Kindred with the Skies -- the sequel to Uncertain Voyage

by Ken-Goh

Part Two of In Some Brighter Dreams

DISCLAIMER: This is an (alas) unlicensed work of fan fiction. I do not own the copyright to Eureka Seven, the characters of the 2005 anime series or its setting. Bandai Entertainment and Bones Studio have the legal rights to anything directly relating to the Eureka Seven series - though all my original characters, as well as all original lyrics and poetry, are solely mine.

Kindred With the Skies is part two of a new story arc, In Some Brighter Dreams.

In Some Brighter Dreams is a sequel to, and extension of, the events chronicled in my earlier Eureka Seven followup novel, Shine On, Shine On—which is itself an extension of The Fire in the Heart. The component sections of both novels are available here on this site.

This is the proper sequence of all installments up to this point:

The Fire in the Heart

1: Out of the Nest

2: Loss of Life

3: And I Shall Be Your Light

4: The Flame at the Heart of the World

Shine On, Shine On

1: The Edge

2: City of Dust

3: Borealis

In Some Brighter Dreams

1: Uncertain Voyage

2: Kindred With the Skies

All of these can be found here on this site.

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Kindred With the Skies

(2)

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A story from the world of Eureka Seven

by

John Wagner

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Chapter One

The Scent of Blood

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It was the faces that Number Twelve hated most.

Stupid faces, blank faces, faces devoid of all strength and nobility. Unfit to reclaim this planet as Humanity's birthright. The dull-eyed faces of animals, uncomprehending of the slaughter awaiting them. Some of them stared in passing; that was to be expected. Number Twelve would have loved to destroy the staring ones, the leering ones, the simple ones. But such small pleasures were not part of the Protocol, and would seriously impair the success of the mission. From Number Eight and Number Three there had been no report. Did that imply failure, or was the contemptible InterDominion simply imposing a security blanket, desperately concealing their work? In either case, the glorious Mission would continue. Number Twelve dismounted from the stolen bicycle and coasted to a stop, balanced on one pedal.

The building was not large by objective standards. A dissonant, self-indulgent cleverness marred its architecture, from its glassy lower floor to the arched roof, high above, like the wings of an ancient pagoda from beyond the darkness of the Exile Years. The place exuded gaudiness and undisciplined immaturity. It would not have been tolerated, if only...

Number Twelve allowed the memory to stoke the righteous rage that must never be allowed to die. Distasteful or not, this was the place, and at least one of them would soon be here. Warmed anew with a sense of irrefutable purpose, Number Twelve found a narrow space between a confectionary stand and a vendor of swimming apparel. A good place to hide the bicycle before someone recognized it and raised an undesirable fuss.

The shadows made excellent concealment. The morning was still very young and neither of the establishments on either side had yet opened for business. Without a sound, Twelve let the bike rest against one wall, not risking even the telltale clunk of its kickstand. And now to—

"Well, hey! You're up bright and early, aren't you?" A boy stood at the street end of the gap, each arm on a building, effectively blocking any streetside exit.

"Who are you?" said Number Twelve without inflection. A witness. This could be bad.

The boy—Twelve made an immediate correction, for in spite of his apparent youthfulness, he might be any age from eighteen upward—wore a blue shirt, black bathing trunks and a face of easy insouciance. "Hank Purcell. I work down the street, in the souvenir shop. Kind of a summer job; I'm enrolled in welding school in the fall. What about you? You new here?" He stepped nearer, into the shadows.

Number Twelve tensed. "Yes. Are you alone?"

"Sure." Hank Purcell inched forward, casually, centimeters at a time. "I'm the only one who—"

Twelve leaped into the air, sliding the glass blade from its hidden scabbard in a single fluid motion. It slashed in a quick and silent arc, across Hank Purcell's exposed throat. He tried to scream, but only a liquid wheezing issued from the hideous wound as he toppled face-down to the sandy soil, an ugly dark blob already forming beneath him.

Number Twelve watched impassively for his clutchings and twitchings to cease before stepping forward, over the body. Details were everything, and she had to be certain no one waited beyond the opening. No one did; Twelve came out of the dark gap, strolling in an unhurried way along the boardwalk. The hotel was the logical place. Time to secure a room and remain alert.

Number Twelve would watch and wait.

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Chapter Two

Never a Day Goes By

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The first notes of the orchestral opening poured out, lush and full, into the darkness beyond the silent stage. Tomika Stevens, shimmering like pink flame in the glow of a single contrasty spotlight, raised her eyes to the audience and caught the violin crescendo, growing from it, till her pure mezzo-soprano danced above it in the lighthearted introduction.

We live in a world of wonders,

Where nothing can surprise.

If we could see beyond the stars, I know

It would only be a reprise

of what has gone before.

The music grew darker now, and Tomika's remarkable voice plunged nearly to contralto, rich with melancholy longing.

But never a day goes by,

Never a chance I take,

Without you revealing, all that I'm feeling,

With every breath I make.

She brought both hands before her, pleading and vulnerable.

And within your arms I find,

questions that never end.

There we discover, each in the other,

All that life can intend.

All that life can intend.

The orchestral line rose for the chorus, and she answered it, again in the higher register, brilliant and clear, almost childishly free of vibrato.

The miracles that surround us,

Make our little lives seem tame.

So why is there so much to learn, right here?

Can it be that you are to blame,

For opening the door?

The brass sections joined in now, deep and dramatic, and Tomika's thrilling, vibrant response joined them, begging, desperate, insistent.

For through all the deadly dance,

Always your face I see.

Revealing, creating, anticipating,

All we will ever be.

Trumpets, trombones and polyphones surged and throbbed in dark subtones.

For never a day goes by,

In the journey that never ends.

Lover to lover, we will discover,

Past the horizon, keeping our eyes on

A world only we can see.

And then silence, four beats of it, and a soft solo piano accompaniment as Tomika closed her eyes and rose once more to a quavering trill, alone, desperate and somehow rapturous at the same time.

Where never a day goes by.

Never a day goes by.

She lifted the final note, held it, first half an octave, then a full octave above, ringing like a bittersweet memory.

The stage light winked out. Job shivered, as he always did, before cutting the orchestral recording and bringing up the stage lights.

Tommy, her magic still intact in the blazing glow, looked down into the orchestra pit occupied only by a bank of synthesizers, a control console and her husband. "How was it that time?" she asked.

"I think you've got it," He came to his feet, gathering up his pencilled notes. "That's just the right touch of innocence in the final lines. It's a dynamite performance, and it's going to have them all in tears while they beg for more."

She gave him a lopsided grin. "You're just saying that because you like this tight dress."

Job did; thought she looked every bit the goddess in its sheer pink revelation. But now was not the time to admit it. "Trust me, you're magnificent. We can start on the runthroughs with the real orchestra tomorrow morning, but I don't see any problems coming. We're ahead of schedule, which is the way every project should be."

"Really?" She made her way to the edge of the stage, legs stretching taut the molecular-mesh fabric, her silver-pink heels flashing. "Help me down, will you? This outfit isn't made for climbing."

Eagerly, he did so, pressing his hands to the warmth of her waist and boosting her down to the orchestra pit without letting her lose her balance. Impulsively, he kissed her. "Oops. Smeared your lipstick."

"It was ready to be smeared." Tommy returned the kiss with enthusiasm and abandon. "Mmmm. You didn't get to be such a good kisser as a systems engineer."

"And you didn't get to be one in the Federation Landestroopers." He hesitated, then lifted one eyebrow in mock suspicion. "Did you?"

"Don't answer that, Tommy!" called someone out of the darkness of the main aisle.

Job shaded his eyes and peered into the shadows beyond the fourth row. Alan Wyngarde, sporting a gaudy flower-print casual shirt, came down the aisle with a jaunty wave. Maeter hurried along at his side, her brilliant blonde hair gleaming as they emerged into the light.

"Alan! Maeter! When did you two get in to Ocean Dunes? Is this a vacation?"

"Not really." Maeter looked round at the empty stage, taking it all in with a mix of awe and admiration. Her loose yellow legless sunsuit, cut in the latest style, perfectly complemented her hair, as the red ribbon at its neckline echoed her lipstick's crimson hue. "I've got a fashion shoot for NewMode tomorrow, so Alan came down with me."

Her husband shook his head with a fond smile. "Bit of a working vacation for both of us, actually. While she's out posing on the beach, I'll be working remotely on restructuring the Temple's databases. They're badly in need of reorganization. But never mind that—we just found out the two of you were here, putting on on some kind of show for the hotel."

"Well, yes." Job shrugged uncomfortably, knowing what the next question would be.

"So it's true then?" asked Maeter. "You've really left the University Systems Research unit?"

"It was time, I guess." He slid one arm around Tommy's waist. "With the Coralian Gift, we're all of us going to live a very long time, and I decided it was time for a career change. Maybe my family was right after all—I never really lost my love for music. So here I am."

"Here we are," said Tommy proudly. "He's written a whole new act for me. Did you hear that last number? That's one of his. I'll be introducing it tomorrow night."

"Amazing!" Maeter clapped her hands together. "Will you be singing together?"

Job knew he was beginning to blush. "Well...not at this time. But..."

"C'mon, don't be so shy." Tommy kissed him on one cheek. "Keep this under your hats, both of you, but we're going to..."

He winced. "Maybe you shouldn't..."

"Sure we should. Maeter and Alan can keep a secret. We're working on a—" she lowered her voice to a secretive whisper "—full-length musical play."

"Impressive," Alan admitted.

"Isn't it, though? The hotel needed a big act to start attracting customers—"

"Tommy is the big act," Job hurried to explain. "I just write the music."

"—so they invited us down here for a month. We're using this date to break in the new songs. And if we make enough of a splash, we'll approach the National Theater with the idea for the musical in the fall. How 'bout that?"

At last, Alan looked genuinely surprised. "Really? That's wonderful. I...I've got to admit, Job, when you left the University for a career in music, I wasn't sure it was really a good idea. I mean, after all, you're one of the original Gekkostaters, not to mention something of a celebrity in systems engineering circles."

"He means he thought you were out of your mind," said Maeter.

Job had to laugh. "I thought so, too, more than once. But the fact is, I was tired of being part of the 'Living Legend of Gekkostate.' Living in the past doesn't have much of a future, I guess you'd say. We've all of us got virtually unlimited lifespans ahead of us, and resting on my laurels for the next millennium or so just isn't where I want to go. Time for a change."

"It all sounds consonant with the Will of Vodarek," Alan said with a serious face. "Say, the reason we came here was to tell you that Phaedra and Hal will be down later today. Maybe we could all get together when we have some time off."

"They're coming to the Dunes?" Tommy shifted one of the straps of her gown. "We didn't hear anything about that." From the distant lobby, far back in the silent darkness, came the shuffling echoes of some commotion beyond the lobby doors.

Maeter shook her head. "I think the management invited them. Just like they invited us. Trying to start up a resort like this in a place as new as the InterDominion must be a huge gamble, don't you think? They want as many, you know, big names here as possible. To get people interested. You two, for example. And I guess they think that Sir Alan and Dame Wyngarde—plus Baron and Baroness Farnsworth..."

"'Baron and Baroness?' I hope you're kidding. Is that what they're calling Phaedra and Hal these days?"

"Afraid so," said Alan. "As the Antipats attract more followers who don't like Eureka and Rentons' prominence, an opposition Monarchist movement's been forming, that explicitly wants them made King and Queen. The Will unfolds in strange ways. You haven't been aware of any of this?"

Job shrugged. "We've been working pretty hard on the show; we haven't had a lot of time for keeping up with current events. Maybe they can bring us up to date when we all meet."

"Great," Maeter said. "And I'm sure they'll be really interested in this play you're cooking up. Wait'll they... What's the matter?" Puzzled, she looked from Job to Tommy to Alan, all of whose faces showed something near to alarm.

"Well...it needs to be kept secret till we get an official answer from the National. Maybe it'd be better if we didn't mention anything to Hal and Phaedra, just yet."

"Oh." She nodded understanding, setting her crystal earrings asparkle. "You mean because of—"

"Yeah," said Tommy. "Because of that. But listen, we're through for the day, here. Why don't we go and...?"

One of the lobby doors at the rear rattled open, and footsteps pattered rapidly down into their circle of light. Job recognized Yukata Sado, their stage manager, out of breath, his hair jutting out in little wisps on all sides. "Job? Tommy! Thank God you're okay!"

Job felt a tingle of alarm, the kind he had hoped would now belong only to the past. "Yukata? Why shouldn't we be okay? What's—?"

The man stumbled to a stop before them. "It's murder," he gasped between wheezing breaths. "Just the kind of publicity Ocean Dunes doesn't need."

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Chapter Three

Seeds

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Holland Novak felt the tic coming back to his left eye. Ever since that damn business of five years ago, Egan always gathers us here when things start getting hot. It was just his office, then. But now it's an office and an emergency command center, and I hate every chair and table and monitor in it. And no matter how much it's been expanded, it still feels as cramped as a closet in here.

At the head of the conference table waited Dr. Gregory Egan, hands placidly folded. On the wall behind him hung a framed quotation that Holland had seen so many times he could nearly recite it from memory:

There is in stillness oft a magic power

To calm the breast, when struggling passions lower;

Touch'd by its influence, in the soul arise

Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.

Where does he get this ancient crap? wondered Holland, and ground his teeth, wishing it were all over.

Eureka and Renton entered the room, and, in a polite gesture that over time had solidified into official protocol, everyone came to their feet. Grateful for the chance to stretch his legs, Holland stood with the rest. To his right, in what had once been Jobs' customary spot, Professor Fernando Wossel—once better known to the pirate crew of the Moonlight as "Woz"—rose to his full one point seven meter height with a quiet sigh. Tired? Worried? Indifferent? I can't read him; never could, not even in the old days. With Jobs, I always knew where he stood. But not Woz.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," announced Prime Minister Egan, "please be seated. Thank you all for coming so promptly. We are currently—"

The door flapped open once again, as Captain Jean-Baptise Arban hurried in, his face shiny with perspiration, to take his seat. "My apologies, Prime Minister—My Lord and Lady—for being so untimely. Lord Commander Sorel requested at the last minute that I take his place. The Lord Commander is occupied with other matters, and sends his regrets."

"I see." Dr. Egan watched without expression as Arban opened his briefcase to snatch out a sheaf of papers, like a handful of lettuce. "You have new developments to report, then?"

"Yes, Prime Minister. I should reiterate, IPFSec's task is to deal with threats to the InterDominion itself. We are not—and were never chartered to be—a police force, national or otherwise. That's why it has taken us so long to sift through the civil reports from the various Provincial constabularies."

Egan nodded slowly. "Quite so. Please prepare to report, Commander. While you do so, Professor Wossel has information of interest to us all. Professor?"

"Thank you, Dr. Egan." Without consulting notes of any kind, Woz folded his arms and began at once. "This concerns the movement of the Arkship. Two days ago, it left lunar orbit for unknown reasons, and began moving gradually toward Earth. That movement has now stopped—for the moment, at least."

Holland shifted in his seat. "Wait a minute. You can't just stop along a trajectory. You'll either keep moving along the original flight path, go into a new trajectory—or drop to the ground."

"Exactly right, Holland! Well, in most cases, at least. But the Arkship has stopped in the L1 Lagrangian point."

"What's that?" asked Renton.

"To simplify, the Lagrange points—they're named after an ancient mathematician—are gravitationally stable locations in the orbits of two bodies. Of course, the Sun and other bodies have an effect as well, but we can ignore them for this discussion." He held up one hand and began counting off on his fingers. "The L1, L2 and L3 points are less stable than the others. L2 is on the other side of the Moon from us, and L3 lies on the other side of the Earth. L4 and L5 are very stable, and on the same orbital path as the Moon. But L1 is the nearest one that's directly between the Earth and the Moon, at a distance of about 348,000 kilometers from Earth."

"From the Earth's center," corrected Dr. Egan.

"Yes, precisely. It's about, oh, 341,000 kilometers from our surface. In any case, the L4 and L5 points, though stable, are more distant. They lie at the apexes of the orbital plane with a common base..."

Holland, seeing that this was going to be a fairly typical Woz monologue, interrupted. "We get the picture. But if this L1 point is unstable, why's the Arkship parked there?"

"Oh, it's only unstable in a relative sense, Holland. Any object can remain at the L1 point with a minimum expenditure of stationkeeping energy, which is what it's doing now. And it's always facing Earth." He displayed a toothy grin, as if he'd just come up with a clever answer to some brain-twisting riddle.

"That's the part I don't like. Why is it facing Earth? And what made it leave its lunar orbit in the first place?"

Egan lay a single sheet of paper on the table before him. "An excellent question, and one we cannot answer at this time. However, Professor Wossel's research group at the University has been able to establish a precise time for the Arkship's movement. It followed the experiment carried out by Dr. Morita's group by a mere one minute and three seconds."

"Does that mean the experiment caused the ship to move?" asked Eureka.

Viyuuden, waiting like a brooding shadow at the opposite end of the table from Dr. Egan, spoke for the first time. "The experiment caused a significant disruption in the Coral's thought; my associates and I felt it at once. Just what that disruption might have been—or its meaning—I don't pretend to know at this time."

"Is that why you came charging in here yesterday, yelling about how we've gotta stop somebody from getting here to the Heart of the World?" As always, Holland found the priest's mysticism and intuitive leaps frustratingly vague.

"No. Gregory told me that the two young reffers of whom Lord Maurice and Lady Ariadne spoke were being bussed here to this city."

"That's true," said Arban. "Our field agents personally put them on a bus to the Heart of the World."

"Yes. And shortly thereafter, there appeared..."

"More 'disturbances?'" said Holland, with the beginning of a sly grin.

Viyuuden looked away. "No. More like...an awareness. Of something very powerful and very inimical to the Coral...and to all it creates." He squirmed, showing every sign of profound discomfort. "There are no words for it, for it had a perceptive shape beyond anything in human experience. Our meditative circle in the Temple recoiled from it at once; several of them are still in recuperation from its touch. Scoff if you like, Holland—if you had seen the pain in their faces..."

"I'm not scoffing. You guys lean too much on incense and magic for my taste, but you usually know what you're talking about. Even when you can't explain it to the rest of us. So, you're saying that these two reffing kids are up to some kind of major sabotage?"

Arban hurried to cut in. "No, First Speaker. Both Viyuuden's Guardians of the Flame and our own IPF agents had already checked them out exhaustively. Beyond doubt, they're nothing more than ordinary young athletes, and neither of them show either the inclination or ability to bring any harm to the Coral. In fact, Their Majesties, the Prince and Princess, personally cleared them and commanded that we bus them here."

"That's true," said Renton.

Viyuuden leaned forward, hands outstretched. "Nevertheless, I repeat: they must not reach this city—or Their Majesties, the Blessed of Vodarek." He inclined his head toward Eureka and Renton.

Too much goddam smoke and mirrors. Tell me something I can get my hands on! "Well, that ought t'be simple enough. Intercept them at the bus terminal and march'em out of town."

Arban's eyes fell to his papers, and Holland knew at once that it was not going to be simple at all. "That was our thought as well, First Speaker. But we've discovered that when the bus arrived...neither of them were on it. Somewhere between here and Shiretoko, both of them disappeared."

"Then where the hell did they—?"

"We don't yet know, sir. As I've already pointed out, we have to rely upon local provincial police units, which are themselves widely spread and lacking in coordination. We've gotten a lead that something related may have happened in a little backwater called 'Harmony Falls,' and there are IPF agents on their way there within the hour. In fact, Lord Commander Sorel is preparing to lead that investigation personally."

"Dominic is?" What's the head of IPF Security doing out in the field? Isn't that a job for his subordinates? "Well, okay, as long as he passes along whatever he finds out as soon as he can. Woz...what about this experiment of Morita's, anyway? What made it screw up? Was it that sabotage explosion? And what was it about the explosion that even got Viyuuden, here, disturbed?"

"Once question at a time, please!" said Professor Wossel. "As for the experiment itself, well, all the data we've been getting indicates something that makes no sense at all. Using hyperaccelerated trapar, they projected a test probe into lunar orbit. It was a way of..."

Holland swiveled his chair back and forth, both hands tight. "A way of getting to the Arkship before the Federation does, I know. And it didn't work."

"Actually, we don't know if it did or not. Certainly it went somewhere, and gave up a great deal of energy in the process; it came back extremely cold. But the really interesting part is that it came back fourteen point seven seconds before it departed. That should be impossible."

"Yeah. Was it caused by the reactor explosions?"

Dr. Egan put down the hard rubber balls he'd been squeezing as hand-strengthening exercises. "It was not. Dr. Morita's team is very clear on that—if on little else. The saboteur's detonations seem timed to coincide with the experiment, but they did not affect it. Captain Arban, have you any further news on this attempt?"

Arban reddened, obviously taken by surprise, and riffled through his papers again. "All the Project security personnel took up their assigned protective posts after the explosions, sir, as per their orders. Several of them reported that the saboteur escaped, but they did not pursue beyond a few kilometers. But...someone went in full pursuit."

"Indeed? Who might that have been?"

"It was...Mr. Stoner, the Minister of Information."

Holland jolted upright. "Stoner? He took off after the bomber? All by himself?"

"No, First Speaker." Arban faced him, with difficulty. "We've determined that he took one of the Project personnel with him. A Miss Sigrid Arnoldson, a cyclotron beam-alignment technician."

Good God. Everybody's gone crazy. Even Stoner's run off on another one of his crusades. What next? "So where are they now?"

"We received a communication from the Minister less than half an hour ago, sir. It seems they trailed the saboteur's stolen vehicle for about a hundred and fifty kilometers across the steppes to the southeast of the Project. They finally found it, abandoned, and with signs of thruster scorching nearby."

"So our Mad Bomber was picked up by air." Holland leaned backward, letting his hands fall to the arms of his chair. He twisted first one wrist, then the other, in the preliminary moves for insertion into an LFO's prosthetic arm-control waldoes. An LFO. What I'd give to be able to hop in one and fly out to where Stoner is right now. Maybe chase down that pickup ship and blast it right out of the damned air. Slowly, he tightened his fingers around imaginary cannon triggers...

Holland caught Renton watching him with a thin smile of recognition, and sat up, embarrassed. The LFOs are gone, and so are the old days. "Okay, have somebody from the IPF Air Fleet pick him—them—and the cars up. Unless Stoner's off on another wild adventure by then, that is. Doc, it's starting to look like this bombing business was pretty well organized, wouldn't you say?"

"I concur. Tell me, Captain Arban, has there been any connection discovered between the sabotage to the Pinwheel project and the attempted murder here in the Temple several days past?"

For an instant, no one rose to the audacity of Egan's suggestion.

Arban recovered first. "I don't... No, sir. We're not aware of any link. Are you suggesting...?"

The Prime Minister gave him an affable smile. "I suggest nothing—at this time."

"Yes, sir. However..."

Holland's antennae went up. "Yeah?"

"This morning I saw a bulletin from the local private constabulary down in Ocean Dunes, the place where that investment consortium's trying to make a go of a vacation resort. I know it probably doesn't mean a thing, but..."

"No information is irrelevant at this point," said Egan. "Please continue."

"Well, sir, there's been another murder. A successful one, this time. And the weapon used was again a knife. A young chap who had a summer job along the beachfront was killed. Violently."

Eureka's normally pale face went a shade whiter. "Didn't the Coralian Gift save him from the stabbing?"

"No, My Lady. You see...it wasn't just a stabbing. The blade was... Well, the victim was nearly decapitated by the force of the slash. His entire throat and most of the spinal cord had been severed. The massive blood loss and the nerve damage...even the Gift couldn't regenerate him fast enough to prevent death."

"Ghastly," whispered Woz.

Viyuuden nodded in a thoughtful way. "It is true, then. I received a communication several hours past, from Mrs. Aruno. She told me of a dream in which she experienced whirling knives and blood upon the ground. It was too vague to be considered a warning, much less a prediction, but the connection is now clear."

Egan pressed the tips of his fingers together. "Indeed it is. Captain Arban, please dispatch a team of IPF investigators to Ocean Dunes, to...assist...the local mercenary force. It is likely that they will have overlooked or damaged any subtle evidence by now, but we may still gather some useful information. Professor Wossel: be so good as to contact Dr. Morita at once, and gather all information you consider relevant, directly from him. It is imperative that we know more about the nature of his experiment's very unusual failure. Katsuhiro will no doubt resent your distraction, but that is of secondary importance, now. Holland?"

Holland churned inside but remained outwardly impassive. "Doctor?"

"I want you to see that no more of this becomes public knowledge, for several days at least. As Mr. Stoner seems...otherwise occupied at the moment, please contact the Ministry of Information. Make certain that they create a cover story for the press which explains the explosions at the Pinwheel site in a conventional way. Even if it means sealing off the Smolensk installation itself from all unauthorized outside contact."

"Right. Does that include Stoner and this technician he's kidnapped?"

"'Kidnapped?'" Egan nearly chuckled. "I have never heard of Mr. Stoner requiring force in the past, have you? No, allow him to follow his own instincts in his pursuit of this matter. It may yet prove valuable. Viyuuden, my friend, I would very much appreciate it if you would now join me in your own quarters for further conversation on the esoteric implications of the current situation. Otherwise, I propose that our meeting has ended."

No one objected, least of all Holland. They all stood, bowed to Eureka and Renton, and left.

-#-

When the rest were gone, Renton released his breath in a long, angry hiss. "I'm glad Maurice and Ariadne are still out of town. This business gets more sickening every minute."

Eureka made the tiniest of nods. "I know. More deaths. More lies. More secrecy. More scrambling to beat the Federation. Sometimes I wonder...how long before the InterDominion itself becomes like the Federation? And then we'll have two great powers, each trying to dominate the other, each trying to take the entire world for itself. The seeds are already planted, Renton. And each day I feel more powerless to stop it."

"Yeah." He rose and took her hand to join him. "But even though they're not here, we've still got to keep Ariadne and Maurice up to date. Come on, let's go find a secure connection."

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Chapter Four

Outsider

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With growing impatience, Anemone watched him fling clothing into his overnight bag "Dominic! What the hell're you doing?"

"I told you." Kneeling on the edge of the bed, he threw a soap case and toothbrush into the bag as though hurling rocks at an enemy. "I have to get out and do a field investigation."

"Since when does the Commander of IPF Security for the Heart of the World do his own field work?"

He faced her, the better not to be distracted by her pink briefs and cutoff T-shirt. "Since something important's come up." Dominic jammed his shaver into the space between pajamas and socks. "It's in a little town called Harmony Falls. Something happened there, I'm sure. Something that everyone's overlooking. And I need to know what."

"Does it really matter that much?" Anemone's wings quivered as she balled her small fists. "What's up with you lately? Dammit, I thought you were through with on-site investigations!"

"I am—most of the time. This is different. Why are you making such a big important deal over it?" He rummaged around in the dresser drawer for a spare communicator and added it to the suitcase's burdens, aware that his own wings fluttered with emotions he would rather have kept concealed.

"It's important because I like having my husband at home nights, that's why. Because...look at me, Dominic!—because after that night when we raided Zemplén prison, you swore you weren't gonna risk your neck in the field any more, that it was all over with."

"This is nothing like that." The suitcase's latches snapped shut like shears. Dominic hefted it; heavy, but manageable.

Anemone hung her head and wrapped both arms about her bare midriff. "Because I want you here with me. Because I don't want you ever again out where you could catch a bullet. Because...I love you."

He shut his eyes. Face it, you knew that one day it would come to this. Knew it from the very beginning. And now here she was, just as he'd imagined her, asking the question that could no longer be avoided. Dominic released a weary sigh. Now there was no choice but to tell her, to admit it all. Dropping to the bed, he patted the cover beside him. "And I love you. You know that. Come on over here, will you? Sit beside me."

She did, but with no great enthusiasm. "You scare me when you do stuff like this." Her voice went hoarse, and she leaned into him. Dominic wrapped one arm about her shoulders, sliding his hand just above her wings. "Have I done something, Dom? Something I shouldn't—"

"Don't talk that way. Of course you haven't done anything. It's got nothing to do with you."

"Then what—?"

With his free hand, Dominic smoothed back his churned mop of brilliant pink hair, the same shade as her own. "Listen, Anemone... I haven't always told you everything about my job."

"I know. I can feel it when you hide something. I figured you'd tell me when you were ready."

"Well, I'm not ready. But now I've got no choice but to tell you anyway. I don't know where to begin. This isn't easy..."

She shifted nearer to him. "Not even with me?"

"Especially not even with you. No man wants to look like an idiot in front of his wife." He stared at the rug, groping for the right words. "Look, five years back, when I turned into a full Coralian hybrid—"

"I was damn proud of you then, Dom."

"So was I—at first. But at work... It started with little things at the IPFSec office. Like smothered chuckling, throat-clearing when I'd walk past... For a long time, I tried hard to convince myself that it was all my imagination, that I was just getting paranoid."

Anemone shook her head, puzzled. "About what?"

"And then there were other things, too. Field agents would stop reporting directly in to me, and turn in their reports to one of my subalterns instead. I wouldn't see them till hours, sometimes even days, later. A year or so ago, there was an entire operation concerning a possible Barrier breach up in the northern tundra, that didn't cross my desk until the following week."

"I hope you gave whoever did it hell."

He got up from the bed and paced aimlessly beside the window, high above the city brooding below. "I did. It didn't happen again, but there was an entire change of, well, attitude, in the office. Never any open insubordination, but just the faintest hint of resentment, even mockery, in the air. Nothing solid enough to act upon, mind you. But I started getting the feeling that there was some tremendous joke going on, and everyone was in on it but me."

"I still don't—"

"Let me finish. It was just after Egan and Holland and Viyuuden made us move out of our apartment and here into the Temple. Because the 'Chosen of the Coral' had to be more securely protected, they said. And after that, things started getting even more strained. Still nothing I could put my finger on, just that air of some hidden joke, that I couldn't understand."

Dominic stopped, then, leaning on the windowsill, looking outward. "I...I came into the office early one Saturday, to take care of some paperwork that wouldn't wait till after the weekend. No one saw me come in—at least I don't think anyone did. And I opened the intercom circuit down to the Analysis pool, to ask for some records. Someone had accidentally left the link open. And I could hear a few of the duty crew talking, laughing. About me."

He could hear Anemone take in a breath, then. But she did not speak, and he went on, more awkward and ashamed with each word. "Between horselaughs, they were calling me 'Commander Fairy.' And then I finally understood the joke. The joke was...me."

"What the f—?"

"You see, the Intelligence community attracts a lot of wannabe tough guys, of both sexes. You wouldn't believe the strutting and posturing that goes on, all of it to show your co-workers what a hard case you are, able to chew up nails and spit out bullets. It's all part of the game, a game I've played all my life, since my first day as a Federation Intelligence recruit."

Dominic turned, facing into the room and the dumbfounded Anemone. "There just isn't any place in the IPF Security Service for a man with pink hair, lavender eyes and—" he wriggled his wings ironically "—translucent pastel wings."

She stood, rigid with righteous anger. "Oh yeah? Well there damn well isn't anything funny about mine!"

"Of course not. You're exotically beautiful, and a world-famous dancer. Oh, sure, somehow Renton can carry it off, and even Maurice. But not me. Not in the world where I work. I can't function effectively in that environment any more." Slowly, he shut his eyes. "And then two years back, when that unanimous Senate vote gave me the royal title of 'Lord Commander,' it didn't help at all. Just the opposite, in fact. It only distanced me even further from the people who were supposedly my subordinates. If it wasn't for J.B. Arban—"

"Is he in on this, too? That dirty little—"

"No, no, Anemone, not him! Arban's a very competent, very by-the-book guy, and I can rely on him. He's dropped a couple of hints here and there that he knows what's going on behind my back, and he doesn't like it." Dominic shrugged helplessly. "But it's my burden to carry, not his." He stood, then, hands behind his back. "And now you know it all. And why I've been ashamed to tell you all this time."

She jumped to her feet and ran to him, her arms iron-tight about his waist. "You've got nothing to be ashamed of, Dom! None of this is your doing."

"I know. I'm not ashamed that it's happened, not at all. I'm ashamed...that I'm completely unable to do anything to stop it. I can't help thinking that I ought to be tough enough to rise above all this nonsense, somehow put my foot down and get my organization back in line. But it's no good. You can't stamp out something that everyone pretends doesn't exist."

Dominic glared at the floor, his gold-ringed Coralian eyes simmering. "And it's undermining IPFSec's efficiency, badly. And mine. Half the time I hate to go to the office; I'm watching the clock all day long and counting every minute till I'm out of there. This ought to be the greatest position I've ever had, the kind I've dreamed of all my life. But instead..." He threw up both hands and let them drop uselessly at his sides. "Maybe Job Stevens has the right idea. Maybe it's time for something else. But I'm an Intel operative, and always have been. What else do I know how to do?"

Anemone clung to him for a long moment of silence. Then: "You shoulda told me sooner. You shoulda told me. You're the bravest, finest guy I ever knew, Dominic. You've served the InterDominion since the day it was started. You put your own life on the line so many times, to save me—and to save so many others. You were the one who went into my head and pulled me back from a one-way ticket to the nuthouse. You. If this is the kinda gratitude you get from the InterDominion after all that..." She stepped back, swabbing at her shining eyes. "Listen, baby, whatever you decide to do, I know it'll be the right thing, you hear? And I'll be with you all the way, no matter what. But next time..."

He forced a twisted smile. "Yes?"

"Next time, you damn well tell me what's on your mind. You hear me, Lord Commander Sorel?"

His smile grew, if ever so slightly. "Loud and clear." He kissed her, sealing the bargain. "But I've still got to pack. Something funny happened out in Harmony Falls, something that no one else seems to've noticed. I want to know what it was."

"But you don't have to...prove anything to anybody, y'know."

"Maybe not. Maybe I just need to get out and prove to myself that I can still do something besides push paper and give orders. And get away from that damn office for a while, where I can think." Dominic hoisted the bulging suitcase to the floor, letting it drop with a solid thump. "I've ordered an airship for forty minutes from now, and I can just make it to the IPF aerodrome on time. Where are my traveling boots?"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Five

Change of Course

-#-

"Hey, Matt!"

Crouching on the scorched grass, Matt Stoner contemplated Sigrid, who leaned with elaborate patience against their military staff car. Using his pocket knife, she had cut the arms and legs from her technician's coveralls to better cope with the summer heat here on the steppes, and Stoner found the effect a huge improvement. "Yeah, just a second."

He scooped a handful of pungently reeking soil and burnt grass into an Information Ministry envelope, then made his way back to her, shading his eyes against the sun. "I was collecting some of that burned residue. The IPF guys'll want to check out this landing pattern when they get here. But Security'll want some too, and I have a feeling Dominic Sorel's gonna be in on this soon enough."

"And what about that?" She inclined her head in the general direction of the saboteur's abandoned vehicle, silently waiting ten meters distant, driver door open.

"Don't touch it; I already told the IPF about it when I radioed in. The transport they're sending'll be big enough to pick it up. They'll want to go over it with their detectors, to see if our man with the bombs left any traces." Stoner looked to the sky, shading his eyes against the midday sun. "Anybody can see what happened here. The bomber drove out this far, called for his pals once he was outside the Project damping field, then they came and picked him up in a flyer of some kind. Fairly well-planned operation." He hesitated, then added: "Almost military."

"I dunno, Matt." With one foot, she prodded at a loose rock, its surface seared and brittle from landing-thruster heat. "If he was that professional, I'd expect him to've had a backup plan, wouldn't you? In case the flyer couldn't make it in time, I mean."

Stoner thought rapidly before replying. The wind raced across the dry grasslands with a lonely hiss. "What're you getting at?"

"Well... I was looking at the map in your car. The bomber was making straight overland. As straight as the hills allowed, anyway. And if you draw a straight line from the Smolensk Project site right through where we are now, then continue it on for another hundred and twenty kilos or so...it comes to within a kilo or two of Ocean Dunes."

"What, that fancy waterfront resort? The new one?"

"Yeah. I mean, suppose the airship hadn't been able to pick him up? I'm no expert at this, of course, but it seems to me he'd have kept on going till he got to Ocean Dunes. Don't you think?"

Several new suspicions raced through his imagination. "Maybe so. Which suggests that whoever sent him out to bomb the Project might be in Ocean Dunes, too. A pretty wild shot, but I've run with less." Stoner scratched idly at the back of his neck, already grown gritty in the wind and heat. "Maybe I'll just get the IPF crew to charge up the accumulators on my car, then keep on driving after they take you back. Been too damn long since I was out digging up a big story on my own. It might feel good at that."

Sigrid moved closer and put out one tentative hand to his arm. "Well, listen, Matt... I been thinking about that. Maybe it's not such a hot idea for you to go walking off into this. Alone, I mean. I mean...I think I'd like to go along."

"Uh-huh." He looked to the sky, searching for the IPF ship that would approach from the northern horizon. At last he found it, a growing dark speck at less than two hundred meters altitude, enveloped in the laminar-flow trapar fire that allowed it to fly at low search-pattern speeds. "Better get back to the car," he warned her. "That thing's about to kick up a lot of dust, and you don't want to get caught in the trapar downdraft."

"But I..."

The rescue transport drew nearer now, swelling into a bulging teardrop with stubby wings as it circled overhead. Shielding his own eyes with one arm, Stoner turned from the crackling wind and pushed Sigrid toward the shelter of the car. "Back inside, if you know what's good for you! We can talk more about the rest on the way to Ocean Dunes. Hurry!"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Six

By the Sea, by the Sea

-#-

Gene Onegin hurried down the sun-bright beach, toward their hut. The tourists were thick, now, milling about on the boardwalks and beach paths, gawking and laughing and ready for lunch. He ignored them as he slipped between two shops and descended the dirt path down to the barren gully he'd immediately christened "Dead End Lane." Manon hadn't been particularly amused, but then, she never was. And I guess I can't much blame her, can I?

Their hut—one among many—had served as a temporary workers' quarters during the months the hotel had been under construction, and not a man of them had wasted an instant's labor on making it a thing of beauty. A simple rectangle of stylon panels held together by frozen billows of gray synthfoam, it provided insulation against the summer heat, shelter from the rain...and a hiding place, at minimum cost.

Gene fit the titanium key into its slot, making a great deal of unnecessary noise with the knob. Manon hated nothing more than being surprised when he came in. "Manon? You here? I'm back."

The shade inside wrapped him in its foggy arms and he shivered as his eyes adjusted, grateful that the construction gang had left the thermoelectric heat exchanger in place after their departure. "Manon?"

A soft squeak from the far corner told him she was curled up on the canvas-frame chair next to the window. She's always there. Always. "It's me, Gene. I'm back. I've got something to tell you."

"What is it this time?" He saw her, now, rising listlessly and coming across the room, arms wrapped about herself.

"I've got a job."

She picked at one tooth, in a way that spoke volumes of her indifference. "How nice. Why? Are you planning on settling down here?"

"Well...no, 'course not. But as long as we're here, we've gotta eat. And pay rent on this palace. It's only been three days, but all the same... The money those Security people gave us isn't gonna last forever, after all."

"Neither am I. I'm so damn sick of this hideous little dungeon! Three days! It might as well be three months."

Inexplicably ashamed and angry all at once, Gene nearly shouted, "We have to stay here, you know that. That thing that happened back in Harmony Falls..."

"And what did happen back there? We still don't know. And nobody's showed up to spray us with any—" she tossed her hair back from her face, violently "—nerve gas. The whole idea was crazy from the beginning. I was just, I don't know, upset at being arrested and hustled out of town; at having the reffing championship taken from me—"

"Taken from us, don't forget," Gene reminded her.

"Oh, stop being so damn self-centered, for once. You made me come here. It was your idea. Always trying to convince me to do things I don't want to... You're just like my—"

She stopped, then, and the shadowed room whispered in her silence.

"Like your...father?" said Gene. "That's crazy. I'm not—"

"Don't try to analyze me! I just... There's nothing to..." Her voice fell to a barely audible murmur. "What sort of job?"

"It's at a, uh, souvenir stand. You know, selling things to the tourists. I went all over the beachfront looking for work, and the guy who'd worked there before me didn't show up today. So the owner hired me on the spot. He was pretty hard up, I think. There are some big shots coming from the Heart of the World, and they're expecting a lot of hotel visitors soon." He peeled off his torn T-shirt and tossed it to the nearest chair. "Okay, the money's not so great, but at least we'll be able to keep on staying here. And keep on eating, even though it won't be in the hotel dining room. Where're my other shirts? I want to put something better on, for my first day on the job."

"In your suitcase, of course, on your side of the room." She pointed, and Gene noticed the faint quiver in her hand. "I...wonder... How did you do it? Did you just...walk up to him and ask for the job?"

"What? Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm a stranger here. How else would I find a job?"

"I...don't know. I've never... How long will you be working? Your hours, I mean?"

Gene pulled the fresh shirt down over his neck and tugged at it here and there. "For right now, one o'clock till eight-thirty at night. The beachfront is all illuminated with colored lights at night, and they play music. You oughta get out once in a while, and see it."

"If I feel like it, I will."

He shrugged, pretending to an airy indifference. "Suit yourself. It just seems like you must get pretty bored in here all day... There, I guess I'm presentable enough to go sell some junk to the sightseers. I'll be back around nine, I guess. Don't wait up for me." As if you would.

Gene pulled the door shut behind him and stepped back out into the brilliant sunlight, trying his best to look only ahead.

He walked with long, determined steps, feeling the energy of the relentless sun drive away his fears as he hurried along. The Boardwalk was alive with milling crowds, now, most of them obviously well-off, decked out in their summer finery. Stunning girls, in gaudy and revealing beachfront dress; their men smiling with the self-assurance of money, mysterious behind trendy sungoggles. All of them moved in a flowery mist of glittering laughter that tinkled and sparkled like the wind-whipped waves. Gene realized, then, that he did not envy these people, for envy would imply that they had something he could never have. But I will have it, he promised himself. I'm not gonna be a harvester mechanic for the rest of my life. I might've lost out on the reffing championship, but sooner or later, I'm gonna be right there with them, laughing with the rich ones. Back in the Federation, Dad never had a prayer of getting out of his rut on the collective farms. But here in the InterDominion, you can make something of yourself, as long as you're smart enough and work hard enough. Someday, I'll be part of this crowd, I damn well will.

A girl with red hair as spectacular as her crimson lipstick strutted by on the arm of her companion, his straw hat and unbuttoned syntheflector sun shirt fluttering around him. Gene allowed himself the fantasy of seeing himself in the man's place, and wondered, just for a moment, who he might imagine clutching his own future self's arm, laughing and smiling contentedly up at him in the sunlight. But the thought brought him an unexpected melancholy, and he hurried on to the souvenir stand, with still twenty minutes remaining to one o'clock.

"Here I am, Mr. Yoshi," he announced to the owner.

"Good lad." Yoshi wore an open face with a perpetual half-smile. "I can show you 'round the shop 'fore you start. What'd you say your name was again?"

Having no idea what the man's true age might be, Gene took the safe path of addressing him as someone at least twenty years older than himself. "Art Toscanini, sir." Another gust off the Inland Sea—Gene knew it had been called the "Caspian" in ancient times—rattled a wooden rack of ceramic statuettes, and he grabbed at it to keep it from falling.

"Quick work, Art! Might be a good idea t'move that rack to the floor, eh? Now here's the cash strongbox under the counter. You know how to make change? Good. Always make sure it's locked when you're away from it." Yoshi gave him a brief but sharp glance, and Gene understood that he was making a final decision whether or not this eager lad from upcountry could be trusted with so much ready cash. Apparently satisfied, he moved on throughout the little shop, open on the front side but with a roof and walls protecting it from any sudden rain. Yoshi pointed here and there, indicating the assorted geegaws for sale: cast-resin glow-in-the-dark dancing girls in various states of undress; tiny bronze replicas of the hotel; sungoggles in a wide range of prices; little metalflake pocket knives, everything prominently stamped with the bold logo "I've been to OCEAN DUNES."

Even as Yoshi explained the simple layout, a fair-haired man with a toothpick dangling insouciantly from one corner of his mouth pulled a blue beach umbrella from a display rack. "Sun's pretty bright out there today," he said, holding out a five-ICU note.

Yoshi nodded to Gene, who checked the price tag on the umbrella, took the man's bill and counted out his change, the way he'd always done it in his father's shop. "There you go. If the sun's still too bright for you, we've got sunburn ointment, too."

"Yeah? I'll remember that. See you later—"

Gene narrowed his eyes and gave him an oily, insinuating grin. "It's a lot of fun to rub it on your girlfriend," he said.

The man with the blue umbrella paused, twirling it thoughtfully in his hands. "Second thought, gimme a bottle of suntan oil, too."

"Great job," laughed Yoshi after the customer had hurried away. "I see you've a knack for this work. Come and get me around seven-thirty, and I'll show you how to lock up."

"Yes, sir. Er, where'll you be?"

"In the hotel bar, of course."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Seven

Unexpected Arrival

-#-

"We'd like to see the Ministry Archives, please."

The bored receptionist at the Ministry of Information's Archival Office did not trouble to look up from her desk full of papers. "Fill out an Access Request Form, then submit it through the usual channels." She pointed to a bin of pre-printed forms across the room.

"I'm afraid we don't have time for that."

Rick nearly laughed at her stunned expression when she raised her face to find Prince Maurice and Princess Ariadne standing before her. But he knew she might take his laughter for mockery, and kept silent.

"Your—Your Majesties! I didn't...I'm so sorry. I'd no idea. I didn't know you'd returned from... Of course you're welcome to..."

Ariadne smiled politely. "We know there was a Ministry camera crew covering the recent reffing tournament in Shiretoko. We'd very much like to see the archival footage of that event, if you please. It may be very important."

"Yes, My Lady, right away!" The receptionist pressed a button on the console beside the desk. "I've summoned the Archivist for Athletic Events. He'll be with you very shortly." To underscore her zeal, she pressed the button three times more, until an amber Acknowledge light appeared above it.

Rick smiled pleasantly, to put the woman more at ease. —Why do all these government buildings have to smell like paint? he flashed to Ariadne.

Because most of them are new, just like all the buildings in the New Lands. Look, there's someone coming already. "Good evening. You must be the Archivist."

"Yes, Lady Ariadne; Lord Maurice. I'm Toru Takemitsu, Chief of Archives for the Ministry's sporting-event recordings." His hair, badly in need of a trim, fell forward over his eyes, and he brushed it back with a practiced sweep of one hand. "How may I serve you, Your Highnesses?"

Already sick of the obsequious formalities, Rick cut the introductions short. "You don't have to serve anything. We just want to see the recordings your camera crews made of the reffing tournament in Shiretoko. At all wavelengths."

Takemitsu stopped in mid-bow. "All of them, Sir? Our crews normally record in visible light, of course, but as a matter of policy, we also record in ultraviolet, infrared, polarized, diffracted... The purpose is to provide all possible wavelengths as a reference, in case there are legal or historical issues at some future date."

"We understand," said Ariadne. "Please lead us to a console where we can access these reference recordings."

"As you wish, My Lady. Unfortunately, Minister Stoner is not in the City at this moment..." He spread his hands in apology.

Rick gave him a curt nod. "We know where Stoner is, but we can't wait for him. And we've got reason to think that there might be something important in those recordings. Please take us to them."

"At this hour...?"

"Now." Ariadne did not raise her voice. She did not need to.

Takemitsu swallowed, hard. "Yes, My Lord and Lady. Please follow me."

As they hurried down the harshly-lit corridor behind him, Ariadne's jewel sparkled to Rick. Do you think we should have let Mother and Father know that we're back in the Heart of the World before coming here?

—They've got enough problems of their own. Anyway, if this turns out to be nothing, we'd only make ourselves look like idiots again. Jeez, let's get this over with, before these paint fumes make my headache any worse.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eight

Unmasked

-#-

The afternoon passed without incident. Gene found himself far too busy to be bored, and by six o'clock, nearly the entire rack of dancing girls had been sold out. Money was clearly not in short supply, here in Ocean Dunes. The customers ranged from doe-eyed beauties in minimal bathing attire to stylish and obviously moneyed patricians from the InterDominion's small but emerging entrepreneurial class. It's not like the Federation, he mused as the sun dipped lower over the Inland Sea, where only the officer corps and the Party higher-ups could ever hope to get ahead and make any kind of real money. You can bet Manon's old man would like to be one of these guys. In fact he probably will be. And so will I, some day.

The affluent vacationers frolicking on the beach became silhouettes against a ruddy sunset's deep warmth, then faded into twilight altogether. Colorful solar glow-lights on their tall poles winked on here and there in the darkness, shifting the party atmosphere to a new and more intimate level. Refreshment stands came to shining life. Gene watched them bloom one by one, in a gorgeous spectrum of sultry hues. Not far away, a vendor of fruit ices readied his own booth for the evening's business, the glass jars of liquid flavoring aglow in tempting shades of orange and blue and red and yellow. On the wall, the single remaining dancing girl shone with her own blue inner fire, as though she might at any moment take on life and pirouette off on her own. Customer traffic at the souvenir stand, already slowing to a trickle, stopped altogether. Above his head, the clock showed 7:45; time to close up for the evening.

With careful attention to detail, he gathered the day's receipts, piled them neatly in the cash-box and closed it up. Gene lowered the shutters and latched them into place. He had no key to the locks; that would be Yoshi's task. Humming a popular tune, he tucked the cash-box tightly under one arm and set off down the boardwalk toward the entrance to the hotel—or simply "The Dunes," as he'd discovered it was becoming known to the locals.

Low, tinkling music whispered all through the immense lobby. The quiet, cool air and plush carpet beneath his sandaled feet felt almost achingly exhilarating. Gene had never seen anything so opulent—or so many glittering people—in all his life. Against the nearest white pillar stood a stand-up cardboard poster for the evening's floor show: Tonight! Beginning a Limited Engagement! Tomika Stevens In Concert! A life-sized image of the altogether remarkable Tomika Stevens herself, sultry in a filmy evening gown, pouted from the poster board. Staring, Gene nearly collided with a waiter bearing a rack of steaming covered dishes. "Uh, sorry. Hey, which way is the bar?"

The uniformed waiter gave him a quick lookover, clearly finding Gene's T-shirt, beach trousers and sandals unsuited to the rarified atmosphere of The Dunes. "The Lounge is over that way, kid," he grunted, hurrying on.

"Thanks for nothing," muttered Gene, who kept walking.

The Driftwood Lounge was like nothing he had ever seen outside of a ThreeVee drama, a twilit den of plush, chrome, polished wood and subdued lighting. A musician in a secluded corner played softly on a spinet while the expensively-dressed patrons whispered to each other in shadowy booths; waitresses in near-microsopic satin skirts glided here and there with trays of exotic drinks. Nothing at all like the Harvestman's Bar where Dad gets his beer after work, he decided as his eyes adjusted to the dark. Gene spotted Yoshi on a stool at the far end of the bar itself, and stepped boldly ahead, hoping no one would challenge his right to be there.

"Mr. Yoshi? I've shuttered down the souvenir stand, but you'll have to lock it up." He hoisted the cash box to the bar's surface, earning a frown from the uniformed bartender. "Here's the money and the day's receipts. We did pretty well."

Yoshi smiled and sipped at a frosty green drink before reaching for the box. "Good lad. I won't bother counting it; I don't doubt your honesty—ow!"

"Something wrong?"

"Bit of a shock..." He shook his right hand in the air, then opened the lid and withdrew a twenty-ICU note, handing it to Gene. "Static electricity, I guess. Here's your salary. Any trouble tonight?"

"No, sir. We're pretty low on glowing dancing girls and silver-lensed sungoggles, though."

"I'll restock them in the morning. Would you care for a drink? My treat."

Well, in that case... "Sure, thanks. How about a Sunjammer?" Dad always talks about how great Sunjammers are. Now I can find out for myself.

"A Sunjammer it is." Yoshi raised one finger and conveyed Gene's order to the waitress who had just returned a tray of empty glasses to the bar. "You know, my boy, it was a lucky thing you happened along when you did. I lost my previous nighttime assistant only yesterday. Sad business, that."

"Yeah? What happened? Did he quit on you?" With the waitress' back to him, Gene began to truly appreciate the outline of her figure, well-revealed by her skimpy costume. She shook one wrist to dislodge a swizzle stick that had somehow become stuck to her skin, and the quivering movement only added to his admiration.

"You hadn't heard, then. His name was Purcell. Poor Henry was...murdered. Brutally. This very morning. I suppose The Dunes management's ordered their security forces to keep it quiet." He took a long pull at his green drink. "Don't suppose I blame them, really. Bad for business."

"Murdered? Holy crap, by who? I thought this place was pretty safe." Gene shivered beneath the chill of the air conditioning.

"It is. Or was. A couple of ODSP SecuriCops interviewed me this morning, and they couldn't very well help admitting what'd happened. I thought the word'd be all over the beach by now. Looks as though even here in the InterDominion, there're still madmen. Sad." He shrugged and lay a handful of ICU coins on the bar for the drinks, before picking up the cashbox and turning in the general direction of the exit. "Good night, Art. I'll see you tomorrow at the usual time."

Gene nodded numbly, digesting this news. Could the murder have been in any way connected with the attack in the bus station? Had someone mistaken the late Henry Purcell for himself? Was he being tracked? If so, by whom? All the possibilities were ominous, and Ocean Dunes now seemed much less of a haven than it had three days before.

His drink arrived, tinkling with ice and topped by a plastic stick with a comical caricature of an LFO at its top end. "Your Sunjammer, sir," said the waitress, pleasingly silhouetted against the subdued light behind the bar.

"Thanks." Gene smiled up at her, determined to push the fog of doubt and fear from his mind, if only for a while. He found the front of her abbreviated uniform—and the wholly female girl it contained— every bit as appealing as the rear. "Say, my name's..."

Her heavily mascared eyes flapped open like frightened birds. "Gene? What're you doing here?"

"Uh, yeah. That's right, I'm..." He peered more closely into the gloom, and laughed, amazed, almost shocked. "Manon? Is that really you in that rig?"

"Well, what if it is? I thought you were out working at some beachfront stand!"

"I was, all afternoon. I'm off, now. Wow, what an outfit..."

She looked from side to side, and lowered her voice to a growl. "Can't you save your mockery at least till we're home? As if it weren't bad enough—"

"Hey, no, wait, I wasn't making fun of you. You look...great. Really. I was just...surprised, is all. When did you...?"

"Shh." Manon caught the barmaster looking her way. "Not now! We're not supposed to get friendly with customers. Just finish your drink and act as if you don't know me. I...I have a break at eight, in just a few minutes. Meet me in the lobby, near the Lounge entrance."

He nodded silently, and sipped at his Sunjammer, studying every amazing aspect of her retreating form, more confused than ever.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Nine

Preparations

-#-

Someone was looking for her, searching for her, across an enormous distance that was really no distance at all. Lark rolled to one side, both in her body and out of it, looking for the immense thing waiting among an icy emptiness bigger than anything she could comprehend. The thing was not evil, for the concept of evil did not exist in its strange consciousness. But it wanted, very badly, to interfere, for reasons Lark found it impossible to follow; painful even to try.

And through it all, a single-minded hatred stalked, waiting with a spider's patience, the bringer of death, the one that had struck twice already and would soon strike again.

Are you still there? cried the searching voice, clear, female. We want to help you, but our Spheres are out of register. You must—

"Lark?"

She twitched to full wakefulness to find Kazuya bending over her on the couch, his face kind and patient and concerned. As always. "Kaz. I suppose I must've dozed off. Is it time to go down to the concert hall yet?"

"Almost." He wriggled into his formal satin turtleneck. "I would've let you sleep longer, but you were tossing and turning so much..."

Lark pulled herself upright. "The voices. They never shut up."

"Mmm. The girl with the black hair again?"

"I'm not sure. But she's trying to find me. She says she can help."

Kazuya draped a gold chain with sapphire pendant around his neck. "Can she?"

"Yes. I'm sure. But there are others... Something enormous, that doesn't like us, any of us. And something smaller, something that wants to kill."

At that, he looked sharply at her. "Should you tell Viyuuden?"

"I will. Where are my pills? The ones with the green stripes, I mean? Never mind, here they are." With hands that trembled, Lark put two of them in her mouth, then swallowed, without water. It's later than I thought; I'd better get my gown out. She stood, and went toward the bathroom, cramped but efficient, in the way of all hotel accommodations.

"Lark... This girl you're always talking about... Do you think she's actually...you know, real? I mean, it could be your own mind, looking for a way out. Not that I'd blame you, but—"

"Oh, Kaz. You saw it, that day in the park. You saw the window, opening into our world!"

"I told you, I saw something. A blur in the air, like a reflection from a puddle of water. I mean, I could see that it was something kind of out of the ordinary, but I didn't see this girl with the black hair, or any strange room behind her. Are you sure...?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Lark glared into the mirror, appalled at her red-rimmed eyes and anger-puckered face. He's not sure whether to believe me or not. I don't blame him—any other man wouldn't have even kept an open mind about it. But this is hard, so hard, on him. "You'd be better off without me," she whispered, the words slithering out of their own accord.

In an instant he was with her, strong arms about her, holding her close to him. "No. Don't ever think anything like that. I knew what I was doing when I married you. I still do. I'll always be with you. Don't ever forget that, Lark."

She nodded into his chest, not letting the tears come, feeling the gathering numbness in her mind that meant the antipsychotropics were taking effect. "I love you, Kaz. Without you, I'd..."

Something sounded from across the room, a low scratching, like the rubbing of a branch at the window on a windswept night. Before she could react, Kaz swept her behind him, staring at the door, alert and suspicious. The scratching came again, louder and more insistent this time. "Go into the bathroom," he murmured. Too befogged to argue, she obeyed, but stayed in the bathroom doorway, peering out at the suddenly threatening entrance.

Kaz whispered something she could not hear, then unplugged a heavy table lamp, removed the shade and held it high; a crude weapon. He crept nearer to the door, and the only sound in the room was the relentless scratching, now overlaid with rapid, urgent breathing.

With his free hand, he reached across and undid the claw lock at the top of the door, then lowered his arm to the vanadium handle. Slowly, silently, he moved it downward, then yanked the door open with all his strength, holding the lamp high, ready to strike...

...and looked out into an empty hallway. "What the hell?"

From somewhere around his knees came a gruff snort, followed by a bark of indignation. "Not good way to greet company," said the big shepherd dog, trotting inside.

"Moonbeam? What are you—?"

He sat his haunches down on the plush carpeting next to the their window before letting out a wet, comfortable sigh. "Instinct, you call it, maybe. Things feel not-right to me. I took some vacation from the Plant, and came down; surprise you." He pointed his long nose in the direction of the table lamp, still high in Kazuya's hand. "Looks like I right, yes?"

Lark came out from the concealment of the bathroom to kneel at his side, scratching his ears, painfully grateful for Moonbeam's familiar presence. "You're right that you surprised us. But it's still good to see you. You should've told us you wanted to come along."

"Didn't know, then." He tilted his head, as he always did when trying to grapple with the concept of the future. "Things feel not-right. Maybe you need me. I already check in at desk. You going someplace?"

"Yeah, we are." Sheepishly, Kaz lowered the lamp back to its table. He closed the door and slid into his formal velveteen jacket. "There's a concert tonight, by Tommy Stevens. Remember her? We're going down in a couple of minutes." Pointedly, he consulted his wrist chronometer. "If Lark ever gets dressed, that is."

She stood, relieved that the conversation had turned to everyday matters once again. "I'll be ready in just a minute. Do you want to come along, Moonbeam?"

"Human music not for my ears. You go, have fun."

Lark turned for the bathroom, where her evening gown hung from the shower rod. Have fun. Yes, that'll be good. For a change.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Ten

Caught in the Act

-#-

Ariadne sat hunched over the video-editing console, her face weirdly uplit in the dim archival booth. Her fingers danced over its controls with professional ease as the images fluttered past at varying speeds. Rick looked on, amused, watching the play of astonishment across the Archivist's face as he stared at her expertise with the complex device.

"You have...operated a Model XII Visual Redactor before, My Lady?" he ventured.

Rick knew better than to interrupt her concentration. "She found a manual on-line, back in Shiretoko," he explained. "She read it from cover to cover on the flight back here. That's all she needs."

"Here," said Ariadne, taking no note of the conversation. "Look here, Rick, this is the part we're looking for. See? Eugene is just coming down from that Roll Drop maneuver of his. He's released himself from his ref board, and just done his mid-air flip. "

"I see it." Rick pushed her left wing out of the way and leaned over her shoulder to study the monitor. "He's got some great form—just look at how smooth he does that mid-air flip. Move the image forward, in slow-motion."

The miniature Gene inverted himself, arms outstretched, drifting gently downward toward the approaching ref board. Then, like a collapsing puppet, he went limp, lolling in mid-air, eyes dull and unfocused. "That was in normal light?" Rick asked.

"Yes. Infrared and ultraviolet show even less detail. Shall I try elemental-emissions spectra?"

"No, not yet." he moved closer, near enough to feel the warmth of her. "Run that sequence again, but this time use the polarized track. I'm sure there's gonna be..."

In weird, shifting colors, the scene played itself out once more. A sharply-defined Gene rolled slowly, arms extended, then...

"There!" cried Rick, pointing. "There, that thing coming at him from the lower right."

All three of them watched, speechless, as a shapeless blob, phasing in and out of the blue false-color spectrum, rushed upward to meet Gene. And as he lost control of his dive, it shrouded him, glimmering in a liquid cloud around him, riding groundward with him as he fell. "Keep rolling it," Rick whispered. "See? There's the Lescault girl, coming to rescue him."

Manon rose from behind the camera's apparent position, riding the trapar wind to reach out and snatch for Gene's leg in mid-air. And as she did so, a second flowing mass attached itself to her. She clutched at Gene with feeble hands before losing her grip, falling beside him, her forgotten ref board fluttering off on its own. Rick grinned with satisfaction. "We got it!" He shouted. "Those two were both right all along, just like we figured. The IPF Security guys should've listened to them. We've gotta let Mom and Dad know about this right away; Dr. Egan and Holland, too."

"Yes." Ariadne shuttled back through the video sequence, to the point at which the formless pool of twisted light first appeared in the frame. "Now we know where they've been hiding."

The Archivist, Takemitsu, cleared his throat nervously, plainly out of his depth in it all. "My Lady... I don't understand any of this. What is that unfocused area next to the boy?"

She turned her stunning Coralian eyes to him, silencing him with their dazzle. "It's what Prince Maurice and I have been searching for, for two days. That is a Dancer."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eleven

The Gang's All Here

-#-

Matt Stoner yawned and rubbed at eyes gone rough and sandy. OCEAN DUNES, said the illuminated sign by the roadside. He reached across the front seat and prodded Sigrid on one bare leg. The pale skin quivered.

"M-Matt?" She blinked against the sign's sickly orange light. "We there yet? Hell, it's dark out, now. How long've you been driving?"

Stoner shrugged carelessly, hoping to imply that seven and a half hours at the wheel had been no great exertion for him. "Long enough to be ready for some shuteye. Trouble is, the InterDominion is still only ten years old; there aren't a hell of a lot of usable roads anywhere. Took three hours just to get across the steppe and reach this bus route."

"You shoulda let me drive for a while."

"I'm all right. Now that we're on a real road, we'll be there in no time. There, look ahead—see that building, with all the lights? We're almost to the coast, and the hotel. We can get a good start tomorrow morning on rooting out evildoers in Ocean Dunes." He shifted in his seat, taking the load from his right buttock, which now throbbed painfully.

Lights grew visible at an increasing rate. First the small yellow windows of private dwellings, occasional street lamps above avenues of shops, then gay little colored sparks along what had to be the beachfront. And above it all, the shining tower of the Ocean Dunes Hotel itself, awash in colored spotlights. "Gaudy kind of place," said Sigrid. "What time is it?"

"About a quarter to nine." With effort, he stifled a tremendous yawn. "Here's got to be the road to the hotel; we'll be there in a jiffy."

Sigrid smoothed her ragged improvised sunsuit into some semblance of order. "Hope they don't have a dress code. I've got to buy some clothes, first thing in the morning. All this chasing and running might be old hat to you, but it's kind of outside my line."

"What d'you mean?" On the main street, the brilliant, colored lights from storefronts and cafes flooded the car. Stoner felt absurdly visible and exposed.

"All that time you spent with Gekkostate, in the old days. You know—being a hero and charging all around the world, tweaking the Federation's nose."

He snorted contemptuously. "Bull. I was no hero. Just a sardonic smartass who thought he was the Moonlight's resident intellectual."

"But you—"

"Later. We're here, finally." The harsh artificial lighting of the parking garage came as a relief to eyes painful from hours of staring into darkness. Few private vehicles occupied the many berths, so Stoner pulled the car into the closest one, then exited with much popping of cramped knees and arms. He connected it to its accumulator socket and straightened himself. "Feels better already. Come on, let's go get registered."

"I hope it's not full."

"Are you kidding? This place's only been open for a couple of months. Only in their dreams do they have that much of a clientele, yet." He sealed the locks of the IPF military vehicle. "Come on, there's an entry over there."

#

Stoner felt the eyes of the Ocean Dunes' moneyed patrons on him as they made their way through the cool, plush lobby. Screw'em, he fumed. Rich bastards, staring down their long noses at anybody who looks like they might actually work for a living. Then he noticed the discomfort written on Sigrid's face and saw himself anew. Well, hell I guess maybe they worked for their money, too. And I do look pretty damn scruffy. So does Sigrid, but then, she's got the equipment to pull it off. Stop trying to be the Savior of the Masses, Matt. Remember what that got you the last time you tried it?

The uniformed clerk at the front desk eyed them both with frank disapproval, until Stoner passed his Ministry of Information credit plate across the counter. "Yes, sir, Minister Stoner! On behalf of the management, I'd like to welcome you and Miss...Arnoldson to Ocean Dunes. Your patronage is greatly appreciated. You have penthouse quarters on the fifty-first level. May I have someone fetch your bags?"

Stoner pocketed the card and shook his head. "We got here in an IPF military scout car. The only bags you'll find in it are probably full of ammunition. Listen, we're...on assignment. It's been a rough day, and we've got to find some clothes tomorrow, so just show me the... What the hell's the crowd all about? They weren't here a minute ago."

Irritated at having to raise his voice, he pointed toward an excited mass of newcomers flowing into the lobby, their combined voices rising in a twittering babble. Stoner estimated thirty, forty, at least, with still more coming in a steady stream through the main entry arches.

"Tomika Stevens is making her debut performance tonight in our theater, sir. And we are honored to have several other celebrities as our guests this week. No doubt these folk wish to see them at close range."

"Uh-huh." Stoner's journalistic instincts stirred once more. A lot more people in this place than I expected. Damn, I hope the Ministry's got a camera crew down here. The InterDominion's been pretty short on celebrities; this is the kind of thing that ought to get a lot of public interest. I better give them a call, once we get to our room. "Just who are these big shots who're visiting?"

The clerk smiled uncomfortably, as though deciding whether or not to reveal such information might be a violation of hotel policy. "Well, since you are the Minister of Information... They are Lady Maeter and Sir Alan Wyngard, as well as the Baroness Phaedra and...let me see...her husband, Baron Harold Farnsworth."

"They're all here? At the same time?" said Sigrid, and Stoner caught the faint dissonance of unease in her voice.

"Don't worry," Stoner assured her. "I won't introduce you till we get something decent to wear. Now, come on, before this damn crowd of gawkers gets any worse... What the hell?"

Around the base of a broad spiral staircase, a dozen or so of the new arrivals were unfolding placards from beneath shirts and skirts, holding them on high and beginning a ragged chant. "Hey, hey, I'm no fool; we don't need patrician rule!"

Alarmed and excited at the prospect of a developing story, Stoner grabbed Sigrid by one arm, holding her back from getting any closer to the growing crowd. "Antipats. Mixed in among the tourists. Damn, it's no wonder they showed up so fast. Hang on a second, will you, while I call the Ministry to make sure we've got someone down here to get footage and photos."

"Matt...this isn't good."

"I can see that." He flipped open his communicator and punched in the secure private line to the home office. "Hello, this is Matt Stoner," he shouted over the quickly-rising chants. "Yeah, I'm finally checking in again. Listen, have we got anybody on camera in Ocean Dunes? Looks like some kind of big Antipat demonstration's cooking at the hotel." And still more of them flooded in the doors, some of them obviously genuine celebrity-seekers, most with the wild eyes of self-righteous zealotry. "Well find out—and if we do, make sure they're in the lobby. Yeah, right now. I'm here now, and things could get kind of colorful, pretty damn quick. Okay, Stoner out."

Sigrid leaned closer, raising her voice. "Matt, listen to me. If there are...saboteurs in this town, they might be infiltrating this Antipat group. Phaedra Farnsworth's a Coralian, one of the heirs presumptive to the Royal Family. People who'd try to blow up the Pinwheel project might not stop at—"

"At assassination. Yeah, I get your point." He came to a quick decision, and turned at once back to the hotel front desk, where the frightened clerical staff now stood with communicators pressed to their ears, muttering in quick, urgent tones. "Listen," he told the head clerk, "I've got reason to believe that the Baroness and all the rest might be in danger from this mob. Have you got a Security group around here?"

The man swallowed, and his officious manner evaporated beneath Stoner's hard gaze. "Yeah. Yes, we do. I've already pressed the call button for them, but it's just the Hotel Security division, not the IPF. We're not equipped to deal with—"

"Okay, just get them here, on the double. What about Phaedra and Maeter and the others? You've got to make sure they stay in their rooms. And put a guard on their doors. Then..."

A woman further behind the desk pressed one hand to the microphone of her communicator. "We can't, Mr. Stoner! I've just called the Baroness' room, and the cleaning staff said they've already left. They took the elevator down to the second floor, and they'll be making their entrance from the Grand Staircase over there."

Stoner ground his teeth. "Then stop the elevator!"

"It's too late," cried the desk clerk, pointing across the wide lobby toward the staircase, where Maeter, arm in arm with Alan Wyngard, followed by Phaedra and her husband, were descending the elegant marble stairs with slow, deliberate steps.

Stoner swore foully. "They think this's just their adoring public cheering for them—they won't catch on till it's too late. Stay here, Sigrid!" He bolted for the screaming crowd, elbowing and hurling aside any who stood in his way.

#

In a far corner, next to a maintenance hallway, Manon, dazzling in her satin waitress costume, stood against one of the gilded lobby pillars. Gene looked round the secluded shadows, to be certain no one stood within earshot. "Okay, now what's up? This's the first time you've spent any time out of our place since we got here, and now you're...like this."

"Well, so what? You think you're my father, criticizing the way I dress?"

"That's not what I mean! I told you, it looks good. It's just that you're..."

"Look, Eugene, I had to find a job of some kind. Did you think I was going to let myself owe you anything? Well, think again! I won't have you bringing in all the money, depending on you, making me indebted to you!"

He tightened his fists at his sides; the girl was beyond frustrating! "You're not... Dammit, I told you, I'm not your stinking parents. I just had to get some money coming in, while we decide... I'll bet you've never even had a job before, of any kind, have you? Always living off your parents' money while you trained full-time for competition reffing. How was I to know you'd... How'd you get this waitressing job so quick, anyway?"

Folding her arms across her steep red satin neckline, Manon pointedly looked away across the lobby, rather than directly at him. "You said you just went around, asking people if they needed help. So I came here to the hotel and did the same thing. The bar manager hired me on the spot."

Yeah, and it's not hard to guess why, he admitted to himself. "You coulda told me."

"You were already out on the beach, selling trinkets or something. You didn't stay round the cabin long enough to ask me anything at all."

"Maybe I haven't felt too welcome aroundthere," he shot back, aware of how lame and irrelevant it sounded. One of the janitors walked by and unlocked a storage closet; Gene struggled to gather his thoughts till he had passed. "Anyway, what do you know about being a waitress?"

"More than you know about hawking geegaws. I've seen waiters and waitresses at plenty of social functions, I can see what they do as well as anyone. The drink mixer at the hotel bar is automatic, so I didn't even have to learn that. I just wait on the customers." She smiled with unconcealed cunning. "The pay is decent. I think. And the tips are very good."

"Yeah, I'll just bet they are," he shot back. "And what kind of 'mixing' to they expect you to do for those?"

Manon went as red as her costume and drew back her arm, muscles taut, when a barrage of angry shouts echoed out of the main lobby. Both of them looked out to see the materialization of an angry, placard-waving mob, chanting something unintelligibly hostile. NO InterDominion Royalty, read one of the scrawled signs. Let the People Rule, proclaimed another.

Gene went cold. "It's just like that bunch of bomb-tossers at the dance, back in Shiretoko. Those are Antipats! What the hell're they up to here?" He took one of her hands and pulled her back, away from the lobby floor. To his considerable surprise, she made no resistance.

"What's your brilliant plan, now?" said Manon, though with less outrage than before. She stumbled on her spike heels, but kept beside him as he tugged her further into the dim corridor.

"I don't have one. I just know that the last time I saw one of these crazy demonstrations, I ended up being arrested and put on a bus. If we're spotted and arrested again, they'll throw us in jail instead."

The shouting crowd, now grown in an astonishingly short time to fill the lobby, began to expand in their direction. Protestors kicked over chairs, potted plants and anyone who stood in their way. Their chants grew deafening: Hear, hear, see, see, death to arist-oc-ra-cy!

"'Death?'" said Gene as he watched the increasingly violent mob rampage out of control. "This's getting really ugly. Come on, we can wait it out in that closet back there—"

A metal end table sailed through the air, landing not three meters away from them. Without thinking, he grabbed Manon and pulled her away. She opened her mouth to speak, but at the same time, a cluster of scruffy hooligans carrying signs and wearing protest buttons broke free from the main mob and charge down the hallway. "No damn patricians!" screamed one. "Look at her!" another one wailed. "One of those stinking aristocrats!" "Get her!"

Gene saw the glitter of a short-bladed knife; he put Manon behind himself and backed as rapidly as he could toward the storage closet. Without turning, he fumbled the door open and shoved her inside.

The lead attacker swung clumsily at him; he punched out with all his force, feeling his knuckles slide off the man's unkempt beard. Never having struck anyone in anger before, Gene found himself briefly surprised by the pain in his hand, but even as the first rioter went down with a squeal, two more closed in on him, including the one with the knife. He ducked low, beneath the swinging knife hand, then snatched at it. He kicked the attacker's feet out from under him, and, as he fell, Gene dropped to one knee and held the arm across the other knee, snapping the elbow backward like rotten firewood. The man wailed in agony, but already three more rioters were on him, pounding, clutching, dragging him down. Behind him, Gene heard the closet door click open and saw Manon's stockinged legs emerge.

"Manon, no!" he screamed. "Get back!" And then the brilliant blue light filled his mind again and time stopped.

#

Alan Wyngard, Maeter holding his arm, came step by slow step down the Grand Staircase. They'd been told to prepare for a bit of a crowd for this public appearance, but the sheer size of the gathering in the lobby took him by surprise. "Rather a big turnout, isn't it?" he said to Maeter.

She nodded, setting her crystal earrings bobbing. "I'll say. I thought they only expected a hundred people or so. I didn't even know there were this many people in Ocean Dunes."

Then the first rough chants reached their ears, and the anger-twisted faces turned their way. "Hey, guys," said Phaedra from behind, "I don't think this's any welcoming committee, do you?"

Their six IPFSec and Guardians of the Flame escorts formed an immediate ring around them. "Don't go any further down the stairs," one of them warned, pulling a hand weapon from beneath his dinner jacket.

Alan turned over his shoulder. Phaedra stood expressionless, holding her husband steady as she scanned the lobby with her Coralian eyes. Hal Farnsworth swayed slightly, exhaling an invisible cloud of strong drink as his forehead jewel blinked fitfully. "It wouldn't do for us to just turn around and go back," said Alan to Maeter.

"No, it wouldn't. We can't just run away. These damned Antipats keep getting bolder, but letting them drive us away would only give them what they want."

The Guardian just to her left whispered something inaudible into her throat mike. "My Lords and Ladies, I've called for the local mercenary police, but this could be a dangerous situation. We should all return to your suite at once."

"No," Phaedra told her. "We're not running away from these scum. Stand your ground, everybody. We'll face them down. And don't start firing on them unless we give the word. Shooting into a crowd of protestors—mixed with innocent tourists—would look just great in the opposition press, now, wouldn't it?"

"Besides," Alan pointed out, "they'd only come after us as we waited for the elevator, anyway. Hotels aren't designed for fast escapes, after all."

"Bastards," mumbled Hal.

Their guards drew weapons, holding them prominently displayed but not aiming them into the mob below. The bolder ones began creeping up the stairs toward them, screeching hoarse, half-obscene slogans and waving their fists. Across the lobby, Alan thought to catch a brief, impossible glimpse of the Information Minister, Matt Stoner, bulling his way through the milling mass of humanity, but the crowd quickly closed in before he could be sure. At the base of the marble stairs, more and more protestors, seeing no opposition, stumbled upward toward them. "Parasites!" one woman croaked at them. "Sluts! Leeches on the common people!"

Alan cleared his mind, centering himself in the Combat Preparedness state he'd been taught during his years with the Guardians. Be aware of your opponent's periphery, and your own. Feel the constraints of your clothing, and always operate within them. Control your reflexes; do not release them until the optimum moment...

A hulking protestor, improbably garbed in a pair of yellow bathing trunks and flowered beach shirt, lunged upward, arms outstretched. Alan dropped slightly on his left leg, twisted his body and kicked out with focused strength at the man's abdomen. His eyes went wide as he fell sprawling backward, diaphragm paralyzed, already fountaining vomit on his comrades below.

Seeing one of their own felled drove the rest mad. They surged up the staircase with eyes full of loathing. Alan caught the dull sheen of brass knuckles on the nearest one, and dropped him with a precise sidehand blow to the neck.

At Alan's side, Maeter responded to the training he himself had given her, unfastening the side of her evening gown to give herself more freedom of movement. She kicked savagely at the one who came for her, buckling his knee and sending him rolling down the stairs, bellowing in pain.

Their IPF and Guardian escorts hurried to form a human barrier before the four, battering and smashing at the waves of attackers, still refraining from using their sidearms. Shouts and threats grew louder and even more violent, and still no reinforcements from the local constabulary appeared...

#

Kazuya stepped from the Tower elevator to the main floor, Lark wrapped in his arm. The door slid open on a scene from hell itself, a crazed mob of shouting, rampaging thugs of both sexes tearing at furniture. Before he could overcome his own shock, he and Lark were dragged from the elevator by what seemed to be innocent tourists, desperate for a way out. But too many of them, far too many of them, crammed into the elevator, and it only stayed on the main floor, chiming over and over, refusing to move with such a weight holding it down, jamming its doors open.

Lark twitched and groaned, nearly inaudible over the roaring crowd, and staggered. Kaz turned for the front entrance, hoping for escape, but found it blocked by protestors and the simply curious. Beyond, outside, he could hear the angry voices of local mercenary police trying to ram their way in. No way out in that direction, then.

He led Lark to the relative shelter of a gilded pillar, pressing his ear near to her face so he could hear over the frightening din. "What're you trying to say? I can't make it out over the racket! What is it, Lark?"

"The one who kills..." She licked at dry lips, then began again. "The one who kills is here. Number Twelve. Number Twelve is looking at...at Phaedra. Number Twelve is going to kill..."

#

Matt Stoner bulled his way forward, pushing, dodging the swinging fists, planting blows of his own on anyone insufficiently quick in squeezing out of his way. Never seen a crowd so goddam dense; nothing spontaneous about it, that's for sure. This was planned. I'm still no more than three-quarters of the way to that staircase...why don't those idiots run back to their room? Never mind, after more than ten years of knowing Eureka, Renton, Dominic and Anemone, I ought to know better than to ask. Almost there, finally. Just a couple more rows of these chanting jerks and...

No more than two meters away, Stoner saw a short figure in a hooded rain jacket lift one arm, pointing it deliberately toward the staircase. Stoner lunged forward, only to be blocked again, and fell to the floor. Quickly, before he could be trampled, he pushed himself up...and the blowtorch hiss of an RPP pistol roared beside his ear...

#

Phaedra saw the RP gun rise, in the hand of someone wrapped in a blue rain jacket, face hidden in the shadows of its hood. "Hal!" she shouted. But he only blinked, confused, and wobbled on the marble stair.

Without conscious thought, she put herself behind him, clamped her arms about his chest and snapped out her wings. In a burst of trapar flame, she lifted him bodily from the stairwell, upward, two meters, three. Below, the explosive projectile shattered agains the marble, blasting into a thousand glimmering steel shards. And almost immediately after, the flash of an RPP incendiary round lit the mob several meters behind. Screams broke out and panic churned in the air...

#

Stoner turned, astounded to find Sigrid crouching beside him, a steaming RPP pistol clutched professionally in two hands. Ahead, the gunman in the blue raincoat clutched at his right shoulder, dropping a dull steel gun clattering to the lobby floor. He staggered, but, amazingly, recovered and scuttled to the right, out of Stoner's view. "Sigrid?" Stoner stared, uncomprehending. "You were following me? Where'd you get the RPP? How did..?"

But there was no time for talk. A searing flash of blue-white brilliance illuminated the entire lobby for an instant, with the glare of a thousand cesium strobes, somehow blinding both sight and mind with a terrible silent screech that bored deep into the darkest recesses of the human consciousness. Stoner wobbled on his feet, shaken by whatever it was he had just experienced

Silence descended at once, broken an instant later by screams from both ends of the hotel lobby. The chilling, unthinkable pulse had turned the crowd from a hungry mob into a mindless, storming stampede that roared for any available exit, trampling each other, screaming and snarling, driven only by blind, instinctive, unreasoning panic.

As the central lobby area slowly cleared, Stoner took Sigrid by the arm, leading her toward the Grand Staircase, stepping carefully over discarded placards. "Come on," he sighed, pushing sweat-sticky hair back from his eyes. "I'll introduce you to my friends. But you'd better put the RPP away. Those guys in the first row're likely to be pretty touchy about that sort of thing today."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twelve

Long Distance

-#-

Someone seemed to be near her, though Lark's mind remained dull and indistinct. And yet, the air of strange familiarity would not dissipate. Are you here? she said.

I'm not the one to whom you last spoke, the voice answered. That was my superior, and she cannot be present at the moment; you may call me...Cymandiel.

Is that your name?

No. But names can be very powerful, and we do not reveal ours lightly. You seem to be in a strange sort of trance state just now, and that makes it much easier to communicate for a while. There's no need to push an opening across the spheres this way.

Lark opened her eyes, realizing at the same time that she had no eyes; that she was only a disembodied viewpoint, drifting in a dream. Cymandiel was there, standing before a small brazier in which burned a slow fire. Though no older in appearance than her mid-teens, she stood a bit taller than the first one, with brilliantly silver-white hair that flowed down past her shoulders. Her only visible clothing was a short white gown bearing what appeared to be ritual symbols sewn along the hem in silver thread. Beyond, dim in the firelight, Lark could see a wall of curved marble blocks, but little else. Where is this place?

This is a working room, where experiments are carried out. It's in a tower, but the windows are shuttered, now.

Are you always here?

Cymandiel laughed softly. No. I'm part of a group called The Foreseers. What we do is a little hard to explain, just now. But we've detected your mind, reaching across the spheres. You have an unusual mind, you know. Even her eyebrows and lashes glittered silver-white in the fire's glow.

Yes, I do know! I'm half-insane with knowing! They call me a telemedium, the doctors and priests who try to help me. Thoughts, from other people, from things I can't even imagine, are always in my head, hammering away, shouting, slithering... I can't stop it.

I see. Now I understand. From somewhere off to Cymandiel's left, in the shadows, Lark sensed a movement, as though someone had quietly entered through a hidden door. It must be awful How did you get this way?

I was...reconstructed. Brainwashed. Conditioned and altered by the military. It took me years to recover, but what was done to my mind won't go away, not all of it. They did the same things to some other girls, as well.

Cymandiel stepped away from the fire for a moment, whispering to someone Lark could not "see" with her inner vision. What is your name? she said when she returned to the brazier.

I'm called Lark. Once, I had another name, but it was all erased from my memory.

"Lark." No matter how you got it, that seems like a nice name. Are you married, Lark?

Yes. My husband is wonderful, but it's hard, so hard, on him, living with me and my...problem. I feel terrible about what it's doing to him.

Cymandiel lifted her arms and whispered something Lark could not hear. Awful things were forced on you, Lark. Can no one in your sphere help you in any way?

In my world, you mean? No. Does that...does it mean that you're not in my world?

The Empyrean has many spheres, Lark, an infinity of them.

Almost pleading, she asked, Is there anyone in your world who can help me?

Cymandiel frowned into the flames for a long while, and Lark wondered if she had heard. But then she raised her face and said, Perhaps. I think your sphere must be fundamentally different from ours. But it's possible. I'll ask some questions. There are many learned people here. You said there were others who were tormented like you. How many?

I'm not sure. We never all met each other, at the same time. I was number sixteen—

And as she formed the thought, an awful possibility that exploded at once into certainty roared into her mind. Number sixteen. Oh, my God, I was number sixteen!

I don't...Lark, you're growing clouded, I can't...

She jerked in Kaz' arms as her eyes popped open to the subdued illumination of an overhead hotel light fixture. "She's conscious again," someone said.

Lark sat bolt upright on the carpeted floor. "Sixteen!"

The room reeled about her, slowly resolving into a large, luxurious suite. Others surrounded her besides Kaz: A brilliantly blonde girl she recognized from the video as Maeter Wyngard, and her husband, who had once been a Guardian of the Flame. Beyond, Matt Stoner, Minister of Information, his ironic face known throughout the InterDominion. A sharp-eyed girl in crudely-fashioned cutoff shorts slouched at his side. Both of them showed every sign of long struggle. "I was number sixteen," Lark repeated, her lips slurred and uncooperative.

A woman with a soft, serious face framed by waves of dark hair came to kneel at her side. "Mrs. Aruno? I'm Irina Arkhipova, an IPFSec agent. I'm one of the detail assigned to guard the Royal party, but I also have medical training. Lady Phaedra saw you collapse near the elevator, and we brought you here, along with the others, to the Royal suite."

"Phaedra's here?" Out of long habit, Lark checked her own evening gown for tears or stains.

"In another room, Mrs. Aruno. What happened? Was it that flash of light that dispersed the mob? Do you know where it came from?"

"Don't start questioning her yet—" began Kazuya.

"No, it's all right, Kaz. I'm just a little dizzy. No, I didn't see where it came from, but I guess I passed out. In fact, I might have collapsed just before it happened, because I barely remember the light at all." The memory came back to her, then, and she tensed. "But there's something I've got to tell you. You're IPF Security? I remembered something while I was...out. You've got to know this."

Several of the other agents of the security detail shifted nearer. Lark had no idea which were IPF and which were Guardians of the Flame, but it made no real difference. "Are you certain, Mrs. Aruno?" asked Irina.

"Yes, yes. I've had...well, visions in the past, seeing crimes committed before they happen. The murder attempt back at the Heart of the World, the bombing at the scientific installation...and others. You can ask Viyuuden, I've been in touch with him all the time."

One of the tall, spare male guards nodded his confirmation, and Lark guessed him to be a Guardian.

"Very well, then what is it you've recalled?"

"The killers. I was in their heads while they were committing their crimes. I saw them happen. The first attempt, the one at the Temple, was Number Eight. The one who planted the bomb was Number Twelve. And it was Number Twelve who killed that young man yesterday. And Number Five tried to shoot Phaedra and her husband just a little while ago."

Irina nodded, without expression. "Well, if only you knew their names—"

"No, you don't understand! Those are their names. The only names they had, when they—when we—were made tools of the Federation, before the Founding of the InterDominion."

Kazuya stared at her, and she knew he understood. "Swallowtails."

"Yes! They all think of themselves as numbers, that's why I couldn't tell they were female! I was number sixteen! We were all Swallowtails in the old days, programmed and conditioned, Dewey Novak's personal harem. And now some of them have turned..."

"Have turned assassin," said Irina, standing. "And at least one of them is here in this resort town at this moment. Dimitri, you and your associates must get in touch with Viyuuden. We need to notify Lord Commander Sorel at once."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirteen

The Wine-dark Sea

-#-

Hal Farnsworth lay across their bed, still in his evening clothes, chewing on his third stimtab. He hated the bitter taste, and hated even more the bitter reality they always brought with them. He kept his eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable.

"Hal?" Phaedra sat on the edge of the bed. Even without hearing her voice, he knew it had to be her, knew her scent, knew the pressure of her body, knew the faint draft from her wings. Her wings.

"Yeah. The tabs've done their deadly work, my love. I'm sober again." He looked about him to the luxurious bedroom, their segment of the Royal Suite. "You know, you should envy people who drink. At least we have something on which to blame all our other failings."

She sat with back bent, hands folded in her lap, her shockingly pink hair splashing down across bare shoulders. "You don't have any failings," she said in a quiet voice.

"Oh, no?" Unnerved by her beauty, her nearness, Hal swung his legs to the floor. "Then why do I only have this?" He pointed to the Coralian neural node on his forehead.

"Not that again. Please. You know it's because the second phase of the transformation only comes when we merge fully."

"It's been five years, Phaedra!" Ashamed of revealing himself so harshly, he waited, taking long, deep breaths, till his hammering pulse stabilized. "Five years since we first came together. And I'm still not like you, no wings, no eyes...still not a full Coralian hybrid." He stood, and began to walk aimlessly about the room, affecting a smile of effete unconcern. "They say, y'know, that it's not what you are but what you don't become that hurts. And everyone can see what I haven't become. Everyone."

"Even Renton didn't make the transition for two or three years," she reminded him, still gazing at her hands.

"In those days, there was no one to compare him to. But he still went through the change, eventually. Then it was Maurice and Ariadne; then your mother and father. All the other husbands to Coralian hybrids've made the change. All but me." He could hear the sound of voices from the adjoining room, and guessed that Lark Aruno had come to consciousness again.

"Look, Hal, even Viyuuden's explained to you—Coralian girls always choose the right human men for mates. Always. We can't make a mistake. And...I know I didn't."

"Then maybe it's the Coral that made the mistake. Ever think of that one? Maybe I'm just not good enough for you, and this is its way of telling me so?"

She jumped up from the bed, her wings shivering, catching the lamplight in little sparks and prisms. "Oh, stop it. Do you think I pulled you out of the way of that bullet because I thought you weren't good enough?"

"A perfect example, my dear." Hal lifted his hand as though it held a shot glass, which he fervently wished it did. "Any real husband worthy of the name would've been saving you from that damn assassin. But not Good Old Hal Farnsworth, oh, no. I should have been in full possession of my faculties, pushing you out of the way, shielding you with my own body. I should have..." He veered away from the thought, choking with regret. "But that's neither here nor there; just one of my many failures, and this time in full view of the public. Hal Farnsworth—who had to have his tipsy butt saved by his long-suffering wife."

"You're not a failure!" Phaedra balled her small fists at her sides. "Listen, do you know how many men'd love to be in your shoes, just having a Coralian node at all?"

He shrugged. She was so dazzlingly beautiful in her clinging gown, and he nearly gave in to his need for her. "I'm all too well aware how many men would love to be in my shoes, darling...and of how much better off you'd be if they were."

"Oh, crap! Can't you ever just be happy?" The harsh edge to her voice suggested she might cry, but she held her head up, magnificent, beautiful and unattainable. "I'm going out to see what the hell's going on. You can stay in here and drown yourself in booze again if that's what you want!"

Longingly, Hal watched her perfect form sway out the door and away, far away. "Happy?" he whispered to himself "Happiness isn't something I experience. It's something I remember." He scanned the room for a bottle and, finding none, followed her out to the common room.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Fourteen

On the Trail

-#-

"Lord Commander?" Amaryllis saluted, and waited for Dominic to lift himself from the ground behind the Harmony Falls bus depot, where he knelt, going over the grass with a hand-held UV light.

"Mind where you step, Lieutenant Fleming." He stood and dusted his hands against the trousers of his field fatigues. "These footprints are pretty faded after yesterday's rain, but still visible if you look carefully enough." And if you've got Coralian eyes. "What is it?"

"Message from the home office, M'Lord. I think you'll want to read it at once." She held out her communicator screen for his inspection.

Dominic read it over quickly. "Is...the Royal Party all right?"

"Yes, M'Lord. Ocean Dunes is in a bit of a turmoil, but the crowd has dispersed. The Royal Party—including your daughter and son-in-law—are unharmed, and under guard in a suite on the hotel's topmost floor. The local police forces are maintaining order in the town. It seems that details are still trickling in."

He thought the matter through. With Phaedra and the others safe in the hands of IPF and Guardian protectors, there seemed no significant danger for the immediate future. But if there was any truth to what the Aruno woman had said—and Viyuuden swore to her reliability—then one or more of the mysterious killers of the past week might still be at large in Ocean Dunes. "I see. Have them—"

Corporal Miyamoto appeared, bearing a short printout. "My Lord. Pardon the intrusion, but you wanted this information the instant it came through. Your instincts were correct. Comparing the DNA traces from here on the grass with local hospital records has found a match. Four of them to be exact. The sources are in the Shalimar District Medical Center, held under observation. They were taken there by ambulance, just after the incident."

"Very good. You and Sado stay here and get a list of all ticket transactions for that day. And tell the rest of the team we're going to this Shalimar hospital right away. Fleming, contact the home office at the Heart of the World, and have them send a twelve-troop Rapid Deployment team to Ocean Dunes at once—on my priority order. I'll have further orders once we've confirmed who our mystery patients are."

"M'Lord."

Dominic packed away his UV illuminator and watched the rest of his unit prepare to move out under the darkening skies. His anticipation grew, tempered by a rising fear of what he now had reason to believe he would ultimately find. Well, I know Phaedra's okay, anyway. She's got Hal to look after her. At least that lucky bastard doesn't have to deal with everyone staring at his wings and eyes, calling him 'Captain Fairy' behind his back. There are times when I really envy that guy. "Okay, stow everything in the transport, on the double! We're moving out in five minutes!"

#

Doctor Ginette Neveu—her hospital badge identified her as the staff neurosurgeon—met Dominic and three of his investigating team at the Isolation Ward door. Short, and with a stern manner that suggested she was unaccustomed to having her domain invaded by outsiders, she gave his Coralian eyes, pink hair and wings a close once-over.

"Satisfied as to my identity, Doctor?" he asked.

"Quite, My Lord. Your staff has already communicated with our Director, but there would, in any case, be no mistaking you. Have our patients committed some crime?"

"We're not sure, yet. In fact, we're not even certain who they are, although our DNA database scan has come up with some...interesting matches." He handed her a preliminary list, generated during the drive from Harmony Falls.

Dr. Neveu's salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted as she read. As she still showed traces of middle age, Dominic guessed she could not have immigrated to the New Lands more than five years previously. "Well. If this is true, I can certainly understand your sense of urgency. Come with me. Mind you, all of these people are still in an unstable mental and physical state. When they were brought to us, they were completely incoherent and showed a great deal of neurological damage. We were unsure that they would regain their sanity at all—or even walk again. But they have been making outstanding progress since that day, thanks, presumably, to the Coralian Gift."

She led them to a quiet hallway off the main corridor, lined with numbered doors framing panes of safety glass. "You're keeping them in separate rooms?" Dominic asked.

"That's right. When they arrived by ambulance, they were all showing random muscle spasms, the kind we used to see in severe cases of neuromyotonia. Combined with their degenerated mental state, there was a real danger that they might cause injury to themselves or each other." The doctor stopped before door number 581. "That's no longer true, but we haven't risked moving them yet. Here you are, Lord Sorel, this is...Patient A's room."

"Thank you, Doctor." He gestured to his subalterns. "You three stay out here in the hall. Just in case the others start getting uneasy." And in case the sight of me is too much for this guy, in his condition. Without any further hesitation, he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

The drowsing man beneath his thin sheets looked little like the photographs that Dominic had received along with the results of the DNA match. Thin, almost bony, the effect was reinforced by his bare skull, apparently shaven by the hospital staff. "They took off your beard, too, didn't they Major Haydn?" he said to the silent room.

The patient opened his eyes and turned at once toward him, lifting himself up on one very shaky elbow and grinning with the flat humorlessness of an organ keyboard. "The wings. The eyes. Sorel. Dominic Sorel. Thank God you're here at last."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Fifteen

Now Hiring

-#-

Two massive ODSP guards stood flanking the door to the Royal Suite, each one holding an automatic weapon at the ready.

Tommy, now in casual shorts and top, hesitated. "Guardians or IPFSec?" she whispered to her husband.

"Local security mercenaries, I imagine. Like the ones at the elevator door downstairs. And upstairs."

The barrels of the automatics rose as he stepped confidently forward. "Stevens, Job," he announced. "This is my wife, Tomika. Here are our ID cards. We're here by invitation. We'll submit to a retinal scan, if you want."

Neither guard spoke. They took the cards, examined them carefully, and murmured into throat mikes. After a moment, they nodded and handed the cards back. "No scan will be required, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens. Please go on in."

As they passed, the sentinel to their left nodded briefly. "Sorry about your debut show being cancelled tonight, Mrs. Stevens," he said.

She gave him her most radiant stage smile in return. "Well, there's always tomorrow."

In spite of the subdued lighting, Job took in the luxury of the Royal suite in a glance. Maeter, still in her silver evening gown, sat casually at the end of an elaborately embroidered couch with her husband Alan, watching an MOI newscast on the video. At the other end, Phaedra, feline in a gown of silky black, curled up with both arms about herself, looking at no one. Hal Farnsworth sat alone in a chair some distance away, toying with an empty glass. Job wondered at once how recently it had been full.

Several additional couches appeared to have been dragged in from other rooms, one of them occupied by Tommy's younger brother Kaz. His ex-Swallowtail wife, Lark, lay full length with her head in his lap, shifting uncomfortably and not quite asleep.

Most surprising of all was Matt Stoner, upright but solidly dozing on a divan next to a short-haired blonde. Even in sleep, his companion had an aura of athletic competence that might at any second burst free. Not your usual type, Matt. Both of them showed the effects of a great deal of long, hard exertion.

"H'lo, Tommy," said Kaz, softly, so as not to disturb Lark's attempts at slumber.

She nodded in return, and ritual greetings were exchanged all around. Job was quietly appalled. The lot of them looked too much like the survivors of a shipwreck. "Who's that with Matt?" he asked of Alan.

"Her name's Sigrid Arnoldson. Her and Matt drove down from a secret project out on the steppes someplace. Seems there was a sabotage attempt out there, and they gambled that the guilty party might've escaped here to Ocean Dunes. She's a technician of some kind. She's pretty damn good with an RPP, though. She blasted the assassin who was aiming for Phaedra downstairs, during the riot."

"Aiming for me, you mean." Hal Farnsworth, still in full evening dress, affected a sophisticated ennui that grated on Job's nerves. "Lacking wings myself, I had to rely upon my better-endowed wife to protect me."

Phaedra did not reply, nor did Job. Best not to encourage him. "Well, Tommy and I are glad to see everyone's unharmed. We actually didn't see the riot ourselves. We were backstage waiting for the opening cue, when the audience started screaming, then stampeding for the exits. And that was before they'd even heard one of my songs."

The joke fell flat. This group's even more shaken up than I imagined. "Well, anyway, what was it you wanted? Which one of you called us, anyway?"

"Called you?" Maeter turned from the video screen. "We didn't call anybody. Did you call them, Phaedra?"

Phaedra stirred without interest, shaking her head No before sinking into apathy once more.

"Well, somebody did," said Tommy. "I got a call from someone, after the theater emptied. Things were pretty loud backstage, but somebody—a woman—said they'd like us to come to the Royal suite as soon as we could. If it wasn't one of you, then—"

"It was me, Mrs. Aruno." A woman in the black uniform of a Guardian of the Flame came through the door, having made no sound at all. She held her arms unmoving at her sides, as she walked with the precision of an angry ballerina across the deep pile rug. "Forgive me for not having been here to meet you both, but I was in urgent conversation with Viyuuden. My name is Viktoria Yastrebova."

Her lips smiled, but, Job noted, the rest of her face did not. "It concerns the immediate crisis situation. For obvious reasons, neither the Wyngards nor the Farnsworths can leave our protection until reinforcements arrive from the Heart of the World. There are only six of us available—both Guardians and IPFSec personnel—which leaves us extremely short-handed."

Tommy folded her arms, and faced the woman squarely. Job had the idea she had taken an immediate dislike to Agent Yastrebova. "You want us to do something for you, then," she said.

"Yes, Mrs. Stevens. You are a former Federation Landestrooper, and your husband's exploits are too well-documented to require comment. In short, you are both experienced and we can trust you."

"To do what, exactly?" asked Job, his own suspicions aroused at once.

"Nothing dangerous..."

"That you know of."

"...that we know of, correct. You and your wife are widely known to be in Ocean Dunes for reasons that are unconnected with the Royal visit. Therefore, you have freedom of movement in this settlement without arousing undue attention. We would be grateful if you would carry out some minor investigations until our reinforcements appear."

Tommy lifted her chin. "What about Stoner and his girlfriend, over there?"

"Minister Stoner appears to have an agenda of his own, which makes him unreliable. And as for Miss Arnoldson, we still know too little about her. Please, both of you." Agent Yastrebova reddened, clearly unaccustomed to having to ask for cooperation. "There is a certain matter on which we need information quickly, before any available evidence is destroyed or lost. It would...be of great assistance to your friends."

Job and Tommy locked eyes; each one nodded infinitesimally. "Okay," said Tommy. "We'll play detective for you. But just until your backup gets here."

The Guardian relaxed visibly. "Until then. Here is what we most need..."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Sixteen

Mutterings

-#-

"...and I think it's really quite understandable that violent protest should have spontaneously occurred, after all."

At the bottom of the video screen in Dr. Egan's office, a streamer kept on repeating Riots at Seaside Resort. Royal Family attacked. No reported deaths.

The announcer took issue at once. "Are you saying, then, Professor Koev, that you feel that these violent uprisings are justified?"

"Oh, nonononono, Peter." The professor, lips pursed with distaste, waved his hands in rejection. "Naturally, we cannot endorse such methods. But really, when the people of the InterDominion are denied a voice in their own destiny, why, it's only human nature that their discontent should appear in unfortunate forms, wouldn't you say?"

"'Professor,' my ass," grumbled Holland. "That guy was a minor political enforcement officer at the Federation College of Manual Training in Bostongrad, back before the War. We ought to expose him and the other hoity-toity rats like him, to shut them up for good."

Egan did not look away from the screen. "At the right time, perhaps we shall. But for now, let us hear what he has to say."

The interviewer did not fall into the conversational trap set for him by his guest. "Professor, it has been said by some of your critics that you harbor pro-Federation views, and that your judgment may therefore not be entirely objective."

He licked his thin lips several times before replying. "Well, after all, Peter, one's rivals are unlikely to be entirely 'objective' themselves, eh? But I do confess to a certain unease with the knee-jerk eagerness of so many here in the New Lands to reject any and all things Federation, without thinking the matter through. After all, the corporate Syndicalism of the Federation of Predigio Towers was never really given a proper chance, was it? It may have been a bit misapplied by certain personalities in high office, but—"

"Not a proper chance? How many more millions have to die before you figure your precious Federation's had all the chances it needs?" Furious, Holland jumped to his feet and turned the videoscreen off. "I can't listen to much more of that crap without throwing something. Damn Antipats. They're just trying to drum up last-minute legislative support before the hearings."

"And they are succeeding, I think." Egan, unperturbed at Holland's outburst, squeezed rhythmically at the pair of grip-strengtheners he always carried about. "Our opponents in the Senate have been growing increasingly bold of late. Antipatricianism now veers dangerously close to becoming...fashionable." He drew his eyebrows together for a moment. "How soon the public forgets. And how very willing to overlook the obvious. Tell me, what has Eureka and Rentons' reaction to the situation been?"

"Ask Viyuuden." Holland looked here and there about the office for something to kick. "I hardly see them myself, any more. To tell you the truth, I think it's hitting them hardest of all. After all the misery they went through to end the War and create the InterDominion, just to see a bunch of vacuum-headed pseudo-intellectuals getting all sentimental over the Federation... Well, it makes me puke. I can only just imagine how they must feel about it. What does it take to wake people up?"

"I wonder," said Egan in a thoughtful way. "You know, I've received some extremely interesting information only recently, from Maurice and Ariadne. I think a general meeting may be in order, as soon as we've put these Senate hearings behind us."

"What? Something from the kids?"

"You are growing dangerously unaware of your environment, Holland—they are 'kids' no longer. And their intelligence and persistence have revealed something of very great interest." He dropped a sheaf of papers on his broad desk. "But first, we must clear away the more immediate business. Please do stop pacing and let us get on with it."

Holland dropped to his seat like a truant student being forcibly dragged back to school. "All right, all right. But back when I got my wings at the Academy, if I'd ever thought I'd end up preaching to a gang of discontented cows..."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Seventeen

Aftermath

-#-

Gene stared at the nearest wall, unsure of how long he had been there, or why. Six unconscious protestors lay on the floor before him, male and female. One was face-down on a scrawled cardboard sign reading DOWN WITH THE MONARCHY. All of them breathed in a heavy, irregular way, with slimy little puddles of drool collecting beneath their lips.

Beyond, in the main lobby, he could hear the shouts of hotel security guards, and smell the faint tang of ozone and sweat. Antipats. There were Antipats. What're they—?

It came to him, then. There was a riot going on out there. And a bunch of them charged down here, after us. That's them, on the floor! But I...we... "Manon? Manon, are you here?" Frightened, fighting back the dizziness that still clung, he looked up and down the hallway, seeing nothing. "Manon."

Just behind him, a latch clicked. Whirling around, he saw her, wavering in the doorway of the maintenance closet in her waitress outfit, shaking her head, a bit dusty but otherwise unharmed. "Gene? What happened? Why are you...?" She saw the fallen protestors twitching on the floor, then, and stared, lips parted. "It's happened again. Just like it was in the bus station."

"Yeah, sort of like it." Unexpectedly relieved, he nearly held her by the shoulders. "This bunch was rushing us, remember? Some kind of violent demonstration was going on out there, and when they came down here... Well, I don't remember anything else till just now."

With timid steps, Manon crept out into the hall, looking from side to side. "Is the demonstration over? It seems quiet, now."

"Yeah, I think so. There are security cops out there, but I think they're just making sure everybody's gone. But we better get the hell away from here—once they see these guys on the floor, you can bet they'll want to question us. Come on." He held out one hand, and after some hesitation, she took it and allowed him to lead her into the hotel lobby.

"It's a mess," she said, and Gene could not argue. Chairs, tables and even heavy couches had been overturned, and litter—much of it consisting of discarded protest signs—lay here and there on torn and soiled carpeting. The beautiful white marble of the Grand Staircase showed the stains of fire or explosive of some kind, and a fine gray smoke hung in the air, slowly dissipating under the efforts of the air-conditioning system.

"Sure is. I'm glad we missed it, but...what the hell happened to us? Okay, my 'nerve gas' idea was a lousy one. But it was better than no idea at all, which is—"

"You two! Stop where you are!"

A pair of blue-uniformed Ocean Dunes Security patrollers ran toward them, sidearms drawn. Gene pulled Manon closer but made no suicidal attempt to outrun them. "What is it?"

"Who are you two? Were you in on this riot?" He had the look of a frightened and frustrated man, looking for someone on whom to vent his anger.

"I'm...Art Toscanini. I work for Mr., er, Yoshi—" Gene realized at once that he had never gotten Yoshi's given name "—selling souvenirs at a stand on the beach. This's my girlfriend..."

"Caroline," said Manon at once. "Caroline Haffner. I'm a waitress, over in the hotel bar. As soon as the disturbance started, we ran for a linen-storage room, and stayed there till now. We could hear the screaming out here, but we couldn't see a thing."

The two ODSP security cops exchanged a sly but relieved look that suggested spending half an hour in a linen closet with Manon constituted the most plausible alibi anyone could have. "Okay, sounds fine. You did the smart thing."

"What exactly happened?" ventured Gene. "All these Antipat signs all over the floor... Where'd those rioters all come from, so fast?"

The second cop's scowl returned. "Damn good questions. I hear there's some IPF people from the Heart of the World on their way here, to answer them. Some son of a bitch even took a shot at Baroness Phaedra, on the Grand Staircase. Look, you two go on about your business, we've got our hands more than full." He touched the brim of his cap to Manon, and the two of them hurried off in the direction of the main desk.

Gene let out a long whistle. "An assassination attempt. Another one, if you count the bombing back home. This just keeps getting worse."

"I'm worried. Even more than I already was." Manon smoothed out a few wrinkles from the short fringe of her satin skirt. "These blackouts are scaring me. What happened to those people who tried to attack us? And a shooting at the Royal Family...Gene...you don't suppose that we could have—?"

"No, no, that's impossible! You saw those spots on the stairs where the burn marks are. We weren't anywhere near the stairs. Jeez, don't make me even more worried than I am already."

To his great surprise, she actually laughed. "You should have seen your face! As if you were going to be executed on the spot! What time is it? My chronometer's stopped working."

"Mine too." Gene looked to a wall clock. "It's a quarter to ten, almost. Why?"

Manon patted at her hair and tugged at the steep neckline of her uniform. "Because I'm going back to work, that's why. I'm on till eleven, and it would probably look, well, suspicious, if I didn't. I can tell them I was out because of the riot, which is true, after all."

"Yeah, I guess." her quick matter-of-factness impressed him in a favorable way. "All the same, I'll hang around out here till you're ready to go home. I need to do some thinking anyway."

"That'll be good. Then we— What are you doing?"

"Just dusting you off a little, that's all. You must've fallen down and picked up some dirt from that hardware closet. Hold still, will you?"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eighteen

Bedside Manner

-#-

The hospital room swam with an acid stench, barely masked by cheap soap and powerful antiseptics. Dominic dragged a plain wooden chair next to Major Haydn's bed. The Federation agent heaved himself to a sitting position with a great deal of effort, but did not ask for assistance.

"You've been waiting for me, Major?" said Dominic.

"Of course. Look at me, Sorel—do you think I've been in any condition to run away? It was only this morning that I regained enough muscular control to urinate without benefit of a catheter. If it weren't for your Coralian Gift repairing my body, I don't doubt I'd already be long dead."

Dominic considered this news with deepening curiosity. "What exactly happened to you?"

"My team and I were attacked. By ghastly things for which we could never have been prepared." His left arm began to tremble, and he paused, jaw clenched, as he brought it back to his will. "At Harmony Falls. The bus station. You've already been there?"

"Yes. We found traces of your DNA and tracked you here to this hospital. What were you doing in the bus station in the first place? In fact, what are you doing in the InterDominion at all? Was it some kind of sabotage mission? Spying? We don't like having Federation spies roaming around—"

Haydn twitched sharply. "No! You people are far more ignorant than you realize. We are not here by order of our government. We are...rogues, you might say, ronin. Sorel, I..." His mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. "I'm betraying the Federation by telling you this. So be it. I've been a marked man since I agreed to lead this mission; we all have. We all knew we would not likely be coming back..."

"Get on with it, will you?" The knowledge of Phaedra and Hal, away in the upheaval at Ocean Dunes, lent an edge to Dominic's impatience. "What were you doing here? What's this 'mission?'"

Haydn's long sigh ended in a wracking cough that shook the bed. When it subsided, he went on in a rough voice, "I must reveal to you our deepest secret: the Federation High Council is at war with itself. The Deweyite cabal, led by Mikhail Glinka, seeks to rebuild the former policy of cleansing the earth of the Coral. But there is a new, and growing, faction under the leadership of César Franck. It seeks to change Federation policy and find rapprochement with your InterDominion. Neither side holds a clear majority. The bitter power struggle between Deweyites and Franckists has now extended downward into the military. It...threatens the very stability of our government itself."

"Really." Dominic's face gave away nothing, but his heart raced. A fractured Federation, with the terrible threat of civil war waiting in the wings, could become dangerously trigger-happy. "We didn't know any of this." I've got to tell Holland and Egan at once, so it can be confirmed.

"Of course not. Both sides are desperate to keep it within the limits of Pilgrim Island. They fear that if news of such weakness gets out, the InterDominion will take advantage, and launch an attack on the Federation."

"That's nonsense. No one in our government is interested in another war. We're busy enough trying to create a working country of our own."

Haydn nodded vigorously."Of course. And some of the Franckists understand this. But the Council and the military hierarchy as a whole do not. They expect you to seek global power, and to use it to crush the Federation if we show weakness. Say what you will against the Federation, Sorel, but we are a proud people, and do not take well to being dominated by others."

"I know. I served the Federation myself, remember? But that pride always seems to get twisted into paranoia at the top levels. Colonel Dewey might have been insane, but he had plenty of willing followers."

"Yes. He still does. And the Deweyites in the Council continue his tradition. I was informed, little more than a month ago, that a secret Deweyite/military coalition has sent an assassination team into the InterDominion. Their objective is to take out as many of your government as possible, up to and including your Royal Family. That includes you, of course."

Dominic blinked, stunned. Federation murder squads at large in the InterDominion? "Have they gone completely insane? That would be sure to bring on a war."

"Of course. And even if your trapar-manipulating Coralian hierarchy were to be successfully removed, our victory would be by no means certain. It would be another long bloodbath. The Franckists want these assassins stopped, at all cost. My team and I volunteered to do so."

The door at the back of the room creaked open and Lieutenant Fleming pushed her head inside. "Everything all right, M'lord Dominic?"

"What? Yes, yes, thanks. I'll be with you in a minute. Get a secure channel to IPFSec headquarters ready for me." When she was gone, he turned back to Haydn at once. "How do you know all this? It might be just an elaborate Federation cover story for something worse."

Haydn shrugged, like a jerked puppet. "Look at me. Look at my team. Look at what's been done to us. No 'cover story' could have had this effect on our bodies."

"You'll be examined by our best medical researchers to confirm that. Were you sent directly by the dissident Council faction?"

"Yes. We entered as immigrants, with forged identities. Do not expect me to name names, or waste precious time in trying to torture or drug the Council members' identities out of me. They are brave men and women, all of them, and always under the danger of assassination themselves. I remain loyal to them."

"Naturally." Dominic's mind raced ahead, trying to see the possibilities in this unstable situation, all of them disastrous. "If you're so desperate to keep it all a secret, why have you been waiting for us to discover you?"

"Isn't it obvious? My mission has failed. After the attempted bombing of your Prince and Princess at Shiretoko, we suspected the two young refboarders as probable tools of the assassination team. We tailed them as far as Harmony Falls, where they... Sorel, I don't pretend to know what happened. They...transformed, into something hideous, something that caught us in a power unlike anything I've ever imagined."

"We'll check that out. But if you're so worried about these rogue killers, why didn't you just tell us about it directly, instead of sneaking around trying to stop them yourselves?"

The Major spoke with tight patience, plainly frustrated at Dominic's inability to see the clear truth. "Would you have believed me, the leader of a secret Federation incursion force? No. You would have jailed and interrogated us all for weeks on end, looking for some hidden deception. Then your own foreign intelligence apparatus would be employed for more weeks, seeking confirmation. And in the meanwhile, the Deweyites on the Council might have become aware of your probing, aware of your knowledge of their doings. And they would use that information to destroy the Franck faction. "

He gulped from a glass of water at his bedside table. The water spilled down his chin and to the blanket beneath, but he paid it no attention. "I have...failed, and now I beg you to take up my task. We had hoped to deal with the assassins cleanly, secretly, before you discovered them. Now, that hope has passed. These are dangerous people, Sorel, do not underestimate the threat they pose to the balance of power between Federation and InterDominion." He raised one hand, quivering and trembling. "And now it seems they wield a terrible weapon, something completely unknown to me. You must eliminate them—not for me and not even for your country, but for all of us, for the entire world. Please."

Dominic rose to his feet, his course now clear. "We'll get you and your team to the Heart of the World at once, Major."

"You do understand, then. I thank you." Haydn dipped his head in gratitude. "I saw you, you know, several times, in the old days. When you were that maniac Dewey's personal errand boy. It seems you've come a far way since then, Lord Commander Sorel."

"Even farther than you realize, Major." And he was out the door, already issuing orders.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Nineteen

In the Picture

-#-

Rick's wings twitched impatiently as he leaned across the lab table at the New Lands University's Optical Physics Unit. Like every theoretical scientific installation he had ever known—and Rick had been a visitor to many over the course of a very unordinary life—it combined the muffled expectancy of a hospital with the tense, grim efficiency characteristic of military installations. Half the overhead lights had been powered down overnight, adding to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

—They've been studying that video for half an hour, he complained to Ariadne.

It's something new to them. Besides, they're scientists. Mischa always says they worry a lot about their reputations, so they're afraid to announce any conclusions too soon. She reached down to scratch idly at her thigh, a movement Rick found deeply fascinating.

—Yeah, well, it's us whose reputations're in the spotlight, here. And we haven't got all month for them to go on with their analyses, not if this's as important as you and I think it is. I'm gonna ask...

Professor Fernando Wossel, Executive Director of the University's Special Projects Administration, rose from the group of ten researchers clustered about their bank of instruments at a second table and muttered some command that Rick could not hear. He tightened the elastic band around his dark ponytail and came to where Rick and Ariadne stood waiting. "Well, now, this is the most interesting little item anyone's brought us in a long time. Congratulations, both of you. How did you happen to discover this?"

"It was logical, that's all," said Ariadne. "Everyone else was so concerned about those two being possible bombing suspects that they didn't bother to look at anything else. But both Manon Lescault and the Onegin boy are expert reffers, so what we wanted to know was why they would both have lost control so quickly during the tournament. Nothing we could see made any sense."

Rick stuffed both hands in the pockets of his uniform. "And so we started wondering about what we couldn't see. We went to the MOI Archives and got that polarized recording. What is that wavy thing in the image, Woz?"

The Professor grinned, a shining display of white teeth. "It's nothing we've ever seen before, that's for certain. It's a field of some kind, that alternately displays characteristics of energy and a very attenuated, very strange, matter. We're ready now; come on over, and look at the enhancement that Dr. Nadine Deleury has run on the original recording."

He led them, his sandals tap-clacking on the tile floor, to the quickly-constructed analytical setup. The researchers gathered around the table drew back respectfully. Rick and Ariadne could now clearly see a large full-wave video screen connected to several hastily-assembled electronics boards, crudely clipped to dials and readouts. "Ladies and gentlemen," said Woz, "thank you for your expert assistance on such short notice and at such a late hour." He turned and looked over the rims of glasses he had not worn for over ten years. "Wait a minute—the Special Session hearings at the Senate must be going on about now. If you two need to be present, we can always run the reconstruction at a later—"

"No," said Rick without hesitation. "Mom and... I mean, Their Majesties will be there. All they do is sit there and preside, anyway. This's more important." —I think.

"Very well. Dr. Deleury, would you kindly step forward and run the enhanced recording for our Royal visitors, please?"

At a gesture from Woz, the scientist whom Rick took for Dr. Deleury came to the nearest console. She ran her fingers through her dark, wavy hair and pointed toward the center of the video screen. "I...there, your Royal Highnesses, you can see Eugene Onegin falling downward, out of his reffing maneuver. But if Your Majesties will please to look over here..."

"Just call us 'Rick' and 'Ariadne,' would you?" said Rick, embarrassed by her deference.

"What? But I... Oh, well. In any case, we're replaying the sequence in one-eighth time. You can see the boy dropping earthward, and see that he's in complete control of his fall..."

"He's got some great form," Rick whispered, lost for an instant in admiration.

"...yet now, he reaches this point, and we see..."

From the lower right, the enhanced polarized image crept up toward the unsuspecting Gene. What had seemed, at first viewing in the Archives, to be a shimmering blob, now resolved itself into a crawling mass of semitransparent tubes, writhing, churning, glowing dully with a faint light that faded from pale blue into the far ultraviolet and back again.

Rick could feel Ariadne's mental shiver. It's a horrible looking thing.

—Yeah, it is. But maybe that doesn't mean anything, we'll have to wait and see.

"...but now," went on Dr. Deleury, "please observe what happens when it nears the boy...just about now."

The roiling thing paused for an instant, less than a meter away, then sent forth a tendril of itself, bubbling with its strange bluish energy. And once that blubbery tentacle contacted Gene's side, the rest of the thing contracted along its length, flowing somehow into him in less than a single real-time second.

"That's disgusting," said Rick.

Woz nodded as Deleury skimmed forward to the next point of interest. "It is, isn't it? Notice, by the way, that the thing's illumination doesn't stay in a single spectral band. Nadine's breakthrough was to employ femtosecond analysis to the visible image, tracking its frequency shifts. Of course, the recording rate of the original was made by commercial video equipment, so it doesn't actually contain femtosecond-level data, but she was able to extrapolate... Ah, here's where the girl, Manon, comes into the frame."

Clearly unconscious by this point, Gene dropped loose-limbed from the sky, eyes unfocused. And from the upper right swooped Manon, arms extended, the trapar trail of her refboard strangely wavering in the enhanced video. As Gene spun wildly, she snatched at his thigh, pulling him to herself...when another of the repulsive objects rose up from below. At once, it wrapped itself about her and contracted, drawing itself into her now senseless body. The board fell away, and both of them pinwheeled wildly groundward.

The video froze. "And...what about us?" said Ariadne. "Did either of those things come in contact with us when we flew up to rescue Manon and Gene?"

Woz dimmed the screen. "No. We examined that part of the footage carefully, and there's no trace of any...anomalies around your images. " He folded his arms and looked at them, evaluating. "What are those creatures?"

"Creatures?" Rick knew a chill of suspicions confirmed. "They are alive, then?"

One of the researchers nodded solemnly. "Almost certainly, Lord Maurice. Just what kind of life they represent, we have no idea. Even without proper source data, it's plain that they're only partly composed of ordinary matter. And they seem to be constantly phasing in and out of our world altogether. But in their own way, yes, we all agree that they represent living creatures of some kind. Can you tell us just what they are?"

For a few quick instants, Rick and Ariadne set their neural nodes to glimmering.

Those things entered Gene and Manon, Rick. Infected them.

—Yeah. And I think I have an idea why. On the night of the dance, Gene touched you, kissed your hand.

Yes, but...

—And I think that somehow, that touch left some kind of fingerprint or trace in him, something we can't detect but those blue things can. They could feel the traces of Coralian-human hybrid in him, when he was alone up there in the air, away from other humans, out in the open. And one of them grabbed him.

A disquieting new suspicion darkened her thoughts. And...and then, when Manon grabbed Gene, whatever that trace was, it was copied to her, too. And so they got her, too. But why? If it's Coralian hybrids they were looking for, why didn't they just jump to us, when we met Gene and Manon later?

—I dunno. Maybe they tried, and failed. Maybe they thought they already had you and me, and didn't need to go on looking. Maybe they can't touch Coralians directly. Maybe there were too many other people around us, and it confused them. Maybe their thoughts are so different from ours that we can't understand their reasons at all. And that'd make them even more dangerous. But it's all just guesses, now. No matter what it is, we can't sit around just waiting for answers.

Ariadne switched back to normal speech. "We don't know much about them, either," she told the assembled staff. "The people of Shiretoko have been seeing them long enough for them to become a kind of local legend. They call them 'Dancers.' They've been afraid to talk about it to outsiders, afraid it would mean the end of the prosperity they've built up."

"There are more of those things in Shiretoko?" said one of the researchers. "How many? And...are they only limited to that town?"

"I dunno." Rick drew himself upright, not letting his own fears become visible. "But it's really important that we've got to find out. Woz, can you come up with a list of scientific people who should go up to Shiretoko and start investigating?"

"You want me to...?" He looked at them closely for a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. "All right, I will. But this is potentially very dangerous. IPF Security should be involved, maybe even the military. We'll need to inform Dominic Sorel and Holland. And Dr. Egan—and your parents, of course."

"Yes," said Ariadne, and Rick saw in her Coralian eyes the determination of a ruthless angel. "But whatever they do will take time. We need to begin to prepare immediately. We may have lost too much time already."

"Right. I agree all the way." Woz turned to the assembled scientists. "Thanks to all of you for your excellent work this evening. We'll probably need some of you for a quick expedition to Shiretoko. Nadine, gather your imaging equipment for air transport. Piotr, pull together our best optical sensors and get them ready for travel. Lena, do what you can to get this temporary rig soldered together, then pack it up. Then call... What's wrong?"

Rick reeled under an impact beyond the merely physical. He staggered to one side, reached out to Ariadne and grabbed her waist before she could drop to the floor. It passed quickly, but a kind of mental reverberation persisted, as of something powerful letting its presence announce itself. "I dun... I don't know." —Are you all right?

Yes, I'm fine. But what was that? Something heavy, and yet with no mass, falling...or colliding...

"We'll be all right, Woz. But you'd better signal Holland and Dr. Egan and the others, right away. I kind of think we might already be too late."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty

In a China Shop

-#-

Holland stood behind the Speaker's lectern of the Parliamentary Senate chamber, unmoving as an iron statue. To his left, Special Representatives Nirvash and TheEnd sat together on a plush platform, waiting with inscrutable tree-cat eyes before their microphone. Senators and their staffs on both sides of the aisle jabbered at a volume far exceeding even the worst of their normal pre-session squawks. This time they were joined by the trumpeting bellows of the loosely assembled Bovine Grievance Association crowded into the rear. This place is no better than a barn at the best of times. But tonight, it is a barn. He watched the hands of the master clock creep toward the top of the hour, grinding his teeth and sweating.

Senator Makiko Kinoshita, red-faced and outraged as usual, screeched into her microphone without waiting for the opening gavel. "Oppression! There'll be no justice here tonight! This government is displaying the usual strong-arm tactics, that it displays against all dissent from its aristocratic policies!"

Go to hell, you Antipat moron. Holland looked down on the chamber, displaying nothing, feeling everything.

Across the aisle, Loyalist Senator Hidemaro Konoye jumped to his feet, waving one fist in the air. "Liar! If this government really was 'oppressive,' you wouldn't be here, spouting your infantile treason!"

Their supporters on both sides chimed in at the top of their lungs, the Antipats still a noisy minority, but already gaining in both numbers and volume since the last session. At the back of the Senate chamber, the twenty-six dairy cattle from the northern farming districts pawed restlessly at the floor, clearly uneasy in such confined circumstances.

How long can grazing animals like cows control their bowels, anyway? Well, even if they all let go at once, it'd be no worse than what usually fills this place.

The clock struck its echoing chime; silence slowly descended and Holland drew a deep breath. "Ladies and gentlemen...and bovine guests. We welcome you all to this extra-ordinary session of the Parliamentary Senate of the InterDominion of Coral and Humanity."

"Inhumanity, you mean!" one of the Antipats shot back.

"To clarify, for our video audience," Holland began at once, before the shouting could start over again, "we are here gathered tonight in special session to address the concerns of a previously-neglected segment of our population. Since the Coralian Mind extended self-aware intelligence to quadrupedal creatures five years ago, many of them have been struggling to find a place in our world. Some call for a separate living space, apart from Humanity altogether. Others favor continuing to live among us, but insist upon recognition. Tonight, a delegation of cattle from the Hokkaido dairy district has come to us to make their position public. I therefore yield the floor—" Oops, bad choice of words, Holland "—to the spokesbovine for the delegation, Mr., ah, Mouao."

As he returned to his seat on the dais beside Prime Minister Egan, a huge black-and-white bull lumbered to a microphone placed in the visitors' area, specially adjusted for their height. "It pronounced Mouao," he bellowed, the amplification system booming his correction throughout the Senate chamber. Several Antipats cheered hysterically.

"Hear me, humans," Mouao snorted. "We don't come here to ask favors. We come to demand justice. We learn history, now, and we not let you do bad things no more to us." More applause from the Antipats ensued, which the bull ignored. "You humans have blood on your hooves. You use us, murder us, strip off our skin, eat our flesh. You torture us, mutilate us, take our young away, murder them, eat them, too. You do horrible experiments to us, make us suffer and die—and not care!"

Senator Brian Easdale, a staunch government supporter, stood. "But sir...that was all before you achieved intelligence."

"Makes no difference!" Mouao shifted in a bellicose way on all four hooves. "We not smart enough then to fight back, so it okay to gave us pain, eat us, torture us, bleed us? No, not okay! Humans sick. You want kill and give pain—you do it to other humans. Let us alone!"

The other cattle raised a bellowing, moaning chorus of anguished agreement to which the Antipats added their catcalls and boos, along with more than one shout of "down with the administration."

Dr. Egan stood, waiting for the uproar to subside, at least from the cows. "You try deny all this, human?" shouted Mouao defiantly.

"No, my good sir, I do not." Egan's quiet reply brought silence even from the Antipats. "I agree with you in all respects. Humanity has been thoughtlessly cruel to the creatures with whom it shares our world, and I offer no excuse. It was long our moral blind spot, and I ask neither forgiveness nor forgetfulness." He shuffled a few papers on the desk before him. "However, neither does this government intend to wallow in guilt for past injustices, however flagrant. The Animal Inclusion Act, passed by unanimous consent of the entire InterDominion Senate four years past—" he gave a significant glance to the Antipat faction "—has outlawed in the strongest terms all of the abuses you have outlined. You and other non-Human creatures now have full legal rights. I therefore ask you, Mr. Mouao, precisely what it is for which you have come to petition us tonight?"

The bull let out a great wail of anguish and stamped his front hooves again. "InterDominion not enough! In Federation-place, there is the Great Bleeding; millions of un-humans slaughtered and burned—"

"We have heard rumor of these things, too. The Federation—" again Egan looked toward the now-silent Antipats "—has apparently unleashed an all-too-typical campaign of terror and extermination against all newly-intelligent creatures. And it disgusts us. However, as you are already aware, sir, this is the InterDominion, and we have no power over what goes on in the half of the planet ruled by the Federation."

"You humans! You all humans! Federation, InterDominion, don't matter! You do something about it! You make us generals, leaders, Prime Ministers. We stamp on Federation, kill, kill humans!"

"You want to take leadership positions in the InterDominion?" said Holland without rising. "Fine. There aren't any more legal barriers to that. If you think you're capable, go ahead. But you've got to do it on your own. Don't expect us to just fork it over to you, or give you any special revenge privileges."

"Human! You do not—"

Holland warmed to his subject. "Look, we've admitted that what Humanity's done to you—and others like you—was wrong. But we can't change the past, and we're not going to roll over and whimper for you. We regret what went on before, but it's over. Get used to that. Don't expect us to hand you the world on a platter so you can grind your axes." Egan looked down at him in mild reproof, but said nothing. From the rear of the Senate chamber, the barnyard odor increased dramatically.

"'If' they are capable?" Kinoshita bounced on her toes, waving wildly. "Is the First Speaker implying that our fine bovine citizens are not capable of doing so? Such typical aristocratic arrogance! Such condescending patricianism!" She jabbed one finger toward Eureka and Renton, seated quietly on the Royal Platform behind Egan and Holland. "And it flows from the top down!"

"Have you no decency?" cried Easdale, outraged. "Have you Antipats, at long last, no decency?"

Nirvash rose up on her haunches, fangs bared. "Please. No more fighting, either humans or cows. We here for meeting, not for yelling."

Mouao pawed at the floor, raising a shower of sawdust from the polished hardwood. "You alien creatures, shut up! Not true animals, don't even belong on Earth! Sold out to Humans!""

"Please, good folk." Egan's quiet reply brought grudging silence. "Let us put this bigotry and partisan contentiousness aside for the moment, while we hear more of what Mr. Mouao has to say, shall we?"

The irate bull shook his massive head, but returned to the microphone. "You there—King Renton, Queen Eureka. You only part Human. What you say? What Coral-thing say?"

Behind him, the herd took to an increasingly-louder lowing, and stirred fitfully about the confined space reserved for them. Several cried out as though in pain. Something's starting to bother them, Holland quickly scribbled on a notepad which he passed to Egan. They're herd creatures, if their leader stays calm, so will the rest.

Egan scanned the note at a glance and pocketed it. "Mr. Mouao, if I might say so, some of your colleagues appear to be growing unsettled. If any of them have additional concerns for this session, we would be happy to..."

"Let Their Majesties speak!" Kinoshita insisted. "Stop deflecting the question, Egan!"

To Holland's distress, Eureka and Renton began to stand together, the jewels on their faces sparkling furiously. No, don't rise to her bait! Renton opened his lips to say something—but never did, as the entire chamber reverberated to an unearthly bass shriek from Mouao. The huge bull dropped to his front knees and wailed on, while the rest of his entourage screamed and collided randomly with each other, battering the doors and the low wall to the Senate gallery in their panic. Even the tree-cats cringed and wailed, before jumping to the floor of the Speaker's platform and scrabbling for the hallways behind the backdrop.

Wood splintered and cracked; strips of flooring came ripping up under terrified hooves. Several of the Senate guards raised their weapons, but Holland jumped up at once. "No! Everybody stay calm! What's going on? Somebody open the doors, so the cows can get outside; don't hurt them in any way, dammit!"

Behind him, he heard the slithering of cloth, and turned to see Eureka and Renton drop back to their seats, their eyes wandering and dazed but still conscious. Chaos spread through the human segment of the chamber as well, as frightened senators stampeded for the exits, stumbling, shouting, driven only by the blind need to run.

"It comes!" roared the thrashing bull, scrabbling to his feet. "It something strange comes!" And without further explanation, he galloped out the double doors and disappeared.

Holland remained in the Senate chamber just long enough to be certain that Mouao and his followers had gotten outside without injury, then ran back up to the Speaker's platform and out the Administrative entrance behind. The Guardians waiting just inside admitted him at once. "Where're Renton and Eureka?" he asked them.

"They went with the Prime Minister to his office, sir."

Holland nodded and hurried off down the Administrative corridor, where more armed Guardians stood sentinel outside Egan's Parliamentary office. He pushed the door aside, hardly knowing what to expect—but certainly not Eureka and Renton sitting calmly on two of the guest chairs while Egan spoke urgently into his personal communicator.

"You two okay? Great. You had us all scared for a second, there. I though you were going to pass out again."

Renton shrugged as he unbuttoned the collar of his black uniform. "Don't worry, we're not planning on making a habit of that. We're fine, now."

"It was just a short, well, jolt," said Eureka. "I can't think how else to describe it. As if something heavy had struck the ground not far away. Are the hearings a complete disaster?"

"Not in the way you mean." Holland looked to Egan, who showed no signs of ending his communicator conversation. "We already said 'no' to the cows, and I don't think we'll have any more trouble out of them. But politically, it's a different story. The Antipats just got a huge issue handed to them. They'll spin this into us being vicious oppressors who denied Mouao and his herd their rights, then deliberately broke up the session by having you two stage a fainting fit."

Renton tightened one fist. "It wasn't staged. Even those cattle felt it, too."

"I know, and that's how the MOI will present our side of it. But the opposition press is going to grab this and run with it, wait and see—the truth never makes such a good story as a nice, colorful lie. Especially when it's good for working up a lot of hysteria. The Antipats could even end up using this as an issue to force a No Confidence vote."

"Politics," snarled Renton, like the vilest curse. "We're so damn sick of..."

Dr. Egan replaced the communicator in his breast pocket. "For the moment, it appears that politics may be the least of our worries. Just prior to our ill-fated hearing, Commander Sorel's persistence uncovered a group of Federation special operatives with an extremely interesting story to tell. And now, there is news that Maurice and Ariadne, pursuing independent investigations of their own, have discovered disturbing new information about the 'dancers' of Shiretoko. A meeting of the Defense Committee—as well as our Parliamentary staff—is in order. Press releases must be prepared. The Defense Ministry and our Scientific Advisory Unit must be coordinated with no delay. And we must retire at once to the command center, where we may prepare for any new developments."

Holland rolled his eyes. "Oh, crap. Another night away from my wife and kid. Can it get any worse in just one day?"

"It already has." Egan snatched up his briefcase and beckoned them to follow. "The resort community of Ocean Dunes, it appears, has suddenly become the center of some most unusual phenomena. Come, my friends, to where we can most effectively monitor the data."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-One

Blockade

-#-

Job's head swam, and he swayed to one side, nearly losing his footing and tumbling down the hotel escalator. Behind him, Tommy fell forward, her arms about him, and he gripped the handrails with all his strength to keep them both on their feet. What? Earthquake?

"What's going on?" he said. All round them, other hotel patrons were going about their usual business, showing no signs of anything out of the ordinary.

"You got me." Tommy straightened. "Felt like we were getting hit with something. But I don't see anything moving or shaking. Or hear any artillery fire."

Job agreed. "Not really physical at all. More like...remembering an impact."

They reached the bottom of the escalator and hopped off, dodging cleaning crews who labored to repair the damage generated by the recent riot.

From just outside the main entrance came incoherent shouting. Job and Tommy looked to each other and hurried in that direction. Once outside, Job felt the cool sea wind brush his face, touched with its ancient promise. Against a gentle surf, the colorful gleam of beach lights and storefronts still gilded the night with their glow.

But the nighttime crowds of lovers, partiers and thrill-seekers wore none of their usual faces of eager anticipation. Instead, they stood pointing upward, beyond the hotel, into the sky itself. There, in the blackness beyond the buildings' gaudy sheen, threads of light etched a web of green fire over the nighttime sky.

"It's trapar," said Tommy at once. "Like some kind of glowing network, all across the stars. But why? Are Eureka and Renton up to something big?"

"Maybe, but I don't think so." He pointed this way and that. "There's a small intersection of those filaments right there, just over the beach. That must be the one the hotel taps for its own power. But this isn't just some local phenomenon—look at that set running north and west, toward the Heart of the World. They pass all the way down to the horizon and probably beyond."

"So what does...? Oh. You mean those are the Ley Lines? But they're invisible, always have been."

"Normally, yes." Without taking his eyes from the sky, he grabbed for her hand. "But things haven't been exactly normal lately. Come on, our little job can wait a few minutes. Let's get out where we can see more."

#

Matt Stoner shifted uneasily from his dark sleep. My God, I stink. And my mouth tastes like a public urinal. Isn't there something I'm supposed to be remembering, something bad?

Oh, yeah.

"Whaddaya wan'?" He stretched the cramps from one shoulder, surprised to find Sigrid's head still resting upon it, deep in slumber. With tender care, he lowered her to the couch as he stood on crackling knees.

Stoner squinted in the general direction of the soft voice he could barely recall, the one that had called to him. A blaze of brilliant blonde; a gown whose neckline dived drastically south; the figure of a fashion model. Wait a minute, she is a model. This isn't the old days, Matt. "Maeter? It was you who woke me up? What the hell for?" Her husband, Alan, sat in an armchair not far away, hunched over a folding keyboard and looking intently unhappy. Phaedra and Hal Farnsworth were now elsewhere, presumably in their own quarters, being miserable together.

"Shh." Maeter put one silver-nailed finger to her lips. "You want to let her sleep, don't you?" She pointed toward Sigrid, whose chest still rose and fell in rhythmically interesting ways.

"Well...yeah. Her name's Sigrid," he added, as though it would be impolite not to introduce her, even unconscious. "Sigrid Arnoldson. What was it you wanted? I could've used another couple of hours of shuteye too, y'know."

"Yes, I do. But there's something you probably want to see. Over here, out the window." She beckoned and he followed at once, lured by curiosity and the contortions of the shimmering evening gown.

Stoner leaned to the heavy glass of the window that looked out over the inky sea, not without caution. Too many times, concealment had been the only alternative to quick death.

There, across the starry late-summer sky, a greenish spiderweb of twinkling light hung suspended, unmoving but sparkling, like distant high-voltage wires. The streets below milled with hundreds of the curious and obviously frightened, staring upward, some pointing, some hurrying to destinations unknown. "Well, I'm damned. What is that thing? How long's it been there?"

"About half an hour. Then about ten minutes ago, there was a kind of big thump, that you could feel inside, somehow, but not with your normal senses. You didn't feel it? Well, I guess you were pretty exhausted. The Guardians and IPFSec people have stepped outside to contact their headquarters and find out more."

"Which would be...?"

Alan raised his head at last, releasing the worry lines from his brow. "Which will be nothing. I've been trying myself to get through to the Temple on all the normal encrypted channels, and they're not there. Not since that...impact."

"Who's not there?" Stoner came closer, looking over his shoulder at the virtual display hanging above the keyboard.

"The channels. All of them are unavailable."

A hideous thought came to Stoner. "You mean...the Heart of the World's been...?"

"Destroyed?" For the first time, something resembling humor came to Alan's eyes. "No, nothing that drastic. I haven't been able to get out on anything, including the IPF Fleet's transponder satellites or the nanowave relays. But we can pick up occasional bits of incoming commercial broadcasts, in a funny sort of way. Look at this."

He keyed in a channel ID code and from a ragged cloud of interference emerged the severely pixelated face of Annette Emerson, anchoring an MOI newscast. "...to an unexpected end...," she was saying, her distorted voice popping in and out. "...Minister Egan...the hearing...Opposition leaders...Security com..." Then the image gave a sharp jerk and began again: "...unexpected end...Opposition leaders..."

"It's been like that," said Alan, killing the volume. "Bits and pieces of the transmission will jump back and forth, repeating themselves before they continue. I don't know what to make of it."

Viktoria Yastrebova, the Guardian squad leader, came back into the suite, slamming the door behind her. Stoner appreciated the fit of her tight black uniform, but any thoughts of flirtation evaporated after one look at her sour face. "Bad news?" he said.

"More bad news, Minister. Due to the riot and now the appearance of this strange phenomenon in the sky, many vacationers are attempting to leave Ocean Dunes."

Immediately, Stoner caught the shade of meaning in her answer. "'Attempting?' Who's stopping them?"

"Not 'who,' Minister Stoner, but rather what. Our information is that all roads are being blocked by some sort of...barrier. Personal vehicles, buses—even those on foot—are unable to leave this resort. And we cannot contact the Temple for instructions."

Stoner rubbed at his stubbled cheeks with the back of one hand. "Yeah, so I hear. Look, I know you're holding the Royal Family in protective custody, here. But I'm not royalty, so any objections to me going down and having a look for myself? I'm the only Ministry of Information personnel on the scene, after all."

Yastrebova's eyebrows drew together, as if she might be searching for a plausible reason to say "no." But at that instant, a pair of the IPFSec guards came into the room, cursing in soft voices, and she turned away from him. "Very well. But if you find yourself in trouble, you can expect little help from us. Our hands are already full."

"Right." Before she could change her mind, he was out the door, groping in his pocket for a packet of breath lozenges. The shower would have to wait.

#

Stoner found the streets fronting the Ocean Dunes Hotel surprisingly loud. Excitement buzzed in the night air, and none of it of the lighthearted vacation variety. The ones who weren't staring with pie-eyed dread into the sky all seemed to be in urgent conversation with someone else, the topic of which inevitably touched on escape—or its impossibility.

He caught sight of a pair of familiar faces huddled beneath the awning of a small pastry shop not far away: Jobs and Tommy, both in casual resort clothing. Of the two, Tommy made by far the most of shorts and a thin V-necked beach shirt. With a regretful sigh, Stoner pushed a path in their direction through the volatile crowd.

"Jobs! Tommy! What're you two doing down here among the teeming masses? I'm surprised the Guardians and IPFSec don't have you upstairs in the luxury cell with the Coralian royalty."

Jobs looked up, still scowling. "Stoner? We were up there while you and your girlfriend were still asleep, but the Guardians asked us to do a little errand. Actually, the Coralian royalty is what we were just talking about. Specifically, Hal Farnsworth."

"Yeah, well, I guess there's a lot to talk about. All the same, you've gotta feel sorry for a guy in his position."

Tommy's dark eyes glittered, an effect Stoner did not find wholly unpleasant. "Sorry? How can you feel sorry for that pathetic sponge? Doesn't he feel sorry enough for himself?"

"Not exactly the life of the party, is he? All the same, if I had to wither in the shade of a Coralian butterfly for five years, who's to say Matt Stoner wouldn't be hitting the juice a little too hard for his own good, too?"

"That's just crap." Passing faces turned their way; Jobs lowered his voice, then went on. "Renton's managed it. So has Maurice. And—"

"Yeah, well, Renton and Maurice both have the full kit, don't they?" He flapped both elbows and opened his eyelids wide, in comical imitation of Coralian wings and eyes. "Hal doesn't. It'd be pretty easy to get the idea that maybe somebody higher up the evolutionary tree doesn't think he can make the grade, wouldn't it? Listen, I've even caught a couple of my own MOI reporters referring to him as 'Mr. Sorel.'" Stoner shook his head. "I know a few things about that guy's background. And the last thing he needed was to be shoved backstage while his wife pirouettes in the floodlights. I expect Phaedra's none too happy about it either, but probably doesn't know what to do. Hell, neither of them do."

Tommy looked him over with something akin to wonder. "What's this? The New, Improved, Introspective Matt Stoner?"

"Man of a Thousand Faces, m'dear. But let's save all this juicy gossip for later, shall we? What're you two up to out here?"

"The Guardians want us to look for a couple of tourists—or something," said Jobs. "A male and a female, both young."

Stoner rolled his eyes. "What kind of a description's that? Everybody's young these days."

"These two are the real thing, though, in their late teens. Their names are Manon and Eugene." He unfolded the small, blurry printout the Guardians had given them. "These were the best images the IPF could give us, before outside communications went down. Dominic Sorel himself says they're apparently dangerous in some way, though no one seems to know just how. They may have been present in the hotel during the riot. If we find them, we're to report but not to..."

Jobs' communicator tinkled for attention, and he lifted its tiny screen to his face. "Yes, this is Job Stevens. Yes, we are. Well, Tommy and I still haven't—" He went silent, only nodding now and then as disturbing news wrote itself across his face. "All right," he said at last. "Got it."

Both Tommy and Stoner watched him patiently as he replaced the communicator in one pocket. "That was the Guardian, Yastrebova, with some background. It seems that before we got to the suite, Lark—you know, that ex-Swallowtail girl..."

"Yeah," said Stoner, "the telemedium. I was there when she woke up. She said something about rogue Swallowtails carrying out murders, and at that at least one of them was probably here in Ocean Dunes."

"Right. But they might not be rogues. Now the Guardians are saying that there might be some direct Federation involvement."

The hint of intrigue caught Stoner's interest at once. "Do tell." It seems you were right on the money, weren't you, Sigrid? "Why do they suspect that?"

"Just before outside communications were blocked, the IPF guards got a message from IPFSec. Dominic's uncovered a Federation plot of some kind—and it might be involved in some way with these two visitors, Eugene and Manon."

Stoner nearly groaned. Each new item of information, far from clarifying the situation, only made things more confusing. "Involved how? Is this 'Manon' girl the killer Swallowtail?"

"Good God, what a thought," said Tommy, looking warily round as if one of the psychotic assassins might leap out of the crowd, brandishing an SFAR.

"We don't know." Jobs shrugged. "Either that's all the information there is, or it's all that came through before—" he waved his hands upward, toward the shimmering green tapestry above "—before that happened. Yastrebova was just warning us to be careful, that's all."

"Well golly gee, be sure and thank her for that swell advice, okay? Listen, where's the nearest way out of town?"

Tommy nodded her head toward the river of uneasy humanity flowing past them. "Just follow them, and that'll take you to the nearest road out. But it's likely to be pretty crowded. I don't know how close you'll be able to get to whatever's blocking the way."

"True enough. But it looks like so far everybody's thinking in terms of roads. If Ocean Dunes really is surrounded, it'll be surrounded on all sides, won't it? Is there any place to rent a boat?"

"Good thinking." Jobs smiled his understanding. "Yes, there're several rental docks down at the waterfront. And a lot of small private boats, too."

Stoner tossed off a jaunty salute. "Be seeing you, then; happy hunting. Give me a buzz if there's any more news, all right?"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Two

Recovery Room

-#-

"It's just as you suggested," said Mischa, disconnecting her instruments from Major Haydn's body. "There's been damage to both nerve endings and the sclerae themselves. It's nearly healed, thanks to the Gift, but I don't know of anything that could cause such fundamental damage. Especially to an entire group of people at once."

Major Haydn looked up at Dominic from his bed in the New Lands University Medical Research Facility. "Do you believe me now, Sorel?"

Dominic allowed nothing of his thoughts to reveal themselves. With his beard and hair shaved away, Haydn looked to him like a snarling skeleton, sun-blotched skin pulled tightly over a vulture's narrow skull. "So far. Mischa, do the others show the same effects?"

"Yes, they do." She lifted one inquisitive eyebrow. "What do you want to do with them?"

"Protective custody and more interrogation, for the time being. I'll have my people come and fetch them. Please pass your report on...all the way to the top."

She nodded and left the room, pushing the diagnostic console on its silent casters ahead of her.

"Tell me, Sorel," said Haydn when she had gone. "Who is that appealing little creature? She seems entirely too young to be operating such sophisticated equipment—and to be passing on such confidential security data."

Does he really not know? Or is he just playing his part to the full? "Doctor Mischa Egan. One of our top medical researchers. Maybe you've heard of her."

"Egan?" He appeared genuinely surprised. "Once Mischa Svarovsky, now remarried to the traitor Gregory Egan? Yes, I know the name." Haydn scowled into the bedclothes. "It is true, then."

"About the Coralian Gift? Yes, we're all age-regressing to our late teens and early twenties. Just look at me. What do your eyes tell you?"

"That you've become a pink-eyed mutant insect, serving an alien god."

Dominic knew he was being baited. "A pink-eyed insect who's twenty-eight years old but looks eighteen. Come on, Haydn, surely you'd know enough not to believe the Federation's own propaganda."

"I don't... I wanted to believe in your 'Gift,' but it all seemed too good to be true. Is this how the alien Coral creature enslaves you? Unending youth in exchange for unquestioning obedience?"

"We don't give anybody unquestioning obedience around here, least of all the Coral." Or me. "But never mind that, we brought you here for answers, not questions. What branch of the Federation Intelligence Directorate is calling the shots for the Anti-Patricians?"

"The FID?" Haydn's thin eyebrows contracted as if he might be unsure of what he was hearing. "You disappoint me, Sorel. We in the Federation intelligence services are currently well-occupied with our own political struggle, and have little further interest in yours. Political winds are too fickle to be useful to us; that senator of yours whom we tried to use five years ago proved that." He hesitated before going on. "And yet I...admit to having my suspicions about the Deweyite rogue unit. They may have been unofficially involved in inflaming some of your dupes and fellow-travelers during that bombing incident in Shiretoko. That was what initially attracted me and my team to that area."

"But the Federation didn't create the Antipats?" At once, Dominic realized how childishly disappointed he sounded.

"Don't be such a fool. Your adolescent, naïve 'Antipats' are your own homegrown problem. A real government would have put them down long ago, but you idealists never have the stomach for quick, decisive action, do you?"

Dominic stifled a hot reply as his communicator chimed for attention. He snatched it from its case and scrolled through the message on its tiny screen, then read it carefully once more before replacing it. "What do you know about the 'Swallowtails,' Haydn?"

"Only that I wish never to meet one of those maniacal little bitches in person. Why?"

"There seems to be at least a possibility that one or more of them may be involved in murder and sabotage. None of them were ever a part of your team?"

Haydn sat rigidly upright and swung his bare legs to the floor. "On my team? Do I have the look of a lunatic? Never mind. Are you suggesting that the Deweyite faction has sent one of them into the InterDominion?" He stood, obviously still unsteady, clutching at Dominic's shoulders. "If I'd suspected that, I would have demanded a larger team and more lethal weapons. Listen to me, Sorel—you have no idea just how dangerous those creatures are. And they've grown exponentially in cunning and viciousness since the old days of the War. If you root out one of them, do not hesitate. Shoot it on sight."

"I see." He eased the Major back to his bed, already thinking of his next step. "Something strange is going on down at Ocean Dunes. I know you're not a hundred percent recovered yet, but time's getting short. I'm going to have you prepped for a trip. And I need to pull together a team of my own." He pulled out the communicator once again and tapped in an access code. "Hello...Anemone?"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Three

Long Distance Operator

-#-

...into the activation...

...by joints beyond numbering...

...with, or with again...

...unto those hills...

...to do if we can't get in touch with Headquarters...

That last one, Lark knew, was coming from one of the IPFSec guards somewhere in the suite. Off in the distant room she and Kaz had taken, the faint touch of Moonbeam's thought simmered, worried and alive with a thousand images of scent and hearing. And closest of all, Kaz himself, fitful and anguished even in sleep. When the thoughts came that way, so layered and clear and crammed one into the other, Lark knew it was time to take another dose of her medication. I'm getting too open, too vulnerable to it all. She stirred, not really asleep, yet not quite awake, either.

A sort of slow, wordless grunt, like an oily wave breaking on a beach of desolation made her shiver, and she strained to bring herself to sufficient wakefulness to find her pill bottle. But before she could wrench her eyelids apart, another voice came, clear and whole.

—Lark. Lark, can you receive me? I can feel your mind. Can you hear?

Cymandiel? Lark answered, relieved almost to the point of tears. I can't see you, but I know it's you. I must have cut you off the last time. I'm sor—

—It's unimportant. Listen carefully to me. I've taken your case before the Circle of the Flame, at the very highest levels. Even Their Majesties themselves have chosen to be involved.

"Their Majesties?" Eureka and Renton? How do they—?

—I don't know who you mean.

Lark strained to organize her thoughts, to explain in a way that this strangely ignorant girl could grasp. They're the King and Queen of the InterDominion, sort of. I mean, Eureka is a Coralian. Sort of a human-looking girl, but very exotic and otherworldly. And she's got amazing powers, both of them do, powers that they use to protect our world. Oh, and The Coralian Gift brings everyone permanent youth and health, and even a kind of immortality. You see, the Coralian girls choose a Human male for a mate, and sooner or later, he picks up the Coralian mutation and becomes like her. The couples always have daughters, and the daughters choose a Human in turn, and so there's a Princess and a Prince, too...

Cymandiel laughed, clear and crystalline, as though it were the most delightful thing she'd heard in years. —It may be that your sphere isn't so very different from ours after all. But that must all wait for another time. Lark, we have divined the cause of your sickness.

Lark's heart leaped, and she nearly came to full wakefulness before willing herself back into the trance of twilight sleep. You have? Tell me, so I can—

—No. It's not like drinking an elixir that will somehow cure you the way it would settle a sour stomach. You have...how can I explain it?...part of your mind is no longer entirely confined to your own sphere. Like a floating water-plant whose leaves rise up into the breeze, your mind has been somehow pushed beyond its physical limits, catching the breezes of other spheres, other thoughts, whether you will it or no.

She held back tears of despair. Then I can't—?

—Not within your native sphere, the one you inhabit now. But hear me: our finest scholars have determined that if you were to be transferred to another sphere, the state of your mind would be reset, so to speak. We can bring you here, where you would no longer be cursed to hear the murmurings of a thousand unbidden voices.

It's possible? It really is? Then I want to—! A sudden memory brought her joy to a brutal stop. But...only me? What about Kaz—what about my husband? I can't just leave him behind...

—Nor need you. We are not cruel, Lark. He can join you, if he wishes. But wait, hear me out—it must be of his own free will. And it will not be a simple process. There is a branch of our crafts called the Carrum, which involves the intersecting of certain Powers with machinery. And it is the only one which can function across our two spheres.

Lark's hold on her trance state weakened before her delirious joy. I'm ready! Just let me wake Kaz, and we'll—

—No! It was a command, and Lark knew it. Hear me: there are factors involved that you cannot understand. Our two spheres are drawing nearer to each other, which is why we can communicate, you and I. Soon, they will reach maximum affinity, and only then can you cross to us. But in order to do so, you must construct a Carrumbic device in your sphere, one that can resonate with the more complex assemblage here on our side. Do you understand?

I don't... I don't know anything about building alien machinery...

—You need only follow the instructions I'm about to give you. The materials are not exotic. Hold your mind in a receptive state for only a moment... There.

Lark twitched as awakening grew more and more insistent. I see it. Almost a blueprint, in my memory. It's simple. But...that's a machine? And made of—

—It is what I have said. And you must build it precisely according to our specifications. You will know when you are constructing it properly. Attend me closely, now, Lark, for our two spheres are growing out of phase once more, and I cannot speak much longer. They will be at greatest conjunction in fifty-one hours and twenty minutes. At that time, you and your husband must be with the machine in order to cross to us. If not, it will be a very long time before such a feat may be attempted again. It is important that you understand this.

A normal life, without the endless babble of uncaring voices violating her every moment dangled before Lark like candy before an infant. Fifty-one hours and twenty minutes from now. Yes, I'll do it! But where shall I build it?

—It makes no difference. Just do not be late. We shall be waiting. And...

There was no more. Lark felt the connection to Cymandiel—to her "sphere," whatever that might mean—fade and vanish as her eyes twitched open, fully awake once more. She rolled upright on the couch in the common room and looked about her, too excited even to reach for her medication kit. Then the door clicked and three of their guards—an IPFSec agent and two Guardians—leaped to their feet, weapons drawn. But it was only Matt Stoner, the Minister of Information, sweaty and disheveled, water still dripping from his sodden trousers and blood from a half-healed cut on one cheek.

"There's some damn weird stuff going on out there," he sighed, then leaned back against the door and sank slowly to the carpeted floor.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Four

Strangers in the Night

-#-

Here in the shadows of the construction crews' huts, with the hotel's gaudy pastel brilliance a kilometer behind them, Gene could clearly see the gleaming webwork of the Ley Lines, stark and sparkling against the late-summer constellations. "It's beautiful," he whispered, coming to a stop and tugging at the warmth of Manon's bare elbow.

"It's scary, is what it is." She wrapped both arms about herself, and gave the sky the briefest of glances. "It shouldn't be happening at all. Come on, let's go back. It's cold out here, away from the beach."

"Maybe you should've changed back to your regular clothes, after you got off shift."

"Are you complaining?"

Gene grinned. "Nope. Not at all. It just doesn't seem like...you, that's all."

"You think you know me well enough to know what's like me?" She kept walking, wobbling as her nail-sharp heels slid and dropped on the coarse gravel path. "Well, you don't. You sound like my father and mother. I'll wear what I like, for a change. I never got a chance to dress this way back in Shiretoko. It was always 'Manon, remember your dignity,' and 'Manon, that outfit is too daring for someone in your position.' They never stopped reminding me to uphold the dignity of the Lescaults, and how we've always got to project a proper image."

"Uh-huh. Were they like that when they were back in the Federation, too?" Walking directly behind her, Gene found her image very proper indeed.

"I don't remember. I was only eight when we emigrated. Besides, Father was just an inventory clerk at a machine-parts distribution depot in those days."

The revelation took him by surprise. Perhaps, he began to speculate, the history of the Lescaults might be both deeper and wider than he had ever imagined. "My dad was a foreman on a collective farm. He had to make sure everybody met their quota, and then report anybody who didn't to the Federation Commissariat." He shook his head in nostalgic sympathy. "Somebody always got in trouble when he had to do that. But the penalties for falsifying reports're pretty severe, so he didn't have any choice. He always felt pretty bad about that. I guess I didn't realize till just now, how bad it must've been."

Away to their left, off the path, a door opened and closed in the dark, releasing a brief snippet of loud music. "What about your mother?"

"She died when I was five. I guess I don't remember much of her. That must've made it easier for Dad to desert to the New Lands just as soon as he could swing it." Memories dormant since early childhood now came to him with disturbing clarity. "He worked his butt off in those days—I still remember how he used to come home all exhausted. Started out here as a farm laborer, see, then worked his way up to foreman of a parts counter. He was so proud when he could finally open up our little tractor-repair garage! I know, I know—it must sound like a pretty rinky-dink operation to somebody as rich as you. But Dad always says that no matter how small, it's ours, not the Federation's. Hey, listen..."

"What? What do you hear?" She edged a half-step closer.

"Can't you hear that commotion? People yelling and tramping around, back by the hotel, a lot of them. Something's going on, for sure. I'm gonna go back and see..."

"No!" Manon snatched at his arm, then just as quickly released it. "I mean...what if it's another of those Antipatrician riots? Do you want to get involved in one of those again? Don't be stupid."

As much as he resented the casual insult, Gene had to concede her point. "Yeah, I guess not. C'mon, then, let's get home before they decide to march down this way." In spite of her coarse bravado, he could detect the anxiety in Manon's quick, clumsy strides, and tried to deflect the conversation back into less disturbing lines. "You say your old man was an inventory clerk back in the Federation? So how'd he get so rich? What'd he do, rob a payroll train or something?"

"Must you be so infantile?" She spun round, fists at her sides. "He didn't rob anything. He and Mother came to the New Lands because they knew that no one ever gets ahead in the Federation."

"They did?" Once again, Gene saw Manon's parents in a fresh light. "Then...they came here to make their fortune?" He allowed himself a soft whistle. "They must be wicked good at business—and clever, too. No wonder they're so touchy, now that they're high-class. They don't want anybody knowing that they started out grubbing and scraping at the bottom, like my dad. Like...me."

"Oh, so you admire father? I should have guessed. Your mind's as narrow as his is, always thinking about nothing but money."

"You'd think of it all the time, too, if you'd ever been poor." Off beyond a pile of discarded construction crates, Gene thought to catch a flicker of shadow in the half-light. Keep her talking, he decided at once. "Maybe that's your problem—you were hardly even born till they'd made their bundle. You can't remember a time when you weren't rich. All your life, you've had everything you ever wanted, so you take it for granted. But your folks haven't forgotten how it used to be."

"Idiot! Why don't you just...!"

"No wonder you're so bratty. You haven't got any idea how us common slobs have to live, do you? Well, I'm gonna tell you something..."

He grabbed her by both shoulders and held her tightly to himself. The waves of her hair smelled of disinfectant, beer and warm girl as he pressed his lips to her ear. "Keep on arguing with me," he told her in an urgent undertone.

"What do you think you're...?" Manon curled her lip with disdain, but ceased struggling and whispered back, "Why?"

"Over there—no, don't look—by the construction dump. Two people." He tried his best not to sound frightened. "Somebody's following us."

-#-

Job pulled Tommy back into the shadows behind the discarded crate of a commercial power inverter. "I think they saw us," he said.

"Are they coming this way?"

He risked another peek beyond the crate. "No. They're talking to each other; having an argument, I think."

"Are you even sure those are the right two?" Tommy folded her arms patiently.

"As sure as I can be in this dim light. The girl, at least, looks something like the photo we were given."

She rolled her eyes in an affectionate way. "Admit it—it's that leggy outfit she's in that caught your eye."

"Well, that, too. Maybe you ought to wear something like that, for the act." From the distance, beyond the hotel, he caught the faint wail of sirens.

"Maybe I will, once all this is over. Anyway, what do we do now? Go over and tell them to come along quietly?"

She leaned nearer, her breast pressed insistently against his shoulder. Job swallowed, hard. "We don't have to do anything. They're supposed to be dangerous, remember? Our job is just to go back and tell the... Do you hear something?"

"Yes." Tommy dropped to a crouch, pulling her husband down with her. "Back in that direction, the way we came. Feet. Running feet, lots of them. Coming this way."

#

Stoner slogged up out of the water, towing the little rowboat behind him. The soft sand sucked at his feet with each step, but at least he'd had the foresight to remove his shoes and socks before rowing out to the edge of the strange boundary field surrounding Ocean Dunes.

Weary, he beached the boat and sat on its stern while he rinsed his feet of sand and tugged his footgear back on. Didn't accomplish much, but at least I found out that this force field or whatever the hell it is, doesn't stop the flow of water. I'll tell the guards when I get back. Maybe someone'll even care.

As he made his way back up the deserted beach, toward the brightly-lit column of the hotel, it seemed to Stoner that the crowds swarming the streets had grown even more agitated during his absence. Damn, but this could get ugly. How I wish I had a camera crew down here, to get it all on record. Well, at least I can hightail it up there myself, and jot down some quick notes that I can pass on to the MOI when we get out of here. If we get out of here.

The sand made for slow going as he trudged up toward street level, and he found himself breathing heavily by the time he reached the edges of the noisy herd. With a journalist's eye, he immediately noted that there seemed to be two groups involved—one milling about on the sidewalks but making no trouble, the other comprising an organized cadre that marched in a westerly direction, chanting with fists held high. About half of them carried improvised clubs, but made no aggressive moves.

Antipats. What else? Stoner guessed them to be about two hundred strong, and as the tail of the mob passed, he slid easily in behind them, doing his best to look as scruffy and self-righteous as the rest. Shouldn't be too difficult. You've had plenty of practice, haven't you, Matt?

He raised one fist skyward and joined in chanting their simple slogans, though no one appeared to be listening but themselves. As they stamped on past souvenir stands, food vendors and equipment-rental facilities, Stoner saw the fear in the faces of the other visitors along the way. The only thing they're worried about is what's going to happen to them now that the sky's turned into a green doily and somebody's put an invisible wall around their little fleshpot. But what's going on with these Antipats? Where're we headed? Ocean Dunes isn't all that big, yet, and we're gonna be running out of main street pretty soon. Are they planning on marching all the way out to where the barrier hits the ground?

As if in response to his unspoken question, the head of the Antipat demonstrators made a sharp right turn, down a sloping road, little more than a well-worn dirt path that led into darkness. Downward into the night they marched, until only the now-distant hotel provided a faint light—and what little it revealed gave Stoner no reassurance whatever. It's almost a miniature canyon back here, and rubble everyplace. Must've been where the construction crews dumped garbage from building the hotel. Who do the Antipats think they're going to impress in a place like this?

The pace of the crowd grew slower and slower, and Stoner held back, always keeping far to the rear. "Now we show them our power!" someone screamed, and a shrill female voice added, "The People rise, higher and higher; the InterDominion goes down in fire!"

Goes down in...? In the gully's darkness, a galaxy of tiny flames spread throughout the Antipat mob, each spark quickly swelling to a rippling blaze. Those aren't clubs, Stoner realized as he crept backward, out of the light. They're torches.

#

Job could hear it clearly, now. A crowd, getting larger, stumbling through the debris-strewn field Where the abandoned construction crews' huts clustered. "Who the hell are they? Maybe they're searching for a way out of this barrier around the town."

"Not unless they figure on trying to burn it down," warned Tommy. "Stay out of sight, but have a look."

Job crept nearer to the edge of the Plastiform crate, amazed to see a living river of dancing orange flames pouring their way across the rough field, accompanied by ragged shouts. "Those are torches, hundreds of them. That isn't just a crowd—it's a mob." He wished, badly, that he had thought to bring a weapon.

Fragments of shouted slogans grew intelligible as the mob drew closer: Ho, ho, hi, hi, elitist parasites must die! Power to the hands of the People! Death to patricians! The People, yes; royalty, NO!

"Antipats," whispered Job. "Probably the same gang that was in the the hotel lobby earlier. Must be well over a hundred. What in hell are they doing back here? This isn't much more than a construction-site dump."

Even as he spoke, a torch went pinwheeling by overhead, spitting sparks as it flew. Then another, and another, making a whooshing sound in the still night air. Tommy grasped his wrist. "That's what they're doing. This's a dump, all right, and dumps are always full of flammable chemicals and materials. They're trying to start a blaze back here, to call attention to themselves. And in all this confusion, they can get away with it."

"Damn." Away to their right, a hurled torch struck a jagged pile of construction odds and ends, setting it afire almost instantly. Within seconds, a column of flame rose high into the air, bringing loud cheers from the demonstrators. Job felt the heat on his own face, and dropped to his knees on the coarse gravel. "We've gotta get out of here. Plastiform won't burn, but it melts easily enough at high temperatures. This crate won't be a shelter for long."

Not far away, doors rattled open, and someone bellowed, "What the hell d'you think you're doing, you idiots? Get outa here!"

Tommy sucked in her breath. "Oh, God, there are people living back here among this debris. If the fire gets out of control..."

"Yeah." Not far away, the rough ground itself began to erupt in flames, as some long-forgotten flammable waste took fire. More torches hissed above, to the enthusiastic hoots and cheers of the mob. The local dwellers screamed out their rage and fear, along backed up by a growing chorus of threats. Job grabbed Tommy's shoulder. "There. It's the boy and girl we're after, all right," he said. "They must live here, too."

Gravel dug at his hands and knees as he scrambled toward the opposite end of the packing crate for a better look, sweating in the rising heat. There, not far away, the two fugitives stood rooted in the center of the path, watching the mob and the fire with no sign of alarm or even concern. "What in hell's wrong with those two? Are they hypnotized or something? Why don't they run?"

"Never mind them," said Tommy, her face shiny with perspiration in the waving orange glow. "If we don't run, we'll fry. Come on, Job!" She jumped to her feet.

"Right, but..." He made a decision as he rose to join her. Pulling at her elbow, he sprinted for the young couple. "Hey!" he shouted. "Get moving! This place is about to go up in flames!" Job grabbed the girl about the waist, trying to drag her away, shake her out of her strange trance.

Tommy joined him, snatching the boy beneath his shoulders, pulling him like a wounded combatant, away from the exposed path. But almost at once she cried out, tumbling back as if struck. Job moved to help her, but an irresistible wave of force caught him like a truck, sending him sprawling to the stony path.

Riding with the fall, he rolled at once to his feet beside Tommy, who already stood with arms and feet apart in a combat-ready stance. The boy and girl appeared to notice them at last, turning their faces in unison toward them, casting their eyes...

"Their eyes!" cried Tommy.

Job watched with a growing horror as the pair's pupils and irises faded and vanished, until only a pale sky-blue glow throbbed from their hollow eye sockets. He was still deciding whether to run or keep on trying to rescue them when a dozen or so rioters arrived, bearing torches, bits of metal piping and whatever crude weapons they could pull from the trash.

#

With a speed that astonished even himself, Stoner scrambled back up the gravelly path. Perched at last on the road above, panting for breath, he turned and watched a column of whirling fire soar into the night sky. Even at this distance, he felt the heat on his exposed skin. The rioters—he could no longer think of them as anything else—threw the last of their torches into it, like sacrifices to some molten god. By its light, Stoner could at last see the hellish landscape in the gully, now swarming with chanting, cackling maniacs. Is this what Hell is supposed to look like? With fumbling hands, he pulled out his communicator, ready to alert the IPFSec crew back at the hotel, when something going on in the middle of the dirt road, about a hundred meters beneath, caught his eye.

Is it a fight? Are the Antipats squabbling among themselves? Dissension in the ranks? Or are—?

Stoner held his breath. My God, that's Tommy!

#

"You!" screeched a snarling rioter, pointing Job's way with a shard of glass. "I've seen you before! You and that tarty wife of yours, singing at the hotel, for the degenerate elite! You're Stevens, a parasitic monarchist, serving the Coralian creatures!" She lunged his way with the glass blade, but Job stepped neatly aside, knocking it from her hand with a swipe of one arm as he kicked her legs out from under her.

"Burn, damn you!" she wailed as she went down. But the next one, a sweaty, broad-faced tough brandishing a length of electrical conduit, was already stepping in, swinging wildly. Job ducked as Tommy rammed her foot into the attacker's throat; the man clutched his neck with a strangling sound and crumpled.

It drove the part of the mob in their immediate vicinity to fresh frenzy. From all sides they came, surrounding Tommy and Job, both of them now pressed to their limits, kicking, striking, twisting, dodging fists and weapons in a furious dance of self-preservation. We can't keep this up much longer, he realized. They'll overwhelm us, and then...what? Are they really crazy enough to throw us in the fire? Maybe.

Hands, grasping hands, clutched for him and for Tommy. She shouted in defiance but still they came, piling on, grabbing, dragging her, dragging him, down. Their voices swelled to a continuous shout, a roar of bitterness that blended with the roar of the hungry flames until Job could no longer separate one from the other. The gout of fire twenty meters high gushed into the green-lace tracery of the night, the last thing he could see as he went down, reaching out for Tommy. Job swore back at them, unheard, his words lost in the avalanche of sound. Is this what we risked our necks with Gekkostate for? Are you the new world that Eureka and Renton created? But his only answer was a clumsy fist to the cheek, a pair of kicks that splintered his chest, and...

The world changed.

#

From his vantage point atop the canyon's rim, Matt Stoner watched as twin balls of ice-colored light bloomed below, directly from in front of Tommy. He opened his mouth to shout, tensed both legs to run, down into the madness beneath. Rings of pallid light raced outward through the gully, expanding as they flew, extinguishing the tower of flame like a snuffed candle, racing up the canyon walls to where Stoner stood, frozen. The loose stones beneath his feet gave way and he felt himself sliding down, downward into the dark chaos. Did I see Jobs down there, too? was his last thought as the radiant blue rings swept his consciousness away.

#

A wind that could only be sensed, not felt, swept across the stony road in deafening silence. The hands of the frenzied mob fell away, as did their incoherent rattle of voices. His skin grew clammy, and only slowly did Job understand that the pillar of flame at the center of the dump was gone, snuffed out like a discarded cigarette.

Tommy. He gasped at the pain crackling through his broken ribs, but lifted himself from the ground. She lay less than a meter from him, surrounded by twitching, unconscious bodies sprawled in every imaginable position. Job crawled to her, and together they rose unsteadily to their feet, the only two still moving in a hellish sea of fallen fanatics. "What did they—?" he began. But Tommy looked beyond him, into the path, to where the boy and the girl had once stood.

Job turned, astonished. Two formless, writhing masses of what might have been thick, oily ropes hovered before them, twisting, slithering over themselves, radiating a cold bluish sheen over the scattered remnants of the mob. Job and Tommy came into each others' arms, staring, whether in wonder or dread he could not yet say. A soft trilling whistle condensed on the night air, forming syllables, words, and Job strained to hear.

"It is two who can know," the twittering sighed. "A pair would not be of the Mind."

"What've you done with the two people who were there?" demanded Tommy. Job had to admire her courage, but wondered if some less-challenging response might not have been the wiser course.

"It is no hurt they would have." The sound pattered from the breeze around them, from everywhere, with no obvious source. "At last they would lead us. No hurt does the two attempt, but to protect instead. The two understand those of the Mind."

Hallucination? Aliens? Illusions? Ghosts? Extradimensionals? Whatever their true nature, the things had shown themselves capable of communication, of a sort. Job decided to take the chance. "What does that mean? What are you? You put out the fire before it could spread; you made this crazed mob unconscious. Why? Are you connected with what's happened to the Ley—?"

Each throbbing luminous thing sent forth a stream of tiny phosphorescent spheres, one tendril at Tommy and the other to Job. He reached for Tommy's arm, ready to run as far and as fast as they possibly could from these repulsive horrors. But his muscles would not answer his will, and he could only stand, a prisoner in his own body, unable to move or even to protest. Job had the sensation of floating a few centimeters above the ground, but lacked the power even to look downward to his feet.

A heartbreakingly warm wave of utter tranquillity embraced him, but he clung to his rage, resisting. No! Dammit, there's no reason for me to feel so calm, it's a trick, they're manipulating my mind, our minds! I can't let it get me. They want us to stop struggling while they...while they...

Job fought a silent battle against that unnatural bliss, reciting mathematical tables, control-system sequences, even the lyrics of his latest songs in his mind, over and over. He dredged up each episode of anger or frustration from his memory, turning at last to Vodarek meditational chants—anything to block that alien siren song. But not even his most frantic efforts could stand against the relentless onslaught of peace, and he found himself sliding under, seduced against all the dwindling strength of his will.

Then the whispers began.

Concepts, really, viewpoints, broken chains of impossible logic that began and ended without resolution. Absorbing it all, Job's remaining resistance slipped away as he floated in that immaterial sea.

The two of them bobbed together in silence, immersed in columns of rising bubbles, unspeaking, receptive, rapt.

When it ended, Tommy was the first to speak again. "Yes," she said.

And Job nodded his complete agreement. "We're with you, now. All the way.."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Five

Confessional

-#-

Hal stirred at an unfamiliar sound, like the ending to a bad dream. But then, all my dreams are bad lately. And they don't seem to end at all.

Reluctantly, he stretched legs and arms gone unresponsive, discovering in the process a dull pain in his left hip. It caused him no great embarrassment to realize that he'd fallen asleep in one of the chairs in the suite's common lounge; falling asleep while tipsy in strange locations held no novelty to him any longer. Just how long he'd been asleep still eluded him, but he knew at once that it had been long enough for his last drink to have worn off. I must fix that as soon as possible.

Most of the room lights had been either extinguished or dimmed, and it seemed that the IPF and Guardian bodyguards had dragged in a few extra couches and cots to serve as temporary bedding for the suite's emergency guests.

Over in a far corner, Hal saw Matt Stoner in animated conversation with three of the guards. That's what woke me up, he realized, and strained to hear.

"...so I found a rowboat and rowed out into the lake," he was telling them. "That barrier, whatever it is, goes out into the water, too. Doesn't affect it. The lake water, I mean."

The door opened quietly behind him, and a uniformed, taffy-haired girl with high, proud cheekbones slipped inside. At once, the guards formed a ring about her, with weapons drawn. Unruffled, she presented her ID card to agent Gade, and they all holstered their RPPs before returning their attention to Stoner.

"Anyway," the Information Minister went on, "after I rowed back—I didn't steal the boat—I saw this big crowd running down the main street, out in front. Antipats, you could tell from all the brainless shouting and lousy poetry. So I followed them, looking for the story, see?"

The girl with the taffy-colored hair interrupted him. "Did any of them enter the hotel itself, sir?" She wore a deep blue uniform that Hal recognized as belonging to the Ocean Dunes Security Patrol, the mercenary force employed by the hotel management to keep order. Without being obvious about having awakened, Hal sat up fractionally straighter.

"Into the building, you mean? No. I thought that was kind of odd, since everyone the Antipats say they hate the most is in here. But they went right on past, yelling and chanting. The usual crackpot threat display; you know how that kind is, all full of resentment and promises. A hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred of them. It was hard to tell exactly."

"Yes, Minister."

"Anyway, they all turned down a side street. I followed at a safe distance; not my most brilliant idea, as it turned out." Stoner seemed to be warming to his subject. Hal figured him to be unconsciously composing the story he would dictate to the MOI when—if—outside communications were restored. Across the room, Hal saw Kazuya Aruno snoring gently on a couch; strangely, Kaz' wife was nowhere to be seen. As for his own wife, Hal assumed she had gone to their bedroom, alone and anguished again, but far better off than she'd have been with himself. He shifted his eyes back and forth, still feigning sleep. And no sign of Job Stevens or Tomika. Have they been moved to another suite somewhere?

"They went on down to some kind of trashy area, about a kilometer back, down in a wide gully," Stoner went on . "Looked like a battlefield to me, and I've seen enough battlefields to know".

"Ocean Dunes Resort is a work in progress, sir," said the ODSP girl with the hint of a superior smile. "That area is for debris left over from the hotel construction. We call it 'The Dumps.' And there are a few abandoned workers' huts down there as well."

The Information Minister met her smile with his own, a cool, well-practiced thunderbolt of charm. "More than a few, my dear. I saw doors opening all over, down there in your Dumps, when the crusading Antipat legions came bellowing into their midst."

She stammered for just an instant, and looked away. Hal saw her full face, then, and his eyes went wide. "All right...it's true, Minister. We don't like to advertise the fact to guests, but there's a small indigent squatter community living among the rubble. We tolerate it for now because the Ocean Dunes management hasn't the time or resources yet to clear them out. The only control we exercise over who lives there is to charge them a nominal rent. Eventually, when the resort is expanded—"

Politely but firmly, the Guardian Yastrebova spoke over her. "For the moment, we need to stay focused on the topic at hand. Mr. Stoner, would you please tell us again what happened as you followed the mob?"

"Sure. They started a fire down there. Hell of a big one, too, there must be a lot of flammable materials in all that junk. They got a good, big blaze going in no more than thirty seconds, and it made them even jollier than they already were. The slogans, the chants, the self-righteous denunciations...in another couple of minutes, they'd have started painting their bodies and doing a war dance around the fire." He dropped the breezy manner, then. "But they didn't."

No one spoke as they waited for him to go on. "Why not?" prompted Niels Gade.

"Because...well, I don't know. I thought I saw Tommy and Job Stevens down there, but then there was a big burst of blue light, like the biggest strobe flash I've ever seen. It ran out in rings through the whole gully, all the way back up to where I was standing. I remember looking down at it...and then nothing. Next thing I knew, I was laying halfway down the bank in a pile of sharp-edged garbage." He patted at the cut on his face, now healed beneath its crusted streak of dried blood. "Must've been how I got this."

"The rioters didn't do that to you, then?"

"No. That was the funniest thing of all. The whole herd of them—all the way down, as far as I could see—were just laying there, not moving. You guys can round them all up, if they're still sleeping it off. I thought at first they were dead, so I checked a couple and they were breathing but out cold. I guess I came out of it first because I was so far away. I didn't stick around to see what was going to happen next."

"And Mr. and Mrs. Stevens?" said Yastrebova.

Stoner stared, plainly taken off-guard by the question. "I guess I didn't see them again. See, it was dark again by the time I came to, and when I did, all I could think of was getting back here to tell you people." He looked to the floor, no longer meeting their eyes. "I should've gone to look for them, though. I...don't know why I didn't."

"Thank you, sir," said Yastrebova. "If you recall any further details, please let us know. For now, my colleagues and I must coordinate our next move with the Ocean Dunes security group." She hurried off to a corner, where the Guardians and IPF people spoke in low, urgent voices to each other and into communicators, ignoring Stoner completely.

"You're welcome. Mind if I go to bed now? It's been a long day. No objections? 'Night, then." With a long sigh, Stoner plodded off to the bedroom reserved for him and the Arnoldson woman.

Hal stood up at last.

#

Matt Stoner reached for the door to his room, but it swung open before he could touch the handle. Sigrid stood there, clean and bright and adorable in a brief yellow nightie; where she'd gotten it, he could not imagine. He went inside, feeling even dirtier and more disreputable than he had before.

"I was listening," she said. "You've had a pretty rough night. Would a nice hot shower make you feel any better?"

He pushed their door shut behind him, then locked and double-locked it. "It'll take more than soap and hot water to get me clean." Now that the adrenaline fire of excitement had departed, he knew the familiar wash of regret.

"Why? What're you talking about? My God, Matt, you're a hero. You've always been a hero, right back to the Gekkostate days—"

"Cut it out." I didn't mean to snap at her. Why do I always take my personal failings out on everybody else? "Sorry. I guess you're just getting a glimpse of the real Matt Stoner, now. And he's no hero."

He expected her to lash back at him, keeping herself at arm's length. They all did. But instead, she motioned him to the edge of the bed beside her. "At least get out of those cruddy-looking shoes, won't you? Look, what's got you in such a foul mood? Is it because you can't get in touch with your office? Hey, even living legends can't get everything they want."

"That's all it is," he told her, leaning forward, elbows on knees, holding his head in both hands. "Just a legend. Listen, Sigrid, I tried to tell you before, but everything's gone by so fast... I'm not the idol you think I am. I don't know why I'm telling you this, unless it's because you've hung on so much farther than any of the others... I wasn't anybody special in the old days, aboard the Moonlight. Just a sarcastic, fashionably-jaded professional cynic who was good with a camera and knew how to write a flashy propaganda newsletter. A has-been reporter and Federation shill who jumped to Holland's crazy rebellion because I didn't have anywhere left to go."

"Oh, that? Sure, I knew you were a war reporter for the Federation, once. Even your official biographies talk about that. And you regretted that you let them use you as a mouthpiece. But that was years ago. Nothing to get all ashamed of; you saw the light in the end. An awful lot of people who've come to the InterDominion have...some pretty shady pasts. We all used to live in the Federation, y'know."

Stoner shut his eyes. Go ahead, Matt. Tell her the whole thing. All of it. Better for her to run away now, rather than later, when it'll be even messier. "Ten years ago," he began, "we all—Gekkostate, that is—made a trip down to Thuu Bak. It was where we met up with Viyuuden for the first time. Only we couldn't just fly the Moonlight in, we had to walk, through the tropical forest, never mind why.

"Anyway, I was still full of antiestablishment zeal in those days. Like the Antipats, I thought that only I had the key to a pure and moral future. So I..." This is always the hard part. "So right after we landed, I made contact with a bunch of revolutionary guerillas that called themselves the Voice of the People. Anti-Federation, or so they claimed. The reality was that they were nothing but a gang of violent psychos, out to smash whatever they could and steal whenever they could."

"Yeah?" Sigrid nodded. "So what?"

"So I sold us out to them. I told them we'd be marching toward Thuu Bak, even gave them the route. I thought that once Holland and the rest met up with the VOP, they'd see the light and join up with them right away. And we'd all overthrow the Federation together, in the sacred name of The People."

"Did you?"

He snorted, more violently than he'd intended. "They set us an ambush. Captured all of us, except for Renton and Eureka, who managed to get away. Figured on ransoming us to the Federation, and in the meantime, raping our women. Probably the men, too, if they'd had the time. We managed to escape, later. At least I can say I had a hand in that, but it was me who'd gotten them into danger in the first place, so that doesn't count."

Sigrid reached out toward his arm, but never quite touched him. "They haven't forgiven you?"

"Of course they have! Over and over. But it's still there, always between us. No matter how they feel, I can't forgive myself." He rubbed at his rough, irritated eyes. "I betrayed them, Sigrid. I can't ever forget that. And now tonight—you said you overheard me telling my story out there—I knew Jobs and Tommy were down there at the bottom of the canyon. But later, when I woke up, it never even occurred to me to go down and look for them. Never." He threw up both hands, helplessly.

"Well, look, Matt... You'd just gotten zapped by some kind of weird blue mind radiation, right? It could've killed you. You were still confused, foggy. You didn't know what you were doing."

He got up and went slowly to the window, looking up at the green webwork that now held the world in its grasp. "That's what I keep telling myself. But how can I know? Was my brain really scrambled? Or is it just that, at the bottom of it all, I don't care for anything but my own sorry ass? That I betrayed Jobs and Tommy, just like I betrayed Gekkostate ten years back?"

In the silence that followed, they heard the distant creak of the hotel's ventilation system, a faraway siren and the rustle of low voices from the common room outside.

"You're not the only one with those kind of doubts, Matt." Sigrid spoke softly, almost a whisper.

"Yeah?" He did not turn around.

"Yeah. Listen, I'm kind of...glad you told me all this. 'Cause it makes it easier for me to tell you something." She took a slow, deep breath. "See...I'm kind of a turncoat myself. The truth is... Truth is, I've lied to you from the beginning. I'm...a plant. A Federation deep-cover agent."

Matt Stoner put his hand to the window glass, wishing he could fly on trapar wings, far away, and never have to look back. "I know," he said.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Good Old Days

-#-

The various security bodyguards paid Hal no attention as he made his quiet way across the floor. The ODSP patroller seemed to have been excluded from their urgent, half-whispered conversation. As though sensing as much, she turned and put one hand to the door handle, ready to leave, when Hal's fingers came down on her wrist. She turned at once, setting her amber ponytail to shaking, as she seared him him an angry glare.

"No, don't shoot. Please." Hal held up both hands and put on his best imitation of Minister Stoner's disarming smile.

The girl blushed faintly, but relaxed. "I wasn't sure you'd remember me, Hal. It's been a long time."

"Longer than you know. Listen, before anything else, there is something I have to know: when your unit pulled out that night...where did you go? I went through all the official channels to find you, but all I got was 'Classified High Secret.'" He forced a little laugh, even though the memory was in no way amusing. "I even tried some unofficial channels. But Federation Aero Forces Security started getting wind that someone was snooping around, and I had to stop. And after I...left the military, there was nothing I could do at all. But I've never stopped wondering about you, Dagmar—where did your unit go?"

She looked furtively from side to side, then took him by one arm and led him to a couch as far from the IPF and Guardian agents as possible. "Slovonika. We were assigned to guard the LFO assembly plant there. There'd been a workers' strike a couple of days before, and the higher-ups were terrified that it might be the beginning of a widespread insurrection."

"Ah-ha." Hal nodded, very seriously. "Was it?"

"No. The Landestroopers rounded up the ringleaders and most of the followers, and hanged them all outside the factory gates. We didn't actually see any of it, we just flew patrols around Slovonika for three days. And when we got back to base...you were gone. Nobody knew a thing about you, or at least that's what they told me. You know how dangerous it can be to talk about personnel who've been Disappeared." She turned her hazel eyes toward him. "Are you still mad at me?"

"Of course not," he lied. "Hell, I was never mad at you." Hal noticed the blue-and-white ID patch above her left breast: PETROVKA. "I, uh, see you haven't changed your name since the old days."

"You mean am I married? No. But I was, for a couple of years. To Undercommander Brian Easdale."

Hal could barely believe she was not making an inside joke. "Easdale? You're serious? You married that heel-clicking..."

"...by-the-book career officer, and full-time idiot. Don't ask me why, it just seemed like a good idea at the time."

"And...was it?"

"Of course not. Right from the start, he kept on insisting that his wife must join the Party. I should've seen the light right away, but it wasn't till he finally threatened to denounce me to the Political Directorate that I had enough. I decided to defect; to leave both him and the Federation."

"I'm sorry," said Hal, who wasn't.

"Thanks. That was right after the InterDominion was formed, so during maneuvers, I took my spiker over the border to Fredonia, and asked for political asylum. But I couldn't help worrying all the time that a Federation External Punishment enforcer would somehow catch up to me. So I took commercial passage here to the New Lands as soon as I could." She brushed a wisp of hair from one cheek, a gesture that took Hal back through the years to another time, and a sad world of might-have-beens. "But hey, what about you? I hear you're some kind of royalty, now. A baron or something?"

The tension and embarrassment came back to him. "Don't pay any attention to all that. I married into it; I didn't earn it."

"That's not what I heard." Dagmar tapped her forehead, between her eyes. "People don't get those little oval things without earning them. When do you get the wings and the eyes, and all the other perks of the office?"

Hal was grateful, then, for the shadows and the dim light, for he felt his face burn with humiliation. "I don't know. Look, you were always so easy to talk to, even in the old days. I want to tell you about all it. I need to talk to somebody about it before I..."

"Miss Petrovka?"

They both looked up, to see Gade, the man from IPFSec, beckoning. "Yes?" said Dagmar.

"Please forgive me, but we must ask you to leave for the night. We're extremely short-staffed right now, and we've already had to send one of our officers with Mrs. Aruno, who wished to meditate in her quarters. We'd like to keep this area clear of outsiders overnight."

"And besides," added Yastrebova, perhaps by way of conciliation, "we've just heard that there's an MOI news crew setting up in the road just outside the barrier, accompanied by an IPF Ground Forces unit. You can bet there'll be people there trying to get some kind of message out, and it'll be the job of the ODSP to control the crowds. I'm sure you'll be getting called up any minute, anyway."

"I see. All right, then." Dagmar stood, and Hal did the same, awkwardly, unwilling to let her vanish once more, so soon.

"Uh...d'you think we could get together again? Tomorrow, I mean, during daylight. Look, Dagmar, this is really important, for me..."

Though he expected her to politely beg off, she gave a brisk nod. "Okay. Sounds like we have a lot of old times to talk about. Electronics still function inside that invisible barrier, so I can give you a direct buzz on your communicator. Around noon tomorrow?"

"Yeah. Yes, sure. And thank you, Dagmar. You don't know how much it means to..."

She took him by the shoulders, leaned forward and planted a chaste but warm kiss on one cheek. And by the time Hal could think of anything to say in return, she was gone.

#

In her darkened bedroom, Phaedra slowly shut the door that opened into the common lounge. Though she could not, even with her sensitive Coralian hearing, make out most of what Hal and that woman had been saying, she required no enhanced senses to know the meaning of a kiss.

Phaedra returned to bed. But she did not sleep.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In the Still of the Night

-#-

"It's past one o'clock," said Eureka.

Leaning in the stone window frame, Renton shrugged. In the darkness of their bedroom, she could not see the movement, but he knew she would feel it all the same. "Sure it is. You can't sleep any more than I can, can you?"

He heard the whisper of her skin across the bedclothes as she swung her legs to the floor and padded barefoot to stand beside him. The nighttime sparkle of the Heart of the World twinkled around them. And above, the newly-visible network of the shining Ley Lines glimmered its way among the stars.

Trapar energy, the researchers at the University said. And he knew it to be true, for he and Eureka could both sense it, feel the flow of trapar along the planetary energy conduits, surging here and there in incomprehensible patterns whose purpose remained as hidden as ever.

"Sleep? No, of course not." Eureka joined him at the opening, carved so long ago by builders whose names had been forgotten even before the Arkship had departed on its ancient journey of survival. "I'm too worried, in a way I've never been before. In the past, we've been able to stand together against our enemies, no matter how strong. But now...I don't even know who the enemies are."

"Or what they want." He looked upward, where the running lights of a descending InterDominion commercial transport grew lower as it approached the civilian aerodrome on the other side of New Tresor. "Ocean Dunes has been taken over by something no one can understand, for reasons we can't guess. It seems that some kind of unknown creatures called 'Dancers' have appeared, but we don't know why. There's a Federation sabotage unit loose, and they don't stop at murder. The Arkship's awake, now, but not even Dr. Egan has any idea what for—or what's it's doing. Even the Coral's upset about something; I can tell, and so can you. And we can't do a damn thing about any of it except lie to the people we're supposed to be protecting." Renton pounded one fist against the uncaring stone wall. "Some 'king' and 'queen' we make."

"You sound almost like an Antipat yourself."

"Don't even get me started on them. After all you went through to reconcile Humanity and the Coral...and now to have these people sneer at you—"

"At us, Renton."

"—as if we've done something terrible to them... Hell, how wrong can those Antipatricians be? They think we're controlling the InterDominion. But the truth is, every day, bit by bit, it's the InterDominion that's controlling us. And I'm sick of it."

She moved nearer to him, into his arms. "So am I."

Out of long training, Renton did not show his shock, though he knew she could sense it anyway. Always, Eureka had been the persevering one, the one willing to struggle on, to make any sacrifice for the greater good. To hear her now, ready to turn away from all they had accomplished, was like ice water in his face. "Really?"

"Oh, I know it sounds awful. But you and I never wanted this role of King and Queen in the first place. And more and more I'm beginning to wonder...is this what we've been working for? Were we meant to save the world—but not to carry it forward?" She pressed her face to his shoulder, her wings trembling. "I'm frightened."

He held her to him, his only fixed truth in a world that now seemed to be spinning beyond their understanding. There they stood, beneath the softly twinkling light of trapar, their forehead nodes afire as the dying night spun its webs around them.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Five

Nightcap

-#-

Holland stumbled in the door to his apartment, more asleep than awake. Only a shower and bed had any meaning for him, now. The usual Daddy's-home drink could wait.

"Holland?" Yuki came from the dining room in a short cotton nightie.

He found it a measure of his own exhaustion that he was far too weary even to stare. "Yeah, it's me. I think." He dropped his briefcase and collapsed into the couch with a heavy sigh. "What time is it?"

"Past one-thirty. What the hell've you and Egan been doing?"

"Everything. All hell's broken loose. The Ley Line grid's started glowing for some reason..."

"I saw it."

"Yeah. Well, Woz's bunch over at the University says the Arkship released some kind of energy pulse that's triggered the lines. Only nobody knows what kind of energy, or what it's all for. That new resort, Ocean Dunes, is all of a sudden surrounded by some kind of containment field, and nobody can get in or out. Earlier this evening, there was a big Antipat riot in the hotel itself, and some goddam assassin tried to take a shot at Phaedra."

Yuki's dark eyes widened. "Phaedra and Hal're down there?"

"So I understand." He stretched until the couch creaked, trying and failing to hold back a cavernous yawn. "So're Kaz Aruno and Lark, that telemedium who used to be a Swallowtail. And Tommy and Jobs. Maeter and Alan, too. And even Stoner seems t'be there, doing God knows what. It's quite the celebrity spot, I gather."

"Sounds like trouble."

"And it might grow into even more trouble, if the Antipats get wind of it before we can come up with a cover story. The staff's working on one right now, keeping the lid on it all till the MOI figures out how to spin it. " He shook his head at an unpleasant memory. "Renton and Eureka damn near went critical when Egan raised the subject. They didn't like the idea of 'lying to the people' one damn bit. It took Viyuuden to finally talk them into going along with it, but they're still boiling mad. You know how idealistic they are." Holland squinted up into the infinite reaches of their ceiling. "Trouble is...trouble is...I can't really argue their point. It's a dirty business, this running a country. Everything's a sleazy compromise at best."

"Any details on the assassination attempt?"

"There probably would be, if communications in and out of Ocean Dunes still worked. But it seems that energy barrier or whatever it is, also makes a hash of electronic communications. Even long-range phased-wave can't get through." He rubbed at his swollen eyes. "It's a hell of a mess. How was your day?"

Yuki edged nearer. "Not so bad as yours, but a pain in the ass all the same. While the Founder's Day Committee was meeting, there was an Antipat demonstration outside the auditorium. Something about 'bread and circuses' going on while The People are struggling to make ends meet. Always so damn self-righteous and morally superior. Always toeing the Federation party line..."

"Well, you can forget the 'Federation' part of it, anyway." He stretched out one arm and pulled her to his side. "We have some preliminary reports from Dominic, and he says the Antipats' strings aren't being pulled by the Federation after all. That just leaves homemade self-righteousness and moral superiority for us to deal with. Combined with stupidity, I guess. Too bad—the Federation's easier to fight than stupidity." Holland yawned again. "Where's Junior? In bed?"

"Yeah. He wanted to wait up for you, but I shooed him off to bed at eleven; he's got school tomorrow."

"Good move. Wouldn't want him growing up to be a retired pirate, like his old man. Listen, I hope I don't stink too badly, 'cause I don't think I can stay awake long enough for a shower tonight. I'll catch one in the morning. Point me in the general direction of our bedroom, would you? When I pass out, just aim me where I'll hit the mattress."

Yuki stood and helped him to his feet. "C'mon, tough guy. It won't be the first time I've dragged you to the bedroom." When he failed to respond to the gentle joke, she grew serious once more. "Holland... You know how proud I am of you, doing this First Speaker job and all."

"Oh, hell, and I thought you married me for my money."

"Watch out for the coffee table. No, I mean it. But there's something I've always kept wondering about. I mean...why do you do it? It's such a huge job, after all; I don't even know how Egan survives it sometimes. You're always working your butt off, sacrificing half your life to the InterDominion. And what do you get from it? Ungrateful morons like the Antipats and way too much overtime. Why do you keep doing this, Holland? Why?"

For just a moment, the iron resolve buried deep within him pushed aside the weariness, and he faced her, clear and certain of himself. "Because I want Junior to grow up in a world where the name 'Novak' is something to be proud of. Where he carries the name of a big shot hero who helped to build the InterDominion right from the beginning. A world where 'Novak' doesn't bring to mind a mass-murdering madman who damn near took the whole planet to its grave." Holland blinked, foggy and half-asleep once again. "That's why. Are we there yet?"

"Almost." She kissed him on one cheek. "Almost there, my big shot hero."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Six

Overtime

-#-

Mischa Egan turned over, burying her face in her pillow.

Already the foggy fragments of her dream were fading, drifting into wisps of half-remembered comfort, shattered by the light and the voice. Light? What light? I should be asleep. Surely it's not time to get up already...

She pried open one eye, then the other, to find the bedroom softly illuminated by the small lamp on Gregory's side of the bed. It might have struck her full in the face at first, but Gregory himself sat before it on the edge of the mattress. The muscles of his naked back and arms drew tight as he spoke in a low voice into his communicator.

"...in full agreement, Doctor. Yes. You are certain the blue shift is real, and not a function of self-luminescence? I see. Yes, of course we shall need all possible confirmation; please contact me as soon as you have it."

Mischa sat upright, shaking tangled hair from her eyes. She knew that tone of voice, that hunched-over posture, the tension across his shoulders. Trouble was brewing. She waited for her husband to finish before asking any questions, for all his attention would be needed for whatever disaster was being laid at his feet.

"Yes. Yes, I see. Please inform Dr. Wossel as well. Yes, I am keenly aware of the lateness of the hour, but he must determine the course of action for your group. For my part, I will go to my office and prepare my own plans. Yes, I shall. Thank you, Doctor, I shall be in touch."

Only when his thumb had cut off the communicator did Mischa slide to her husband's side. "What is it? Trouble again?"

"Yes, my little kitten. That was the head of the Astronomy team at the University. It seems that their instruments have detected a very large but diffuse mass at a distance of approximately 30 AU from the Sun."

As her head cleared of the aftereffects of sleep, Mischa knew a cold tremor of foreboding. "I heard you talking about a 'blue shift.' Is that a relativistic blue shift? As of something approaching at a high speed?"

"Exactly so." He rose from the bed, still nude, and began to stretch and flex his body in a way calculated to prepare his metabolism for whatever might be demanded of it. "It appears to be a cohesive cloud of some nature. It is still roughly as far away as the orbit of Neptune—though at an angle thirty-seven degrees from the plane of the ecliptic—and seems to be accelerating in uneven spurts." Gregory hesitated, then turned to face her, looking vaguely demonic in the upward glow of the lamp. "Its current path is directed precisely toward the Earth."

"Good Lord. Is it the Mist again?"

"It seems not." He tugged on a pair of fresh socks, then trousers. "Unfortunate that we cannot contact Mrs. Aruno to conclusively confirm its identity, but the cloud's spectral analysis does not match our previous encounter with the Mist-being. This phenomenon is something quite new." From the dresser, he pulled a casual shirt and, with precise coordination, shrugged into it as he slid his feet into a pair of brown shoes.

Mischa rose from the bed. The carpet was cool against her bare feet, but she wasted no time on hunting for her slippers. "Do you have to go now? You've hardly gotten any sleep at all. You said we need more confirmation—can't you wait till we get it?"

"Ah. I was speaking of confirmation by our own astronomers, my love. According to our counterintelligence monitoring satellites, the object's existence per se has already been confirmed." Her husband smiled as he tucked the shirt into his waistband. "By the Federation."

"Oh, God. And how are they reacting?"

"In a paranoid fashion, of course. Their encrypted military communications have spiked sharply within the last half-hour, and the Federation Aero Fleet is on high alert. If they remain true to past form, they will presume that we are somehow involved. Where might I find my thermal jacket? The nights are getting quite cool of late."

"In the hall closet. But Gregory...does this mean they're preparing to launch an attack? They already came close to it, five years ago."

"Certain elements of the Federation leadership will surely leap to that conclusion." He frowned, briefly, deep in thought. "And as their leadership is already divided and in turmoil, we must be prepared for...irrational actions on their part. I must call a meeting of the Senate Defense and Budgetary committees, first thing in the morning." With a lingering kiss, he nodded farewell and was gone.

#

Lark dragged the plastic kitchenette table into the precise center of their bedroom. The table's metal feet kept catching on the deep-pile carpet, and she stopped frequently to wrestle it into position with many a muttered curse.

Moonbeam looked on with detached curiosity. Many things about human behavior puzzled him until he had thought them out carefully, but this one seemed in some fundamental way different, and he followed each move in silence.

He could smell the taut scent of her perspiration; clearly whatever had drawn her back here to the rooms shared by her and Kazuya was driving her to new heights of urgency. Finally, when she dropped to her knees to catch her breath, he felt safe in venturing a question. "Lark. You working very hard at this thing."

"Yes." She produced that contraction of human facial muscles that he had long ago learned was a "smile," a signal of good intent, if not always happiness. "Up in the suite where everyone else is being guarded—" she gestured upward, indicating one of the hotel's higher floors "—I told them I had to come down here to meditate."

"You do meditate," he reminded her. Moonbeam had spent a great deal of time learning to grasp the human ability to speak of things that had no basis in objective reality. "Lies," the humans called them.

"I know. And I need to do it again, soon. My head's buzzing with the Voices. But I had to begin building this machine as soon as possible." She grimaced and pressed one hand to her forehead. "Or the Voices will bury me alive, sooner or later."

"This thing not like other human machines." After two years employed as a professional sniffer, searching out microscopic fuel leaks at the New Tresor aircraft assembly facility, Moonbeam had seen plenty of human mechanical constructions.

"No, it isn't. Whatever drives it doesn't operate according to any of the laws we know about physics." Wearily, she rose to her feet and finished cutting a spool of of red synthetic string into precise lengths. Then, using a squeeze bottle of glue, she cemented the strings to the tabletop in a pattern that almost resembled a moiré grid, but leading the eye in wholly unexpected directions.

The fur stood up on Moonbeam's neck and he growled apprehensively.

She turned toward him. "What? What is it? Is it the guards outside the door? Are they coming in? I told them to give me three hours of meditation..."

"No, Lark, no one comes. That thing you making—you not feel anything around it?"

"I'm a little dizzy, but I thought it was the glue. Did you feel something?"

"Not glue, Lark. Something...funny happen when you finish, just now. Like scent, only in the ear and in the head." He knew he could never fully communicate the strange sensation to a human. "I never feel anything like. You say this Cymandiel know what she does?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I have to take her word for it. I know it all seems crazy, but it's the only chance I've got to ever be free of the Voices." Lark groped in a pocket of her skirt for the bottle of anti-psychotropics that held the chaos in her mind at bay for hours at a time. She swallowed three of them without water and looked toward the clock inset into the bedroom wall. "It'll be dawn, soon, and I'm exhausted. For some reason, putting this thing together requires so much concentration...as if the making of it were somehow part of its construction. Does that sound strange?"

"No, Lark. You almost done?"

"For now. But no, there's still a lot more work to be done. And it needs some things that I don't have here in the rooms—and that I can't get without making the IPFSec and Guardians suspicious. And that's where I'll have to ask for your help, old friend."

Moonbeam sat up eagerly, his ears rigid and alert. Being of help to Lark or Kazuya always made him feel good. "What to do?"

"Here's a list of things that I'll need. I know none of them look like anything resembling machine parts, but the directions Cymandiel put in my memory are clear."

She held down a sheet of paper for him to read; Moonbeam memorized it at once. "What you need first?"

"Er...the three jars, I suppose. And the bottle of black paint. It doesn't matter what the jars are made of, as long as they're the right size, within a couple of centimeters or so. Oh, and another roll of string, blue this time. I'm sorry to ask this of you, but if anyone upstairs suspected what I was up to, they might interfere. And they mustn't interfere."

The subtle vibrations of desperation in her voice told him once again just how very important it was to her. "Okay. I go down right away and have things sent to this room."

"No, I know you're tired, too." Lark knelt and stroked his fur between his ears. "Get some sleep. Besides, it wouldn't do if we were to leave together—the guards might start drawing conclusions. And my three hours are almost up, so I have to leave anyway. I'll be back later, as soon as I can manage it."

"What you say." Moonbeam looked to her, then back to the junk-festooned kitchenette table. It still carried that unpleasant and faintly disturbing air about it. But Lark, with her merely human senses, could never detect such subtlety, so he said nothing for the moment. "When this thing have to be ready to work?"

Once more, she consulted the clock, a gesture she was beginning to make more and more frequently. "Forty-six hours and seventeen minutes," she said, half to him, half to herself. And the scent of fear shone from her again. "That's how much time is left. Forty-six hours and..."

She hurried to the door without finishing.

The End