one found it worth their energy to look up.

Dr. Egan's prediction proved correct, for ground water seemed plentiful and they found wells with noncorrosive hand pumps spaced about every ten kilometers. Holland got no argument when he called for another halt to rest and refill their water bottles.

"My feet hurt," complained Anemone, dropping herself to the cool ground. Her long hair now hung in two tight braids, spreading themselves across the thin grass like discarded birthday ribbons.

Dominic knelt beside her, putting one hand to her forehead, then dampening a small cloth with the last of the water from his canteen and laying it on her brow. "You're holding up well, though. No signs of heatstroke. Keep on wearing that straw hat of yours."

"I'm still getting a headache." She tugged at the straps and thongs of her pink bikini bathing suit. "Somehow I can feel that damn stinking sun right through the leaves and the needles. It's so dreary in here. Nothing but shadows and silence and those damn tree-cat things swearing at us all the time. I feel like we're tramping through the sewers or something."

"Nothing that bad." He smiled and handed her three yellow-and-black capsules. "This should help the headache. I'll go to the well and refill the canteen, you just stay here and get some rest."

Renton, sitting beside Eureka about three meters distant, overheard. He shook their own canteen, hearing only the faint slither of what little water remained. "I guess I oughta do the same as Dominic."

"All right, thank you. And Renton...won't you let me carry something? You've been carrying the supplies for both of us, and it makes me feel a little...useless."

"'Useless?' You? No way!" He stood, wriggling his feet, both of them now become stiff and tender. "You know as well as I do that you can't wear a pack on account of your wings. I don't mind -- honest. It's not as if it's really heavy, anyway, just the tents and blankets and a little food and stuff. You're not 'useless,' and don't you ever go thinking so."

She smiled at him as he made his way across the circle of grass around the pump. Only he and Dominic seemed to be on their feet; the rest of the group lay sprawled in the relative coolness of the shade, eyes shut, enjoying at least the illusion of sleep. Not far from the road, Tommy sat cross-legged, rooting through her pack while Stoner lay beside, speaking earnestly, occasionally emphasizing whatever he was saying with forceful gestures of both hands.

"How's Anemone doing?" asked Renton in a soft voice as he came up behind Dominic.

"She's holding up." He crouched beside the pipe, operating the crank handle that brought cool underground water up in a delicious stream. "Look, Renton... She told me about meeting you in the Moonlight's galley, and about telling you...everything. Thanks for being so kind to her. It meant a lot, both for her and for me."

"Uh-huh. The first time we met, you told me that we were both in love with a couple of troublesome girls. I guess you sure did know what you were talking about."

"Yeah." Dominic's strained smile had the look of authenticity, but faded quickly. "She's not getting better, you know."

"She's not? But she told me..."

"I know. And she's not her old maniacal self, the way she was when...the Colonel...kept her on those vile stimulants. But even though she's taking fewer antidepressants now, they're in heavier and heavier doses." He tilted back the brim of his sweat-damp white cap, turning his sad dark eyes upon Renton. "She hasn't realized it, yet, and I can't bear to tell her. None of the military or civilian doctors have yet been able to figure how how to deal with a case as severe as hers."

"But...that's awful. Can me and Eureka do anything to help? We're carrying this Coralian thing called the 'Prime Radiant,' and it..."

"Brings quick healing and some kind of endless youthfulness; I know. Egan explained that to me. But it's not going to do Anemone any good because her sickness isn't in her body, it's inside, in her mind. Or in her soul, if you like. Those filthy Federation bast..." He screwed the cap back on the canteen and stood once again. "I don't know what good an indefinite lifespan is going to do for someone who just keeps on spiraling downward, getting worse and worse and worse, without end. When that happens..."

Renton knelt at the pump, shocked, unable to imagine any words of sympathy that would not sound trite and hollow.

"Listen, I know you'll tell Eureka what I said, and that's all right. But please...please don't ever let Anemone know. Promise me?"

He nodded, too rapidly. "Yeah. Yeah, I promise. And I know Eureka'll stay quiet over it, too. You can trust us."

"I know. I think it's about four o'clock. You know Holland better than I; will he want us to keep on marching till dark, do you suppose?"

"I dunno. I don't think he likes it in this jungle, or forest, or whatever it is." Several more of the raucous tree-dwelling creatures screeched their resentment in the branches high above. "It's not like being in an airship or LFO, after all. You can't see what's coming."

Dominic tugged his hat back into position. "Just like life, isn't it?" He hefted the water container and set off back toward Anemone. "See you around, Renton."

Fourteen

No one openly complained as they trudged on through the lowering afternoon, their pace growing slower by the hour. All the same, the casual banter that marked the beginning of their trek was now conspicuous by its absence. Each rest break stretched on longer than the last, with more discontented sighing and groaning as they took to the road once more.

"Is it just me, or does it seem t'be getting darker in here?" said Hap, looking up toward the little speckles of sky filtering through dense mops of needles above them.

Jobs tilted back his sunglasses. "It's not just you. It's almost seven o'clock local time. Outside this jungle, the sun's starting to set." He said it loudly enough to make it a not-so-subtle hint.

They all shuffled to a stop as Holland lifted his hand to halt the march. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

"Sounds like trickling water," said Renton, directly behind. Eureka yawned and rubbed at her eyes; he knew she would fall asleep on her feet if they did not soon make camp for the day.

"Yeah. That's just what I've been waiting for, one of those streams that Dr. Bear said we'd find along the road. Tommy; Hap -- go beyond those bushes, will you, and see if there's water back there? Everybody else, move into the trees and make camp. Stream or not, it's been a long, hot day's walk, and we all need a rest."

They all murmured and sighed with relief. But for just a moment, Renton considered Holland, whose own steps had grown as heavy and slow as everyone else's, yet who had set the pace for the journey, consulted their few ancient charts, decided when they should stop to replenish their canteens and asked them all individually how they were holding up. Only when everyone else's endurance satisfied him did he himself sit to rest. The responsibilities of leadership, Renton decided, were powerful and many. "That's great. How much farther d'you think we have to go?"

"It all depends on which one of these old maps is accurate, if any. We ought to be well over halfway to the Vodarek temple."

Jobs lifted one foot and rotated it, working some of the soreness out. "We should've gotten ourselves bicycles back there in Samit Prakkun. It would have cut the travel time in half, if not more."

"Brilliant idea," snapped Anemone, glaring at him. "Why the hell didn't you have it before we left?"

"There's a creek over here, Leader," Hap shouted from beyond a stand of shoulder-high brush. "Great place to cool your feet! Anybody interested?"

Holland ran one hand through his ruffled gray-brown hair and smiled for the first time that day. "We're interested, all right. Okay, everyone, let's make camp."

The weary hikers dispersed into the forest, all of them choosing spots close enough to bushes or tree trunks to give at least a semblance of privacy, yet not so isolated as to be wholly out of sight of the others. Some ten or fifteen meters from the road, they found a rapidly-flowing brook coming out of the deep jungle, curving near to the road, then turning eastward before apparently disappearing underground once again.

But neither Renton nor Eureka stopped to ponder the peculiar topology of this arid jungle. They hurried together to the stream bank, splashing their arms and faces in the cold water, laughing happily as it sluiced away the grime -- and at least some of the weariness -- of travel. Finally, abandoning restraint altogether, Eureka simply jumped in, wriggling in the current like an ecstatic water nymph.

Renton stood quickly, plucking her top and tiny skirt from the ground. "Er...Eureka..."

"What's the matter?" Sitting in the sandy bottom, she stirred the water rushing around her into a gentle froth with her wings. "Why don't you come in, too? It's called 'swimming,' you know. Have you ever done it? It's only about a meter deep -- you won't drown. This feels wonderful. Why are you standing that way? I can't see any of the others."

"That's, uh, sort of the idea... I sort of...I don't want your clothes to get wet, I guess."

"You're so thoughtful. Oh, look at the water! It sparkles!"

With another nervous glance around him to see who else might be looking, Renton bent to the water, then waded in up to his knees. What he had at first taken for the glimmer of sunlight through the trees reflecting in the stream, he now saw to be tiny speckles of greenish light, dancing and darting in the water itself. "Trapar," he said, scooping up a handful and holding it to his eyes.

"In the water? How strange. I've seen trapar stars in the air, where the concentration is high, but never in water. I wonder if the others can see it."

"I don't think so; just us, I'll bet. The trapar density must be really high under the ground around here. I'll bet it has something to do with the Vodarek; maybe we're getting near their temple. Um...why don't you come out now, Eureka? You...might get cold in there."

"Oh, I suppose so. Hand me my sandals, would you? Thank you. And now will you give me your hand?"

He scrambled to the sandy bank to pull her up, his back to the rest of the group, trying to conceal her with his own body.

"Thank you. You needn't stand so close, Renton -- I'll drip water all over you."

"That's...okay. Here, you should put your skirt and top back on now, shouldn't you?"

"All right. Hold onto me so I don't slip and fall...there. I feel much cooler now. Oh, look, Tommy's going in, too!"

Renton turned just in time to see a tremendous splash about fifteen meters upstream, followed by Tommy's head, her dark hair clinging wet and slick to her head, emerging from the water's surface. Her scant discarded clothing hung from the tendrils of a woody vine where Stoner regarded it with an oddly disapproving scowl. Seconds later, Jobs leaped into the stream with a clumsy tumble, laughing and splashing.

"Watch it!" shouted Stoner, throwing up both hands.

Hap laughed in his bellowing, hearty way as he kicked off his sandals. "Don't be such a sourpuss -- you won't melt! Out of the way you guys, I'm coming in next!"

"Tommy sings so nicely," mused Eureka as the two of them made their way back to the partially secluded spot where Renton had dumped their supplies. "Last night was the first real singing I've ever heard -- live, that is. Is it hard to sing?"

"I dunno; I'm not much of a singer myself. I guess it must be hard, or at least hard to do it really well. If it was easy, everybody'd be good at it."

She spread her wings, quivering them in quick, wavering ripples to shake the water away. "I wish I were good at something. Something besides shooting people and piloting LFOs. Let's get the tent up; I'll help you this time."

"Listen, Eureka, I wish you'd --"

Both of them turned simultaneously, staring at a spot three or four meters into the jungle, where a small grove of something resembling oversized dark-green ferns spread their ribbonlike fronds. Eureka stared, all at once tense and alert. "Someone called me," she said.

"Called you? No, it was my name. You must've heard it wrong." Renton walked into the brush, pushing the rubbery fronds aside, searching for some lurking prankster, finding nothing. "I was pretty sure it came from here... I guess it was just the noise of the stream and the others shouting over there. Nobody here that I can see."

They looked to each other, entirely unconvinced. "No. Not that I can see, either. Well, come then, and let's set up the tent before the sun goes down."

Fifteen

Darkness, muffled and absolute, settled into the spaces between the trees. With the infrared stove back at their distant shuttle, the expedition had to settle for dried rations and creek water for their dinner. Most of them crunched and gnawed in silence around the bleak glow of a small military biolantern Ken-Goh placed at the center of the campsite. All but Stoner, who kept up a tense, fitful monologue throughout the meal.

"See, the question of legitimacy always arises when tyrannies begin to weaken. Who truly speaks for the people? Egan and his 'World Parliament' would like to take the mantle from the collapsing Federation, but although they claim to speak for the people, they aren't of the people."

Ken-Goh grunted and unwrapped another bland nutrient bar. "Is the Federation collapsing? We seem to spend a great deal of time and effort battling against them. For a collapsing entity, they show remarkable vigor."

"I wish to hell they would collapse," complained Matthieu, his eyelids sagging. "It'd save us Gekkostaters an awful lot of work."

"You're both missing the point! The World Parliament's no more representative of the will of the people than those corrupt oligarchs of the Federation. They're not in any position whatever to know the collective will of the people."

Near to Tommy, Jobs stretched out, hands behind his head, on a mound of fallen needles. "Neither am I. What is the will of the people anyway? I'm not aware that the VOP has any very strong support in Thuu Bak. You heard Dr. Egan -- we just keep them stirred up enough to serve as a bargaining chip with the legitimate government. They're nothing but a bunch of crackpots with weapons."

"Social change proceeds from violent resistance," Stoner insisted, one hand balled into an angry fist, pressed to his chest. "We should be allying ourselves with the Voice of the People, not cynically exploiting them to advance our plutocratic agenda."

Tommy, busy with combing the knots out of her black hair and dividing it into two pigtails once again, made a wry face at him. "Cripes, Stoner, calm down, would you? If you ever let any of that wild political crap leak into the pages of RayOut, we'll lose our readers in a month."

"Maybe it's time we did! How many of them have been swayed by RayOut? Twenty percent? Maybe twenty-five? The rest of them still stare at their video screens and lap up the Federation media's lying propaganda like trained dogs. Face it -- the masses don't care about truth -- only about a loud voice. And they'll accept lies just as readily. It's deeds that change the course of history, not words. Or pretty music."

Jobs rolled upright at once, his jaw tensed in a hard line that Renton had never seen before. "And what's that supposed to --?"

"That's enough," said Holland. He never looked up from his cup of spring water. But all other voices fell to silence and every eye around the ghostly circle of light from the biolantern looked toward him and nothing else.

"In case anybody's forgotten," he went on in the same low voice, "We're all in this thing together, working for the same goal. All of us are hot and tired as hell, and we've all got short fuses. Let's get some shuteye, and get this long march over with tomorrow." He downed the rest of his water in a single gulp and limped off to his tent without another word.

One by one, the other travelers picked themselves up and left the light. Last to go was Stoner, staring intently into the lantern's yellow-green glow, meeting no one's face.

"That was all really strange," whispered Eureka when she and Renton had slipped into the blackness of their tent and activated the thermal fan. "Jobs and Stoner almost started fighting. I don't know why."

He groped for her hand in the darkness, and gripped it to reassure her. "I do. They were fighting over Tommy."

"Over Tommy?" She faced him, though neither of them could see a thing in the utter blackness of the jungle night. "But she wouldn't want them to --"

"They've been at it for a couple of days, now, in lots of tiny little ways. Nothing ever out in the open. But I noticed it right off, and I think maybe the others did just now, too. It's starting to look like her and Jobs kind of have a lot of stuff in common, and Stoner doesn't like it much."

"Fighting... Oh, Renton, I didn't see it, not at all. There are so many things I still don't understand at all about being human. Sometimes I feel as if I'm half-blind, always tripping over things that other people see so clearly. Don't you ever get tired of explaining it all to me? I wonder if... I wonder if maybe Ariadne will see things any better than I do..."

In an instant, he held her to him, her smooth warmth burning against him over the heat of the baking jungle night itself. "Just forget about her, Eureka. Whatever she turns out to be doesn't matter. I never get tired of anything you do, and don't you ever forget it."

Outside their cocoon of solitude, the jungle night wrapped them in its dark web. Tree-cats rustled and chattered in the fronds of the mutated pines above. The brook chugged its soft, splashing rumble and an occasional flying creature banked around the biolantern, barking curious little needles of sound.

After a while the two of them slipped into a vague halfworld, suspended between sleep and wakefulness, in which they walked in each others' dreams. Dark, empty caverns of Eureka's fear surrounded them, echoing with mumbled accusations. She drowned in pools of silent failure, alone and ignored. Renton pulled her to safety on a sunny shore, only to watch a faceless monstrosity named Ariadne descend from the sky like an LFO, raking them with antiaircraft fire, screaming that Eureka had failed in all respects. The Ariadne-thing snatched Renton from the beach with one immense hand, taking him from her forever, claiming him for its own while Eureka screamed helpless below. Renton pulled an SFAR from the pocket of his shorts and raised it to the cloudy head high above him...

He awoke with a violent twitch in the darkness, Eureka moaning softly in his arms but coming to wakefulness almost at once. She held him with fierce determination, whispering, "Stay with me, Renton, don't go, don't let her..."

"I'm here, Eureka. It was another one of your nightmares, that's all." He kissed the top of her head, her downy hair tangled and matted. "Shhhh. Something woke me up. A noise from outside."

At once, she shook off the sticky residue of the dream and tensed, her body wire-taut. "Outside? What was it?"

"I dunno," he murmured, wriggling into his shorts and sandals. "Probably just somebody getting up to pee, but I better go look all the same. You should get dressed. Get your RPP and personal communicator, too, and wait for me. I'm going out."

"All right. But be careful."

Outside the tent lay a world of prickling dark, claustrophobic, breathless, not even the stars visible above. Renton crouched low and scuttled along as quietly as possible, his own RPP pistol clutched tightly in one hand.

He kept to the shadows of bushes and fronds, out of the faint glow of the biolantern, listening, ready for the faintest breath of danger. Somewhere to his left, the indifferent brook hissed and splashed. Where, he struggled to remember, had the others pitched their tents? Holland, he was sure, would be...

What was that?

Renton froze, still as the night itself, in the dappled shadows of a drooping shrub that gave off an overwhelming sour reek. Somewhere, not far, there had been...

"...and I'm fed up with this stupid trip. It's hot and I'm tired and I can't sleep worth a damn and I wish I'd never said I'd come along. If that idiot Egan thinks it's such a great idea, why isn't he here, smothering with the rest of us?"

"I don't know, Anemone." Dominic's voice was patient and soothing; Renton had the idea that he'd gotten a lot of practice at being patient and soothing. "But it's better than sitting back at the ship being bored."

"At least we'd be cool back at the ship --"

"Please keep your voice down; you'll wake the others."

"I don't care! Nobody can be asleep in this stupid furnace anyway." Renton heard the ineffectual thump of flesh on fabric and guessed that she'd kicked out at the side of their tent. "Who'd miss me if I left anyway? I don't even know why in hell you put up with my crap."

"Anemone, don't --"

"It's true and you know it! I'm so sick of... Where the hell are my pills? I need a blue pill. No, two. Get me my pills, dammit!"

Renton backed away, ashamed of himself for eavesdropping on even this brief snatch of their private agonies. Very slowly, taking great pains for each cautious step, he crept backward, deeper into the darkness, in the general direction of the stream, from which he was certain he could find his way back to Eureka and their own tent. Near to its cascading waters once more, he felt the grittiness of its sandy bank beneath his hands and patted his way along. Falling in would make me look pretty silly, wouldn't it? The monotonously gurgling, swishing sound began to lull him with its wordless song, and the idea of settling down to sleep once again grew more and more tempting as he crawled on hands and knees...

A loud splash sounded from behind him, much too large to be part of the current itself; instantly, he was reminded of the sound made by Jobs diving in that afternoon.

He held himself motionless again, probing the darkness around him with only his ears, alert for the most elusive sounds. "Stinkin' hell," someone cursed in a rasping whisper. Then the rainy sloshing of wet clothing dripping onto dry ground as its owner stumbled to the near bank in a great hurry. Other footsteps joined it, then more faint voices tinged with anger and the need for great stealth.

Renton's sleepy mind cleared at once. What do I do now? It's too dark to aim, and besides, what if I'm wrong and they're not enemies at all? Seconds would be critical; making up his mind in an instant, he scuttled back toward his position overlooking the center of the campsite, loudly pushing branch and leaf aside, no longer troubling to keep his steps silent. At least I can give everybody a warning shot. Crouching in the bushes, he drew his Rocket-Propelled Projectile pistol and aimed at the biolantern in the center of the clearing, the first place that any attackers would use as a guide to their target. Holding his breath, he fired.

The clearing exploded with a thunder of light and sound as the projectile's warhead detonated a foot beneath the jungle topsoil. The whispered exchanges near the brook became shouts of anger and confusion; tents all round came alive with angry cries, Holland's first among them. Red flares, sputtering and smoking, fell from the black night like meteors, flooding the campsite with their weird and angry glow. "Move in!" someone yelled, and Renton hurried back, as quickly as he could part the bushes, to their tent.

"What is it?" Eureka asked, waiting, her own RPP ready in one hand.

He grabbed her by one arm and pulled her down into concealment. "I think we're under attack. There are some guys out there..."

"Nobody move!" commanded an unfamiliar voice back in the clearing. Gunshots blasted through the night, aimed into the trees as a warning.

Return fire from an automatic rifle answered -- coming from Tommy or Matthieu, Renton guessed. Other shots followed immediately, whizzing through the brush in all directions. "We must help them," said Eureka, her gentle face hard in the flickering red glare.

"Yeah. Let's join our minds, and..."

A firm hand seized him by one shoulder, preventing him from standing. Holland, rifle in one hand, glared down at the two of them. "You're not going to join anything."

"But they're attacking..." Heavy footsteps crashed through the forest around them; more rifle fire, some of it deafeningly near, roared from their right. Holland dropped to a tense crouch.

"Shut up! For once in your lives, you two are going to do what you're ordered and not try to be heroes, got it? This whole trip is about you; you're still the only hope the world has of reconciling us with the Coralians. You're going to run as fast as you can -- both of you -- back the way we came, and call the Moonlight for help as soon as you're out of the interference zone. And then you'll stay where you are until they come and pick you up on the way to rescuing us, got it?"

"But we can't --" began Eureka.

A stray shot creased the brush above their heads. "Yes you can, and yes you will! Dammit to hell, this is what we're all fighting for -- don't let us down now. That's an order." He shouldered his automatic and turned back toward the quickly-escalating gun battle. "Don't let us down," he repeated, and ran back, flames spurting from the muzzle brake of the gun as he sprayed death into the night.

Eureka and Renton looked at each other, just once. "Let's go," he said, and they sprinted, hand in hand, away from the flaming red nightmare of battle, through the forest, down the black and silent road as fast as they could move.

Sixteen

"Stop your resistance. You can't win -- surrender or be killed!"

The guns fell silent on both sides as their attackers stepped out of the forest all around the campsite, dozens of them, holding a wild assortment of weapons from grenade launchers to small sidearms.

Holland considered the odds. At least ten minutes of battle had passed; plenty of time for Renton and Eureka to have gotten away -- and obviously they had gotten away. What could now be done to gain them more time for their escape? Fighting to the death -- or keeping these armed thugs talking? He put his rifle on the ground and raised both hands. "Okay, we're way outnumbered. We surrender. Everybody put their weapons down."

Behind him, Ken-Goh cursed foully, muttering in a dark undertone about "cowardice," and dropped his SFAR, but Holland ignored him. He knew as well as any of them that protecting the two Coralian intermediaries had to be their primary goal at all times, even above their own safety.

The apparent leader of the armed group swaggered slowly out into the light of the flares carrying a simple bolt-action carbine with studied insouciance. Holland memorized his face at a glance: a wild, untrimmed black beard speckled with gray beneath a wide, surly face covered in what might have been pockmarks or -- equally likely -- the little shrapnel scars of carelessly-detonated explosives. His heavy-lidded black eyes stared out at the world with no visible emotion, lingering briefly on Tommy and Anemone but reserving their most careful attention for Holland.

He came within a meter of Holland, looking him over from top to bottom, milking the tense moment to display the greatest possible contempt. "You're the leader," he said in a flat baritone. It was not a question.

"That's right. I'm Holland Novak. Now who the hell are you, and what are you doing attacking our party?" Never let the other guy get the upper hand. The battle of wills began; tensions rose again as the bearded man drew back one hand...

Matt Stoner stepped forward. "Hey, wait a minute! None of this was to've been part of the deal! Nobody said anything about any attack! We're on your side, remember?"

"What the hell?" said Matthieu, staring with disbelief as Stoner walked past.

"You are Stoner?" asked the man with the beard. Though it had to be sweltering, he wore a sort of rough uniform made up out of odds and ends of mismatched Federation military field clothing, all of it carelessly buttoned and dirty.

"That's right, Matt Stoner. Are you Colonel Peres? This was supposed to be a meeting, not a frontal assault! At least, that's what the VOP people I talked to back in Samit Prakkun told me when I talked to them. What's going on?"

Colonel Peres -- he never acknowledged Stoner's first question, but all of them assumed the answer to be "yes" -- smirked and reached for Stoner's red beret. He pulled it off and settled it on his own head, keeping the gun barrel raised at all times. "We are meeting now. What was it you wanted to say to us?"

"Well, er," spluttered Stoner, spreading his hands, "I...expected something a little more formal. Where we could all sit down and discuss how we could, well, combine our forces to throw off the Federation's oppression of your people. Work in our mutual interest, so to speak." Little dots of perspiration appeared on his face as he spoke.

Peres laughed, humorless and hard. "'Mutual interest?' What mutual interest could the Voice of the People have with the man who was once among the highest of the Federation's propaganda mouthpieces? And who happily betrayed his employers to run away with the famous gang of pirates who call themselves...'Gekkostate?'"

"What exactly is going on?" rumbled Ken-Goh. "Stoner, you have sold us out to these rebels, have you?"

"Shut up till you're spoken to," screeched one of the VOP attackers, leveling her automatic rifle on him.

"No! I didn't sell anybody out! I just asked some reporter-type questions in Samit Prakkun about the VOP, and how I could get us in contact with them. It's true! I thought...I thought that once we met with their leaders, it'd be obvious that we should be supporting their cause, helping them to throw off the yoke of oppression... The ones I talked to in the city were fully supportive of the whole thing. There wasn't anything said about attacking us, or shooting. I swear it."

Peres walked about him in a slow circle as he spoke, like a man sizing up the purchase of a used motorcycle. "No doubt you...misinterpreted my comrades in Samit Prakkun. A mistake often made by the gullible and the foolish." Making a great show of seeming to remember some minor detail, he looked around the motionless group in a puzzled way. "I see that your party appears to be missing several members. Where is the famous Coralian girl and her companion?"

"You trusted a backstabber like Stoner to tell you the truth about that?" laughed Holland. "As if we'd put them at risk by tramping through the jungle with them! How stupid to you think we are, Peres?"

The Colonel made a gesture to one of his men, who stepped forward and struck Holland across the face, hard, with the short barrel of his carbine. Holland swayed and sank to one knee, but did not fall. "It remains to be seen how stupid you are, Mr. Novak. We will search the area thoroughly for them, rest assured. But even if by chance you speak the truth, you and your companions will still serve us almost as well. I have no doubt that the Federation will pay generously to have the notorious Gekkostate delivered into their hands at last." He waved to his underlings. "Take them away and bind them securely. And understand that no one is to attempt any amusements with the women until I have...interviewed...them personally. Haber; Soltay; Mendel -- comb these woods until you are absolutely certain not even an insect is hiding in them. If you find the Coralian half-breeds, bring them at once. Alive. Move now!"

"But..." pleaded Stoner, his hands out in supplication.

At Peres' signal, another of the VOP insurrectionists ran forward and rammed his fist into Stoner's left kidney. With a combined gasp of pain, horror and profoundest regret, he crumpled to the ground, where he was forced at gunpoint to crawl and stumble along with the other prisoners.

None of whom so much as looked his way.

Seventeen

They staggered to a walk at last, gasping, feet dragging, dizzy with exhaustion from their run through the blind furnace of the night. "How...how far have we...come, Renton?" panted Eureka.

"Can't tell...for sure. Hard to...judge, 'cause it's so dark. At least...at least four or five kilometers, maybe more." He swayed, his legs rubbery and unresponsive, groping for Eureka's shoulder and shocked to find her trembling. "We gotta take a...short rest. C'mon, let's get off this...road and into the bushes."

She gave no answer; he needed none. Renton led her by the hand to the roadside, guided only by touch and faint traces of starlight filtering through the dense fronds above them, into a small open area padded by fallen leaves and needles. There they let their legs fold beneath them, collapsing into each others' arms as they gulped in great raw lungfuls of the stifling air.

Renton's indignation smoldered like banked coals. She doesn't deserve this. After all she's done and all she's gone through, she oughta be treated like royalty, with the whole damn world appreciating the things she's done for them.

"We're never going to make it in time this way," she sighed when their breathing stabilized. "Why don't you wait here for me, and I'll fly back to our shuttle..."

"No way! Your wings need to generate trapar to work, you know that. In the dark, you'd look like a green skyrocket that nobody could miss. Even in the daytime, you'd be a big, bright easy target for anybody on the ground. Please, Eureka, don't even think about it." He leaned them both backward against the base of one of the enormous mutant pine trees, savoring the relaxation. "Maybe you oughta try your communicator now."

"Do you really think we've gotten anywhere near the edge of the interference zone so soon?"

Renton shrugged. "Well, no. But it'll give us something to think about besides how tired we are. And anyhow, the zone might not be all that stable; maybe it gets bigger and smaller, the way a Coralian singularity does."

Neither of them really believed it, but it sounded just plausible enough to be worth the effort. She pulled the communicator from its hardshell case strapped to her left thigh, and activated it, its tiny screen shockingly bright in the complete darkness around them. "There's no signal," she said, snapping it shut. "We'd better move on. I can't run any more, but I can still walk, I think."

"Yeah, I guess so. We should..."

Something rustled in the leaves nearby. He drew the RPP and held Eureka tightly with his free arm. "Open the communicator again," he whispered, the barest breath next to her ear.

She held it at arm's length, flipping up its cover, sending the little illumination from the monitor screen shining ahead of them. A pair of startled yellow eyes stared back at them from the base of one of the pines. "Wurrrrrrrk," said the tree-cat, leaping into the leaves and scurrying away, its prehensile tail curved forward over its gray body.

The two of them relaxed at once, laughing quietly over their own paranoia. We'll get started again soon, Renton told himself. But just what're we running from, anyhow? This is the first chance I've had to think about who those people were who attacked us. Did the Federation follow us here? They can't be just bandits; there's not enough traffic on this road for anybody to get rich by stealing. How're Holland and the others making out against them? Wouldn't they have come after us by now if they were able to? None of this looks good at all...

"Renton. Renton!"

Eureka. Shaking him by one shoulder, outlined in a dim, ghostly light.

He blinked several times, shaking off the dull haze of what he knew at once had to be sleep. "Oh, crap, we fell asleep. I can't believe it -- we fell asleep! How long were we out? And what's that light? Is there a fire someplace?"

"It's the first light of dawn." She stood, brushing long pine needles from her brief skirt and rearranging her top, which had gone badly awry during their flight. "It's almost four-fifteen; we were asleep for more than an hour."

"Oh, no." Jumping unsteadily to his feet, Renton looked around them in the faint gray glow, so weak that in any other time and place, it might still be considered darkness. "Come on, then, we've gotta get back to the road and get moving. Who knows what might've happened back at the campsite while we were snoring away here."

Eureka fluttered her wings, shaking them free of leaves and other debris. "Don't be so hard on yourself. We would have had to stop for rest sooner or later anyway. Now, at least, we're fresh and ready to go on. We should --" Quickly, she turned her head toward a sudden stirring in the bushes behind them.

"Aw, it's just those tree-cats." Taking her hand, he led them both back toward the road. "Let's get moving. If any of the others get hurt because we were goofing off, I won't ever be able to forgive myself."

Walking, at least, was no longer so hazardous, with the hazy light providing enough illumination -- barely -- for them to see the road before them. Ruts and stones over which they would have stumbled badly a few hours previous they could now dodge with ease. They found themselves able to keep up a double-time march that, for now, at least, seemed unlikely to exhaust them before they reached the next well.

"I've been thinking, Eureka. I guess I don't like to say this, but even when we get back to the point where we can call the Moonlight, what can they do? The ship still can't fly into the interference zone."

"Yes, I've thought of that, too. Maybe Jobs' idea about bicycles would be sensible after all." Frowning, she turned her eyes to the side of the road as they walked.

"I sure hope him and the others are all right. I'll bet that bunch who attacked the campsite was that 'Voice of the People' gang that everybody kept talking about. Though I can't figure what they'd be bothering with us for. I still feel kind of bad about leaving the others, even though it was on Holland's own orders. There must be room in this crazy jungle to hide a dozen armies. I wonder if there's anyone else... What is it?"

She came to a complete stop, looking intently into the dense forest on either side of them. "It's that sound again, like something moving in the bushes."

"Just tree-cats, I told you. We've been hearing them ever since we came into these woods."

"I don't think so, Renton." Her wide Coralian eyes found his in the dawn-glow. "Because it's been moving along with us. And it stops when we do."

In spite of the relentless heat, he felt a chill of dread trickle along his back. Only the occasional whistle of waking birds broke the silence, though he was certain that just moments before, the rustling had been there, nearby, moving. "Don't touch your RPP yet," he whispered, "but get ready to grab it, quick. And keep on walking like nothing's wrong."

Forcing bland faces that they hoped projected an illusion of nonchalance, they resumed their walk, looking dead ahead. Each step became agonizingly slow, barely moving them forward at all on a road now stretching to infinity. The crunching, scuttling sound paced them again, louder now and from both sides, and Renton was sure he caught a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy something passing through a stand of ferns, something the size of a man.

"Eureka. If we're attacked, I'll hold them off down here -- you do what you said, take off and fly back to the shuttle. Stay low, just over the tops of the trees. They already know where we are, so..."

Three armed figures -- two male and one apparently female -- jumped out of the brush no more than six meters ahead of them, rifles raised. All three wore the careless, mismatched clothing they'd seen on their attackers the night before. "Hold it," one of them shouted. "You're coming with us, you little --"

"Fly, Eureka!" shouted Renton, brutally shoving her off the road and into the bushes. He threw himself into a shoulder roll, tumbling across the rough dirt road to the opposite side until he spun into an upright position, snapping off a wild hissing shot with the RPP. Its line of fire lanced out, grazing one of the three along the leg and scorching the other two with incendiary flame as it detonated.

Bellowing their rage, the three attackers returned fire with their automatics, raising the road where Renton had stood into a dense cloud of dust. He snapped off another RPP round from his position behind the trunk of an ancient pine, striking the ground just ahead of the two assailants still standing, sending them running back into cover, spraying bullets carelessly in his general direction.

He pressed his advantage, firing a third time, into the bushes, setting a cluster of them ablaze and flooding the area with light. Above the crackling flames he heard no more thrashing or rustling. Okay, they ran away -- for the time being. But they'll be back. Till Eureka can get help, I've gotta get moving, as far away from those guys as I can. One of them's injured, but the other two...

Eureka walked slowly out of the forest, just ahead of the rifle leveled at her head by one of the gunmen. Her own RPP was nowhere to be seen. "Throw the rocket gun down, kid, or I kill the girl."

He's lying. He's gotta be lying. If they want her at all, they want her alive. But Renton knew he could never take the chance. Not with Eureka. He let the rounded RPP pistol slip from his fingers and came forward, back into the road.

The gem on her forehead flickered madly. I couldn't leave you behind to die, Renton, I couldn't. Talk to him, distract him, and when his attention is on you, I'll lift my wings in his face and push the rifle away and you can attack him...

No! The other one's still hiding someplace and the third one's only wounded. One of them might...

They'll kill us anyway if we don't do something. I'm going to...

No, Eureka, don't do it!

The second assassin lunged out of the brush, already aiming for Renton's chest. Catching the motion from the corner of his eye, Renton instinctively dropped to a crouch. At the same instant, Eureka snapped her wings open like a pair of paper fans and leaped into the rutted road, grabbing for him and missing, dropping off-balance into his arms. Trapped in a crossfire, they had nowhere to run. The gunman behind her took aim...

Rapid automatic gunfire exploded from the forest in all directions; the tiny popcorn explosions of bullet impacts ripped at the two killers' bodies and they grunted in shock, toppling backward under the repeated impact and falling with arms splayed, dead before they reached the ground.

Renton and Eureka held each other with the strength of terror, then slowly stood as silence returned. "What ha..." he began, then cleared his dry throat and began again, "What happened?"

Her violent trembling nearly prevented her from speaking. "I d-don't know. Was it Holland and the others? Are we safe now? C-can we...?"

She never finished. From the underbrush on all sides, dark figures emerged like moving shadows, all of them in thin, tight black costumes, black stretch masks covering their heads and faces. They held SFARs raised and ready as they advanced, step by step, in a slow circle. "I'm going to try and lift us both away," she murmured to him, determination steeling her voice.

"No, you've got to get away yourself -- you'll never be able to get us both off the ground fast enough." Before she could argue, Renton wrenched himself away from her and stepped forward, toward the leading shadow-man. I love you, Eureka. Get away now. Please. "How did you find us?" he demanded, staring boldly at the place where the man's eyes had to be.

"We have been looking for you, long, since you entered this jungle." The man in black did not slow his steps.

"You can't have her," Renton promised, tightening his hands into fists. "Not while I'm alive."

The mesh-covered head nodded, as if its owner had expected nothing less. "Then you must..." In a single lightning sweep, he raised the SFAR to shoulder position and unleashed a sawtooth roar of sustained fire, immediately joined by two, three, four of his companions, pouring death through the dancing firelight.

Astonished, beyond fear, Eureka and Renton turned to see the female killer wounded by Renton's RPP roll out of the underbrush, the rifle with which she had hoped to cut them down dropping from her lifeless hand.

Eureka began to sob. Renton wrapped his arms about her, holding her close. "Who are you people?" he shouted to the black-shrouded gunman who'd fired over their shoulders. "Who the hell are you?"

Very deliberately, the man lowered himself to one knee, placing the SFAR beside him on the road and pulling the elastic black mesh from his shaven head. Between his clear gray eyes, he wore a peculiar small tattoo of a five-spoked wheel. All around them, the others likewise knelt and revealed themselves, men and women alike laying down their weapons in an attitude of reverence.

"I apologize most sincerely for the necessity of this violent introduction," he said in a resonant voice, eyes downcast. "Forgive me, Sir and Lady."

Shocked, Renton could only stare. "Uhhhh... Okay. And you are...?"

And at last the kneeling man raised his face to the incredulous couple in the light of the flames, now mingled with the swelling of a new dawn. "My name is Viyuuden. And we are yours to command."

Eighteen

Holland lay helpless on his left side, gnawing at his dark thoughts. The long blindfolded forced march through the jungle had been humiliating enough, but being dragged here to this nest of fanatics with hands tied only made an already intolerable situation worse.

Once more, he tugged at the wires holding his wrists together, achieving nothing more than an increase in the growing numbness in his fingers. The chain looped about his bonds jingled in a cheerful way, infuriating him. If only he could somehow cut the damned wires, he could...

"You cannot break either the wires or the chain," said Ken-Goh, sitting beside him. "But you may do yourself an injury by trying."

Holland rolled himself to a sitting position, shaking off the pebbles clinging to his skin from the bare ground. "I don't take well to being tied up and chained to the dirt."

"No more than do I. But consider the nature of the problem: we are all of us bound and held prisoner, chained to metal posts driven into hard ground in a clearing whose location we know not. Our weapons have been taken. Our captors are criminals who have refrained from murdering us only because they plan to sell us to our most bitter enemies."

"All right, I've considered it." Holland permitted himself an angry glance toward the crude barracks some thirty meters distant, where the lights showed that at least some of the VOP guerrillas were still awake, probably deciding on how best to hand them over to the Federation. "So now that I've thought it over, what am I supposed to do?"

Ken-Goh shrugged his powerful shoulders. "You are supposed to wait for...our friends to return with help."

Up the line of stakes holding their chains, Anemone screamed again. "My pills! My damned pills! I've lost my pills! I want them, I need them, I need my pills! Damn you, Dominic, where are my pills? Oh, God, what'm I going to do? I need my pills!"

"She is getting very bad," observed Ken-Goh quietly.

"Yeah. If I'd known just how heavily medicated she was, I'd never have invited her and Dominic to come along. Or Stoner."

"Do not judge him too harshly. He is a naïve idealist, not a traitor. Naïve idealists often do stupid things."

"I've been trying to console myself with that thought. Hasn't worked yet. Listen, Ken-Goh, even if Ren...even if our friends get to the Moonlight before we're trussed up and dragged out of the interference zone to a Federation carrier, it'll still be too late. The ship can't fly in here, and neither can the LFOs. They'll have to hike in, just like we did, and it'll take just as much time. Not to mention that we don't have any idea where the hell we are ourselves." Again he pulled against the wires on his wrists, ending with a snarl of defeat. "Maybe it's me who's the naïve idealist. It was a stupid idea to come in here on foot."

Anemone began to sob, loudly. They could hear Dominic making a patient attempt to comfort her, to no effect.

"No. You are an idealist, yes, but never a naïve one. Only in hindsight do we see that Stoner would carry his crusading fantasies to such an extent. Where is he, by the way? I saw those VOP hooligans drag him here, but I cannot see where he was tethered."

Holland gestured with a jerk of one shoulder. "Just beyond Dominic and Anemone, I think. I haven't heard him say a word. Either in shock or too ashamed to talk. As if anybody'd talk to him anyway."

A door opened at the distant barracks, sending light out onto the bare, stony ground. "Shut up the blubbering, you whining broad!"

A few meters away, Tommy murmured something obscene. But her resentment only seemed to spur Anemone to greater volume. "Who the hell d'you think you are? Take these wires off my hands! They hurt! And bring me my pills, damn you!"

The dark figure outlined in the light of the open doorway paused, hands on hips for a moment, then closed the door behind him and walked toward them, his boots crunching heavily on the gravelly ground.

He stood before Anemone, staring down with a cold and confident smile. A select-fire rifle hung over one shoulder. "Our chief, he doesn't like all the noise, little doll. Why don't you just shut your mouth?"

"I don't care, I don't care, I don't care!" She thrashed at her restraints, hitting the ground with her joined fists, kicking out in all directions.

"She's not well," said Dominic, glowering as he edged himself closer.

"No?" The guard grunted out a sour laugh. "She looks pretty good to me." Nervously, he glanced back over one shoulder, toward the distant barracks. "The Chief, he says to me 'Raymon,' he says, 'Nobody's to lay so much as a hand on those girls -- before I do.' Yeah, rank has its privileges, you know? But I think maybe the Chief is gonna be too busy for any fun." He squatted, rubbing his hand slowly up and down Anemone's bare thigh. "I got plenty of time, though, little doll. Know what I mean?"

"You dirty pig!" she screamed, lashing out with one leg and kicking him hard in the chest.

Raymon rolled over backward, sprawled in the dirt, his stubbled face taking on a mean and dangerous look as he scrabbled to his feet once again. "You wanna play rough, little doll. Okay, I like it rough, too. Just as long as I can -- play." He snatched at her ankle, pawing for the thongs of the lower half of her pink bathing suit.

"Hands off, you!" growled Dominic, throwing himself between them. "She's had enough of ignorant manure like you. Get away!"

"I'm not going nowhere, boy!" He wheeled the rifle from his back and swung the butt end up, hard, against Dominic's face, then up and down on his head, again and again, until Dominc lay still and bleeding in the dirt at the end of his chain.

The others shouted at once, curses, threats, but against their chains none of them could come close enough to interrupt Raymon's sweaty advances. As Anemone squealed and squirmed and sobbed, he fumbled about the ground on hands and knees, grasping for her, just beyond his reach but getting nearer with each lunge. She kicked again, but having learned his lesson once, Raymon dodged aside and grabbed her leg just in front of his face. "Come on, little doll, gimme; don't be so shy. I'm not gonna hurt you -- much."

"No! Get off! Get...off!"

Panting in a hoarse rattle, he smirked down at her, pinning one arm as he stroked her cheek with obscene intimacy. "Not yet, doll, not yet, I'm just gettin' ready...that's a real cute little snatch of cloth you got on, but you'd look a hell of a lot better without...without..."

From behind him, Matt Stoner rose noiselessly up in the simmering dark, grim and seething. With a quick thrust, he pulled his bound wrists over Raymon's throat, pulling, dragging him to his feet, off his feet, tighter and tighter. Raymon jerked and twitched, thrashing in desperate horror, unable to free himself, unable to breathe, a lifetime of brutal rage dwindling in his murky eyes. And then with a dull, sickening snap, Raymon stopped his struggling and hung like a limp puppet from Stoner's upraised wrists.

The others stared in dead silence, hardly able to believe what they had witnessed. Then Stoner dropped the empty shell of Raymon to the ground like a bag of distasteful refuse. "My God," he breathed, staring down at his own trembling hands. "And I believed in these people."

Matthieu came to his senses first of all. "Stoner," he hissed, keeping his voice as low as possible. "Stoner! His pockets -- has he got anything in his pockets? A file? A knife?"

"What? To get these wires off, you mean? Right, good thinking." He knelt beside the body, coldly rummaging through the dead man's shorts for anything that might be used to escape. "No. Just some money and a few more rounds of ammunition...wait a minute. The rifle. It's got a bayonet with a sawtooth edge." Growing excited, he sat and jammed the automatic between his knees, barrel and bayonet pointed upward, moving his wrists rapidly up and down against the blade. In less than a minute, one strand of the wire wrapping snapped free and he unraveled the rest in short order. "Here, Matthieu, cut yourself loose and then unclip the bayonet and get the others. Holland -- I'm no soldier; do you want the gun?"

The only emotion Holland permitted to reach his face or voice was the hard determination of command. "No, you keep it for now -- lay prone about halfway down to that barracks and use it on anybody who comes out to see what all the shouting was about. Tommy -- as soon as you're free, see how Dominic is and do what you can to calm Anemone down."

"Has anyone noticed," said Ken-Goh, fidgeting as he awaited his turn to loose himself from his bonds, "that we are beginning to be able to see each other? There is a distinct glow in the sky over there."

Hap hurried over and sawed at the wires over his wrists "It's the dawn, Maestro. The sun's gonna start coming up before long. We'd better be out of here by then. There; get the Leader's wires after you're done."

Once freed, Holland hurried over to the place where Tommy bent over the motionless Dominic, gingerly pressing at spots on his face and head. "How is he?"

"Alive, but banged up pretty bad. Don't take my word for it, 'cause I'm no medic, but I think he might've got a cracked skull. Maybe his jaw, too. And a concussion. He's healing fast, but he's in no shape to run, that's for sure."

"Uh-huh." He looked toward Anemone, now curled in a fetal ball, her Coralian eyes staring at nothing. "How about her?"

Tommy shook her head. "Catatonic. I'm no medic, and I'm for sure no magician, which's what she probably needs. Beats the hell of me what her problem is. She's not gonna do any more running than her husband, though."

"Damn. Can you carry her?"

"I guess so. But --"

"Good. Jobs -- can you carry Dominic across your shoulders?"

He ran one hand across his scalp, where a rough stubble of returning hair showed itself. "I think so, as long as I don't have to move too fast. Where are we going?"

Holland pointed into the forest just beyond Tommy's back. "That way. We were headed southeast yesterday. The strongest glow in the sky is over there, so this way must be southeast. We'll run into the road sooner or later. You two pick up Anemone and Dominic and get a head start in that direction. Now, dammit! If anyone looks out the windows in the next couple of minutes, we're all dead." Without looking back to see if they obeyed, he ran to Ken-Goh, who had just finished using the bayonet blade to pick the lock holding his chain to its stake, and now wound it about one shoulder. "Maestro, you go down and get the rifle from Stoner; we're moving out and you'll cover our rear. Give the knife to Hap. Double time -- the light's getting stronger fast."

"Very well. You take this chain, then -- I would hate to see you completely weaponless."

With Ken-Goh and the rifle guarding their rear, the little group scrambled up the mildly sloping clearing and into the edge of the dense forest, each one of them expecting the impact of a bullet at any second. Jobs, in the lead, stumbled once under Dominic's weight as he tripped over a hidden root, but recovered himself and staggered on.

"How far t'the road, I wonder," panted Tommy, bearing Anemone draped over one shoulder like a rolled carpet.

Hap hacked away a low-hanging branch with the bayonet. "Unless we're awfully close to the Vodarek temple, it's not gonna make a lot of difference. The road's no safer than the forest right now. Maybe even less so."

"And the sky's getting brighter," Holland agreed, leaping over a fallen trunk. "It'll be real dawn in just a couple of --"

Beyond the canopy of trees above them, a sustained low-altitude roar shattered the stillness of the unseen sky, shaking the trees themselves, making further conversation impossible until it gradually passed by to the northeast. "What the hell was that?" cried Matthieu. "It can't be an aircraft -- nothing can fly in this zone."

Ken-Goh spared it only a moment's glance overhead. "Whatever it was, it has surely brought our kidnappers out of their den. Which means that they will now have seen that we have fled. And that we..."

A bullet crackled past his face, embedding itself in one of the pines beside him. "Time's up, people," Holland shouted. "Stay behind the trees as much as you can and don't stop running!"

None of them needed the advice. Ken-Goh fired two shots on the run, to force their pursuers to keep their distance. But they were all tiring as the leaping and dodging over uneven terrain and through trees and underbrush ate up what remained of their energy reserves. Holland took Anemone from Tommy, and signaled Hap to shoulder Dominic after Jobs tripped once again, bringing him briefly to his knees. The shots from the rear rattled again, cutting through branches above and around them. Though the VOP clearly couldn't get a clear shot at them yet, it would only be a matter of minutes.

"Keep going!" cried Holland. "The game's not over till you quit! You want those slime getting the best of Gekkostate? Keep moving!"

On Hap's back, Dominic began to moan and twitch, regaining consciousness, making him even harder to hold. Ken-Goh fired again, three times, and answering fire from several rifles came almost at once.

A thin streak of fire flashed past, striking a pine branch that exploded into flame. "That's an RPP," coughed Jobs. "They're using our own weapons against us."

"Yeah." Holland shifted Anemone again. "Here, take her, will you? I'm going to try something to slow them down." Once Jobs had her on his own back, Holland waited for the others to pass, then wrapped one end of the chain Ken-Goh had given him around one of the smaller tree trunks, pulling the other around the base of a thick bush. Would the undergrowth be thick enough here for such a simple trap to work? Anything was worth a try. Cinching the knot, he ran again, driving himself to catch up to the rest, his chest already raw and painful with each breath of the searing jungle air.

Shots exploded from behind, and his right side burned with wet pain so shocking that he toppled forward, his momentum carrying him forward and down, face scraping along the rough jungle floor. Each time he brought his legs up to run again, the long rip in his side opened and the shattered ends of the ribs beneath grated against each other. He touched the wound, and saw with a strange detachment the blood shining on his fingers. This is it. No more cute escapes with Yuki at the controls. Who'd have thought Holland Novak would finally buy it in a stinking hot jungle, shot down by a gang of grubby maniacs who think they're brave revolutionaries? He opened his eyes and looked toward the quick, heavy footsteps coming from behind. Screw that. They'd have to face him as they moved in for the kill.

Three of them came crashing through the shrubbery, waving their guns in all directions. Two tangled their feet in Holland's chain and went down heavily, one screaming as he impaled himself through the cheek on his own bayonet. The third tottered to a stop, took one look at Holland, lying helpless in the dirt, and lifted his rifle...

A clatter of automatic fire shook the air behind Holland, and the VOP rifleman fell back, clawing at the barrage of bullets Ken-Goh blasted into his chest. "Come," he shouted to Holland, pulling him upright with one powerful arm.

"I can't... I'm hit, I'll drag you down..."

"Is this the man to whom I entrusted the ship I designed? Come! We can at least die on our feet! Do not..."

Seven more of the VOP pursuers appeared, then nine and more, all of them aiming at Holland and Ken-Goh but not opening fire. In a moment they understood why, as Colonel Peres himself stepped into their midst, Stoner's red beret still squashed down on his greasy hair. His hand went to the pistol belt he wore over his gray shorts...and never quite made it.

From the southern side of the forest, something enormous came striding through the trees, waving the giant boughs aside like a man hurrying through tall grass. With pounding steps that shook the ground, it advanced upon them, a looming angular giant of green-enameled metal that caught the first rays of the dawn on its distorted semblance of a face, a face now turned toward the Voice of the People thugs who stood speechless with horror. One or two of them screamed and turned to run, but it was already too late, for a beam of raw heat that forced even Holland and Ken-Goh to turn away raked the ground behind in a flaming semicircle, leaving a broad smoking strip of molten earth that effectively cut off escape. The rest took one look at the twelve homing-missile tubes and three antiaircraft cannon now pointed directly down at them along with the combat laser and wisely elected to stay where they were.

At the same time, a swarm of SFAR-carrying newcomers in black flowed out of the darkness between the trees, their faces turned upon Peres' followers with distaste. "Put down your weapons," commanded their leader. One of them attempted to shoot his way out, only to be sheared in half by a roar of high-speed automatic fire from three SFARs. Peres sank to his knees, looking as if he might vomit at any moment; the others threw aside their guns and blubbered for mercy.

"It is the Type Seven!" laughed Ken-Goh, slapping Holland hard on one shoulder. "We are saved!"

Holland lurched as the blow sent an explosion of pain along the rip in his side, but ignored it, light-headed with relief as the big LFO lowered itself into a semi-folded position behind them, its cockpit only about three meters above ground level. "And there are only two people who can fly it. They made it! I don't know how, but they made it!"

As the canopy of the Type Seven went transparent and hissed open, two very concerned and very familiar faces peeked down. "Are you guys okay?" called Renton.

"I'm hit but it's starting to heal, if Ken-Goh doesn't kill me first. You two are late. What took you so long? And who are your friends?"

Eureka smiled in a pleasant way. "They call themselves the 'Guardians of the Flame' -- they're Vodarek, from the temple just ahead. Their leader is Viyuuden."

While his associates bound the disarmed VOP rebels with steel manacles, Viyuuden turned to Holland with a little bow, looking him over very intently. "So you're Holland Novak. Some years ago, I spent a great deal of time hiding from you."

"I'm...glad you succeeded. But what are...?"

"Pleased as I am to hear this news," interrupted Ken-Goh, "both Dominic and Anemone are in dangerous condition. You must find them and --"

Renton shook his head rapidly. "Jobs and Matthieu're already loading them into the Moonlight's shuttle; it's parked in the road about half a kilometer back there. The Moonlight's landed at the Vodarek town that's built around the temple."

Ken-Goh's extravagant mustache twitched. "They were able to fly into the suppression zone? How can this...?"

"The Vodarek lowered their trapar barrier long enough for us to get off a message and for the ship to get in. But never mind now!" He reached out with the massive portside manipulator hand and raised the body of the Type Seven halfway up on its legs. "Just climb on, and we'll get you out of here."

Holland looked back, still in doubt. But the sight of Viyuuden's cool smile convinced him that his own part in this particular battle was now over. He allowed Ken-Goh to help him into the Type Seven's manipulator, feeling very much as though something significant -- just what he could not yet say -- had passed behind him forever.

Nineteen

Dominic and Anemone lay side by side, nude and still unconscious, on a table of carved stone beneath a simple oil lamp that somehow seemed to give off far more illumination than it should. Laurel, the white-robed Vodarek priestess, stood at their feet, her brown eyes closed, her arms spread, saying nothing. From time to time, she altered the positions of her fingers minutely and in precise combinations, but nothing that Eureka or Renton could perceive changed in any way.

At last she sighed, brushing back her long black hair from her eyes. But Renton noticed that she did not smile. "Are they gonna be all right?" he asked.

"Captain Sorel will, certainly. Though it is only thanks to the Coralian Gift you both bear that he is alive at all. His mending proceeds rapidly. I've caused him to sleep for a while longer to speed his healing even more."

Eureka intertwined her fingers, fidgeting anxiously. Neither of them had stopped to clean themselves or change into fresh clothing, in spite of the repeated invitations of the Vodarek faithful. "You're only speaking about Dominic, though. What about Anemone?"

"I am on very unsure ground with her, Lady." She shook her head in sympathy. "Both her body and her seirei are so very unique. She shows no signs of awakening, and I think now that her case will require the presence of Viyuuden himself. The instant he returns from disposing of those Voice of the People vandals, he will be summoned. Your Honours will be notified at once, of course."

"Uh, what exactly does that mean?" asked Renton. "How are him and the Guardians doing their 'disposing?'"

Laurel smiled in a kindly way. Though probably no older than her mid-thirties, she wore the serene air of one who had seen far more years. "Your concern for those who did you and your companions such harm does you great credit, Sir. Each of them will be stripped naked and taken to randomly-chosen locations several hundred kilometers apart. There, they will be released, far from each other. Those who are capable will come to understand the poor decisions they have made if they find their way back to civilization. For the rest...we do not care."

He glanced toward Eureka, a twinkle of her forehead jewel telling him that she understood as well as he the likely fate of the ones who failed to reach enlightenment. "Okay. But...what do we do now? I saw a crowd of Vodarek outside the Temple when we came in here, and it looked kind of like they were getting ready for something. Is it anything to do with with us all barging in here to your hidden city?"

"What?" The priestess seemed genuinely amused. "Sir Renton, the presence of yourself and the Lady could never be anything but a delight to us. Indeed, that's one reason the Vodarek community has gathered here at the temple -- to welcome you. We have known of your approach for a long time; you are always in the Coral's thoughts."

"You said one thing," Renton pointed out. "What're the others?"

"Why, we await the coming of Ariadne, whose appearance has been foretold, of course."

Eureka sucked in her breath and edged still closer to Renton. "Ariadne? You know about her? Then tell me, please, Laurel -- who is she?"

"Why, I don't..." The woman looked back at her, wide-eyed, at a loss. "Why, Lady...we were...we were hoping that you could tell us."

"Oh." Ever so slightly, Eureka sagged, but smiled at her all the same. "I see. Well, thank you for all you've done for Anemone and Dominic. Where are our other friends?"

"Not far, Lady. Our people are eager to see them, for we have followed their exploits from afar for years, and they are all of them renowned heroes among us. You will all of course be given living quarters during your stay among us. I will take you to them now, if you like. "

Renton nodded and took Eureka's hand. "Yeah, we'd like that, please."

They found the Moonlight crew gathered in a large antechamber, open to the sky and overlooking the town on one side, its walls covered in peculiar abstract-like wooden bas-reliefs that led the eye in unexpected directions. "Mama! Papa!" shouted the children, happily running forward to embrace them. No one thought to question the absence of Matt Stoner.

All the others pressed in behind, full of questions about Dominic and Anemone. "But what about you?" said Renton to Holland, when they had answered to the best of their limited ability. "You said you got shot."

"Good as new; I'll live to ref another day. Not even a scar left any more." He displayed his right side, where only a clean streak through the grime suggested that there had ever been a wound at all. "We were just worried about those two inside, and the Vodarek wouldn't let us in. They said only priests and the 'High Ones' could get close to them now. That'd be you two, I suppose."

"I wish they'd stop all that 'Sir' and 'High Ones' stuff," Renton said, blushing deeply.

Matthieu laughed through his sardonic smirk. "Hey, don't complain -- we never got promotions like that when we worked for the Federation." Hilda reached back to give him a good-natured swat, then thought better of it and hugged him, blinking back tears.

"Pardon me, Lady Eureka and Sir Renton." One of the younger Vodarek faithful, little older than Renton himself, approached and bowed, displaying his shaven scalp and wheel tattoo. "We've permitted another shuttlecraft through our shield. The people inside are friends of yours, and they're very anxious to meet you, if you're willing. They've come a long way."

"Friends?" said Eureka. "We're always glad to see friends. Please show them here."

The young man made a gesture toward one of the radially-branching hallways, and two very familiar figures hurried to them, wrapped in white-and-gold Vodarek robes. "Dr. Bear!" blurted Holland.

"Mischa!" Maeter shouted, running to her with open arms.

"I am relieved to see you all once again, whole and well," said Egan in a perfunctory way. "We have heard the news about Captain Sorel and his wife -- tell me at once, what is their condition?"

"Dominic's definitely gonna be all right," said Renton. "The Vodarek don't know yet about Anemone. Viyuuden himself will look at her when he gets back. Viyuuden is --"

"Yes, yes, I know who he is. Damn it all. I should have foreseen all of factors bearing on on your journey. My stupidity has endangered you all -- and most particularly you and your wife. None of our intelligence reports indicated that the Voice of the People were so well-informed, nor that they would be so brazen as to make attempts upon your persons. How could they have known of you and your errand?"

"We can talk about that later," Holland said. "But people aren't as neat and predictable as engineering problems. They have minds of their own; they do unexpected things. You can't think of everything, Dr. Bear."

"I should be able to! When lives are at stake, it is imperative that all calculations be without flaw!" He raised his fists before his face, as if to call down the wrath of the heavens themselves.

"But what did you have to do with our expedition, Doctor?" asked Jobs. "And...what are you doing in those robes?"

"He's entitled to wear them -- because he and Dr. Svarovsky have worked so long with the Vodarek community," echoed a hard, deep voice from behind. Viyuuden bore down upon them with long, urgent strides, his cheek bruised, his black jungle clothing torn across the chest. "Like Holland Novak and the rest of you who make up Gekkostate, they have proven themselves by their deeds and their courage to be true disciples of Norbu." He turned directly to Eureka and Renton, shutting the rest of them from his attention completely. "I had our shuttle pilot return me here immediately I received news of Anemone's condition. Has she deteriorated further?"

"Not when we last saw her, a few minutes ago," said Eureka. "She's in a coma of some kind. Laurel has put Dominic in a trance, waiting until you arrived."

"Then she took the correct action; good. But it will only delay the inevitable."

Renton realized then that he had completely underestimated the seriousness of Anemone's condition. "The...inevitable? But you can cure her, right?"

"No. This is far beyond my abilities. For her to have any chance of keeping her sanity and her life, the power of the most profound masters on the planet will be needed."

"Well, then...we've gotta get them here, right? How long will it take? Where do these masters live?"

"They are standing before me at this moment. If you and your wife will accompany me, we'll begin the rite at once."

"Us?" squeaked Eureka. "But Renton and I don't have any special powers!"

Viyuuden's fierce gaze encompassed them both with its intensity. "Lady Eureka, neither you nor Sir Renton have any idea what powers you command. Today, you will begin to learn. Please come with me at once."

Twenty

Viyuuden led them back to the small, dim chamber where Dominic and Anemone lay together and kicked the heavy door shut behind them. Stripping off the thin black shirt he wore as a jungle fighter, he spread his arms over the inert couple much as Laurel had, though whatever silent ritual he worked took only a matter of seconds. He turned to the puzzled Renton and Eureka, still scowling with concern. "The first thing we must do is to wake Captain Sorel and explain his wife's condition to him. Lady Eureka, please stand behind your husband and clasp your arms around his chest."

"Like...like this?"

"Yes. Do not let go, or break the skin-to-skin contact at any time! It is now necessary to build up a strong concentration of trapar in this room."

Even at such a time, Renton could not entirely avoid the thrill of Eureka's arms around his bare chest. "But I can't make trapar," he protested. "Only Eureka can do that, with her wings."

"Yes, only the Messenger can create trapar, Renton-sama. But only the Chosen can direct it. And you are the one who was Chosen. Lady Eureka, please begin to create a trapar flow, and use your will to couple it to your husband."

Hesitant, but trusting the strange militant priest, Eureka spread her wings and made the adjustment inside of her to charge them with trapar, flushing them a brilliant green, tinged with living ripples of light. At once, the lamp above the stone table went out, her wings providing the only illumination.

"Should we join our minds?" she asked, not entirely certain what to do next.

"No! That much power you cannot yet control. Just direct your trapar into Sir Renton. Visualize it flowing from your wings into his body."

She pictured the dazzling green liquid light now surging out of her extended wings trickling forward, and as she did so it obediently streamed along her arms in little shining rivulets, growing stronger and more easily controlled with each passing second.

Renton tensed as the trapar rushed into his own body, a cold tingling like electrically-charged water, gravitating toward his chest, then spreading to arms, legs and head. He grew giddy for a moment, then forced away the lure of the trapar's intoxication and faced Viyuuden with confidence. "Now what do I do?"

"You've both done well so far -- I expected you to require far more time to gain control. Now, Renton-sama, please saturate this room with the trapar your wife is creating. It will be...most convenient if you use your arms."

He examined his hands, afire with dancing trapar, and understood immediately. Oh, yeah. I get it, now. Just spray it out like a couple of hoses. He extended his arms, gathered his concentration, and released twin streams of green energy that poured against one wall, narrowly missing Viyuuden himself, who jumped aside, astonished.

"A bit more diffuse, Sir Renton! And a bit less powerful, please. The trapar must merely infuse the atmosphere, not exert force...yes, that's it...perfect. Now you must keep on charging the room with trapar, until I signal you to stop. Do not fear; under my guidance, the trapar concentration will not harm them."

Viyuuden positioned himself at the foot of the platform once again, wrapped in the fiery sheen of the green flames, and closed his eyes. After a brief chant, Dominic opened his eyes, blinked several times and rose up on his elbows, clearly disconcerted at finding himself naked in a strange room beside Anemone, floating in living green light. "Renton? Eureka? Where the hell are we? What's going on? Anemone! What's the matter with her?"

"It's okay, Dominic. We're in the Vodarek temple. You'll be okay, even though Holland said you got beat up pretty badly. But Anemone needs help. This's Viyuuden, the head priest that we came here to meet, and he's gonna cure her."

Viyuuden only shook his head. "That is incorrect, Captain Sorel. If your wife can be saved, it is you who will save her. Your friends and I can only provide the mechanism."

"All right." Dominic's face took on its accustomed seriousness. "I don't understand any of this, but if Anemone's in danger, I'm ready. What do I have to do?"

"You must reach into her mind and share her pain. All of it. She was tormented beyond all endurance at the sadistic hands of the Federation, and the suppressed agony and rage of it has been slowly claiming her mind. According to what I've been told, she was nearly ravished by one of the VOP beasts who captured you last night, and that experience pushed her fragile sanity past its limits. Her seirei has retreated into the world of horror her thoughts have created in the seventh dimension. Only one who loves her can accept the burden of her pain and perhaps have a chance of leading her out again."

"You want them to join their minds?" said Eureka, holding tight to Renton. "I thought only half-human, half-coralians could do that."

Viyuuden spared her a quick, sharp glance. "She is half-human, half-coralian, Lady Eureka. What the Federation attempted to do to her with its perverted science was impossible. But the Coral, for unknown reasons of its own, intervened and accomplished the alterations to her DNA that no human genetics ever could. She is an artificial hybrid, but a true one nonetheless." He turned his attention back to Dominic, who now held tightly to Anemone's limp hand. "Do not enter into this lightly, Captain. I'm not a wizard, and I cannot guarantee success. It may be that her mind is so thoroughly damaged that even you, her husband, cannot lead her back to the light. And I warn you -- receiving all of her pain in a single burst will be a shattering experience; some danger does exist that your own mind will be broken beyond repair. These are the facts. You must now make your own decision of your own will."

Dominic looked toward Anemone, lost in her silent dream of agony, and nodded, once. "I made my decision a long time ago. Let's get going."

"Very well. Lady Eureka and Renton-sama -- please increase the trapar density surrounding the Captain and his wife."

Renton and Eureka whispered to each other for a moment, then he extended one arm and a fresh stream of trapar shot toward the stone table, forming a near-opaque cloud around the two. He stared, startled, as Viyuuden nodded acknowledgment, then reached beneath the stone table for a small glass bottle of faintly glowing yellow fluid, pouring it to the tabletop. In seconds, it flowed across the entire surface. Dominic groaned in pain and screwed his eyes shut, growing instantly rigid as droplets of sweat glistened on his drawn face.

Viyuuden passed one hand above the two on the table, and something resembling a liquid spark snapped out between Dominic and Anemone, lingering in the air above them, connecting them at a spot on their foreheads that corresponded to the position of the jewels borne by Eureka and Renton. For a moment, nothing happened. And then Dominic began to scream, again and again, as if every nerve were being ripped from his body. Though Renton and Eureka cringed, Viyuuden watched impassively until the screams gradually faded and both of them lay still, hand in hand.

"It's done," said Viyuuden at last. "You may cease the trapar flow, but please let the concentration around them remain for a time. You do well, both of you. Amazingly so, in fact. You seem to have an instinctive sense for these skills, though it's certainly naïve of me to be surprised."

The lamp above the table rose to full brilliance once more. Eureka disengaged herself from Renton, though both of them felt a nagging reluctance. "What about Anemone?" she asked. "Is she cured? Will she be all right now? And what about Dominic?"

"He is wandering the seventh dimension, working to lead her back from the madness that imprisons her in her own thoughts. It will be some time before we know how successful he has been." For the first time, his face took on a more kindly cast. "We have done all that we can; now they are one with the will of Vodarek. For the time being, I must go to my quarters, where I can clean myself, find appropriate clothing and meditate. I'll have someone show you to your own rooms. Your children are already housed separately, and are sleeping after an exciting morning."

"But we want to know --" began Renton.

He opened the door with a bow and gestured them outside, where the sunlight fell harsh and brilliant upon their faces. "Yes, Sir Renton, you have a thousand questions -- and I have a million answers; perhaps more than you will care to hear. Later this evening, I will speak with you and your followers, but for now you have had a long and very unpleasant journey. Rest and compose yourselves. Both the temple and our town, fleeting though they may be, are yours to explore when you're ready."

Renton dug in his heels, determined not to be brushed off so easily. "Wait a minute -- we came here to have something done about this Coralian Gift that they've put on us. You've got to tell us what to do."

Summoning a young acolyte, the priest regarded them both with a tight smile and eyes that revealed nothing. "My Lord Renton, the time is rapidly drawing nearer when you and Lady Eureka will be telling us what to do. In the meantime, please accept my advice and go to the suite of rooms we have prepared for you."

Viyuuden would not be swayed; Renton and Eureka finally allowed themselves to be taken to an upper floor of the roughly pyramidal temple building, where they found themselves alone in peace and comfort for the first time in days.

Their rooms were not luxurious -- Renton doubted that anything approaching true luxury would be found anywhere on the grounds of either the temple or the surrounding town. But compared to either their tent in the distant forest of their first year together or the stark military cabins of the Moonlight, they found it all nearly too sumptuous to be real.

"I almost feel guilty being here," said Eureka as they wandered from room to room, "when Anemone and Dominic are still in such terrible danger downstairs."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. But I guess Viyuuden's right -- there's nothing more we can do for them now." He held his hands before his face, fascinated, a bit apprehensive. "Was that really us controlling all that trapar? I didn't know we could do that."

She wandered to one of the long open windows of their bedroom, looking down over the two hundred meters to the temple's base. A loose group of locals, a few wearing Vodarek ceremonial robes, most in typically scant Samit Prakkun hot-weather wear, milled about excitedly, pointing upward now and then. Beyond, a small town with neatly laid-out streets, small houses and what looked to be markets extended toward the north. To the south, the Moonlight squatted like a nesting vulture on a green meadow scorched by landing thrusters. The Type Seven, collapsed into its ground mode, nestled beneath the portside wing. Knots of children played around both of them, crying out to each other and looking up in awe at the hulking warcraft. "Things are getting complicated again, aren't they, Renton? Every time we think we're finally going to have our life to ourselves, someone considers us the most important two people on the planet and we're on the run again." Impatiently, she pulled off her little cloth bib and let it fall to the ground, to be followed seconds later by the tiny skirt and sandals.

Outlined against the cloudless sky, Eureka's dryadic beauty filled his vision. "Uh...no. I mean, yeah. All those hints Viyuuden kept dropping about how we don't know our power and how we're gonna be giving him orders someday. Something's for sure going on that we don't know about. I'm glad he saved us when he did, but now I wish he'd go back to waiting for Ariadne or something and let us alone for a while."

"Ariadne! I'm so sick of hearing about her!" She turned to face him, her Coralian eyes blazing. "I wish the Coral had never decided you needed an 'Ariadne,' and just..." Eureka trailed off, realizing at once how her innermost thoughts had just exposed themselves.

Renton picked himself from the softness of the mattress where he'd been sitting. "Wait a minute... You think 'I' need an Ariadne? You think...?" He stretched forth his mind and at last her secret shameful fears came gushing out of her in all their chaotic ugliness: her old insecurity; the terror of losing him; the dread certainty that Ariadne would be an improved model, without the obsessive worries, the hesitations, the self-doubts of her predecessor. Ariadne would be brighter, quicker, more decisive, self-assured, confident...and orders of magnitude more beautiful.

And she would replace Eureka in his heart because the Coral would accept only the best to carry out its mysterious plans.

He walked forward, slowly, toward the light, toward her, his arms held wide. "Eureka, nobody could ever... I mean, I love you... I'll never let you go, never want somebody else..." But the words alone, he knew, made only poor echoes of his real feelings, inadequate to sooth those open wounds within her that would never completely heal. Watching her in all her beauty against the brilliant equatorial sky, Renton drew her to him, his jewel aflame as he sent her the swelling warmth in his own heart.

Eureka swayed and fell into his arms, laughing and crying in equal parts, thrilled and relieved and more in love than ever. Her rainbow-tinged wings swept forward to embrace him; their two minds touched and became one. They kissed, warm and without restraint, and long after the naked sun of Thuu Bak had surrendered the sky, the fire of trapar-flame continued to blaze from the windows of Lady Eureka and Renton-sama.

Twenty-One

A young moon rode low in the deep blue-black sky of Thuu Bak when one of the temple messengers knocked politely at their door to request the Sir and Lady's presence with Viyuuden and several other honored guests near the apex of the Vodarek pyramid. They followed him upward along sloping corridors of stone, lit by softly glowing yellow lamps inset into the walls. The entire temple seemed to pulse with a low, musical chant that rose and fell, solemn yet somehow bright and hopeful at the same time.

"What's all the chanting about?" Renton asked the messenger. After a welcome shower, he had found a pair of clean Thuu Bakkian shorts and fresh sandals in their closet. Eureka saw nothing to replace the little lace top Yuki and Annette had fashioned for her, so she settled for cutting out the back of a loose, brief pullover dress of some gossamer blue material, much like the short gowns she wore aboard ship. Privately, Renton suspected it was meant to be the upper half of a flimsy nightgown of sorts, but she looked so devastating in it that he said nothing that might discourage her.

"It's a mantra to open the mind to the thoughts of the Coralian, Renton-sama. For nearly a month, we've all seen the signs of Ariadne's approach. Soon she will appear, another Coralian in human form. It's an event of very great significance to the Vodarek community and to the world -- whether the world knows it or not."

"Are there caves nearby?" Eureka asked, her soft voice echoing from the marble walls. "Sakuya and I were formed in caves, where the trapar concentration was very high. It's high in this area, too."

He nodded, shifting the braid into which he'd wound his long hair. "Exactly so, Lady. And yes, there are caves -- several of our people are stationed at them, meditating, in case she should appear there. But most of us are gathered in the main sanctum, on the ground level of this temple. I'd be happy to show you after your meeting with Viyuuden -- your honored presences would be welcomed... Here is his working room; please enter. If you should need assistance at any time, you have only to summon me. My symbolic name among the Vodarek is 'Kitsune.'"

"Thanks, Kitsune." Renton considered the heavy door before him, of some richly polished wood, probably mahogany. The symbol of a five-spoked wheel, inlaid in silvery metal, dominated it like the face of some ancient shield. Without knocking, he turned the handle, held it open for Eureka, and followed her inside.

Gathered around a low oval table, Viyuuden, Dr. Egan, Mischa, Holland and Yuki all looked up with solemn faces that alarmed Renton at once. Quickly, he looked about the cramped room, finding it more of a personal study or library than anything fitting his idea of living quarters. Tall bookshelves filled two walls from floor to ceiling, and next to the glassless window on the far side stood a high stool before a study table littered with papers in a neat, precise handwriting.

Viyuuden bowed, deeply. "Welcome, Lady and Sir. These two seats have been reserved for you."

"You're late again," said Holland with a wry smile. "Where were you this time? Packing -- or checking your personal weapons?"

Yuki laughed. "Don't let him get to you -- we were 'packing and checking our own personal weapons' just a couple of hours ago."

Renton pulled out one of the empty chairs for Eureka and sat himself beside her. "Yeah, well, I always say that every one of Holland's missions is successful, right?"

Dr. Egan, who had endured the lighthearted exchange with obvious impatience, spoke up. "Prior to your arrival, Viyuuden was explaining to us that this room was once Norbu's personal study, where he did the greater part of his writing and meditation."

"Indeed it was." Viyuuden gestured around them. "Many of his personal effects remain here, where we treasure them greatly. Norbu was not only a remarkable thinker, he had also the gift of being able to communicate even his most advanced precepts with humor and an earthy, rough-edged wit that made them accessible to all who would listen. Yet his pose of crudity could not conceal a mind of great subtlety and eloquence. Observe the plaque above his desk, yonder, which bears a bit of his own verse."

Eureka and Renton both twisted in their seats to look. "I can't quite make it out," she said, squinting. "Something about 'the loveless...'

"It is one of his most deeply-felt utterances." The priest closed his eyes and began to recite, in a rich baritone:

That is no land for the loveless.

Awash in torrents of desire, worlds afire,

with precious memory of what is to be,

where two are one and all exists that might.

No regrets for empty yesterdays, no dread to cloud what only we may see,

No fear to stain our night.

That is no land for the loveless.

For you will warm my shadows,

And I shall be your light.

"All of us who serve as priests of Vodarek memorize these verses, which Norbu composed soon after arriving here. He mounted them there, above his desk, that he might contemplate them every day as he worked."

"Sakuya," said Eureka, looking to Renton. "It's about Sakuya, and his faith that they'd be together again in the tenth dimension."

Almost without thinking, he took her hand. "He really loved her. And he spent forty years getting himself ready to go back to her. I wish I'd have known all those things while he was with us; maybe I'd have talked to him more."

Viyuuden nodded quietly. "You would have learned much. But the press of events was very urgent during his final days here in the third dimension with you, and the task of teaching you what you need to know now falls to me, his lesser disciple."

"Is that the real reason Norbu wanted us to come here?" asked Eureka.

"He did not deceive you, Lady. You wished to be free of the burden of being the only ones who can bring the Coralian Gift to humankind, and we are prepared to comply -- though the process is perhaps more complicated than you realize. And at the same time, we are ready to begin helping you discover just what great potential lies within you."

He pushed a small globe of the Earth toward the center of the table. It had been recently updated to show the half of the planet no longer covered by the Coral. "Consider the new configuration of our very planet, itself entirely coated with three hundred kilometers of coral until the pair of you brought about the Coralian Epiphany. But afterward, the Coral blasted away half of itself into the tenth dimension, leaving half of the ancestral Earth exposed and half still encrusted. Tell me -- have you ever wondered why the planet does not now wobble destructively, being so unbalanced?"

Though the question had not been directed toward any one of them, Renton felt the responsibility of giving the first answer. "Well, yeah, sort of. I mean, it seems like now the Earth ought to be like a driveshaft with weights welded on only one side: it oughta be shaking itself to pieces." The chanting from below rose to a new level of complexity, and Renton fought against its hypnotic appeal. "So...how does the Earth stay together?"

"A question the Federation is anxious to keep its citizens from asking too loudly, my boy," said Egan, leaning closer, his eyes eager. "For the answer is: the Coralians themselves, manipulating the mass of the planet to maintain its rotational stability. That should give you some measure of how much power they wield."

"But they are not human," Viyuuden added quickly. "And as they desire to live in harmony with us, they wish this immense power to be delivered into the hands of those capable of understanding both Coralian- and Human-kind. By those who partake of both natures. By..."

"By us?" Eureka jumped to her feet, her trapar-sparked wings spread wide and taut. "You want Renton and I to have that kind of power?"

"Are you crazy?" Renton joined her, slipping his hand into hers. "This is nuts! Who d'you think we are, Colonel Dewey or something? Eureka and me don't want to rule the world!"

"Didn't I warn you?" crooned Holland, folding his arms and smirking at Viyuuden and Egan.

"If the Coral wants to give someone that much power," Eureka raged on, "then let Ariadne have it! Maybe that's why the Coral is creating her in the first place. Renton and I don't want to be Queen and King of Earth!"

Egan flushed a brilliant red and looked as though he might jump up and begin to shout at any second, until Mischa lay one hand to his arm and shook her head in warning. "But...but you must!" he spluttered. "All of humanity depends upon it -- this is what the Federation fears beyond anything else. Their greatest terror is that the two of you will rise up against them, armed with the power of the Coralian Mind. That is the true reason they have sought so persistently to kill you since your return. They suspect what you can become...what you must become..."

"No!" shouted Eureka and Renton with a single voice.

For a moment, the room fell silent. Holland radiated smugness; Yuki smiled pleasantly; Mischa nodded with the same clinical detachment she would apply to a screenful of medical data.

Only Viyuuden seemed unperturbed by the rebuff. He bowed in their direction, completely composed. "I am at your command, Lady and Sir, and I respect your decision without question. Your will in such matters is one with the will of Vodarek; we can only observe, as that will reveals itself in its own way."

"Thanks." Without further discussion, Renton and Eureka made for the door together. "We're going downstairs, to listen to the chanting. We'll see you tomorrow, Viyuuden."

Twenty-Two

Renton fumed as they walked with no clear direction except down, desiring nothing but to put as much distance between them and the absurd plans of Egan and Viyuuden as possible. They found one of the several elevators available from each floor and descended in silence to the ground level, where the main temple chamber filled the building at its widest point.

As the doors slid open, Eureka stopped and looked around them, wondering. "Oh. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Though his anger clung stubbornly, he could only agree. Beneath a great domed roof over two hundred meters wide where its base met the marble floor, nearly the entire population of the Vodarek town stood chanting in descending circles, facing a central platform somewhat below floor level. And upon it shone what Renton at first took to be the the biggest Compac Drive he'd ever seen, a transparent triangular column more than two meters on a side and fully six meters in height. Within it swirled a miniature cyclone of shimmering green liquid, its bubbles streaming spiral trails, the trapar sparks flickering and gleaming. All of it was very much unlike any true Compac Drive in his experience. And through its contained fire marched in slow procession, over and over, the letters of the word A R I A D N E.

"Does it bother you?" he asked Eureka, just loud enough to be heard over the singsong chant of the gathered voices.

"No. Not any more. Not now that I'm certain I have you." Now and then, white-robed communicants walked with slow steps up one of the two aisles from the temple floor, their meditations completed for the time being. As they left, others trickled in to take their places. The beauty of the slow chant, in no language she had ever heard, touched Eureka's heart in the same way as Tommy's poignant lullaby, and she watched the passing Vodarek smile and bow, almost wishing that she and Renton could find a part in such measured peace. "Renton -- look!"

He followed her pointing finger, startled. Two very familiar figures marched up the departure aisle: Dominic and Anemone, looking distinctly dazed but untroubled, hand in hand and wrapped in white Vodarek robes. "Come on," he whispered, and the two of them moved off to intercept them before they reached the surrounding exits.

"Are you two...all right?" Renton asked, just as the four of them reached one of the many low arches leading out into the equatorial night.

Dominic looked up like a man lost in a dream, and gently tugged Anemone to a stop. "Renton. Eureka. It's great to see you again"

"But how are you?" insisted Eureka. "Viyuuden said he didn't know...didn't know if the treatment would work."

Anemone focused her wide Coralian eyes of lavender-pink on Eureka's and smiled. Not the quick, jittery smirk so prevalent during their journey, but soft, open, almost serene. "It worked. Thanks to you two -- and to Dominic. He took all of it, all the fear and the disgust and the shame. And when he did, then he understood, exactly how it was in my mind. And he led me out of the madness. I'll never need those damned pills again. I guess there was a time, 'way back before the place where my memories begin, when I was happy." Tears sparkled on her cheeks, leaving little dark blotches on Dominic's robe as she pressed her face to his chest. "Now I'm happy again. And it doesn't matter any more who I used to be before they tortured me. Because I'm happy being who I am. And what I am."

Renton and Eureka moved closer to each other. "That's really great. Look, Anemone, I don't know if anybody's told you yet, but Viyuuden said to us that it was the Coral that made it possible for you to become a half-human, half-Coralian, not the Federation. The Coralian sort of intervened somehow. I don't know why; I think maybe Viyuuden doesn't, either."

Dominic gathered her in his arms and gestured for them all to go outside, where they could enjoy more privacy beneath the simmering moonlight. "Thanks for telling us that. It makes a difference to us, knowing that she's what she is because the Coralians rescued her, not because some foul Federation sadist accidentally got it right. I think, maybe, that it's what Viyuuden would call 'the will of Vodarek.'"

"You sound like one of them. I guess I never thought of you as religious before, either of you."

"No. We're not." He breathed deeply of the hot, dry air. "But I think I'm beginning to see that Vodarek isn't a religion. More like a way of seeing. When Anemone and I woke up, there was an attendant there to give us these robes. He said we'd left our old lives behind us, and it wouldn't do to put our dirty clothes back on again."

Tenderly, Dominic stroked the pink cascade of Anemone's hair as they walked. "Maybe he was right. After we put them on, we heard the chanting, and we just seemed to naturally wander down there. It helped us to put our thoughts in order again. And then we felt the two of you arrive just now, and we came up to see you. Maybe you'll think I'm being funny...but I had the idea that all the others could feel you arriving, too. You and Eureka are much more important than you know. They said that Vodarek is a state of mind with a will, Renton. Somehow, the two of you are tied up in that will."

"That's what we're most afraid of," said Eureka, her memory still fresh with Dr. Egan's extravagant schemes.

Anemone lifted her head, looking back and up at the massive pyramid of the temple, sparkling with ceremonial oil lamps and an occasional electric light. "I wish Stoner'd been at the chanting. I think it'd help to bring some peace back to even his sorry soul."

"Stoner? What's wrong with him?"

Dominic emerged fully from the tranquility of the chant for the first time. "What? You didn't know? Well, of course you couldn't have, since Holland sent you away as soon as the attack began... I just thought that someone would have told you by now..."

A twinge of dread caught at Renton's stomach. "Nobody's told us anything. All we know is that he wasn't with Holland and the others when the the Guardians of the Flame brought us here. Then Viyuuden yanked us away for your healing ritual. Was Stoner...killed?"

"No," said Anemone, "but most of us wished he had been. He sold us out to the Voice of the People. It was him who tipped them off that we'd be in the jungle. He had it set up all along."

Renton stared at Eureka, who stared back, stunned. "No way! Stoner can be a little eccentric, maybe, but he's no traitor." Above them, a shooting star traced a long glowing streak through the night.

A hot breeze stirred the air, making the monotonous chant fade in and out across the meadow, like a radio on a summer's night. Dominic shook his head and looked back toward the temple. "From what I gathered, he didn't think of it as treason -- until he got his nose rubbed in it. He's naïve, politically. He thought the VOP was some kind of heroic resistance movement, instead of just a criminal gang that likes to glamorize itself." His brows contracted, angry and bitter. "Right now, I'm more interested in Egan. Just what the hell did he bring us on this trip for? Why did he encourage us to go into the jungle with the rest of you?"

Anemone twined a strand of her soft pink hair around one finger and looked from Renton to Eureka with a flicker of her old cunning. "And Sonia Wakabyashi and Katsuhiro Morita are here somewhere in this town, too -- we saw them on our way down to the temple chamber. I was still pretty spacey, but I'm sure it was them."

"Sonia and Dr. Morita?" Eureka twitched her wings in surprise. "Why are they here?"

"Well, your guess is as good as ours, wouldn't you say? I want to... What the hell?"

Another shooting star flashed overhead; this time, Renton was sure he could hear it hiss. "Fireworks? Are fireworks part of the ritual...?"

Forty meters away, another one dropped to the ground, flaring immediately to a brilliant, sizzling white, driving back the night and casting their features in stark upward shadows. Eureka gripped Renton's arm. "Those are incendiary grenades! We're in danger! We have to get back and tell Viyuuden and --"

Gunfire splattered out across the dark meadow, harsh and jarring over the dreamlike harmonies of the chant. A ring of the incendiaries appeared around the distant Moonlight. "Come on, Anemone!" cried Dominic, grabbing her by one wrist as they ran for the temple, robes fluttering behind.

Blinded by the raw magnesium glare, Eureka and Renton blinked away afterimages. "Is it the Federation?" he said, holding up one hand before his eyes. Voices sounded out here and there, some alarmed, some in warning, all backed by crude, screeching battle-cries.

"No. A Federation assault team would never make so much noise or expose themselves with all this light." An explosion flashed yellow no more than fifty meters away, showering them with earth and small stones.

"They're exposing us, too. Let's go, Eureka, we've gotta get out of here and into the dark --"

Two bullets whizzed above them and a pair of strong arms tackled his legs, pulling him down, hard, to the crisp grass and hard ground beneath. "Don't stand there! You can be seen for a kilometer in every direction. D'you want to help them kill you?"

Desperate, Renton kicked out several times, then looked toward his feet into the face of a clutching wild man in a grass-stained pair of Thuu Bak shorts. "Stoner? What're you...?"

Matt Stoner, hair and beard filthy and streaming in all directions, released Renton's legs and tottered to a crouch. "I was heading back to the ship and I saw them come sneaking in from the jungle road. One of them tried to take me down. Come on, both of you, keep moving! If they figure out who you are, you'll be dead in seconds."

"Who are 'they?'" Eureka wanted to know. Automatic fire rattled to their right, and a second burst answered it. Renton guessed that the Guardians of the Flame were already responding to the attack.

"Just keep moving, and I'll explain while we get out of the line of fire. And keep low while we run! I think it's more of those VOP scum again -- the ones who took us prisoner must've been only a small unit. No, stop looking at me that way, Eureka! I didn't betray you or sell you out, no matter what the others think."

"Dominic says you're politically naïve." More gunfire erupted as they hurried through the darkness, this time closer to the temple, where the chanting never slowed.

"Does he? Well, he's right. I was a gullible fool, an idiot, full of sound and fury but in the end, signifying nothing. Watch out, hold it!"

They crouched motionless, as six or seven men and women with automatics charged past, silhouetted against the temple lights less than half a kilometer away.

"Were they Guardians or VOP?" whispered Renton.

Eureka's delicate gown trembled in the night wind. "The Guardians of the Flame, I'm sure. They came from the direction of the temple. We should..."

Another hissing incendiary dropped to the ground only meters away; then a second, revealing them all with pitiless white light. "We should run!" shouted Stoner, jumping up and dragging them both up with him. "Now! Head for the temple!"

Automatic gunfire sounded, very near them, near enough to see the muzzle flash from three VOP weapons. With a brief, regretful look back, Stoner charged toward the attackers, waving his arms and whooping insanely.

"They'll get him!" cried Eureka.

"He wants them to get him -- he's trying to draw their fire away from us. I'm not gonna let him --"

Stoner threw up his arms, quivering as more than a dozen automatic rounds pierced his body. He toppled to the ground, twitching feebly, then lay still.

Renton stared, aghast. "Stoner!" He made as if to run to Stoner's side, but Eureka restrained him, holding to his arm with an unbreakable grip.

"No! You'll only be cut down the same way!"

"But we...they're coming for us. We haven't got any weapons --"

"We have a better way, don't your remember? And I shall be your light, Renton!"

He understood, then, and their minds touched and locked as the irregular rumble of running feet closed in upon them. She wrapped her arms about his chest, spread her wings and the flare's white brilliance faded, outdone by the fire of trapar blazing from her. Renton -- the Renton part of them -- extended his own arms forward and twin torrents of raw trapar roared out into the night, fiery streamers that spread and engulfed the VOP killers where they stood.

Bullets flew toward them, only to vaporize in little fireworks of green in mid-air. The raiders first slowed, then staggered, then finally dropped their weapons and collapsed to the ground, their nerves and minds saturated by the energies of the concentrated trapar. More ran into the glare, firing wildly, only to topple beneath the same irresistible madness.

"Protect them!" someone screamed, "Protect them at any cost!" At least twenty of the Guardians of the Flame charged past on both sides, SFARs and automatics held forward, racing into the dark beyond the trapar-light. More gunfire sounded, then screams as the disorganized VOP invaders, on the run now, fell before the Guardians' fire. Farther away, the Moonlight came to life, pulsing with light as its grenade launchers rained antipersonnel rounds into the black meadow. Seconds later, the type 808 LFO unfolded itself from the stern, all eight of its forward searchlights on chest and head throwing back the night, striding into the attackers' midst, cutting them down under Hilda's merciless aim. Before the massive humanoid battlecraft and its weapons, the rest of the raiders screamed, threw down their guns and sprinted desperately back toward the jungle. The lucky ones made it.

At a shouted order from Viyuuden, ten of the Guardians formed a circle about Eureka and Renton, facing outward to fend off any further attempts on their lives. Viyuuden himself, looking very un-priestly indeed, ran to them, his face drawn and hard with fear. "Lady and Lord -- did they harm you in any way?"

Renton and Eureka turned their four eyes to him, and answered in their emotionless synchronized voice. "No. But Stoner was hit badly. Bring him to us."

"But...he must have immediate medical attention..."

"Bring him to us. Quickly"

Viyuuden bowed, his face blank. "You are the Will of Vodarek. You two men -- pick up Mr. Stoner yonder, and bring him before the Messenger and the Chosen. Gently! And hurry."

In less than a minute, the two Guardians pulled Stoner by the shoulders into the circle of guards. Beyond, the battle still blasted on, but farther away now, and with fewer shots with each passing second.

Viyuuden knelt at Stoner's side, touching his neck, holding his wrist, lifting his eyelids, all with no effect. In an agony of sadness, he turned to Eureka and Renton. "I'm sorry, Sir and Lady. He is dead. He's taken at least ten shots, perhaps more. I will contact the crew of your ship, and..."

"Move away," they ordered quietly. The ringed Guardians looked to Viyuuden, who nodded and stepped back with them, waiting. The incendiary flare sputtered as it burned low, throwing weird, writhing shadows about the somber scene.

Eureka and Renton glanced toward each other, the jewels on their faces glowing brightly, then joined hands and gazed down at the body of Matt Stoner, lying sprawled and silent on the dry grass. A flicker of trapar gleamed on Eureka's wings, then across Renton's shoulders, streaming down their arms until it found the place where their hands met and swelled to a ball of living light. The grass crackled in the sudden energy shift and several of the Guardians brushed at the hair on the backs of their arms, uneasy at the microscopic sparks that danced there. Shouts rang out from the temple -- Holland, Tommy, Jobs and others -- but no one had eyes or ears for anything but the silent drama unfolding before them.

The sphere of green trapar-fire expanded, surrounding both of them, burning, swirling, pulsing as though barely contained, dense with light, throbbing and expanding. A thick lance of its fire stretched out to Stoner and flowed along his body, encasing it in green radiance. As the assembled Guardians watched, terrified and fascinated, his torso seemed to bubble like hot tar. And wherever each tiny globule burst in droplets of dark blood, a bullet seeped up to the surface of his unbroken skin and lay there, harmless, or rolled off into the grass.

Stoner's arms jerked. Viyuuden dropped to his knees, his piercing eyes round and shining in the green fire, and the Guardians followed without prompting as Matt Stoner rolled over to one side, coughing up thick gobbets of coagulated blood, moaning and wheezing as he clawed at the dirt.

"We will...take him to our doctors now," said Viyuuden to Eureka and Renton, standing immobile within the furnace of trapar.

They blinked, both of them, and the ball of green fire contracted, hissing, to a tiny point and vanished. Darkness crashed in once more; flashlights came to life. Battling a wave of almost overwhelming nausea, Renton caught Eureka as she crumpled beside him, lowering her to the ground, fighting to remain conscious. "It's never been this bad before," he whispered when Viyuuden came to his side. "I didn't...we didn't even know we could do that. We didn't mean to, at first. And then... Don't touch her!"

The Guardian who had tried to hold Eureka from falling snapped back, alarmed and apologetic, but Renton only pulled her closer to him, watching her eyes flutter, knowing her pain and confusion. "Nobody but me can touch her now." He looked to Viyuuden again. "I don't know how I know that...but I do. Just like I don't know what we did for Stoner. It's just that...I dunno. I guess we just knew, then, that somehow we had to...I know how crazy this sounds...we knew we had to make...well, life. And Stoner's cells weren't dead, not all of them, so we..." His head dropped forward; he jerked himself awake, looking for answers in Viyuuden's stern, compassionate face. "It's all so dizzy and weird. I feel like I'm only half in this world. And Eureka's even worse, I can feel it in her. We need to be alone, close to each other...we're...so... Viyuuden, what the hell's happening to us?"

"You are far above my poor knowledge and perception, Renton-sama. Can you stand, and support Lady Eureka? I'll lead you to a place where you can be alone together. Have no fear! I promise that no one will touch you."

Too sick and exhausted to speak, Renton only nodded, threaded his arm around Eureka, beneath her wings and arms, and, with an effort greater than any he had known, forced himself upright, standing in the circle of Guardians. Other faces swam across his consciousness: Holland, Jobs, Matthieu, others. But they slid away just as quickly and he turned toward the temple.

"Everyone clear a path!" commanded Viyuuden. "Guardians of the Flame -- surround them and see that no one tries to touch them! Clear a path to the temple!"

Flashlights gleamed on all sides, making a wobbling road of light before him as Renton struggled to bear his precious burden to a destination he could not guess, one step, then the next, then another, fighting to stay conscious and hold her up as she stumbled, dragged along beside him. Their thoughts touched and gleamed, reinforcing one another, one's weakness the other's strength, giving each other the will to struggle on in the weary dream, one step, another, another...

Images oozed through his shining mind: Eureka, unawakened in her stone cavern. Eureka, one arm and patches of her face glowing green and translucent with Coralian tissue. Eureka, naked and scarred beneath a quivering yellow-orange mass of scub coral. Eureka, radiant and astonished within the Coralian Command Node, her lavender-pink eyes glistening, awash in love. Eureka, Eureka, Eureka, Eureka... Nothing mattered but Eureka, nothing ever had mattered, for he had known her forever and always would know her. One step...another, pain and weariness and always the battle for consciousness, against something that beckoned to them in a wordless voice both alien and warmly familiar. They would walk together to the end of the world, and though the pain would never end, they would be together and that made it all worth it. One step...

"Be careful of your steps, Lord and Lady. You are in the temple, now. I'll lead you to one of our healing rooms."

Renton peered up into the aching lights. Viyuuden was there, and others as well, but they didn't matter any longer. Only Eureka and the burning need to be alone together, away from everyone, from everything, where what had to be would come to them both. He trudged after the shadow of Viyuuden's back, the chill stone floor painful to his feet but helping to keep him awake, keep him aware, keep him moving. A door, opening into silent darkness, beckoned. A stone table, like the one they had seen that afternoon, waited for them. "Don't let...anybody in," he croaked from lips and throat gone dry as the meadow grass. "Not till we...till we say so."

"I promise you, Renton-sama, that no one will disturb you, even if it costs us our lives. And...thank you."

What the man meant, Renton did not ask or care. The darkness came again; he supposed the door was closed behind them now, and with the last of his fading strength, he lifted Eureka to the table and rolled, exhausted, up and beside her. Dimly, he registered that what should have been an uncomfortably hard surface felt soft and pleasantly warm beneath them.

Light slowly rose in the room, not artificial but trapar-light. The entire chamber overflowed with trapar, more dense than he had ever seen it, even in the sphere around them in the meadow. It sparkled with uncountable little flakes and motes, wild with energy and life. He felt as though they floated in an endless ocean of trapar, and a distant serenity came to him.

Eureka opened her eyes fully at last, and she smiled at him. "I love you." Writhing and wriggling, she peeled off her evanescent gown and threw it heedlessly to one side, like some heavy and stifling blanket.

"I love you, Eureka." He lifted himself on one elbow and stroked her cheek with one finger. "What's happening to us?"

"I don't know...I'm still so scared, but we're together and whatever comes, it'll come to us both. Touch me, Renton, you must keep touching me. Don't let go, please."

"No, I won't." He held her to him with both arms. "It's near, I know it..."

"I know..." she sobbed, though from terror or joy, neither of them could decide. In a harsh spasm, Eureka lifted her knees into the air and a deep shudder ran through her slender body.

An intangible force wracked Renton, pulling at him, deeper even than the merely physical. Every nerve pulsed and streamed into her, everything that he was poured into her, memories, feelings, strength, love, all gushing out of him and blending with her own in the currents of the trapar sea. A voice -- millions of voices that were one -- whispered into their intoxication and Eureka sighed. Renton looked downward, stunned, shocked, but did not release his hold.

Something was emerging from her.

Twenty-Three

"Damn you!" railed Axel Thurston. "That's my grandson and his wife in there! Don't try to BS me, you toady, I know something funny's happened to them and I want to see them!"

The pair of armed Guardians standing before the door to the Vodarek medical room remained impassive. "Mr. Thurston," explained one, "we've already told you several times that Viyuuden has forbidden anyone inside. And that the Messenger and the Chosen themselves have declared that it is their will to be left strictly alone until they wish to come out."

"Arrr..." He threw his fists in the air, shaking his head. "I know, I know, dammit. But they're the only grandchildren I have, and I can't just stand here..."

Holland put his hand to the older man's shoulder. "Easy, Axel. All of us are upset about this. And we're not going away until they come out of there."

"Damn right, we're not," agreed Tommy, Jobs at her side. With a ring of Guardians surrounding the Moonlight to protect it against further attack, the entire crew now assembled themselves outside the barred door, most of them sitting cross-legged on the stone floor of the Vodarek temple while the chanting of the communicants in the main chamber continued even more fervently than before.

"We should never have left them alone," said Dominic, shaking his head. "We just assumed they were right behind us when the attack began."

Jobs smiled wistfully. "You haven't spent as much time around them as we have. In a crisis, their first impulse is always to save the day by themselves."

"Stoner knew that," Yuki agreed. "The Guardians I talked to said he tried to stop them, to get them to run for safety before he sacrificed himself. It's a safe bet he was trying to atone for betraying you to the VOP. That's when he was wounded."

Viyuuden appeared from a stairwell, his face creased with concern. "He was not 'wounded,' Mrs. Novak. He was dead. Mr. Stoner's heart and breathing had both ceased, and he had fifteen VOP bullets lodged deep in his body. I've just come from his bedside, and our doctors are very certain of this."

Next to Dr. Egan, Mischa gasped. "But I watched him being taken to your medics. He was dazed but certainly alive."

"Yes -- now." The priest shook his head, still unable to comprehend. "Lady Eureka and Sir Renton...resurrected him. Their power is even greater than I imagined -- greater than Norbu himself imagined. I witnessed it with my own eyes, and still find it difficult to accept. I don't know how they did it, and I don't think they know themselves. Certainly the strain had to have been tremendous, and it appears to have triggered...something else in them. What that might be, we are all now waiting to know."

"Incredible," muttered Egan, still in his white robes. "I must admit this has been a humbling experience for me. So many factors I failed utterly to predict."

Dominic turned on him, still angry in spite of his worry over Renton and Eureka. "Starting with bringing Anemone and me along on this trip. There was never any reason for us to come with you in the first place. Why the hell did you insist on our joining you? And why encourage us to go along on the jungle expedition? Anemone came near to dying -- and then to going mad."

With some difficulty, Egan composed himself before answering. "There are a great many things I have not told you -- all of you. Viyuuden and I will reveal everything to you once this current...crisis...is resolved. But for now, I owe you and your wife an explanation, and this is it: I brought you for her sake alone."

Anemone's Coralian eyes grew round. "My sake? What did any of this have to do with me?"

"Your mental state was, to say the least, precarious, my dear. In fact, I was able to learn, through secret IPF channels, that only by massive infusions of antidepressants were you able to function at all. And you were growing steadily less stable. The doctors predicted you had less than a year remaining before you descended into permanent psychosis." He stretched his legs before him on the flagstones of the floor. "I believe that your husband was aware of this, and mercifully kept the information from you."

She looked to Dominic, who hung his head, barely nodding. "It's true. I'm sorry, Anemone, but I just couldn't bring myself to tell you something like that. It was bad enough watching you get worse and worse, without making you carry that kind of knowledge."

"Quite so," agreed Dr. Egan. "Having been in secret contact with Viyuuden for nearly a year, I became convinced that Vodarek meditational therapies stood an excellent chance of bringing her progressive insanity under control. But there were no guarantees, you understand, and given her instability, Captain, I'm sure you will agree that it would have been cruel to reveal her terrible illness to her, only to later discover that nothing the Vodarek could do would help her after all."

"I guess maybe it would have, at that," Anemone agreed.

"Thank you. Therefore, I concocted a plausible excuse to bring you both to Thuu Bak on my -- very real -- mission, then to 'discover' that you were not needed after all. So I...maneuvered...you both into joining Holland's expedition, in order to get you here, where the Vodarek could tactfully lead you into healing without revealing themselves too quickly." He permitted himself a sad smile. "But I was too sure of myself. I underestimated the strength and brutality of the Voice of the People, and failed altogether to take the possibility of Mr. Stoner's well-meant but foolish collusion into account. Unwittingly, I led you into the most horrible danger."

"I guess that's true." Anemone stared, wondering. "But then, you didn't take Renton and Eureka into consideration, either, and thanks to them, the Vodarek could cure me completely. So it all worked out." She smiled then, brightly and from her heart. "Don't apologize, Dr. Egan. Nobody can see everything in advance, and you did a hell of a lot better than most people could have."

"Thank you so much, my dear Mrs. Sorel." Egan astounded them all by blushing, then rubbing delicately at his eyes with one long finger. "And you are quite correct -- I did not adequately take Renton and Eureka into consideration. At every turn, they have grown in stature and ability, far outstripping the plans that the World Parliament, in our smugness and arrogance, had spun for them. We hoped to lead them; now, it seems we can only curb our hubris and follow where they lead."

"I knew you had the makings of a Vodarek in you, Gregory," said Viyuuden. "Norbu always said you were a man with the beginnings of great wisdom."

"Thank you, Alexandru. I shall always regret not having been able to speak with him at greater length before his ascension."

Holland started, rousing himself from deep thought. "'Alexandru?' I only ever knew of one man with that name: Alexandru Antonescu. The Federation named him a Vodarek terrorist, an enemy of the state, and sent Unit Seven into Temesvar to wipe out him and his guerrillas. He disappeared, presumed dead. And then a couple of years later, somebody named 'Viyuuden' popped up in Thuu Bak..."

The priest bowed. "We can discuss this at a later time. My Guardians of the Flame also..."

Every one of them fell silent. The door began to open.

Twenty-Four

Renton stared, torn between horror and fascination, as a gelatinous tendril of some softly glowing amber substance extruded itself from her. Shining faintly even against the wash of trapar swirling around them, it oozed forward, almost alive, in a way that should have been repulsive but was not. And as it moved, it swelled and grew, thicker, rounder, already more massive than anything Eureka could ever have held within. She twitched as it detached itself from her and settled into a rounded oval on the surface of the stone. Almost without willing it, Renton touched the Coralian jewel on his forehead. It's the same shape, he realized, lost in the mystery of it all.

"Scub coral," she whispered, never for an instant relaxing her grip on him. "The primal material of the Coralian caves. Like..."

"Like the one near Tresor, yeah. Like the one you almost died in. It's still getting bigger. How?" The smooth glistening oval expanded upward now, nearly half a meter in height. At its center, a dark mass formed, moving, rolling, its outlines indistinct but growing within the bubble of coral. Both of them watched it, hardly breathing, clinging to each other. The shadow within extended itself still higher, spawning a secondary bulge at one end as, from the lower segment, four lesser swellings snaked out, longer and narrower, slowly waving. "What is this?"

The coral mass grew again, just large enough to contain what moved inside, and at the same time its quivering surface stabilized and solidified into a thin shell. Eureka trembled, holding to Renton with a steely grip.

Inside the coral ovoid, the dark shadow writhed, whirling, floating, fighting against its imprisonment. Terrified, Eureka and Renton edged closer, still bound to one another, the nodes on their faces brilliant with light. They reached forward...

And the thing inside opened its eyes.

The coral shell shattered, hurling fragments in all directions, shards that dissolved at once in the concentrated trapar charging the room. On the table before them, searching with soft lavender-pink Coralian eyes, sat a solemnly beautiful baby girl, physically perhaps two years old, regarding them with the open curiosity of innocence.

She smiled, then, and the jewel in her round little face glowed like moonlight, sending twin beams out to her parents, whose own nodes responded instinctively. Thoughts, emotions, dreams, all of them she pulled to herself, taking all that her young mind could hold, all that the love of Renton and Eureka could give. "Mama?" she whispered, her smile widening joyfully. "Papa?"

Eureka sighed and reached out and pulled her to herself. Renton opened his arms to gather them both in the warmth of his love, more contented at that moment than he had ever dreamed.

"Mama?" the baby repeated.

Trembling, Eureka surrendered to her tears and held their child as if she would never let her go. "Yes. Oh, yes, Mama and Papa are here for you. We've waited for you so long, my little one. Oh, so long...my precious Ariadne."

Twenty-Five

"Renton!" shouted Holland, running for the door. Renton's stunned blue eyes peeked out through the narrow opening and he made as if to draw back, but the Guardians closed in instantly, not lifting their weapons but barring the Gekkostate crew from coming any nearer. "Are you all right?" Holland demanded. "How's Eureka? Do you need help? Medical treatment?"

"H-Holland? You're all here? Jeez, we didn't know... Yeah, w-we're okay. It's all been really strange... Look, we want to see you all, but not...not yet. Right now, will somebody please get the kids? We really want them in here right away. Before anybody else."

Anemone jumped up. "They're in our room, playing with Gulliver; I'll get'em. I'll be back in just a second, okay?"

As she hurried away, a buzz of low murmuring passed among the assembled Gekkostaters, sharp with relief but muted by the lingering fear of what might yet be revealed. In that soft moment, Dr. Egan was the first to notice that the chanting from the Vodarek temple had stopped. "Viyuuden," he said, his voice breaking. "Viyuuden, what does it mean?"

The priest, who had stood with hands folded and eyes shut, murmuring to himself, now looked up, smiling, his hard eyes alight with the joy of a man whose most extravagant dream has come true. "That it has come at last. It means that what Norbu and I worked for, prayed for with so many dwindling hopes, has now taken shape. It means...the turning of the life of the world is upon us."

"Then we have a lot do do," said Mischa in her somber way.

"Yes. But for now, let us all be thankful that it was granted us to be present at the Beginning."

Tommy stretched, rose from the stone floor with Jobs' assistance and cocked one eyebrow. "What the hell are you guys talking about?"

At that moment, Anemone returned with Linck, Maeter and Maurice in tow. The two smaller children yawned and blinked at the crowd in the light of the hallway, but Maurice wore a serious face, glancing now and then at the Compac Drive he held tightly in his right hand.

Anemone led them to where Renton stood, opening the door just wide enough to allow them in, single file. "Thanks," he said, then shut the door once again, loudly barring it behind him.

Ten minutes passed; fifteen. This time, no small talk lightened the tension among the gathering of friends. Even Viyuuden showed every sign of impatience as he waited next to the two Guardians, tapping his sandaled feet and running his tongue over his lower lip.

When the heavy door creaked partially open once again, Maeter scampered out, followed by Linck, both of them giggling uncontrollably. After one look at the solemn grownups, they broke out in fresh waves of laughter, reveling in their privileged knowledge. Maurice came next, deep in thought. Frowning, he stood to one side of the doorway, evaluating them all with frank suspicion. Only Holland noticed that he no longer carried the Compac Drive.

But before any of the Gekkostate crew could question the boy, Renton swung the door wide, turned over his shoulder and beckoned inside. Eureka emerged in her blue gown once more, smiling shyly and holding the uncertain baby in her arms.

"This is Ariadne," announced Renton. Then, seeing their stares of silent incomprehension, he added, "She's ours."

Yuki's jaw fell. "My God," she whispered.

Viyuuden and the Guardians, their sentry duty now ended, dropped to their knees, chanting with folded hands. "Congratulations!" cried Ken-Goh. Matthieu laughed in wild delight, and at his side, Hilda began to clap, her happy applause immediately picked up by all of them until the temple hallway echoed as joyfully as midnight on New Year's Eve.

Yuki could only shake her head, delighted and puzzled. "B-but Eureka, how? I mean, she's already so grown! And you were never..." She held her hands out before her abdomen. "You never got...well, big. How long did you know?"

"Well...I didn't, really. Neither of us did. It wasn't in the regular human way..."

Edging in beside Eureka, Renton took the baby in his own arms, giving Ariadne the opportunity to display her stubby translucent butterfly wings. "I guess it's different for us; for half-coralians. Don't ask us to explain it, 'cause I don't understand it either. Mischa will probably want to do tons of tests; maybe she'll be able to answer some of the questions. Hey, Ariadne, say hello to Aunt Anemone and Uncle Dominic."

Anemone touched the baby's small hand, fascinated. "Oh, she's adorable! She's got Eureka's hair and eyes, but her father's face; you can see it already."

"'Reddy," gurgled Ariadne with a tremulous smile.

"She can talk already!" Dominic smiled back at her. "Amazing! So this is the Coralian way, is it?" He glanced lovingly at his wife, and Renton fancied he could already read Dominic's innermost thoughts.

"Hey, you guys!" said Maurice, elbowing his way in front of Eureka and Renton, his arms extended to either side. "Don't get so close to Ariadne, all of you at once. You're gonna scare her!"

Renton felt a hand on his shoulder; Viyuuden leaned near and spoke softly to them both. "Revered Ones, may I suggest that yourselves and the First Born might wish to retire to your room? Tomorrow will be another demanding day, and I know you must both be very weary after your experiences." He smiled at Ariadne, who smiled back. "And the Blessed Child must have sleep as well."

"I suppose you're right," said Eureka. "My head is so full of new things that it feels like it's going to turn to ice; we need time to think and talk about it all. Let's go, Renton. Oh, and Viyuuden -- Ariadne will be staying in our room. I know she's very intelligent, but she's still not ready to be sleeping with the other children yet. Would you please have someone put another mattress in our room?"

The priest bowed again. "It has already been done, Lady Eureka. The Guardians of the Flame will escort you and Renton-sama to your quarters, if you will permit it, so that none may delay your slumber."

"All right," Renton agreed, though the constant "Sir Renton," and "Lord Renton," and "Renton-sama" grated heavily on his ears. He shifted Ariadne's weight to his other arm -- just born she may have been, but her body mass was that of a two-year-old -- and nodded as though he'd been planning every one of Viyuuden's suggestions all along. "We are kind of tired, I guess."

Alone in their own rooms once more, Renton, his head still spinning, locked the door behind them and retired to the small bathroom to clean himself of the day's accumulated grime while Eureka cooed over the baby. After a fast shower, he stood before one of the several mirrors, contemplating the thoroughly confused and apprehensive young man who stared back at him.

Tomorrow will be a demanding day, Viyuuden says. I sure don't like the sound of that. I have a feeling we're not gonna like the sound of much of anything that goes on around here from now on. And something tells me this is just the beginning.

Carelessly, he ran the towel over himself, trying to imagine what new surprises the morning might bring. Nothing to match Ariadne, at least. Mischa is gonna fall out of her seat when we tell her where Coralian babies come from. He slipped his feet into a pair of sandals with a long sigh. Ariadne's so cute. But now we've got four kids to look out for and protect; four targets for the Federation. And that's just how the Federation will look at them, sooner or later...

A high crooning sound came from behind the heavy door, interrupting Renton's melancholy reverie. Instantly suspicious from long habit, he threw his towel over the shower curtain's frame and crept silently to the door, easing it open, all senses alert. To his surprise, someone in the next room was singing, in a thin, clear soprano, with a beauty and purity that sent shivers across his damp skin.

Sum-mer-ing,

In the arms of slum-ber.

Renton eased the door all the way back. Eureka sat cross-legged on the bedroom's largest mattress, Ariadne cradled in her arms, swaying back and forth as she sang the solemn lullaby to their sleeping child.

You were born,

To receive the light.

With infinite care, he crept to them, sitting himself beside Eureka, watching the baby's electric-blue curls quiver in her breath.

Paint the skies,

With a brush of won-der.

Warm the day,

And embrace the light.

And in that moment, it finally came to his overcrowded awareness that Ariadne was theirs, their first-born, the unshakable love that bound him and Eureka given life and substance.

When I touch your cheek I know...

Renton touched Eureka's face and felt his own hot tears overflow at last.

My dear one you'll always be,

My dear one you will always be...

Twenty-Six

Even with his eyes closed, Renton knew it was already past dawn.

He lay motionless in bed, drifting in a quiet meditational state, neither sleep nor waking, taking an honest inventory of the current state of his life.

I'm sixteen years old. I'm married, with three kids and a fourth just born yesterday. My wife's a half-alien mass murderer and so am I.

In spite of the light trance, he smiled. And those are the good parts.

I haven't got an education. In fact, I never even finished high school. I'm a decent mechanic, but nothing special. I've never had a real job at all. The whole damn Federation wants me and my family dead. And even the people who know the truth about us are gonna be stampeding all over us when they find out we've got the Fountain of Youth. We can't go on living with Gekkostate forever -- if Gekkostate even lasts much longer. The only people who can really help us are a bunch of weird mystics who think that me and Eureka are a couple of gods or angels or something.

What the hell are we gonna do now?

Reluctant to face the day, he nevertheless opened his eyes. Eureka lay motionless beside him, watching him tenderly. Across the room, little Ariadne squatted in front of a book she'd pulled from one of the shelves along the walls, staring intently at the pages and muttering to herself. "Is she reading?" he asked in a whisper.

"Maybe. She took a great deal of knowledge from us right after she was...born. I wish I'd been able to do that." Eureka sat up on the mattress, hugging her knees. "It would have saved me years of learning how to speak and read and write and interact with people. And even more years of learning about human feelings." She turned to him with a knowing smile. "But then I wouldn't have met you, would I? And I can't even imagine a life without you."

Unable to deny the beginning of a new day any longer, Renton sat upright, wrapping one arm about her smooth, warm shoulders, just above her wings. "You won't ever have to."

Ariadne tottered to her feet and essayed five or six uncertain steps in their direction before toppling to the floor. Undiscouraged, she scowled and tried again, this time making it as far as their mattress, where she crawled to them, smiling with pride at her accomplishment. "Very good," Eureka praised her as the two of them held her to themselves. "I suppose I must see if any of the Vodarek can make you some clothing."

"That'll be the least of our problems," said Renton. "Except for those formal religious robes, it seems like nobody dresses much around here; it's too hot. Even Maeter and Maurice and Linck just peel off their own clothes when they're playing outside and they think we're not looking. It's like they're at the beach or something." He grew wistful. "Wouldn't it be great if we were all at the beach? Remember how cool the beach was inside the Coralian Great Wall? And the forest -- a real forest -- and the trees and everything? If there hadn't been so many scary things going on, it would've been like a vacation. I wonder if there really are places like that left on Earth."

A respectful tapping at the door interrupted his reverie. "Yeah, okay, I'll be right there," he called, tugging on his brief white shorts while Eureka grabbed her flimsy gown and slid it down over her head.

Kitsune, the Vodarek message-runner, bowed pleasantly. "Good morning, Sir Renton. I hope I haven't awakened you and the Lady...oh, is that the First Born One?" For a moment, he let slip the mask of his aloof formality. "Say, she's really a cute little kid, isn't she?"

"She sure is. Did Viyuuden send you here?"

"Er, yes, Sir Renton, as you've already guessed. He wishes to meet with you, the Lady and several of your friends at ten o'clock, in the Meditation Chamber at the apex of the Temple, if you will condescend to join him there."

Eureka stood, cool and elegant and devastating with the morning sunlight streaming through her misty gown and her fine turquoise hair ruffling with each breeze. "We do condescend, thank you. But before any of that, we need to see that our children get some breakfast. Would you mind waiting while we gather them together?"

"It'll be my privilege, Lady," said Katsune with a bow. "I promise you, they'll have nothing to complain of."

But will we? wondered Renton, flashing his misgivings to Eureka. This'll be it. Whatever's gonna happen next, it's gonna start now.

The view from Viyuuden's meditation chamber spread itself around them like a panoramic painting. Each tapering wall bore a single window as wide as itself, unglazed and open to the wind sweeping in from the eastern horizon.

But neither Renton nor Eureka had time to enjoy the scene. Viyuuden himself stood politely before his chair -- the room contained no tables -- gesturing them inward to be seated. Renton had expected the entire crew of the Moonlight to be present, yet only Dr. Egan and Mischa sat across from them -- along with two newcomers.

Eureka smiled happily. "Sonia! Dr. Morita! Anemone told us she'd seen you. When did you arrive? And what for?"

"Hello, Eureka; Renton. I'm pleased to see you both well after all you've been through." Morita gestured toward his left. "I'll...er...let Dr. Egan explain our presence."

Sonia made no answer at all, only staring at Eureka and fidgeting with her fingers as Egan rose before them. In his white Thuu Bak shorts and thin shirt, Renton thought the researcher looked as though he might have dropped in on his way to a game of tennis. "Good morning to you both, and my deepest congratulations on the newest member of your family. But charming -- and important -- as your daughter is, there are matters of immediate significance which I must now lay before you."

"About time," grumbled Renton. "And if this is gonna be more of what we talked about yesterday, we're still not interested." Immediately, he regretted his hasty harshness. "No, I'm sorry, Dr. Egan. I meant what I said, but I guess I didn't mean to be so rude about it. We're just a little jumpy lately."

"Perfectly understandable, in your circumstances. Nor will this meeting touch upon yesterday's agenda, you may rest assured. Let us begin by clarifying one significant point: you are now looking at the entirety of the World Parliament, assembled before you."

"Just the five of you?" said Eureka. "I had the idea that a 'Parliament' was something bigger."

"Exactly, my dear -- and so will the Federation, which currently imagines a large body of tower-state leaders meeting in secret to form a shadow government plotting the downfall of the Federation of Predigio Towers. We find it expedient to keep the Federation believing these things, until the day when we can make them a reality." Egan smiled like a man doing parlor tricks at a party. "Indeed, Eureka, our little conspiracy owes its very existence to yourself."

"Me?"

"Yes. Approximately a month ago, not long after you returned to the Moonlight, you asked my dear friend Katsuhiro why he had been complicit in handing you over to the Federation not long after you had been discovered."

"Oh. I remember that conversation."

Morita leaned forward, still penitent even at this late date. "So do I, Eureka. I felt very ashamed of myself after you brought that incident back to my mind. We Tresor administrators discussed this matter among ourselves, and we discovered, much to our surprise, that we all still had consciences. In short, we swore never again to bow down so cravenly in the face of an oppressive regime. That was when Gregory proposed that in order to begin a real revolution against the Federation, we needed to form the nucleus of a new government. So we contacted Viyuuden, here, and decided that we'd be the first members of a 'World Parliament.' One day, we hope it'll become a real parliament. But for now we're just paving the way and in the process giving the Federation something more to worry about."

Renton thought about it all for a moment, listening to the distant calls of people in the marketplace below. "But it's still pretty risky, isn't it? I mean, if the Federation finds out any of this, they're gonna want you dead."

"If you and Eureka can take that chance," said Mischa, her jaw set and firm, "then so can we. When Gregory admitted to me what they were all up to, well, after having seen what you two have gone through, I'd have been ashamed of myself not to join them." She patted Dr. Egan's hand, and the two of them shared a look of deep affection.

"I think that all sounds wonderful." Eureka shifted her wings out of the way and leaned back in her chair. "Why aren't the people from Gekkostate here, though? Aren't they involved?"

The five conspirators looked uneasily among each other until Viyuuden became the default spokesman. "We will tell them before long, Lady Eureka. And we very much hope that at least some of them will choose to join us. But you see...there has been a change of alignments, so to speak. Once, Holland Novak made the decisions for both of you -- and did so at great risk to his own life. Then the five of us tried to make the decisions for you, only to discover that you had grown beyond any of us; beyond Gekkostate. It is the two of you whom we now inform first. You are our leaders now, Lady and Sir."

Renton and Eureka stared at each other, waiting for the punchline that never came. "Us?" cried Renton. "Us? But...are you kidding? We're just..."

Viyuuden cut across him. "You are collectively the Messenger of the Coralian Mind and her Chosen companion. Your family, as we now know, Renton-sama, has been observed by the Coral for many years. Just as Lady Eureka was painstakingly created by the Coralians, so were you carefully selected for perfect compatibility with her."

"Wait just a minute! It wasn't the Coral that made us love each other!"

"'Made?' No, Sir Renton, the Coralian has never made either of you do anything. It simply gave you an opportunity -- as it did Norbu and Saint Sakuya -- and when that opportunity came, you validated their wisdom by remaining unshakably devoted to each other through trials that would have destroyed any ordinary couple. The coming of your daughter -- the first human-coralian born of love rather than Coralian bioengineering -- is the sign for which we of the Vodarek community have waited since the departure of Norbu."

"The sign for what?" asked Eureka, very uneasily.

"For us to come out of hiding and persecution, and join the World Parliament in becoming a seed around which a new government can be formed as the Federation slowly dwindles away. The Will of Vodarek is now clear to us, and this new World Parliament is its vehicle. Katsuhiro, would you be kind enough to pull down that map?"

"Certainly." Behind Dr. Morita hung a long cord attached to a rolled map fastened to the wall. He stood and lowered it, showing an orthographic projection of the earth. "This map is based on the most recent satellite scans," he said, waving his hand before it. "Like the globe in Norbu's chamber, it displays both the half of our Earth still covered by three hundred kilometers of Coral encrustation, and the New Lands -- the half of ancient Earth that was exposed when the Coral sent a part of itself into the tenth dimension. At the eastern end of the New Lands is the island chain once known as Nippon, or Japan. At the other extreme, there's most of the subcontinent of Europe. Between them stretches Eastern Europe, Asia and the Indian Subcontinent. Below is the Pacific Ocean and parts of Africa and Australia."

Morita stood to one side and pressed his finger to a spot somewhere on the nebulous borders blurring Eastern Europe and Asia, between the pole and the equator. "This is where we intend to establish a capital city. Far from the Federation and its military, here at the heart of the world."

"Just five of you?" said Renton, growing dizzy with the terrible fear that all of them were deadly serious. "That won't be a very big city, will it?"

"Not at first," laughed Viyuuden, rising and standing with his back to the northernmost window opening. "But others will come. First will be the Vodarek ourselves. We've endured years of Federation persecution and apostate factionalism -- now it's time for those of us who follow the Way of Vodarek to find a new home. They will come from all over the current world. Others, non-Vodarek, will follow us."

Eureka asked the obvious question. "How do you know that?"

A small current of tension ran through the room. Renton had the idea that what would come next was something that all the others considered of pivotal importance. "Because of the Coralian Gift you and your husband bear, Lady Eureka. You traveled here because you do not want to be the only ones on Earth who can grant the Coralian blessing of health and limitless youthfulness to others. Tonight you will have your wish -- we shall perform the rite that will extend the Gift to all the Vodarek in this settlement. All of us will become vectors of the Prime Radiant. Still more will share the Gift as time goes on, but for now we alone shall take the burden of the Gift from you. Then we intend to migrate en masse to the new city. Those who want the Gift's benefits will have to go there to get them; inevitably, many of them will stay."

All of them looked expectantly toward Eureka and Renton. "All right," Eureka said at last. "That all sounds like a good idea. You all must have thought this over very carefully. But there's one thing that still isn't clear to me: you say that all the Vodarek in this town are going to go to your new city in one big migration. How are you going to do that?"

Renton nodded. His skin grew prickly with an awful presentiment; he felt an almost irresistible urge to grab Eureka, run for all they were worth and jump on a ref board, away and gone. Only the thought of the children restrained him. "She's right! And there's hardly any trapar in the air above the New Lands; only what the winds bring there from the parts of the world that're still covered in coral. So that means you can't fly there. And it's way too far to go on foot, and there's no fuel for trucks or cars. It'd take some kind of miracle to get you all to that place at once."

"The achievements of the great always appear miraculous," admitted Viyuuden. "We shall be taken to the New Lands. The signs are unmistakably clear. The time is upon us."

"Oh yeah?" Renton jumped up, sick of listening to the priest's easy, self-assured faith in the inevitability of his grand plans. "And who's gonna take you?"

But Viyuuden's serene smile held no smugness, only an unshakable assurance. "Have you not guessed already, Lord Renton? You will, both of you. We do not presume to ask this of you, much less command it, for this mighty thing is not ours to request or command -- it is the Will of Vodarek itself. This is the inheritance into which you have matured. Only you and the Lady command that power."

A silence so deep that Renton thought it might choke him enveloped the room. Then, for the first time, Sonia found her voice. "We await your orders...Lord and Lady."

The End

of Part Three