Goldenrod: The final chapter of the Eureka Seven saga

by Ken-Goh

The conclusion of the Eureka Seven series.

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 lyrics and poetry, are solely mine.

Goldenrod is the third and last part of the final 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 all three novels are available here on this site.

This is the proper sequence of all installments:

1: 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

2: Shine On, Shine On

1: The Edge

2: City of Dust

3: Borealis

3: In Some Brighter Dreams

1: Uncertain Voyage

2: Kindred With the Skies

3: Goldenrod

All of these can be found here on this site.

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And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

—Henry Vaughn

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Goldenrod

(3)

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A story from the world of Eureka Seven

by

John Wagner

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Chapter One

Dark Dawn

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Viyuuden, High Priest of the Community of Vodarek, tugged the thermal jacket more tightly about his neck as he walked. Though it was still only September by the calendar, the nights had already grown cold, and dawn's full warming would not arrive for at least another thirty minutes.

All the same, he had risen a full hour earlier than usual, and departed the Temple after his habitual morning meditations in the Great Hall. The Coral is uneasy. I know it in my heart; even the initiates can feel the perturbations in its ineffable thought. What unimaginable force could disturb the dreams of such a vast being? The Coral could destroy the world itself—and nearly did, once. But instead, it gave us an Emissary—who soon led the way for others of her kind. Already their power has been tested, and found sufficient. Will it be challenged again? And if so—darkest of all fears—will it still be enough?

Viyuuden shivered in the damp wind creeping up from Lake Epiphany. Streetlights, closer together here in the Governmental district of the Heart of the World, cast an otherworldly sheen, muffled in their hazy spheres of mist. Further out, scattered apartment complexes and condominiums stirred with the tiny sparks of early risers, rousing themselves for another day of managing the volatile young InterDominion. But will they be able—?

Voices stirred the velvety air; the priest froze in mid-step and listened with all his mind and senses.

"Awake, city of innocents! Rise, now, and gird thyselves to greet the source of all thy manifold blessings!" The voice rang clear with power, moral authority and fanaticism. Darkened office buildings echoed back the proclamation, over and over.

Viyuuden quickened his steps, rounding a familiar corner to face the broad marble staircase of the Parliament Building. There, in the floodlights that always illuminated its snowy stone, stood a curious knot of predawn pedestrians. All were garbed in robes as white as the gleaming stairs, all of them hooded—except the one in the center. He stood one step higher than the others, bearded, arms outstretched at his sides as though casting a blessing. Here and there, a few curious night people—cleaning staff, Civil Patrol officers on the midnight beat, third-shift technicians from the various computer facilities—stood with arms folded, whispering now and then to each other. At a more discreet distance, five black-suited Guardians of the Flame waited, and watched.

"Soon the gifts that were given so long ago shall be revealed," the bearded orator went on. "Soon the great and final battle between Chaos and Order will begin." He shut his eyes and crossed his arms across his chest. "Where will you stand then, my friends? The weak shall run from these portents, but the strong of faith will prove themselves worthy. Where will you stand?"

Gently, so as not to startle him, Viyuuden touched the elbow of one of the encircling Guardians. The man turned, body tense as his training dictated. But at once he snapped to attention and lowered his head briefly in respect. "Reverend Sir," he said in a soft undertone, surprise written on his shadowed face. "I am Kristiyan Koev, Guardian of the Flame and Seeker after the Way of Vodarek. What is your command?"

"Relax, my friend. Tonight—no, I should say 'this morning'—I'm just another wanderer in the dark streets, waiting for the light of dawn." He tilted his head in the general direction of the orator, who preached on with a great deal of arm-swinging zeal. "Who are these people? I haven't seen them about the City before."

"Neither have we, Reverence. There seem to be about eight of them, but they come and go from time to time. We've been told they showed up less than an hour ago and started ranting about some kind of Great Redemption. Shall we take them to the Temple for questioning and—?"

"No." Viyuuden held up one hand in the ritual sign of Patient Peace. "The people of the City will rise and start going to their workplaces before long. As long as these...prophets do not interfere with them, let them have their say. And direct these Civil Guard officers to do the same."

He looked again toward the apparent leader, whose rolling phrases revealed some considerable practice at public speaking—or perhaps of a deep and powerful conviction. Have I heard it before, somewhere, somewhen?

"...and the sky shall tremble with the presence of Friend and Foe alike! Soon, the Time of Becoming shall be upon us, friends. Prepare your hearts for its appearance! There shall be..."

That voice. The priest could not shake away a gnawing sense of familiarity.

"Reverence? Did you speak?"

"Eh? No, only to myself, Mr. Koev. That man's voice stirs some old memory in me. Or perhaps in times of crisis, some voices take on a certain frightened sameness. I'll meditate upon it, later."

The Guardian frowned. "Then there is a crisis, Reverence? There's been a lot of rumor lately, about strange goings-on from down south. Is that where Their Holinesses have gone?"

"Be patient. Soon, the Ministry will be releasing more infor... 'Their Holinesses?' Do you mean Lady Eureka and Lord Renton? You've seen them tonight?"

"Well, yes, Reverence." Koev shuffled uncomfortably. "It was about three hours past midnight. All of us—Guardians, that is—saw the holy trapar flame of their wings, leaving the apex of the Temple, where they dwell. At least, we assumed it was the Blessed Ones, but they flew at a great height. They went in a southerly direction." As if to reinforce the truth of his report, he pointed toward the southern sky, now occupied only by stars. "Were you not aware—?"

"The time is fast approaching, friends! Hear me and prepare your spirit for the Transformation! Make ready, and fill your hearts with encouragement. Make ready!"

"No, I was not." At once alert, Viyuuden spun away, back toward the Temple. "Tell the others, if they see any more such activity, to report it at once." He hurried off through the fading night, the clear and insistent reverberations of the man in the white robes following him, taunting him:

"Make ready...make ready...make ready..."

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Chapter Two

Board Meeting

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Senator Hidemaro Konoye quivered with a barely-repressed rage as he dropped into his seat at the conference table. Seven-thirty; he was the first one to arrive. He always tried to be the first one at meetings: some would be impressed, while others would wonder what he might know that they didn't. Good politics all the way around.

Prime Minister Egan breezed into the room with a nod and a token smile. "Good morning, Prime Minister," said Konoye, secretly envying Egan's apparent inexhaustibility. I know damned well he's been up most of the night, ever since this latest crisis began. And yet he looks like he just came from a brisk workout somewhere. Which he probably has.

"Have you seen the Heart of the World Critical Observer this morning, sir?" Konoye said at once. "They've gotten intolerably flagrant. Look at this headline: 'ARROGANT NOVAK INSULTS BOVINE CITIZENS.' And beneath it: 'Would-be Coralian Royalty Pretend to Fainting Fit.' Really, sir, this is scarcely less than treason!"

Egan peeled off his athletic jacket and took his seat at the head of the table, before his data screen. "In point of fact, the bovine delegation is quite contentedly awaiting the next Senate session in its well-grassed meadow north of the city, Senator. As for the Observer, it is no more than a minor and predictable irritant."

"But...but their circulation is growing, sir. We must move firmly, to stamp this out before it spreads any further. The Senate itself is becoming corrupted with Antipatrician sentiment, to the extent that an actual political party could soon coalesce around it."

"Possibly." The Prime Minister pecked at his keyboard, his eyes scanning rapidly over the screen. "But any heavy-handed attempts to suppress them would only result in a counter-reaction that could sweep them into power in short order."

"But—"

"Senator, I fully understand your concern about the Antipatrician movement. And I share your sentiments entirely. However, more pressing matters must take precedence for the time being, and it is in your capacity as head of the Parliamentary Budgetary Committee that you will be most urgently needed this morning. Have you the summary I requested?"

Konoye swallowed and clicked open his briefcase. When the Prime Minister was in such a somber humor, he knew there could be no swaying him from his resolve. "Yes, sir. I have..."

The door swung open and First Speaker Holland Novak entered, in earnest conversation with High Admiral Gunter Juergens, resplendent in full uniform. Ko8noye stared, unnerved. The High Admiral seldom made an appearance at meetings of the civilian authority, and his presence here today suggested events of the highest magnitude.

Others filed in to the conference room, wearing various degrees of concern: Professor Fernando Wossel; Senators Paul Hindemuth and Hjördis Schymberg of the Military Appropriations Committee, followed by several of their staff; Acting IPFSec Commander Jean-Baptiste Arban.

Konoye's stomach tightened another notch. As Head of IPF Security for the city of The Heart of the World—and, to a lesser extent, for the remainder of the sparsely populated New Lands—Lord Commander Dominic Sorel should have been personally present, instead of his second-in-command. More followed, few of whom Konoye had ever seen before, presumably secretaries and other staff personnel.

At last came Viyuuden, the stern-faced leader of the Worldwide Community of Vodarek, menacing as always in his black bodysuit, cloak and knee boots. Everyone seated now rose, and faced the doorway.

"Lady Ariadne," the priest announced, "She Who Returned from Death. And Lord Maurice, her Resurrector. All stand before the Heirs of the InterDominion."

Konoye watched the confident young man in his dark uniform, hand in hand with the supernaturally beautiful Princess as they entered with slow, regal steps. But even as he reeled before the glorious Lady Ariadne—little of whose beauty was concealed by her brief, wispy pink gown—the Senator nearly groaned aloud in shock. Where are their parents? Where are Lady Eureka and Lord Renton, our Monarchs Apparent? They should be here, presiding over such a high-level gathering. A ghastly thought came unbidden. Has something happened to them?

"Please be seated," said Princess Ariadne, in a voice both delicate and commanding. It was the signal to begin, and all present sat once more amid a clatter of chairs, the dry rustle of paper and the subtle clearing of even drier throats.

The Prime Minister was the first to speak. "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your presence on such short notice, and at such an early hour. Please believe me, it was necessary. All of you know at least one small part of the larger crisis now before us, but few of you are aware of the entire situation. We shall now correct that omission." Egan riffled through the bound papers of Konoye's report before continuing. "Before we begin, allow me to remind you—unnecessary though I am sure it be—that the topics discussed here today are of the highest secrecy." He did not add "or else;" he did not need to.

"A point of order, Prime Minister." Senator Hindemuth rose awkwardly to his feet. Good for you, Senator. I'm as staunch a Monarchist as any, but we still mustn't let such a glaring irregularity pass without question.

"Senator?"

"Their Majesties the Lady Eureka and Lord Renton are not present. Without implying any disrespect to the Prince and Princess—" he nodded in their direction "—may I ask why this strange absence?"

"It's because Mother and Father aren't in the City today," said Lady Ariadne without hesitation. "They left late last night."

All around the table, low murmurs of disquiet ruffled the stuffy air. "Your...Your Highness," the Senator fumbled on, clearly at a loss. "Did...did they not tell you, er, anything more?"

The Prince smiled faintly, in a way so much like the First Speaker that Konoye blinked, hardly sure if he had seen it or not. "Actually, they didn't tell us anything at all. Not the way you mean." He wriggled one finger in the direction of the Coralian neural node on his forehead. "We just...know. They're all right, but when Viyuuden told us about the meeting, Ariadne and I decided to come in their places."

Hindemuth swallowed nervously, but gave the Royals a polite bow and sat down. "Yes, My Lord."

Prime Minister Egan nodded. "If that has been settled, let us immediately move on to the business at hand. It seems that we face multiple crises of varying natures, which may or may not be connected, but all of which require our full response. First Speaker Novak will deliver a summary of the situation. Mr. Novak?"

"First things first," said the Speaker without rising. "If you people will look at the screens before you, you'll see a map of the solar system, not to scale, of course."

Konoye studied the colored, three-dimensional map that appeared on his monitor. Seven planets and their orbits—indicated by colorful circles—ringed a yellow sun. But among them showed something else, something he had never seen on any solar system map in his life. An indeterminate mass, above the plane of the ecliptic, appeared at roughly the same distance as Saturn. It showed no orbit, but a quivering blue line behind it represented its path up to this moment. The line's far end, presumably its projected trajectory, terminated in a red question mark.

"That thing you see coming in from someplace we haven't yet figured out is our first problem. It's been adjusting its course and speed now and then, but there's not much doubt that its target is us, the Earth. It's about a tenth the mass of Earth's Moon, but doppler analysis says it might not be solid—or at least not completely solid."

"It's not that thing we called 'The Mist,' then?" Juergens asked.

"Nope. Spectral analysis is all wrong for The Mist."

"I suppose there's no point in asking what it is," said Senator Schymberg, "or why it's coming toward the Earth?"

"Wish I could tell you, Senator, but nobody knows yet. All the same, it's bright enough and close enough so that anybody with a back-yard telescope'll be able to spot it before long."

"How close is 'close enough?'" Acting Commander Arban wanted to know.

Professor Wossel looked up from his screen "It's at approximately one point three billion kilometers at this moment. Of course, the precise figure will vary with Earth's orbital position from day to day—not to mention any unpredictable perturbations of its own path."

Schymberg wheezed a sigh of relief. "Then we at least have some time to prepare for its arrival."

"Not as much as you think, Senator," said Novak. "Like Woz told us, its speed varies. But the best guesses put it in Earth's vicinity in...a little less than two days."

In the immediate silence, Konoye was certain he could hear his own heart beat. "But...how can anything move that fast?" he blurted. "In fact, how could it have even gotten here, across interstellar distances? Even the Arkship was limited to suboptical velocity, or so I was always told."

Prime Minister Egan nodded agreement. "And you were told correctly, sir. Though, as to whether that is still true..." He trailed off for just an instant, eyes shut in thought. "But this is not the time for idle speculation. For now, it is enough that we know it is approaching—and likely under intelligent control."

"And we're not the only ones who know."

All heads turned toward Prince Maurice, including Konoye's. This is unprecedented. Their parents always simply sat there silently during policy conclaves.

Novak cracked his knuckles as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. "Damn right we're not. Seems that the Federation's long-distance orbital sensors found this thing at least a day ago. Their controlled media're about to start pushing the party line that it's some kind of InterDominion trick, to catch them off guard."

"They can't possibly believe that!" Hindemuth's normally pale features flushed a deep red. Konoye suspected that only respect for the presence of Their Majesties restrained him from jumping up and shouting.

Acting Commander Arban returned only a tight, chill smile. "Given the level of hysteria at the highest levels of the Federation Presidium High Council, it's hard to say what they believe any longer. His Lordship, Lord Commander Sorel, has captured a Federation agent who's informed us that the Council is divided against itself. In brief, one side wants to live and let live with the InterDominion; those are the Franckists. The other side wants to continue with previous policy and wipe us from the Earth, no matter the cost. Again."

"Those are the Deweyites," murmured Novak, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"Yes, First Speaker. And the factions are engaged in a bitter power struggle that could lead as far as civil war. But our problem, from a strictly political point of view, is that the Antipatrician movement right here will seize on this. They'll claim we are planning a sneak attack on the Federation, and try to force a vote of No Confidence to bring down the administration."

"And install Makiko Kinoshita as the next Prime Minister," growled Senator Schymberg. "That treasonous—"

Konoye interrupted before she could say anything that might prove politically embarrassing later. "Agreed, but irrelevant, Hjördis."

"Holland," said the High Admiral, "you mentioned something about 'first things first.' If that was the first point, how about moving on to the next one? We can hash out the details later." When Senator Konoye had first met High Admiral Guenter Juergens, the senior officer had already been the most respected military commander in the Federation, the long veteran of enough bloody conflicts to leave his hair a dull gray verging on white. Today, he sat before them a vital and energetic man seemingly in his early thirties, but having lost none of his iron determination as the Coralian Gift slowly stripped away the years.

"Sure." First Speaker Novak touched a control patch, and the display on all their screens altered, to show a not-to-scale diagram of the Earth-Moon system. A spark of red hung between them, unmoving. "That dot you see dangling there in space is the Arkship. Two days ago, it moved out of lunar orbit to what I'm told is a Lagrangian Point, a gravitationally stable position where it can park without moving."

Hindemuth risked a question. "At whose command did it move, sir?"

"'Command?' Maybe none at all. But you're on the right track. We think there was a signal, if you want to call it that. Woz, can you answer that one?"

Professor Wossel leaned forward in his chair. "That brings up an interesting point, Senator. You see, the Arkship left its previous orbit at what we now know was precisely the moment when Dr. Katsuhiro Morita's experimental trapar accelerator began its first operational test."

"What? You mean the two were connected, somehow? As if it were waiting for someone to discover trapar acceleration?"

Wossel smiled his broad grin of utter innocence. "That's the current working hypothesis, yes. Subject to verification, of course."

"But I don't—"

"Neither do we," Novak said. "But to make things worse, it seems that creatures called 'Dancers' have somehow..."

Princess Ariadne cut him off. "...appeared here in the InterDominion, up in Shiretoko. Dr. Wossel's group can probably tell you the most about them, if you want more details afterward. But we can tell you now that they're made of some kind of strange matter that's similar to trapar itself."

"They're almost invisible, most of the time." The Prince tossed back a thatch of black hair from his face. "But they can, well, possess humans, sometimes."

"How do you know that?" asked Arban. "Your Highness."

"Because they've seen it happen," Wossel told him. "So have I. It's visible on the recordings the MOI made, of the reffing tournament in Shiretoko. Thanks to Their Majesties' shrewd detective work, we were able to watch them actually enter the bodies of a local boy and girl. No doubt about it, I'm afraid."

The First Speaker gave Viyuuden a sharp glance. "You were pretty put out when we found out about those two. Mind explaining now just what it is about them that upset you so much?"

"I do not..." The priest cleared his throat, seemingly uncomfortable with the question. "It is difficult to explain in mundane terms. I can only say that I sensed a great...upheaval centered about the two. Like the first, faint, ripples of an approaching tidal wave." He shook his head impatiently. "I feel it still. And it grows nearer."

Hindemuth shook his head at this latest in a barrage of bizarre revelations. "Do we have this young couple in custody, then? For study, I mean?"

The First Speaker made a cringing face. "Well, now, that leads us into another little problem. See, they're out of our hands. They've left Shiretoko. Took a bus to that resort down south, Ocean Dunes."

"Can't our Security forces just go there and put them into some kind of protective custody?" The Senator looked toward Arban.

But it was the Prime Minister who addressed his question. "No, sir, we cannot. Nor can anyone else. For the town of Ocean Dunes has been sealed off from the outside world."

"'Sealed,' you say?" demanded Juergens. "By what?"

"By what can only be termed a 'force field,' of some kind. And to anticipate your next objection, I am well aware that so-called 'force fields' should only exist in fiction. They are a paradox: energy is energy, and cannot behave like solid matter. Yet to deny what is in favor of what one wishes to be is to take the path of self-delusion. And Ocean Dunes is enclosed by an impenetrable yet immaterial barrier in the shape of a translucent cylinder somewhat less than seven kilometers in diameter." Egan gripped and twisted at the edge of the table as if he might be about to overturn it in a single violent outburst, until Senator Konoye realized it was only an isometric exercise of some sort.

Juergens rubbed at his cheek, like an old campaigner who had gone without shaving during an extended military operation. "How high does it go?"

"That has yet to be determined, Admiral. I am rather hoping that some of your airships might be able to give us an answer."

"You mean measure it?" Juergens snorted in a dismissive way. "By hell, the IPF can do better than that. We can blast a hole through this non-material 'force field.' One of our plasma cannons—"

Prime Minister Egan held up a cautionary palm. "You are forgetting, my friend, that you would be doing your blasting above a resort town filled with civilian vacationers. What might happen to them if the field were to be breached is not something we wish to discover."

"So you don't want us to attack it." Though his voice remained level, Konoye thought the Admiral was beginning to look like someone he would never care to meet in battle. "Just what did you invite me here for today, then, Egan?"

The Prime Minister folded his hands before him. "To determine if the IPF Combined Fleet can repel a full-scale attack by the Federation." He hesitated, then added as an afterthought, "Or, failing that, an imminent invasion by extraterrestrial powers."

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Chapter Three

Retreat

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"It's so peaceful here," Eureka sighed, looking out across the wind-waved meadow of goldenrod beneath them. Dawn crept slowly down the mountainside all around, melting the glistening dots of silver frost from leaf and bough. "And so beautiful."

"Yeah. Goldenrod is beautiful stuff," said Renton.

"A bit sad, though. It's the last flower of autumn, and once it's gone, the winter comes again."

Renton knew her moods well, and made no attempt at teasing her. "Not forever. Spring'll come again, and by next fall, there'll be another crop of goldenrod, over and over, time after time. Nothing really ends, it just goes in cycles." He breathed deeply of the woodsy air, watching his breath billow out in thin clouds. "Remember the first forest? When we floated back down to earth after the Coralian Epiphany? Remember how it was?" Her thin blue thermoseal bodysuit clung to her like dew, and he knew a warm desire to take her back inside the tent. "We were so naïve in those days. We thought it was over, then. That we'd done everything the world could ask of us, and then some." He tried to force a bitter laugh, but the lie stuck in his throat. "We were kids, really."

"Kids, perhaps. But not children." A trio of sky-fish soared overhead on the northwest wind, catching the sunlight in swirls and rainbows, not unlike her own wings. "We knew the most important thing of all. We knew we wanted each other."

Renton took her hand, letting his complex feelings stream outward through the flickerings of his Coralian neural node. "Yeah, we always knew that. I wish...wish it was all we had to concentrate on, these days. Eureka, it'll be soon, now, you know that as well as I do."

She stood and stretched her wings in the morning sun, letting the light cascade through them, setting free the sparkling highlights of her electric-blue hair. "Yes. The time seems to have gone so fast, hasn't it? Well, in any case, coming out here was the right thing to do. Although, perhaps we could have at least let the others know we were going."

"Not a chance." He rose next to her, brushing bits of fallen pine needles from his own bodysuit. "If Holland or Egan or Viyuuden knew we were here, there'd be a ring of IPF patrol ships circling overhead, and the whole damn mountain'd be covered in an army of guards right now."

"Still...something important is going on."

But Renton felt no real conviction in her words. The vague sense of disquiet from the Coral hadn't changed in days, and an aura of excitement seemed to hover around their mental image of Maurice and Ariadne. Other than that, no particular sense of urgency touched their enhanced awareness. "Something important will happen. But it's not yet. We'd know if it was. They can do without us for a while. Right now, the only thing they need us for is to hang around looking royal. They've got to learn to do without that."

Eureka laughed. "We're not quite that useless; not yet. All the same...it is wonderful here. It's so wonderful being, well, left alone. You're right—it's not quite time yet. We won't be doing any great harm if we stay a little longer."

"No harm at all." He stretched out his own wings, like an athlete warming up. "What d'you say we go for a flight in about an hour? That mountain off to the north looks like its trees are starting to change color about halfway up."

She shaded her eyes and peered into the distance. "All right. But why an hour from now? What shall we do in the meantime?"

With a sly grin, Renton took her hand again and led her back toward their tent. "We'll think of something."

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Chapter Four

Cross My Heart

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Senator Konoye could scarcely believe his own ears. "Prime Minister!" he cried, over the sudden babble of his colleagues at the conference table. "Surely you can't be serious. Extraterrestrial invasions are the stuff of lurid fantasy novels!"

Egan raised one hand and waited for silence to come once more. "That has traditionally been the case, sir, yes. I do not put forth such an event as a certainty. But we must be prepared for any possible eventuality, including the unlikely ones. Therefore, I ask Admiral Juergens once again: is the Independent Planetary Fleet capable of repelling such an attack, should it occur?"

"I don't..." The Admiral opened and shut his mouth several times, clearly flustered. "The enemy logistics alone are wholly unpredictable, Egan. I would say it's outright impossible. But as a strictly theoretical question, I'd guess it would depend on many factors. Such as the number of invaders; the type of weapons they might have; their level of technology... It's impossible to predict their—"

"Yes, Admiral. But you are speaking of the hypothetical invaders, about whom, by definition, we know nothing. What we can know is the IPF's readiness. Are we capable of mounting an effective defense from hostile outsiders?"

Senator Hindemuth, who represented the Military Appropriations Committee, spoke up before the Admiral could put together an answer. "I believe Senator Schymberg and I can help address that question, Prime Minister. But I'm afraid we can't be very reassuring. The LFO fleet on which we once relied is, of course, long gone. The IPF now has twenty-two Victory-class battle cruisers; nineteen Predator-class heavy attack ships; seventeen light aerial-strike craft and fifteen interceptors of various configurations and age. In addition, we have twenty-eight single-seat short-range interception craft."

"And the wider picture is even bleaker than those numbers already suggest," added Senator Schymberg. "We have only twenty aerodromes scattered around the InterDominion, and all of them are severely understaffed and underequipped. Ammunition for our projectile and rocket-based weapons is at less than fifty percent of what a three-day siege would require. Energy accumulators for particle- and laser-based weapons are in seriously short supply. We import all of our airship fuel from the Coralside provinces, and at any given moment, we've only got about a week's supply in storage." She flipped to a new page of the printed report from which she'd been reading. "Still worse is our own new aircraft production. Apart from a relative handful of experimental ships from New Tresor, only seven light strike craft and ten single-seat interceptors have been actually built here in the InterDominion. The rest are Federation ships brought here by defecting crews during the Founding of the InterDominion ten years ago. All of them are very much out of date, to say the least."

Juergens slapped both hands to the tabletop and leaned forward like an enraged animal. "The courage and dedication of our aerial troops isn't listed in any of your reports, though, is it Senator?"

Konoye felt a flash of pride to see that Hjördis met Juergens' steely gaze with her own, not in any way intimidated. "No one questions the bravery of our troops, Admiral. But all the courage in the world won't help them when their ammunition and fuel run out while they're in combat with our obsolete airships."

The High Admiral's face flamed a florid red as he stood halfway from his chair. "And whose fault is that? Every six months, the IPF goes before the Parliamentary Senate to request more funding for the Fleet. And we never get it! If you're going to complain about our unreadiness, don't forget to add your Committee's tight-fistedness to those damned lists of yours!"

Konoye fought back a surge of panic as Prime Minister Egan caught his eye, clearly a deliberate signal. He snatched a document of his own from his briefcase and swallowed hard before speaking. "It, er, isn't tight-fistedness, Admiral. The InterDominion is very sparsely populated, with most of our people scattered across the central area, near to the Heart of the World. By way of comparison, the Federation has a population of about thirty-two million, against our five point one million."

No one spoke, so he hurried on before any of them could interrupt. "We know that the Coralian Gift suppresses the birth rate to keep our undying population from exploding beyond our resources—as it did in ancient times, before the Exodus. But it also has the effect of making our tax base absurdly small. And that tax income must go to priorities such as roads, housing, building a rail system for travel and food distribution, and so on. I've given the Prime Minister an itemized breakdown of our economy. If you'll look at it, you'll see that military allocations are necessarily far from the top of the list."

"All right, all right," Juergens growled, grinding his teeth. "I haven't forgotten that the InterDominion's operating on a shoestring. "

"I never get to forget it," said the First Speaker. "We all knew it when we started out. But we—all of us—gambled that we'd have a lot more years to get a working self-sufficient economy going. And we took it for granted that in the meantime, the Federation'd be the only enemy we'd have to deal with."

Juergens swept the table with his granite eyes. "Very well, I admit that, too! But from what I'm hearing here today, The Federation's getting unstable and stands a good chance of becoming aggressive again—soon."

Arban nodded vigorously. "That's correct, Admiral."

"And if our trapar shield were to be compromised or destroyed by these hypothetical monsters from outer space, the Federation could make its move and we'd be facing attack from two sources. The IPF will fight to the death to repel them both, I can damn well promise you that. But no matter what the reasons, there're only so many of us, with so many hand-me-down airships..." Admiral Juergens let the unspoken conclusion hang in the air.

"Thank you, sir," said Egan, breaking the icy silence, "for clarifying our dilemma so succinctly. It is greatly to be hoped that the mass currently approaching Earth presents no threat whatever, and that the Federation leadership will choose the path of rationality. But—' he leaned forward on the table, his hands clasped together "—should events prove otherwise, it will be up to each and every one of us to work together to our very utmost to protect what we have begun here in the New Lands. We must make the best of all that we have, and waste no energy in lamenting that we do not have more."

Senator Konoye quietly shivered. What the Prime Minister was describing could be, if extrapolated to its logical conclusion, the invasion and occupation of the InterDominion—and perhaps of the Earth itself. His mind balked at imagining the unimaginable. "You can count on myself, the Monarchist movement and every Loyalist senator in Parliament, sir. But what of the Antipatricians? How can we keep this news from them?"

A quick glimmer of light flashed between the Princess' and Prince's forehead gems. "We can't," said Prince Maurice. "Like Holland says, this thing'll be close enough for anyone with a small telescope to see, soon. And after that..."

"After that," the Princess continued, "we won't even need telescopes. The government will only make itself look foolish by trying to conceal the fact. But what we must hide is the Federation Council's division."

Konoye found the courage to challenge her. "But Your Highness... Wouldn't it throw the Antipats into disarray, to find that the F-Federation High Council itself is, well...fracturing?"

"More likely the Antipats'd just deny the whole thing," said the young Prince, "and then claim we were spreading lies."

First Speaker Novak nodded agreement. "Damn right they would. And seeing as we don't have any proof beyond some Federation spy's unsupported word for it, there'd be nothing we could do to counter them. Nope, we've just got to keep our mouths shut about this one, and make our plans in secret. That's why you senators are here. Make all your preparations for the worst, but keep quiet about what's really going on. The Prime Minister and I know it won't be easy, but we can't let the Antipats muddy the water during this crisis. If there is a crisis."

"Understood, Speaker." Hindemuth looked round at the other senators and their staffs. "And I don't doubt I'm representing all of us when I promise to keep this information confidential." From their ashen faces, Senator Konoye knew that every one of his colleagues agreed without reservation.

"I thank you all for your cooperation," said the Prime Minister as he stood. "If there are no further topics? No? Then in Their Majesties' names, I declare this gathering at an end. But please, ladies and gentlemen, hold yourselves in readiness to meet again at a moment's notice, should...events require immediate action."

-#-

The shaken senators shuffled quietly from the meeting room as though from a funeral. Maurice waited for the door to click shut behind them, leaving only Ariadne, Woz, Holland, Arban and Dr. Egan at the table. Holland let out a great wheeze of relief.

Maurice unbuttoned his collar and nearly laughed. "You were right, Holland," he said.

"It wasn't much of a gamble. Human nature doesn't change. Much."

Jean-Baptiste Arban looked from one to the other. "Right about what, Your Highness?"

"About...misdirecting our esteemed Senatorial colleagues for a moment," said Egan, pressing both fists together before his face.

"What? But sirs...Your Highnesses... You told them all about the force field, and the approaching object..."

Holland laughed, in his acid way. "Tactics, Jean-Baptiste. You'll notice we didn't mention anything about Phaedra and Hal and Maeter and Alan and Stoner being trapped inside that barrier around Ocean Dunes. That's for you and Dominic to handle. We only let them hear the things we want them to hear—them and the Senate Monarchists—while you do whatever the hell you can about getting our people out. Without the Antipats drooling over your shoulder."

"What?" Arban stared at him. "But they all said they'd keep the secret of..."

"Sure they did. Which means it'll be common knowledge in the Monarchist faction of the Senate by this time tomorrow. And all those Senatorial aides have families, friends and lovers, don't forget. Oh, don't look so shocked, Arban—I don't mean that they're traitors or troublemakers. But senators're just as human as we are, and just as likely to spill the beans about something this important to the people close to them. Hell, does anybody here think I'd try to hide something like this from Yuki?"

"I don't und... But First Speaker, why? If you wanted this situation kept a secret...why did you and the Prime Minister call this meeting?"

Maurice felt the brush of Ariadne's mind before she spoke. "Because we don't want it kept a secret. We just want the information released slowly, selectively and to the people on our side first."

"And," said Maurice before Arban could object, "because if we made some kind of official announcement this soon, the Antipats'd claim we were lying, or that we were panicking, or just too incompetent to handle things. Right, Dr. Egan?"

Egan gave him a judicial nod, smiling like a man who'd just found a coin in a parking lot. "Exactly so. And while the information is being disseminated by osmosis, so to speak, we are granted precious time to prepare—to the extent we can prepare for such unknowable events. Viyuuden, my friend—you have been uncharacteristically reticent this morning. Surely you have something to add to this matter?"

The priest stirred as though from a trance, and looked round the table. "Eh? No, Gregory, nothing at this time. You've touched upon the most urgent topics, I'm certain. What concerns me at the moment is the state of the Coral's thought. As if it is..." He waved one indecisive hand in the air before him.

"As if it's waiting for something." said Maurice, who could feel Ariadne's agreement.

"Yes. Yes, exactly. A great upheaval looms before us. 'The time is fast approaching, friends.'"

Holland began tossing charts and notes back into his briefcase. "Time for what?"

"Foolishly, I neglected to ask that very question." He stood in a whirl of black and turned for the door. "Please keep me updated on all new developments."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Five

The Lost

-#-

Sigrid Arnoldson ambled aimlessly through the volatile crowd on the Oceanwalk, both hands jammed deep in the pockets of her shorts. I've got clean clothes, now, grub and some sleep. So how come I don't feel any better than I did yesterday?

Matt had been so damn uncommunicative last night! "I know," he said when I admitted being a Federation undercover operative. And that's all. Just "I know." Dammit, I wanted so much to explain to him that I was through with all that, that I want to defect, to change sides, to stay in the InterDominion. To stay...

Admit it, Sigrid. To stay with him.

And now he's gone, left the hotel, disappeared. And I've got to find him.

She leaned against the display window of a hot-pastry shop and stared up into the brilliant morning sky. The Barrier—that's what everyone was calling it, now—caught the light in ripples and shimmers, climbing far, far upward into some invisible apex that no eye could follow. Here and there, she thought she could make out the dark dots of circling airships. That's a good sign, she decided. At least it means that the InterDominion military knows we've got a problem here. On the other hand, they can't know how much of a problem, or how many.

A little boy—children are such a rarity these days—of about six years hurried on beside his mother, his short legs a happy blur. Here and there, men of various degrees of desirability gave her looks of eager invitation, none of which she felt any inclination to return. Is this really the same crowd that tried to assassinate Baroness Phaedra yesterday? Frowning faces, angry faces, worried faces, nervous faces. How many of this bunch were involved in that riot last night? What the hell's going on around this place, anyway? Is Federation influence that deep, or is it just that the InterDominion's got more than its share of crazies? And what about the sabotage team I was supposed to meet up with? Are they here somewhere? Do they know what I look like? Are there—?

"Miss Arnoldson?"

Sigrid's training took over. She jumped back one step, both arms spread, ready for anything. Fight, if necessary; otherwise, run. She scanned the agitated crowd, searching for an opening, any opening.

"Miss Arnoldson?"

Sigrid stopped, then, and slowly straightened. Dammit, girl, when did you start getting so panicky? Easy, act like nothing's wrong. "Yes?"

The woman who'd approached her came nearer. Long, black hair, done up in a pair of pigtails. Spectacular figure, very fit, standing tall and walking with a casual confidence that Sigrid wished she could match. Something about her eyes, very penetrating, very intense. "I'm Tomika Stevens. We were in the hotel suite last night, my husband and I."

Her rangy companion, sharp of cheekbone beneath a trendy forward-swept haircut, joined her. In his face, Sigrid saw the same piercing stare, carefully controlled, as he leaned forward to offer his hand. "Job Stevens. Things were pretty hectic up there last night; maybe you and Matt didn't really notice us."

"I noticed you, all right. Guess I didn't recognize you right away, here in the daylight. I was thinking of...something else, just now. You startled me a little. I've been looking for Matt, see?" She did her best to display an indifferent smile.

"So are we," said Tomika.

At such close range, Sigrid had a detailed look at the remarkably exotic features that had glowed out from so very many magazine covers, theater posters and video screens over the past six or seven years. It's not just makeup or trick lighting. She's the real thing. And she can sing, too. I hate her. "Yeah, well, he disappeared after he came back to the hotel last night. Took a shower and changed his clothes, then cleared out without saying another word to me. The guards told me Matt didn't say anything to them about where he was going. Uh, why are you two looking for him, exactly?"

"Oh, we just want to tell him some things he might find interesting." Tomika's ripe smile came and went, like the opening and closing of a shutter. "If you find him before we do, let him know we're looking for him, won't you? 'Bye, now."

"Yeah, sure, I'll—"

But they were already gone, merging without a trace into the restless crowd.

-#-

Business at the beachside souvenir stand had dropped to nearly nothing since the riot and the arrival of the Barrier the previous night. Gene leaned on the counter, looking out across the beach and the rippling water beyond. Even now, with Ocean Dunes a simmering boiler of uncertainty, a few dedicated vacationers stretched themselves on the sand, laboring to enjoy themselves in spite of it all. But none of them showed any signs of being in a mood to buy suntan oil or luminous dancing girls.

He came to full alertness as a most interesting girl came round the corner, toward the shop. "Morning! What can I...," he began. "Oh, Manon. Hi."

"You don't have to sound so thrilled about it," she said, wrapping both arms about herself.

In her abbreviated shorts and cut-off T-shirt, Gene found her more thrilling than he cared to admit at the moment. "Look, you know that's not what I meant. I was just surprised to see you down here at the beach, is all. You don't have to be so damn contrary all the time, do you?"

"Maybe I don't take to being host to an alien parasite as calmly as you do." Even though the air was warm, even stuffy, she hunched her shoulders, as though to a chill wind. "Maybe it actually worries me."

"And maybe it worries, me, too. Did you ever think of that? You think nobody has feelings except you?" At once, he regretted the accusation in his tone. "No, never mind, I'm just kind of on edge, myself. Yeah, it was pretty much of a shock when those two told us what we...what the Dancers said to them last night."

"If you believe them."

"Well, yeah. But why would they lie about it? What've a hotshot singer and her songwriter gonna get out of making up a crazy story for a couple of strangers? Besides, it all hangs together. Even you've gotta admit that at least now, things've started making some kind of sense." He fished a coin from his pocket and dropped it in the cash drawer, then pulled a packet of butterscotch candies from a rack. "Here, have one of these."

"Thank you. I'm...sorry for snapping at you. I suppose I've been kind of a pain ever since we left Shiretoko, haven't I? Baruma knows, you've been patient enough about it."

Gene watched a bathing-suited man walk past some five meters behind her, stare in a lingering way at Manon's rear profile, then keep on walking. "'Baruma?' So your family's in the Syncretic Revelation Church, is it? I didn't know that."

She nodded and slipped the sweet lozenge between her lips. "'Lord Baruma Almighty, and His Chastening Angels, Mommet, Chaysess and Boaddar, protect us from all evil, I do pray,'" she chanted. "My family's been Syncretic for three generations back. Of course, the Federation outlawed the Church, so we had to perform our Rites in secret." Manon let her eyes meet his for the first time. "I'm surprised you even know about Syncretism."

"Even us 'tractor boys' think about things besides tightening bolts on harvesters once in a while, y'know. Look, I keep my ears open, and my eyes. So how come nobody started up a Syncretic Temple when they came to the InterDominion?"

She laughed a little, then, and Gene's open ears and eyes found it very pleasant indeed. "Truth is, after we came here and weren't being persecuted any more, most of the Faithful started drifting away from the Church. I never told Mother this, but I think that sometimes the only thing that keeps Syncretic people united is to have some kind of common enemy, like the Federation. And Father was always so busy with his business... I've...been thinking about what you said about him and Mother, last night. It's really strange, but I'm starting to feel, well, almost sympathetic to them. They started with nothing, and worked so hard to make a better life for themselves—including me. It's no wonder they're so touchy about social standing and all. Does that sound a little...crazy to you?"

"No. In fact, I wasn't sure I could tell you, but I kind of admire your old man's talent. I hope that some day I can make it to the top, like him." He smiled, and blushed, and hoped that the brilliant sunshine would conceal it. "But not so touchy about, you know, 'respectability' and everything."

For a long, awkward moment, neither of them said anything more. Eventually, Manon came nearer and leaned across the wooden counter, closer to him. "I'll bet you could. Make it, I mean. I really do." She shook her head, flustered, but did not move away. "I'm...a little surprised to see you out here selling knickknacks, though. I mean, Ocean Dunes is so unsettled today, that I can't imagine anyone's actually buying anything."

"Oh, that. Well, I had to do something to keep my mind off...everything else. While we wait, I mean. I asked Mr. Yoshi, the guy who owns the stand, if he really wanted me to open up today. He said to go ahead; that even if only one person bought something, it's better than nothing at all. I don't think I can really take any salary from him tonight, though. My conscience wouldn't let me."

"You're very honest," she murmured. Gene could smell the butterscotch on her breath, rich and sweet. "I like that."

"Uh...yeah. Look, Manon...I mean, I know we're in real trouble..."

She leaned across the counter, closer still. "We've been in trouble since the day we fell out of the sky. Big trouble. And I'm scared. So I think...it's a good thing that, you know...you've been such a great guy to be in trouble with."

Sweet and rich, and ever so warm...he drew nearer, and she made no move to back away.

The blue light flared in their minds, and time stopped.

#

Moonbeam waited in the kitchen corner while Lark fiddled earnestly with the supplies he'd brought her from local shops—the ones that were still open, that is. The rest he'd managed to steal from the hotel's storerooms and supply cabinets. It had taken longer than he'd expected, but Moonbeam found a certain feral pleasure in all the sneaking and lurking, under the noses of the unsuspecting humans.

The oddly lopsided stack of green bottles Lark had assembled above the refrigerator glowed, faintly, in the ultraviolet range that he knew humans could not see. He decided not to mention it to her.

"There." She stepped back from her work, releasing her breath, careful not to bump the webwork of wires she'd just finished gluing in place within a plastic picture frame.

"You all done?" The frame now smelled strongly of hot metal, though it seemed to Moonbeam that she could not sense it.

"No. There's more to do still, but I think that'll be the hard part. I'm sure I can get it finished in—" Lark glanced toward the kitchen clock "—the thirty-seven hours I have left. I owe you so much, Moonbeam. Without your help, I don't think I could have gotten so much finished this quickly." She gave in to a tremendous yawn, and the dog could smell the sour tang of her fatigue, both mental and physical.

"Lark...this thing will work?"

"It must work. It must. I can't bear this noise in my mind much longer."

That much, he already understood. "You told Kaz yet about your machine? If it take you away, what about him? He go along? He even understand?"

"Not...yet. But I will make him understand. I know he will. I can't stay here any longer, not with the voices always..." She came near to a sob, raw and desperate, but held it back as she wobbled to her feet on legs cramped from hours of kneeling. "I need a yellow pill. They're so loud, now, so demanding..."

Moonbeam twitched in sudden dread. Something strange, very powerful. At the same time, Lark froze, eyes wide, hands held before her with fingers spread. "Lark! Lark. You in danger? Let me get you—"

"No." She swayed and came to rest holding to the door frame between kitchen and bedroom. "No, not threatening, not us. I've felt it before...The Mist. I've got to get back upstairs, to tell someone, right away."

"Mist-thing?" Moonbeam stood, fully alert, ears upright. He well remembered their last encounter with the vast intelligence now known among the humans as The Mist. "What it say?"

Lark's hand quivered as she grabbed the door handle. "There weren't any words. Just a feeling, as though to say it remembered us. Or was aware of us."

"What that mean?" he growled.

"I don't know. Its thoughts are—how can I describe it?—huge." She rubbed the back of one hand across her forehead. "Alien. I could understand it the last time, barely, because it was slowing itself down, deliberately 'talking' in tiny, simple bits that a human could understand. Not this time."

Moonbeam considered her explanation. "Is to do with thisthing?" he pointed his nose in the direction of the kitchen table, throbbing with its invisible energies.

"No, I don't think so." Something in her voice said I hope not! to Moonbeam, but he kept his silence. "Get some rest, my friend. I'll be back later."

Lark ruffled the fur on his head and slipped out into the hallway, where her Guardian escort waited. After she had gone, he trotted from room to room, taking a detailed look at the impossible device and its jumble of components. Here and there, tiny beads of light crept along its threads, expanding to waves of not-quite-sound before dissipating in the morning air. Will this thing do what you expect, Lark? How much you trust it? How much you trust her who told you to make it?

He crept to a corner of the living room, as far from the nearest sculpture-like subassembly as possible, and settled down on the carpeting. Time to sleep, Moonbeam decided.

-#-

Gene blinked away the lingering blue memory. Manon. I was gonna kiss her. Did I? She's still standing there...

The girl's head swayed, and she pulled back. "What? What the hell? It's happened again hasn't it? Did we...kill anybody this time?" Frightened, she looked up and down the beach, where only a handful of Ocean Dunes guests strolled along the waterline, showing no sign of having been affected in any unusual way.

"I don't think so." He ducked under the counter to get out of the stand, and looked round them as far as he could see. Nothing but quiet surf and a dangerously unquiet crowd clogging the walkway along the distant street. "I think we were only out for a second or two. Weird, though; the last couple of times, the Dancers only came out because we were in danger, if what Job and Tomika told us was true. But nothing was threatening us this time." At least, I don't think there was.

Gene felt a pressing but inexplicable need to do something, to shelter her in some way. But against eerie creatures like these Dancers, what could any human do? He threw one arm around Manon's shoulders in what he hoped was a comforting way. "Look, I think we oughta find Job and Tommy Stevens and tell them about this. I'll close up the stand. Come on with me, while I give the cash box back to Yoshi."

#

Renton snapped up from the forest floor, sending the approaching fall's first leaves fluttering from his bare skin. "Did you feel it?" he whispered.

Beside him, Eureka crouched like a taut butterfly, wings erect and both palms pressed to the ground, her Coralian eyes flashing from side to side. "Yes. Almost like...music, wasn't it? But it's gone, now. It only lasted for an instant." A strand of electric-blue hair dangled across her face, but she made no move to brush it away.

"Not the Coral, I don't think." He came to his feet, still batting leaves away. Above, the clear mountain sunlight still twinkled through wind-ruffled trees. Nothing in any way menacing showed itself. "Like the clouds opening on a cloudy day, so you could see the sky. And then closing again, just as fast."

Eureka stood, unself-conscious in the dappled sunlight. "It was so powerful...but somehow I wasn't frightened. Should we go back to the Heart of the World yet, do you think?"

"Not yet." Renton bent and plucked their limp clothing from the ground. "Right now, we should just get back to the campsite."

She angled her wings this way and that, gathering the warm light. "Aren't you going to say 'Why can't they just leave us alone?' the way you usually do?"

But Renton found no reply as they walked, hand in hand, back to their tent at the edge of the forest.

#

Ariadne looked up from the monitor she and Maurice had been using to study the changing energy patterns of the planetary Ley Lines. "You heard that too, didn't you?"

"Yeah." He wavered between a frown and a smile. "Time's getting short, then. We better go right away to tell Woz and his team about this Ley Line thing—if they haven't noticed already."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Six

Inspection Tour

-#-

Dominic Sorel jumped out the transport's starboard personnel hatch even before the swirling dust kicked up by the landing thrusters had dissipated. Just behind him, Major Haydn stumbled after, his arm crooked across both eyes, coughing with each blind step.

Ahead, a dozen or so IPF ground forces materialized out of the acrid cloud, running forward with weapons held at ready. An officer wearing the star-cluster of a captaincy raised his hand to bring the troops to a halt, then lowered it in friendship to Dominic. "Lord Commander," he cried, shouting over the roar of the transport as it drifted away toward a makeshift debarking pad. "I'm Captain Reinhard Keiser, IPF Rangers. The High Admiral's orders're to give you full cooperation. Welcome to Ocean Dunes, My Lord."

"Thank you, Captain. My companion here is Major John Michael Haydn, Federation External Intelligence. I know how unusual this is, but he'll be working with me on this operation."

Keiser's eyes narrowed. "I've little reason to love the Federation, M'lord. But we've been warned in advance that he'd be along. Orders is orders, and my lads'll obey 'em. You'll be wanting to see things close up, I suppose."

"Yes. We got a pretty good overview from the air, but I'd like a nearer look. Lead, on, Captain."

"Aye, M'lord."

Keiser signaled four of the IPF Rangers to surround them as he beckoned his visitors to follow. As the gritty dust cleared in the wind off the lake, a long crowd of people—clearly civilians—became semi-visible some six or eight meters ahead. Though the dust cloud no longer obscured their outlines, something interfered with them, like an irregular pane of slightly translucent glass that quivered and shifted, leading the eyes astray. "This is even crazier than I expected," Dominic said, half to himself.

"Aye, M'lord. This 'force field,' if that's what it is, distorts light and radio transmissions both. It passes the lake water, and likewise for air. But not anything solid, which is why the dust be so heavy when you landed. It won't dissipate through the field, if you follow my meaning."

Dominic reached out a hand for the hazy barrier, then stopped and gave a questioning glance toward Captain Keiser. "Is it safe to...?"

"To touch, M'lord? Aye, safe enough. Go ahead."

He did. The Barrier had a texture, oddly grainy, like sand stirred by underground water. Yet in spite of its initial softness, Dominic found himself unable to press deeper than a few millimeters before it thickened into immovability. Even all his strength would penetrate no deeper. "I suppose your people have tested its resilience?"

"Aye, M'lord. First thing we did. It took a while to give the folks on the other side the idea that we meant to blast a hole in it, and that they should keep away. But they finally cleared back when we brought up a twenty-centimeter projectile cannon at ten meters' range. Not that it would've mattered if they'd stayed put, for the armor-penetrating shell just splattered off the field in a spray of molten iridium. 'Twas the kinetic energy of the shell, y'see, all converted to heat at once when it struck."

"I see." The vague faces and forms of the trapped vacationers on the other side of the barrier gave Dominic a secret shudder of fear, like pleading ghosts beckoning from the depths of an unnatural fog. "And energy weapons?"

"Just the opposite, M'lord. Plasma cannon and lasers, both. A tiny trace of vapor formed around the burn points, and our theory is that it was the beams' energy condensing into a wee bit of matter rather than passing through. But there's been no time for real analysis, as you'll surely appreciate."

"Yes. I understand that radio waves won't pass through either, but have you been able to communicate with the people in there in any way? Hand signals, for example?" Inside the barrier, two people of indeterminate sex seemed to be making a frantic attempt to get their attention, but reading their lips was impossible.

Keiser shook his head. "No, M'lord. As you'll observe for yourself, it's like trying to do charades through murky water. And there's some odd kind of delay in EM transmissions, too, making broadcasts, well, flicker. Like a bad video recording, it is." He hesitated for a moment. "And yet, as you can see, m'lord, the hotel itself, much further away, can be seen clear and steady."

Major Haydn spoke for the first time. "How far away from this 'force field' is the hotel?"

"Well, Mr. Haydn, as far as we've been able to determine, it's right dead center of the field, which is a perfect circle. That'd put it at about three and a half kilometers in." He made no effort to conceal his contempt for the Federation officer. "Why d'you want to know?"

"I'll tell you that when I've got more information." Haydn did not look at the Captain, but instead peered into the Barrier at the towering Ocean Dunes hotel, spearing up into the bright morning. "But it's no Federation secret weapon if that's what you and your associates have been speculating. No earthly technology at all, I'd say."

Dominic lifted an eyebrow in his direction. "You're thinking of extraterrestrials, then. But why? What for?"

"You're asking me?" The Major spat a mouthful of dust at the ground. "Isn't it you rebels who've spent so much time and energy making the world safe for alien intruders and their unknown agendas? You adore the damned Coral—a creature that once cleansed our entire planet of all native life—and watched like swooning schoolgirls while a second alien intelligence came near to doing the same, five years ago. Well, this is what happens, Sorel, when you welcome incomprehensible aliens with open arms. You involve us all in their bizarre antics—which may or may not have anything to do with Humanity's own welfare."

Several of their escort guard shifted, as though ready to silence Haydn's disrespect in the quickest way possible, but Dominic's angry glare put a stop to any such thoughts. "The first man who breaks discipline is going to spend the rest of his life wishing he hadn't." He turned back to the Major, but found himself with no ready answer. "Captain Keiser, I'll want a radio link to IPFSec at the Heart of the World. I need to have them get some equipment down here on the double."

The Captain saluted smartly. "As you command, M'lord. If I might be so bold...what is it Your Lordship has in mind? Some new weapon we've developed?"

"Nothing like that." He looked once more into the churning crowd of imprisoned wraiths. "You might say I intend to do a little...advertising. Has my wife arrived yet?"

"She has not, M'lord. But we had a radio message that she's due to board a flyer out of New Tresor. We expect her within the hour."

Dominic nodded. "Good. Let me know the minute she arrives. Meanwhile, show Major Haydn and I to your communications tent."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Seven

Beach Party

-#-

Chill water, whipped into choppy wavelets by the steady breeze off the lake, slapped at Sigrid Arnoldson's bare feet. Here on the #3 Private Boating Dock, deserted small powerboats rose and fell with each wave, occasionally bumping with dull, hollow thumps against the padded walls of their berths. All of them abandoned and lonely now, she mused.

The wind rose again, putting tiny whitecaps to the waves. Matt, Matt, why did you go away? Was it because you found out that I was just a Federation shill? Or had you figured that out right from the beginning? She focused on the wind and surf, letting herself drift in it, hoping it might drown her boiling regrets.

And if you did know, why did you stick with me so long? You could've turned me in any time, once we reached Ocean Dunes. But you didn't. Why did you stick with me, Matt? No one's ever...

Sigrid found herself unable to finish the thought. She stood, wishing the gleaming white beach had at least a few pebbles—anything she could hurl into the face of the indifferent lake.

A wave slapped against one of the dock pilings, spattering her face with salty droplets as cold as yesterday's tears. Matt, murmured the voices in the wind, Matt Stoner. She stood and kicked away a shard of glass from a boat's shattered windshield, swiping salty spray from her eyes, feeling at once very foolish.

"Sigrid Arnoldson?"

"I..." She froze, immediately apprehensive without yet knowing why. Sigrid turned to meet the voice, composing her face into a bland smile.

They—she estimated eight of them, standing in a tight group—said nothing for a moment. Six men and two women, tightly packed in an odd way.

Like a military strike unit.

Waves broke behind her, and still they remained silent. Nothing marked the intruders as in any way different from the other stranded tourists she'd seen milling about the town. But their hard, staring eyes were sizing her up, and she wondered if it would be possible to make a break for it, up the beach, toward the numerical safety of the hotel. "Anything I can do for...you folks?"

Two of them quietly moved out from either side of the main group. Nothing overtly threatening, but Sigrid found herself effectively blocked from trying any daring escapes. "You are Sigrid Arnoldson?" asked one in the forefront. "Formerly of the Pinwheel Project?" All of them wore everyday casual clothing. The better to blend right in, she decided, and the thought was not a happy one.

"Yeah, that's me. And you are...?"

"You've betrayed your Motherland," one of them said, low and flat, as if passing sentence.

"What the hell're you talking about?" Why didn't I use a phony name Why?

"You did not come with us from Sestroyesk, as was the plan. You left with an InterDominion official."

"You've deserted and betrayed us," one of the women chimed in. "You know the price of treason is a traitor's 's time for yours."

Sigrid's stomach turned to cold lead. This's the Federation strike team I was supposed to leave with, after the explosion. She glanced over one shoulder, finding there nothing encouraging. Behind her, nothing but empty water; before her and to both sides, a trained Federation death squad. Completely encircled. In spite of the breeze, sweat dribbled down the back of her neck. "What're you on about? I followed my orders; I planted the damn bomb. You don't need me for anything, any more." A sudden inspiration came to her. "I saw an opportunity to attach myself to one of their top Ministers, and I did. I can get inside information right from the top, now. Doesn't Pilgrim Island care about...?"

"There's no time for any further comedy, Arnoldson. In spite of many chances to update us, you've made no mention of any targets of opportunity. If you've 'attached yourself' to Matt Stoner, it has nothing to do with espionage. You're a pathetically emotional traitor. And you are expendable."

Oh my God, my God, I recognize her now. She looks so different without her hair dyed, and without the makeup and facial prosthetics to change her appearance. Hardly able to accept what was about to happen to her, Sigrid swayed, her legs numb and unresponsive. "I'm not. I'm not..." The lie stuck in her throat.

The girl, the Swallowtail, moved a few steps nearer to her. "No? Then, there is still one thing you can do to prove your loyalty to the Federation. Matt Stoner, the Minister to whom you've admitted 'attaching yourself.' We'd like very much to get our hands on him. Where is he?"

"I don't..."

The girl's face took on a distinctly impatient look, an eager darkness about the eyes. "Where is he, Arnoldson?" Beside her, one of her team reached into one pocket and pulled out a high-velocity needle gun, holding it close to his hip.

"I..." Sigrid grew light-headed, powerless, unable to accept the reality that now had her in its jaws. No, dammit, no! "He was...gone when I woke up this morning. Nobody knew where he went. I was out here looking for him, myself. I don't know where he is. I don't know! You've gotta believe me!" Indifferent waves hissed and splashed on the beach behind her. The empty boats thumped against cushioned bumpers in their berths. Do it, damn you, do it! Do it now! Get it over with!

But instead of gunning her down where she stood, the group stood quietly, awaiting the the icy girl who was their chief.

She, in turn, stared at Sigrid with a pallid face devoid of any expression at all. "Liar!" she screamed, and her voice was like the pistol-crack of a whip. The saboteurs on either side all shifted nearer, as if on signal.

"Sigrid Arnoldson," she said, in a voice absurdly delicate. The lake wind rippled her walnut-colored hair, and she saw that her eyes were a perfect hazel, flawless as twin paperweights. "Tell us the location of Matt Stoner."

"I can't," she said, dry with desperation. "I don't know where he's gone."

"Then that is your misfortune." She gestured to the others. "Take her."

The Federation strike team leaped into action as if they'd been waiting for her order all their lives. In less than thirty seconds, they had both Sigrid's arms behind her in a painful lock. Though she used every countermove in her considerable repertoire, against so many her training counted for little. Within seconds, both wrists were bound solidly in place behind her. Her feet remained free, but she knew she was now too unbalanced to attempt a run, even if she had been alone. One of her captors smashed an elbow into her face, and as she reflexively opened her mouth in a cry of pain, he stuffed a thick, heavy cloth that tasted of sweat inside. Sigrid fought down her gag reflexes. There'll be no yelling for help. And who would come anyway?

Number Twelve bent to the sand for a moment to retrieve something Sigrid could not see. "Take her into that rental office over there," she said. "Break the lock; shoot it off if necessary, but be quick about it. We could be seen at any time."

"Yes, Leader," they all hurried to reply in unison. Sigrid, still reeling from the blow to her head, felt herself lifted bodily from the beach and double-time marched along in the direction of the dock's storehouse. Her shoulders, tightly roped in their unnatural position, ached with each step. Again, she struggled with the need to vomit.

There was a sharp crack of plastic explosive, followed by the opening creak of a door. Darkness, stifling and humid, followed immediately, along with the stale reek of stagnant air. Then someone found a light switch, and she saw a pair of overhead fixtures come to life. "Put her on that table," said Number Twelve.

They dropped her on a low wooden table littered with small, hard objects. Spare parts, Sigrid speculated, mainly to distract her mind from her immediate future. At the expressionless Number Twelve's command, the Federation agents untied her arms. But her relief was short-lived as they bound her hand and foot to the tabletop, leaving her spread-eagled and utterly vulnerable. She blinked at the swirling white dots that still filled her eyes. The gag was ripped roughly away, leaving its filthy taste on her tongue.

Number Twelve waved the others aside as she came to the very edge of the table, looming over Sigrid like a dark angel. "Once again, Arnoldson: Matt Stoner has betrayed the Noble Fatherland, his oath to the Propaganda Ministry that trained him and the sacred memory of Colonel Dewey Novak—may his name live forever. He is sentenced to death. Where is he?"

"I told you" she croaked, summoning up her last shred of defiance. "I don't know where he is! And what's the difference? You'll just kill me anyway, no matter what I tell you."

For the first time, Number Twelve smiled. "Yes. But the difference is...how soon you will be allowed to die."

Sigrid opened her mouth to reply. But at that instant, Number Twelve lifted her hand, and the light flashed from the pointed shard of glass she had plucked from the beach.

With savage glee, she drove it downward, directly into Sigrid's left eye.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eight

Visitors

-#-

Holland pondered the milling crowd—not yet quite a mob, he assured himself—stirring around the base of the Temple Pyramid.

The door behind him opened and closed. "Looking down from the mighty heights, onto the antlike mortals below?" said Professor Ferdinand Wossel.

"No, nothing like that." Holland turned back in toward the conference room where he seemed to be spending so very much of his time lately. "I saw too much of that kind of thing back in the Federation: little tin gods who think they're better and smarter than the ignorant masses. When Egan talked me into taking this job, I promised myself I'd never fall into that trap." He lifted one eyebrow. "I think I've kept that promise. Have I?"

Woz dropped into one of the chairs around the conference table. "Pretty much." He slid a news sheet across the table toward Holland. "Have you seen this morning's headlines?"

Without picking up the paper, Holland nodded. "We get'em fresh off the presses. 'InterDominion Dictators Trample on Bovine Rights.' 'Coralian Overlords Stage Fainting Fit in Parliament.'"

"Don't take it too hard. The Defender is nothing but an Antipat smear sheet through and through. You know that."

"Uh-huh. But even the Loyalist press is starting to get edgy. That...thing...that's approaching the Earth was spotted by some amateur astronomers before dawn this morning."

"The Radioastronomy unit at the University's been sitting on the news for hours." Woz gestured toward the paper, lying like a silent accuser on the tabletop. "That's why I dropped in here—to ask you if it's all right for us to release it publicly."

"Sure, go ahead. I'm sure the only reason the Federation hasn't gone public with it yet is that they're still trying to figure out how to put the best propaganda spin on it. Is that really the only reason you came?"

"No. The truth is, I wanted to speak to the Prince and Princess."

Holland looked at him, half-expecting a gentle joke. "Ariadne and Maurice? What for?"

"Because they asked me to. Besides, their parents are nowhere to be found, and we need to keep someone in the Royal Family up to date."

"Woz...they're technically Coralian royalty, sure, but c'mon—they're just kids."

"That's what you used to say about Eureka and Renton. Remember? "

"I guess so, but..."

"We—all of us—can't go on treating them like junior partners any longer. Face it, they've been doing an awful lot of growing up in the past couple of years."

"Well, I..." Holland trailed off, feeling uncomfortably like a man whose daughter had just announced she was getting married. "No, you're right. Maybe I just couldn't bother to see the obvious."

"Things change." Woz rose again and opened the door to leave. "If we can't recognize that change, we become irrelevant. Be seeing you."

"No, wait a minute—have you seen Viyuuden? I need to talk to him, and he's not in the Temple."

Halfway out, Woz turned to look back at him. "No, I don't think so. Is he with Dr. Egan? No? Can't help you, then. Call me when you need me. And you will need me."

"I always did," Holland meant to say. But then the conference-room door flew open with enough force to bang against the opposite wall. The well-dressed man who followed it in radiated outrage from his green eyes.

"Senator Eisinger." Holland folded both arms. Detlev Eisinger, the newest senatorial convert to the Antipat cause, could only mean trouble. "Didn't anyone ever brief you on how to make an appointment through normal governmental channels?"

"Stuff that, Novak! You're not aboard a military airship any more, you're not giving orders and I'm not your crew. I'll have the truth out of you for a change."

Stay cool; it only flusters your opponent even more. "The truth is all this government has ever stood for. What exactly is it you want?"

"The thing that's coming here from space—it's your own creation, isn't it?"

Holland thought quickly. Egan had already predicted something along this line. "The short answer is No. We have no idea what it is, or why it's headed our way. Why do you—?"

"Liar!" Eisinger's face went red and he tightened both fists at his sides. "You sent some kind of rocket probe in a wide elliptical orbit, so it'd look like it's coming from deep space on the way back."

"We don't have any rockets capable of that kind of performance," said Woz, leaning idly against the doorframe.

"And even if we did," Holland went on, "why the hell would we want to do a crazy thing like that? What would it gain us?"

"A war with the Federation!" The senator took a step nearer, raising both hands. Eisinger was a man of imposing height, and Holland could remember many a time when he had used that presence to intimidate his opponents. But not with me, Eisinger.

At a hard stare from Holland, the senator backtracked and lowered his tone a fraction. "It's what you and Egan have been plotting all along, and you know it. You want to distract the Federation military with this...this invented threat so you can send the Independent Planetary Forces in for the kill. You mean to wipe the Federation out utterly, while they're focused on your phony space monster."

Holland nearly laughed, but held back lest he infuriate Eisinger even further. "Where do you guys get this stuff? Look, you know as well as I do that the IPF hasn't got anything like enough ships or troops or money to wipe up the Federation. Hell, it's only our trapar barrier that's kept the Federation from attacking us for the past ten years."

"But it will—"

"It will do nothing. Look, chill down, will you, Eisinger? We may be subtle around here, but we're not that devious. You want plotters and schemers? How about you and your Antipat pals in the Senate just go back to the Federation, and stop accusing the rest of us of trying to rule the Universe?"

The Senator, far from being mollified, jammed both fists to his hips and thrust out his jaw. "All your indignant oratory isn't going to work as a smoke screen any more. Your brother might have gotten out of hand at times, but he was right about one thing: we need to keep alien organisms and their strange plans out of our own history."

From just outside the still-open door, Woz said, "Too late for that, though. The Coral came here millenia ago, without being invited. Colonel Dewey's attacks on it only brought us to the edge of our own extinction. We can't turn back the clock. All we can do now is hang on as best we can, and deal with whatever comes next—if anything." Woz folded his arms, and Holland noticed him quietly thumbing the Alert button of his communicator.

"And of course you and your inner circle of friends will be the new ruling elite who'll tell us how to deal with whatever comes next." Eisinger waved one finger in Holland's face; Holland did not rise to the bait. "And everything else. We're going to fight you on this, Novak, all the way. We won't be ruled by alien life forms, no matter what you and your dictatorship-cum-priesthood say is good for us."

One of the security patrollers assigned to this floor of the governmental offices showed up. He made no hostile moves, but the snap button on his holster was undone. "First Speaker? Is there a problem here?"

"No." Holland shook his head in a casual way. "Senator Eisinger was just outlining his position on current events to us. He wanted to be sure he could get back to his offices without being harassed by any...fanatical demonstrators."

The guard touched his hatbrim in salute. "Nothing to fear there, sir. None of those have gotten in the building. I'll escort you wherever you need to go, Senator."

Finding himself checkmated, Eisinger could only glower silently at Holland as he stamped out.

"You shouldn't have made him look so foolish," said Woz after the Senator and his escort had gone. "Nobody likes being taunted that way. He'll never come back to our side, now."

"I know. But if I'd let him try to provoke a brawl, it'd be establishing a dangerous precedent. It'd be opening the gates to mob rule. We've got to keep the government above that king of thing."

Woz looked impressed. "You really have grown into this job, y'know. Who could have imagined a diplomatic Holland Novak in the old days?"

"Like you said, the old days are behind us. Let's just hope we can—"

But his communicator buzzed for attention just then, pulling him in another direction entirely.

-#-

Viyuuden, silently observant in a scruffy wig, slouch hat and and worn work clothing, circulated among the growing crowd gathered about the base of the Temple Pyramid. Some few of openly Antipatrician sympathies shouted slogans or passed out inflammatory handbills. But in the main, they seemed simply uneasy, vaguely aware that something disturbing was in the air, but not quite certain just what. Not fifteen meters away, someone began to rant about "warmongers" and "little tin gods." The rest was drowned out by the angry cries of loyalists.

He edged up to a woman in New Tresor coveralls. "What's all the fuss about, lady?" he grumbled in a rough snarl.

Madrigal looked around them before returning a cautious smile. "Treason, or just short of it. Word has gotten out that there's an object from space approaching the Earth. The Antipats are trying to exploit the fear."

"Naturally. By the way, that photograph on your badge does you no justice."

"Thank you. Nor do you make a very convincing layabout. The man about whom you wanted information is in the park over there; the Guardians and I have been keeping close watch on him and his followers. He speaks—or preaches, or rants, depending on how you look at it—for about an hour at a time. Then the others take turns before he starts again. We can't tell yet if they're followers or assistants."

"Or disciples." Viyuuden looked off toward one of the several public parklands, finding a figure robed in white, who stood head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. Standing on a bench, he decided, about to speak. Even from a distance, the long beard and brilliant smile made him unforgettable. It's him—the one who was speaking early this morning. "That's the one, yes. None of the Temple data-processing staff seem able to come up with any matches on who he is. But I'm certain we've met before somewhere."

"You meet so many people, though." Tenderly, the priestess touched his arm.

"But I cannot help thinking that this one is significant somehow."

"Bunch of whiners and malcontents, that's what those loudmouthed Antipats are," a passing office worker told his several companions. "If they like the Federation so damn much, what's stopping them from going back?"

One of his friends nodded vigorously "There—see that guy over there, standing up in the park? I heard him this morning. A little weird, but at least he doesn't have his head up his butt, like these lousy Federation fellow-travelers."

Viyuuden had to smile in spite of the grave situation. "At least our supporters still seem to outnumber the Antipatricians—for the moment. Outside of the Heart of the World, however—" His communicator buzzed for attention; he snatched at it. "Hello? Yes, it is. I see. What new information have you?"

Madrigal stood impatiently, watching the changing contours of his face as he reacted to the news from the other end.

"You are certain?" Viyuuden said, barely able to hold his voice low and secretive. "Yes. Yes, good work. Keep on. Thank you greatly." He holstered the communicator and bent nearer to Madrigal. "It is those images and video clips that you and our Guardians have been gathering. Our Information specialists found no correlations, but they passed the data on to IPFSec's pattern-recognition unit for more intensive analysis."

"And...you now know who your mystery man is?"

He nodded and tugged his cap lower over his eyes. "I know now who two of his associates are, impossible though it seems. One is Landestrooper Captain João Pedro Cunha. The other is one Jansug Khakhidze, once a high-ranking member of the Elite Guard at Pilgrim Island's Palace of the Return."

"Federation military? Here in the Heart of the World, and at the Temple itself?Spies? Assassins? Dominic Sorel said—"

"No." He raised one hand, palm forward. "These two—and the others, if I'm correct—have been missing and presumed dead...for the past five years. The assassins and saboteurs Sorel seeks are another menace entirely."

"Then where have they—?"

"They have been very far away."

"But—?"

"Forgive me for parting on such a note of mystery. Already I've delayed too long, and time is of the greatest importance. I shall explain later. For now...keep safe, and trust to the Will of Vodarek."

Nodding a quick farewell, the priest slithered through the crowd, already thumbing the activator of his communicator once more. "I must speak to Holland Novak," he said. "At once."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Nine

Reminiscing

-#-

Hal slouched low in his armchair, pushed back to the darkest corner of the suite's common area, the lair where he did his most serious drinking. From time to time he tipped back his empty glass, giving the illusion—he knew perfectly well by now how he looked when tossing back the sauce—of putting away prodigious quantities of alcohol.

Going through the motions while dead sober was beginning to reveal to him just what a pathetic sight he must make, wallowing in alcohol and self-pity. And the realization ate at him like acid.

The temptation to give in to reality and turn his make-believe sips into full-fledged gulps of soothing warmth grew, dangerously. Hal cast his attention around the suite, finding there little enough to distract him from his torments.

On the diagonally-opposite side sat Maeter and Alan Wyngard, pressed together, staring deeply at three virtual screens projected from Alan's remote processor. Maeter, evidently determined to go on looking every centimeter the fashion model even under their current circumstances, shimmered in a clinging silver-lamé sunsuit. With a sharp pang of desire, Hal wondered what Phaedra, invisible behind their bedroom door, must look like at this moment. Wearing that filmy little black nightie again, maybe, the one that doesn't hide anything at all?

His fist tightened about the glass. Not bloody likely, Farnsworth. If anything, she's probably still holed up under the covers, listening through the door, hoping I won't try to come in and pass out on the bed beside her. And I don't blame her. Again, the vision of Phaedra, bravely lifting her drunken husband up out of harm's way while she dodged the potshots of a Federation assassin, flooded into his memory, sharp and painful. The temptation to simply fill the glass, lift it to his lips and drain it all—and then another, and another and another—nearly overwhelmed him, then.

Lark had apparently risen before the dawn, off again to whatever Vodarek meditations she practiced alone in her quarters. Her husband Kaz had left the suite at half-past eight in something of a hurry—to join her, he'd said. Hal found himself sweating, and realized he hadn't showered yesterday. Would there be time to do so before Dagmar showed up? With Job and Tommy and Stoner—and his eye-catching blonde companion—nowhere to be found, only their bleary-eyed Guardians and IPF sentries remained to ask.

He raised the glass on high, wrapping four fingers around it to hide its emptiness. "Excuse me," he called in a voice suitably slurred. "Ho there; you fine ladies and gentlemen of the law?"

Gade, the IPF patroller, looked his way, surly but at least professional enough not to be openly contemptuous. "What is it you want, sir?"

Hal pretended not to notice. "I wonder if you could give me the time?" He tapped his left wrist.

"Nearly noon," the man answered, "sir."

She'll be here soon, then. He gave a boozy grin and tossed back the glass, bobbing his Adam's apple, pretending to drain the whole thing in a single pull. "I seem to be a controversial figure," he announced in the general direction of Mater and Alan. "My friends either dislike me or hate me."

"Stop trying to be witty and epigrammatic," said Alan with a disgusted roll of his eyes. "You only make yourself look more foolish."

Before Hal could come up with a suitably acerbic reply, Gade's communicator buzzed for attention. He muttered into it for several seconds, growing even more tense and curt with each word. "There's a new development," he announced to the others, snapping it shut. "There are reports that a team from the IPF has landed just outside the Barrier, at the main road. Lord Commander Sorel seems to be in charge."

A low knock sounded from the door before anyone could say more. All the guards, IPF and Guardians alike, dropped into combat positions, weapons drawn. "Who is it?" demanded Agent Yastrebova, turning the handle with utmost caution.

Dagmar Petrovka stood at the threshold, her empty hands raised. Hal's heart jumped. "Petrovka, ODSP. Don't fire."

The others motioned her in and quickly locked the door behind her. "What is it you want?" said Yastrebova.

"I'm off duty, so I came up to offer you guys a hand," she said, fists on hips. "I didn't exactly expect any hero's welcome, but you hotshots from the Capital seem to have a problem remembering that we're on the same side."

Gade, the IPF man, rubbed at one reddened eye. "Everybody's on edge. But maybe there is something you can do for us." He waved vaguely toward the rest of the room. "Have a seat, while we talk this over."

Without waiting for more specific orders, she made her quiet way to Hal's dim corner and found herself a chair. "Can't you even keep off the booze for—"

"Easy, Dagmar. I'm just trying to look soused. For a change, I'm not." Both of them spoke in their softest voices, their lips barely moving.

"If you say so. Where's your wife?"

He tilted his head in the general direction of their room. "In the bedroom, I suppose."

"Alone? You suppose? My God, this isn't the Hal Farnsworth I used to know."

"Or the one I used to know." The usual wave of shame rose in him again, and out of long habit, he looked round for the nearest bottle. "Look, let me get right to it, before I chicken out: I've been second string for five years. I'm just unnecessary baggage. She doesn't need me any more."

Dagmar's shadowed face was unreadable. "Did she tell you that?"

"She doesn't have to. She acts like everything's still the same; she's kind. Kinder than I deserve, I guess. But you've seen her—the pink hair, the wings, the eyes?" He spread his arms, nearly knocking over a table lamp. "I don't have any of that."

"I noticed. How come? And what's it all got to do with—?"

Hal shook his head, barely in control of the so-long-suppressed anguish. "It...it's called the Second Phase Coralian Transformation. Coralian girls are born that way, hybrids between Human and some kind of alien adaptation that no one really understands. When one of them falls for a compatible Human and they're able to—" he waved his hands, before him, groping for words to make the elusive concepts comprehensible to her "—uh, join or merge, somehow, they know they're compatible for a lifelong bond."

"To be married, you mean?"

"No, by that point, they're already married. Like Dominic and Anemone, and... Never mind. The point is, that's the first step for the, uh, male partner." Hal realized he was sweating again, and strained to hold his voice low. "The outward sign of it is this thing." He tapped at the Coralian Node on his forehead. "Then, later on, when they're under some kind of pressure—there aren't many of us; nobody actually understands it, yet—the joining's complete. You get the wings, and the cotton-candy hair and all the rest. That's when you're really joined, when you're on the same plane with...with her."

Dagmar sat back against her chair, frowning in deep thought. "So then...you think you're not...?"

"I'm not in her league, that's what I think I'm not. I was a mistake. I got through the First Phase because we—" He remembered that the events of five years past were still highly classified, and fished around in his mind for some generalized way to explain what had happened in the Arkship, under the influence of both the alien thought-broadcasting device and the Mist "—because we were together with... well, it was all an experiment, see, and... Never mind, the details don't matter. What matters is that it's been five goddam years since then, and I'm still not like her."

"Why does it matter? I mean, she doesn't—"

"Oh, come on, Dag! You said you noticed that I'm still not completely transformed. Don't you think everybody else notices, too? I'm the only mate to a Coralian girl who's still stuck at First Phase! None of the others ever took so long. Anyone who's ever seen us on the video sees how things are. And it doesn't take any mind-reader to figure out that everybody in the InterDominion wonders the same thing: what's the matter with him?"

Across the room the guards next to the door were speaking very intently, muttering into their communicators and to each other. They were paying neither Hal nor Dagmar any great notice.

"Well, look," she began after a moment. "I don't know just how you two got together, but there's been plenty of scuttlebutt around the military services—and most civilian security forces are ex-military. Even if only a quarter of the rumors I've heard about you and Lady Phaedra are accurate, you'd be anybody's definition of a hero. Doesn't she appreciate that?"

He came near to pounding on the table to get his anguish across to her, to make her see. "Of course she does! I told you, she understands. But when you drag understanding around for five years, it can only rot...and turn to pity."

"Did she say that?"

"No! But I can tell." Hal looked down at the table. "When a man looks in his wife's eyes and sees pity... I'm nothing but a liability to her any more. She even had to save my drunken butt yesterday, when those Federation assassins tried to kill us. Because I was too boozy to react. And even if I hadn't been, I can't fly away, or toss trapar fireballs, or... What the hell's so funny?"

Dagmar spasmed gently, clamping one hand to her lips to smother uncontrollable laughter. "I'm...I'm sorry, Hal. It's just...that you haven't changed a bit, have you? Same old Hal, always worrying about being an underachiever, always thinking he's not good enough, no matter what he does."

"Now, wait a minute..."

"No, you wait." She leaned closer, the way she used to do in that little bar, next to the aerodrome. "I should've told you this years ago, but maybe I'm a bit of a coward myself, in my own way. I stopped loving you months before I was transferred out."

He could only stare at her, uncomprehending. "Then why...?"

"Because I didn't have the guts, that's why. Now pay attention, because I'm only going to tell you this once: look, you were never told why you washed out of pilot training, were you? You never knew?"

Hal shook his head No.

"Well, I did. I accidentally came across your discharge files once, doing a routine database search before my own last promotion. You know what your Unit Commander'd had to say about you? 'Excellent skills and intelligence. But fatally lacking in self-confidence.' That was why they made you an aircraft mechanic. That was why you washed out."

"Lacking in... But they never told me anything like that."

"Of course not! You know damn well how the Federation military is. All arbitrary orders, and underlings aren't permitted to question them. But you know what? I could've told them the same thing, long before they demoted you. You've always had that streak of self-doubt in you. And it's been screwing up your chances ever since."

He slumped in his seat, stunned, remembering in burning clarity the frantic odyssey across the Federation, half a decade ago, risking everything to win Phaedra's admiration. And along the way, to save the world. "I...I thought I'd gotten over that."

"Maybe you did—for a while—from what I heard. But from what you're telling me now... Listen, this's hard for me to say, even after so many years, but I guess you really need to hear it: when I was rotated out with my squadron...I requested that the transfer be made permanent. I didn't want to come back to you. I was just so damn sick and tired of your doubts and your hesitations."

"You..." He cleared his arid throat before beginning again. It was so hard to remain calm and rational. "You...never told me that, Dagmar. You never told me how you felt. Never. Why not?"

She looked away, in the general direction of the door, where all of their guards still murmured urgently into their communicators. "Because I was stupid." She let the words hang in the air between them for a moment before pressing on. "You weren't the only one who wasn't capable of thinking straight, I can see that—now. But then, I was young, and inexperienced and naïve and stupid."

"No, you weren't—"

"Don't make this any harder than it is! Just shut up and let me get this out while I've still got the nerve to say it. Fact is, you were quite the catch, and I wasn't the only one who noticed. But like the idiot I was, I tossed it all away."

"You did? Why?"

Dagmar shrugged, letting her shoulders go limp. "I told you, I was young and stupid. Just out of flight school, feeling my wings and bigheaded about all the whistles I got in my tight flight suit. I was a kid, Hal. And I hadn't the foggiest idea how to hold out my hand to help the guy I cared for. So...I took the easy way. I stuck my nose in the air and just ran away from it...from you. And told myself I was ever so smart to dump such a bad deal."

From the corner of one eye, Hal saw Alan and Maeter rise from their couch to hurry nearer to the Guardians and IPF people. But his mind would not focus on anything but the painful tale of loss spinning itself out before him. "Easdale. That's why you married Easdale, then? A big shot, an officer? All cocky and assertive?"

She only nodded, and he saw her swipe a drop of moisture from one cheek. "And not a day goes by that I don't think of how I hitched myself to a second-rate blowhard—and blew the best deal I ever could've had." Dagmar looked up, then, with eyes that pierced and glistened. "I...think your wife's a bit of a kid herself, Hal. Just like I was, back then. She's not as snooty and stuck up as Yours Truly used to be, but she's just as clueless about how to give a helping hand to the man she loves. She's...more patient than I ever was, and from what I've seen, a hell of a lot kinder than me. But that only makes her easier to hurt." Hesitantly, Dagmar reached across the distance between them and held his wrist with a soft desperation. "Stop hurting her, Hal."

"Hurting...?" The old outrage swelled in him. "Look, don't you get what I just told you? It's being tied to somebody like me that's hurting her!"

"No, it's not. You'd know that if you ever talked to her the way you're talking to me. Won't you give her the chance to understand you? The chance to be...what I could never—"

Their front door echoed with the sharp blast of a projectile impact. Someone shouted; Hal and Dagmar both came to their feet, her hand still clutching at his arm. Phaedra. Hal turned toward their bedroom door, seeing there her wide pink-gold Coralian eyes staring out in shock and misery. He jumped toward her, knowing instinctively that, whatever the reason, seconds were now critical.

Then came the second explosion, and the far wall, where Maeter and Alan had so recently huddled over Alan's remote terminal, ripped inward with a force that sent him spinning into a white haze.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Ten

Interrogated

-#-

Still drowning in her red dream of agony, Sigrid began to recognize snatches of sound; voices.

The bloody jelly that they'd made of her left eye had healed fifteen or twenty minutes ago—if her sense of time still meant anything at all. But the things they'd done to her ears with their shiny knives and sticks and wires were taking longer. And the other things...

Feebly, she tugged at the chains binding her arms to the table. Naked, Sigrid knew by the sickening stickiness binding her to the tabletop that she'd lost more blood than she cared to think about. But then, as they'd pushed and snipped and sawed away at her, she hadn't had enough mind left for anything that could actually be called thinking; all of it washed away in the pain and the humiliation that would not end.

Once, early in her Federation training, her inductee group been shown Ministry of Joy videos of "prejudicial interrogation;" the quaint External Intelligence euphemism for savage torture. Sigrid realized at once that it had been a psychological test, to see who could sit through the entire nightmarish sequence without turning away or vomiting. But she discovered in herself the talent—or was it a mental illness?—of turning off her emotions, of retreating into herself, keeping the horror and dread of the things she was ordered to do at a distance, pretending it was all happening to someone else, someone far away.

But now, Sigrid knew beyond all doubt, that whatever it was, it had its limits. There could be no safe corner of her mind in which to hide when the object of the violation and unimaginable pain was herself. She needed to scream. But she had no screams left.

"...so you see," someone was lecturing, probably the Swallowtail, "their 'Coralian Gift' allows us to continue interrogation almost indefinitely. No matter how many body parts we remove or damage, the subject will always regenerate them, given time." She held something out for the others to see. Sigrid already knew what it was.

Her team looked on, their faces gone ashen. "Er, even...even the internal organs, Number Twelve?" the nearest one asked uneasily.

"Up to a point." Number Twelve casually tossed the thing to the opposite end of the room, then wiped her hands on her trousers. "Removal of the heart, for example, would bring about complete loss of blood pressure, causing the rest of the body to experience catastrophic failure before a new one could regrow. And another point you must always remember: even their alien 'Gift' cannot create matter from nothing. Once a certain critical body mass has been removed, there is simply not enough replacement tissue remaining to regenerate what has been lost." Sigrid saw her glance down at her, clinical and indifferent. "Unfortunately, we haven't the time to experiment further on this subject, to determine the exact point of no return. But as for pain...that can be prolonged indefinitely, within the limits I've just demonstrated."

Sigrid prayed for the blessing of unconsciousness, then—and might even have willed her beaten mind to pass out, if her hatred had been any less molten. Cutting off my emotions. I didn't even realize it, but I'd started doing it all the time. I was empty, out of contact with anything but my work. Numb. Dead inside. Until...

And now there's nothing left for me but to piss off this little animal to the very end. No hope, no love, nothing but petty revenge.

She tried to speak, but the stubby, copper-tasting bud of her tongue remained still too short to form coherent words. Start talking, dammit. It's your only hope.

Number Twelve watched the quivering of her lips. "Yes, Arnoldson? Are you finally ready to tell us where Matthew Stoner is?"

Stall her. Play for time. "You...'ont care bout 'at," she gargled through a throat barely functional.

"We don't care about that?" Number Twelve spread her arms wide, mocking Sigrid's utter helplessness. "Haven't we just spent a pleasant forty-five minutes interrogating you on that very subject? And now you say we don't care about Stoner?"

"You cn' fin' him any time. Ocean 'unes isn' 'at big. You 'on't nee' me." She gulped for breath, panting uncontrollably. Shock, probably. Oh, God, let it end, pleasepleaseplease...

The Swallowtail leaned nearer to her blood-caked wreck of a face; Sigrid flinched. "'Need' you? Of course we don't need you. How intelligent of you to finally understand that! Oh, yes, we will find Stoner, sooner or later. And when we do, his treason will be repaid, publicly, in ways that even you cannot imagine."

"'En, wha' you bozzer wid me, for?" Sigrid's tears burned as they streamed across her facial abrasions.

As if in mockery, sea-spray spattered against the forward window of the abandoned office. "Because you needed pain, Arnoldson. You betrayed the Federation that trained you, and you know the penalty for treason." Her eyes grew round and hard, relentless. "My only regret is that time is unfortunately short and I'll not have the opportunity to give you your full measure of agony before you're killed." Number Twelve grinned, a predatory display of brilliant teeth. "I wanted to see you debased, wanted to humiliate you personally. For your crime of treason. And for Matthew Stoner's crime against Colonel Dewey Novak."

"He was crazy," Sigrid muttered, barely a whisper. "Out of his min'. Lunatic."

In a blur of flesh, the Swallowtail lashed out, slapping her backhanded, hard, across the agonized landscape of Sigrid's face. Her entire skull rang with the pain. "Never speak that way about the memory of our beloved Colonel Dewey! His was the greatest, noblest spirit ever to shine upon this cursed planet! He would have been—should have been—the savior of our world!" Number Twelve's crystalline eyes grew rapt. "He. Was. Our. GOD!"

A last spark of contempt sizzled in Sigrid. Daddy's little girl, all right. "Den wha' you wan' me to do?" Her lungs burned with each breath.

Number Twelve took a step back, reaching to the floor again for the daggerlike shard of broken glass. She turned it over and over in her hands, touching the edges experimentally, here and there. "I want you to die."

She leaned forward over Sigrid's chest, smiling that mad, twisted smirk. "And to know, as you die in debasement and ignominy that your entire life has been a failure. It's all been for nothing. The Retribution Protocol will be carried out to the full; all traitors will finally be executed. Stoner will die—slowly—without ever knowing how much you suffered for his sake—as will his 'InterDominion' rabble. Their 'Royal family' will be exterminated utterly, beginning today. All of your efforts and all of your stupid, romantic betrayal will be for nothing. You're a failure, Ex-Captain Sigrid Arnoldson. And now, all of you: pay close attention. Perhaps there's time for one quick, final, experiment after all: we shall see just how much...body mass...this traitor can lose before she dies." She hefted the ragged glass.

Sigrid's numbed mind reeled as she saw the loathing and desire in Number Twelve's eyes, and knew what was coming next. She pulled in her breath, waiting, anticipating the final horror...

And then something else seemed to be happening, something that made no sense at all. The thin wooden wall behind Number Twelve and her team crumbled inward in a blaze of brilliant blue that scattered shards of cheap lumber, papers, office furniture and Number Twelve herself in a storm of cold destruction.

With enormous effort, she raised her aching head; everything was blue, as though she looked through some luminous pond at the sudden parade of strangers that poured in through the missing wall. She coughed, and squirmed against her chains.

"My God!" someone wailed, and Sigrid knew at that instant just how ghastly she must look.

Matt? Am I hallucinating? Is this what it's like to die, beyond the pain, at last?

"Easy," said someone familiar, from another life, another plane. "Take it easy. No matter what they've done to her, it'll heal within an hour or so. All of it. But she'll need nutrients, and shock-recovery treatment, and... Miss Arnoldson, can you understand me?"

And then the chains crackled like dying frost and fell away, and warm arms were around her, cradling her, and Matt's astonishing tears joined hers upon her cheeks. "Sigrid. What've those scum done to you? You'll be all right, all right, I promise, Sigrid..."

Matt? No, that can't be. He's just a dream, a memory of something I lost. But...'Jobs'. Job Stevens. The composer? What's he doing here? And who're those two in back of him? "Yeah." She gave in to another coughing fit that tore at her chest and started her bleeding again in various painful and mortifying places. "M-Matt? Really you? The strike team. They thought they'd have some fun with me before they exe...exec... before they killed me." Sigrid coughed again, but pressed on, determined to tell them what they needed to know before her resolve failed utterly. "Wanted to know where you were. I didn't tell..." But wait a minute. There was something else... "The Swallowtail. 'Number Twelve,' they called her. She said they were gonna wipe out the Royal Family, starting today. Better n-nail her, b'fore she gets away."

Tomika, Job's wife, moved into her view. Her eyes glowed a vibrant blue, the color of the sky, when the wall had blown in. Sigrid shivered. "She has not gotten away, Sigrid Arnoldson."

She struggled to sit and failed, defeated by the pain, even greater than she'd expected. But two hands—Matt's, she remembered—held her just under the shoulders and lifted, till she could remain seated.

On the rubble-strewn floor, fingers still bleeding where they clutched the deadly glass, lay Number Twelve in a contortion of frozen misery. Rivulets of blue light played across her skin, and pale sparks danced in her open eyes. "Is she dead?" Stoner asked.

"Her body lives," said Tommy, and Sigrid noticed how flat and expressionless her beautiful voice had become. "Her half-mind is...reflected upon itself and dividing. She is malleable."

"What's the...matter with your wife?" Sigrid muttered to Jobs.

"Nothing. There's a lot going on that we'll have to explain. First, we've got to get you to someplace safe, where you can rest and get medical care for a while; we'll bring you up to speed when you're there." He waved toward the motionless bodies littering the floor. "And we'll have to get the Ocean Dunes security people to lock this bunch up. First, we'll strip them, so you'll have something to wear. No, don't try to walk—we'll carry you back to the hotel."

Sigrid stiffened; the Coralian Gift was already touching her with its gentle fingers. "Wait. This isn't all of them. There's only three here—I remember at least eight. The others must've got away, and they've gotta be stopped. What did you do to them, anyway? And who're those two kids with you?"

Matt's arms dropped lower, hugging her carefully above her fading scars. "Easy, Sig, one thing at a time. Jobs is right, we've got a lot to tell you. Think you can keep yourself upright while I get pants and a shirt for you?"

But Sigrid Arnoldson found all her possible answers swept clean by the irresistible flood of sobs that would no longer be dammed away. Nothing held back. Never again.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eleven

Advertising

-#-

Dominic found it difficult to maintain an impassive military face as Anemone came hopping out of the transport from The Heart of the World. In her black knee boots, brief shorts and half-unbuttoned khaki blouse, he found her a more-than-welcome distraction from the urgent demands of Ocean Dunes.

"Package delivery for Lord Dominic Sorel," she announced, lifting her flight goggles. "I made damn sure everything was loaded that you needed—or even might need."

He smiled, for the first time, but resisted the temptation to take her in his arms. "Good job." Dominic turned for Captain Keiser, whose IPF Rangers surrounded the ship, staring openly at Anemone. "We'll need this machinery set up as quickly as possible. And prepare a 300-amp power takeoff from the ship's ionic reactor."

"Aye, M'Lord. You heard him, men! Around back wit' you, and help the crew unload the equipment and get things set up! On the double; time's breathin' down our necks."

"What's the situation?" said Anemone as the detail hauled out an oversized flat-panel radiant display on six broad tires. "Do we know anything about Phaedra or Hal yet?"

He leaned closer, to keep the men from overhearing. "No. This field, or whatever it is, surrounds the city on all sides. Nothing solid can get in or out. And while that energy blob approaches from space, the word I get from IPFSec is that the trapar patterns on Earth are being disrupted."

"Disrupted how?"

"They're converging." Dominic moved his open hands inward. "Like the ripples from a pebble that's thrown in a pond, only in the opposite direction. And the center of convergence is..."

"I get it—Ocean Dunes. Has anybody figured out why?"

"According to Holland, no one at the University or anywhere else has been able to establish any connection. But since Ocean Dunes is on our side of the world, the Federation is raising hell and blaming it all on us."

"Not without reason—from the Federation point of view, of course."

Anemone frowned at the stranger who had crept up from behind. "And you are...?"

"This's Major John Michael Haydn, Federation External Intelligence," said Dominic. "He's volunteered to help us."

Anemone did not offer her hand. "Yeah, I heard. Because the Federation is always such a big help."

"I do not fault you for your lack of enthusiasm," said Haydn, nodding a cool bow. "Though you do not remember me, I'm sure, Mrs. Sorel, I have seen you before. I was commanding a Guard detail once, long ago, when Colonel Dewey put you on display at a rally in a public stadium. I confess I found it all in very poor taste. But I had my orders."

"Well, then, I guess that made it all just perfectly okay, didn't it?"

If she had offended him, Hayden gave no sign. "I followed my orders, Mrs. Sorel, as your husband follows his own. And I am here today because I do not wish the Federation I serve to destroy itself in a colossal mistake."

"That wouldn't bother—"

"Cut it out, both of you." Such irrelevant squabbling did nothing for Dominic's impatience. "We haven't the time for—"

Captain Keiser came forward with a crisp salute. "Pardon my interruption, M'Lord, but where exactly d'you want us to put this equipment?"

"Oh. Get the display as close to the energy barrier as you can, facing in toward Ocean Dunes. Use its hydraulic jack to get it up to about five meters. The console can go right behind it."

"Aye, M'Lord." He glanced briefly upward. "If I might suggest, Lord Sorel, I'm thinking we might be wanting a little roof over that seat and keyboard. The wind's beginning to blow a bit, and there's a wee haze over the sun. We'd not want rain to catch us at some inconvenient moment."

He's a damn good officer. "No, I suppose not. There should be some emergency field shelters in the transports; as soon as you've got the cables connected, have the men inflate one over the console. But make sure we have as wide a field of forward view as possible."

"Aye, M'Lord." Keiser hesitated for an instant. "Er, if you'll pardon my curiosity, M'Lord, it'd help us a great deal in settin' things up properly if we had some idea of just what this device is. And what it does."

"It's an advertising sign," said Anemone. "The brightest we could dig up on short notice. Whatever the operator types on the keyboard is displayed in big high-intensity letters on the luminance display panel. We can let the people inside the barrier know we're here, and try to start some kind of dialogue with them."

"Ingenious," Hayden admitted. "We can alert them to the presence of the strike team. But can they answer you back?"

"I had IPFSec access the blueprints of the hotel," said Dominic when Anemone did not deign to reply. "They found that there's a six-meter-tall laminar field display integrated into the outer tiles of the eighteenth and nineteenth floors. The designers intended for it to be used to display messages like 'Happy New Year,' or 'Welcome to Ocean Dunes.'"

Keiser nodded. "I see, M'Lord. And...this text streamer of theirs—is it in working order yet?"

Dominic shook his head, examining with fresh unease the thin clouds frosting the sky. "That we don't know. I hope so, but if not, maybe we can give them a reason to get it in working order."

"Captain," called one of the Rangers from near the base of the display screen. "We have the power takeoff operational."

"Smartly done, lads. Lord Sorel, would y'care to step down and have at the keyboard, now?"

"Right." Dominic hurried to the bare metal seat before the device's small console, with Anemone, Major Hayden and Captain Keiser close behind. He found the power switch, and watched as half a dozen status lights winked on, all of them green. "I can start typing, now?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Anemone. "I looked over the instructions on the way down here. You'll see what you type on this little screen here, just as it's appearing on the main display. Go to it."

ATTENTION PEOPLE OF OCEAN DUNES, he spelled out. THIS IS LORD COMMANDER DOMINIC SOREL OF THE IPF SECURITY DIVISION.

The result was electric. The shadowy figures on the other side of the field leaped silently up and down, waving their arms in an ecstasy of delight. Their wild relief moved him in unexpected ways, and he knew a pang of guilt that he could not reward them with hope for some quick end to their imprisonment.

THE FIRST THING WE MUST DO IS CONTACT ANY IPF OR GUARDIAN OF THE FLAME PERSONEL INSIDE...

"It's spelled with two Ns," said Anemone in an undertone.

...PERSONNEL INSIDE OCEAN DUNES. THERE IS A TEXT DISPLAY AROUND THE 18TH FLOOR OF THE HOTEL. PLEASE GET WORD TO WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE THAT IF THEY USE THE DISPLAY WE CAN COMMUNICATE. THE SOONER THEY DO SO, THE BETTER WE CAN UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION IN OCEAN DUNES. WE ASK YOU TO PLEASE NOTIFY HOTEL MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY AUTHORITIES AT ONCE OF OUR REQUEST.

He sighed and leaned back into the metal chair, already beginning to leave a painful dent in his lower back. "Now all we can do is wait, I suppose."

"Would you wanna wait, if you were one of those people trapped inside? Move over and let me at that thing—they deserve to know what the hell's going on, and what we're doing about it."

"We can do precious little," Hayden reminded them all as she typed at surprising speed.

"We can let them know that they're not alone," said Dominic, his pink hair fluttering in his eyes as the wind rose briefly. "That's probably the most—"

From an upper-story window of the distant hotel, a jet of soundless flame spurted outward into the hazy air. Anemone's fingers fell still on the keyboard. Dominic could only stare, unwilling to put his fears into words.

"On what floor...are your daughter and her husband staying?" Major Hayden asked. But no one had an answer.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twelve

Insight

-#-

Maurice and Ariadne sat silently in the zazen position, legs folded beneath them, by the light of a single candle. Prince Maurice opened his sight to the soft shadows of the private Royal Meditation Chamber.

+That's got to be the answer, he said, in a glimmer of his forehead jewel.

Ariadne's eyes unveiled themselves, twin stars of gold and lavender. "It seems so doesn't it? But it's all so strange. Are we really sure we're reading the Coral right? If only Mother and Father were here..."

"That's the problem, isn't it?" Then, instantly regretting the harshness of his tone, "This has gotta be our job. That's why they sent us away in the first place. I understand that, now. They want to know we can handle things on our own."

"But why, Maurice? There's no reason they had to go away, just to see if we can deal with a crisis without their help."

He stood, smoothing the wrinkles from his black uniform trousers. "I know why. And face it, you do too. You could feel it, just a clearly as me, while we were meditating, I could tell. We should've picked up on it earlier, in the aura of the Coral..."

Ariadne looked away. "Yes. The Coral is as worried as we are. That's the part we mustn't let anyone know—yet. Viyuuden suspects, but he doesn't know."

"Yeah." Maurice held out his hand as she rose from the little table with its plain candle holder. Her bare legs cast shadows like monumental pillars up the wall. "But Mom and Dad know, I'm sure about it. They know more than even us. And that's why they went away—so they wouldn't be tempted to tell us. Or to tell Holland and the others. They want us to learn to handle things without them."

"All of us. Not just you and I, but all of us who've been leading the InterDominion."

"That's the part even I don't want t'think about. This's all way too serious to be just a test for us." He made a fist at the empty dark. "Damn, but I wish they'd at least have told us they were going, before they took off."

Ariadne came to his side. "So do I. But they didn't, and now we must decide our own next step, and soon. Now that we've figured out the algorithm, we need to see Dr. Morita right away. Who knows how long it will take his team to make their calibrations?"

"Right." Maurice pushed, and the perfectly-balanced marble block that served as a door to the chamber pivoted upward. "At least we can do better than Mom and Dad, and tell people where we're going, first."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirteen

Hands On

-#-

Holland Talhoe Novak II—he deeply resented being called "Junior," even by his parents—padded quietly into the Operational Command Center, just far enough behind his mother to make it plain that she wasn't leading him.

The minute they arrived, his nose alone would always tell him in advance just how busy his father would be. When the government of the Heart of the World had built the OCC here in the Pyramid, he knew it had been a replacement, a place for his Dad and Dr. Egan to run things when big trouble came up. It had first come up five years ago, or so he'd been told—that was a long time ago, after all—when, for reasons no one seemed to want to talk about, the InterDominion and the Federation had nearly come to war. Since then, various lesser crises had brought the OCC to urgent life, and each time, its humid mélange took on a distinct scent: warm electronic equipment; the sharp tang of freshly-printed paper; black coffee, constantly simmering. Most of all, there was that pervasive miasma of sweat and uniforms worn for far too long. But young Holland never bothered to analyze it too deeply. He simply called it Fear, and the smell was heavier today than he had ever known it in the ten years of his life.

Without speaking, Mom gestured him to stop. The low ripple and surge of voices around them carried its own warning not to do anything to shatter the taut concentration of those whose sensitive fingers rested on the quivering, invisible threads of Destiny.

He came to a quick, motionless halt. None of the men were looking up from their consoles and data screens to stare at Mom; a sure measure of their intense concentration. Even Dad seemed unaware of her presence, as he carried on a soft conversation with the image of Professor Wossel on his screen.

"...and they're beginning to spiral inward," the Professor was saying, his voice thin and tinny through the monitor's small speaker.

Dad nodded grimly. "Any danger to airship traffic?"

"No. Not yet, at least. But we're a little disturbed by the effect on Eureka and Rentons' trapar shield over the InterDominion."

"It's breaking down?" At once, Dad sat straight in his chair.

"Nothing that extreme. At this time. But it is...thinning. The energy bands of the planetary trapar distribution are experiencing a significant intensity migration toward Ocean Dunes. Don't ask me how. Or why."

"Understood. Are we able to get satellite images?"

"From the geosynched satellites, yes. The transmissions're strictly earth-to-satellite line-of-sight, you understand. But they're high-intensity microwave, so they can still punch through the interference that keeps building up. Useless for communications of any kind, of course, but we should be able to monitor the...situation for the foreseeable future."

"Uh-huh. And how is 'the situation' looking from the satellite images?"

Young Holland thought that it would be so easy to just send a ship into space and look down on the strange conditions that seemed to be screwing things up all over the world, and avoid the need for relying on the handful of surveillance satellites crisscrossing the sky at variable intervals. But there were no manned spacecraft, and hadn't been since the Arkship came back from unknown depths between the stars.

His eyes strayed to a framed print on one wall: an artist's conception of the V330 Asahi, the atmosphere-to-space vehicle that New Tresor had been hoping to build for at least as long as he could remember. Too expensive, they said. No suitable powerplant, they said. Beyond current technology, they said. But ten-year-old Holland gave little credence to such objections; he only knew it looked cool. He could imagine himself at Asahi's helm, just like Dad used to do on the Moonlight, lifting off and ordering it high, higher, into the indigo sky, till the V330's spearlike nose passed beyond the world altogether...

"...like nothing I've ever seen before," said Professor Wossel, snapping him out of his daydream.. "To some extent, the global weather pattern is following the trapar currents." A view of the cloud formations over the InterDominion overlaid his face on the screen. "There's a light cyclonic spiral beginning to form around Ocean Dunes, and it's disturbing the normal jet stream. Our weather's going to be unpredictable until things settle down. Around Ocean Dunes, it could get rough if this trend continues."

Dad nodded, and rubbed at one red eye. "Right. What about the energy blob approaching from space?"

"Still approaching, but it's beginning to slow. That suggests...intelligent control, of course."

"We could always use more of that. Let me or Egan know the minute there're any more changes."

The Professor grinned, in what looked like an encouraging way. "Will do."

"Where is Dr. Egan?" asked Mom, as Dad's screen faded to the globe-in-green-fire logo.

"Off dealing with Parliamentary Antipats," said Dad. "Which is what I'd be doing if I wasn't here collecting bad news." The boy knew that Dad regretted the snappish answer when he shook his head and smiled at them both. "Sorry, this hasn't been a good day to be in the InterDominion's driver's seat." He stood, slowly, as if from cramped muscles, and gave Mom a kiss. "How're the Founder's Day logistics coming along?"

Mom pulled a glum face. "Less than half the group showed up. The rest are too worried about, well...current events. We didn't even have a quorum, so it all broke up early."

Holland Junior hated it when they tried to soften things from him, things that any moron would understand anyway. "'Current events' means the thing coming from outside the solar system?" I'm not a dumb little kid, you know.

"That's right," Dad admitted at once. "Some people get excited too easily."

"Uh-huh. But is the cloud-thing really dangerous? I mean, all those people down in the street are shouting about the end of the world, and crap like that."

"True enough, Son. But we think most of that kind of talk is being stirred up by Antipats. They're..."

"Yeah, I know who they are. A bunch of jerks who think we oughta run the InterDominion the way the Federation's run."

To Dad's left, a couple of the military staffers exchanged furtive smiles while they stifled laughter. "That's about it," said Dad.

"But don't they kinda have a point? About the thing in space, I mean. Suppose it's really dangerous?"

"The Coral came to Earth from space," Mom reminded him. "It's not dangerous."

Having studied Earth History, he was not to be put off so easily. "It was at first. It killed almost everything in the world."

"Well, that's true," said Dad. "But the Coral's learned a few things since then. And besides, we're prepared for that possibility this time."

Holland Junior sensed the hesitation in his voice, though, and knew that Dad wasn't as certain as he pretended. But now would be a bad time to argue. "Uh-huh. Where's Dr. Egan?"

"In one of the Senate offices, making sure no more loyalist senators defect to the Antipat side."

"Seriously?" Mom's eyes narrowed. "With a crisis cooking, how could any of them even think about switching?"

"Because they're scared. So far, none of us have been able to wave our arms and make the Mystery Cloud from Outer Space go away. They're hoping that maybe the other guys can." Dad threw up his hands, the way he always did when some really hard problem was getting to him. "The people of the InterDominion've lived through enough wars and upheavals to make anybody jittery. They're tired of it, and who can blame'em? They want an end to it all—and soon."

"Well put, Holland" The boy turned his head, to see Dr. Egan, tall and powerful-looking, enter with long, confident strides. "The people are weary of it all. And so it is up to us to make certain that their weariness is not directed into unwise paths, by leaders who would love nothing more than to enlarge their own powers by exploiting those fears."

"It'd help if Eureka and Renton were around," said Mom. "Seeing their royalty keeping a cool head would go a long way towards reassuring the nervous crowds. Isn't it their Royal Duty or something?"

"Royalty's no free ride." Dad looked like he was going to say more, then frowned and turned his son's way. "Look, Junior, maybe it's time I finally got around to telling you something about your own family tree. My father—your granddad—was a kind of king himself."

"He was? I mean, Mom said something like that, one time, but I didn't..."

"Yeah, he was. There was a hereditary monarchy in those days, too. It didn't have a hell of a lot of power, but it was royalty all the same. Then there was a revolution—that the military junta doing the uprising called the 'Summer of Love.' Pretty good joke, huh?" But something in Dad's voice told him that it wasn't a joke at all. "Anyway, after enough people were murdered, and enough loyalist forces were killed trying to put down the rebellion, the bad guys won. My...mother died when I was born. My father was executed. Your uncle and I were kept under military house arrest, and our lands and property were confiscated. Then the new Federation High Command decided that me and my brother could leave—without company or money. I guess they were pretty confident that a couple of broke, wandering orphan kids could never re-establish the monarchy on our own."

None of the various technicians at their consoles looked up, but except for the tinny voices from desktop monitors and the faint murmur of the air-circulating system, the room fell to deathly silence. Junior whispered, "Uncle Dewey."

"Yeah. I didn't realize it at the time, and not for a lot of years afterward, but it'd all driven Dewey out of his mind." Dad sighed. "When he got old enough, he joined the Federation military, and rose through the ranks, fast. The military commanders thought it made great propaganda to have both of the former Crown Princes in Federation uniform. Nobody—not even his superior officers—knew what was really driving him. He was..." His face hardened. "Anyway, insanity was the price he paid for royalty. So don't ever think that being a king or queen is some fun walk in the park. Eureka and Renton've paid more dues than those Antipat morons can even imagine. And what's ahead for Maurice and Ariadne, none of us can..."

Viyuuden, the bald Vodarek priest, burst into the room, tugging a bearded man in a white robe behind him. Junior had never seen him so excited, and yet the man he led seemed bemused, even serene, about it all.

"Holland Novak!" Viyuuden cried. "Gregory! I must speak to you both, at once!"

Dad looked even more worried, now. Junior knew that when the normally stoic priest became so upset, it had to be a bad sign. "Why? What's up?"

"The news is highly significant and far-reaching." He gestured toward the white-robed man with barely-contained excitement. "This is...Professor Lewis Ragowski."

Junior was amused by the lack of response from the other adults in the room, since Viyuuden clearly expected them to be stunned.

"Wait a minute," said Mom. "Ragowski? Is this guy related to the Professor Ragowski who tried to kill us, on board the Arkship that time?"

The bearded man—Ragowski, Junior now understood—made a courtly bow. "Forgive me for that, Mrs. Novak. I am the same man. Or at least, I was. As you can see, I have grown considerably younger in the past five years, and I dare say I am transformed in spirit, as well. I have been..."

Dad interrupted him. "Hold it. If you were on the Arkship, how the hell did you get back here? That thing doesn't carry any lifeboats any more."

"It has its methods, Speaker Novak. Methods which it will reveal in its good time, and so much else. It transferred myself and my associates to Earth, just outside this city, only days ago. All of them have become likewise enlightened."

"What for?" said Junior, and for once, no one told him to keep quiet.

"To bring you the glad news, of course." His smile almost gave off a light of its own. "To prepare you for the great joy! The Arkship, you see, has been monitoring us. The appearance among us of the Coralian-Human hybrids was the first sign of our Readiness; your recent unlocking of the unique properties of accelerated-trapar energetics was the second. You stand on the verge of discoveries you cannot yet imagine! There are—"

"And you know this...how?" Mom seemed unimpressed.

"Why, it told us, of course. It wants us to—"

"Look," said Dad in the deliberate cadence of his Patiently Explaining Voice, "we're kind of busy right now. There's a situation down in Ocean Dunes—"

Ragowski nodded vigorously. "Yes, yes! We have powerful enemies, to be sure. But we also have powerful friends. You must—"

Everyone in the room looked up at that moment, and the technicians at their desks came to their feet. Junior turned, following their eyes to the near doorway, where a pair of armed Guardians entered, carefully scanning the room for any possible threat before saluting and exiting the room. Junior's heart jumped. On one side of them walked Prince Maurice in his dull black uniform. But on the other side, graceful as a sunbeam, came the Princess Ariadne herself, wearing one of those short, thin gowns, just like her mother always favored.

Junior stared, hypnotized by her. So beautiful. She's perfect. The most beautiful girl in the whole world. And there she is, so close.

"Something up?" said Dad as an aside to Doctor Egan. "Something new, that is?"

The Prime Minister opened one muscular arm toward the young royals. "I have been anticipating this. It seems that Maurice and Ariadne have an announcement to make, and wish you all to know of it. They will be leaving the City very shortly."

"Not like your parents, I hope?" said Dad, who looked very unhappy.

The beautiful Princess shook her head at once. "No. In fact, that's why Maurice and I came here, first. We wanted to tell you that we're leaving, and let you know where we'll be."

"Is this a proper time to be departing the safety of the Heart of the World?" Junior thought that Viyuuden was very worried about the whole business.

"They know what they're doing, Anton," said the odd bearded stranger. "You of all people should perceive the Will of Vodarek before you."

For once, the priest seemed to have nothing to say. Prince Maurice spoke up instead: "We're going to Smolensk, where the Pinwheel project is. We've been thinking —" he glanced furtively toward the amazing Princess, and Junior, with a prickle of jealousy, sensed the implication of some intimate secret "— about the, um, problem they've run into, and we think we can help."

Dr. Egan nodded and touched his fingertips together. "Very well. Perhaps it is best after all that you are out of the City at this time; Commander Arban has discovered troubling rumors of possible civil unrest brewing here in the Heart of the World. I ask only that you do not emulate your parents by personally flying to your your destination. We shall put an armed strike airship at your disposal."

"Thank you." Princess Ariadne smiled in her enchanting way. Dimly uneasy, Junior wondered if it might be a smile of relief, as though she had expected more opposition.

Dad still looked unhappy. "Listen, it wouldn't be so bad if Renton and Eureka were here, but having all four of you out of the City at the same time... We don't even know where those two are. And now you're both—"

"Exactly!" Everyone turned toward the doorway, where a florid man who looked like an advertisement for antacid pills stood with arms crossed. Senator Detlev Eisinger, realized Junior. "We don't know where Eureka and Renton Thurston are. With complete disregard for the present crisis, they've taken it upon themselves to desert their posts altogether. Is this the kind of arbitrary 'rule' that you all want? 'Monarchs' who desert their people on a whim? Who leave a pair of inexperienced children behind in their places?"

Junior balled his fists, tongue-tied with resentment. You son of a bitch! Don't talk to her like that!

"Let's examine the situation together, rationally," said Ragowski with an amiable smile. "There's far more to this than you—"

"And who in hell are you? Another Vodarek crackpot, who'll worship this homemade 'monarchy' no matter what? Is this the best you can do, Novak? Just where does Egan dig up these misfits for you?" The senator brandished one index finger, like a weapon. "Your parliamentary majority isn't going to keep on backing you much longer, I can tell you that. Not when the people themselves start rising up."

"Back so soon, Senator?" said Dad, giving Eisinger a hard, dangerous stare. "Seems to me you were asked to leave this office once before. Why not do the civil thing and save all this for Parliament?" All around the room, the technicians at their consoles were growing uneasy, looking from one to the other with quick, nervous eyes.

"Where you can control the debate?" the man laughed, sharp with malice. "Not for much longer, Novak. I came here to give you fair and final warning that you and your rabble aren't going to be trusted to guide us through this invasion from space that's coming to Earth; not for much longer. Your brother knew that. He knew that the welfare of the planet is too important to leave to the antics of failures—" his stabbing finger twitched with emphasis "—or gibbering, religious maniacs—" he glanced toward Viyuuden "—or, most of all, to half-alien freaks—" With a rapid lunge, he grabbed for Princess Ariadne's shoulder and jerked her round to face him...

Junior stared, stupefied, at the unthinkable violation. Mom shouted, as did several of the seated technicians, who jumped to their feet; Dad pulled back both fists; Prince Maurice extended one arm toward the enraged Senator...

Astonishingly quick for such a big man, Doctor Egan leaped forward, head held low, hands spread before him. In two steps, he was upon Eisinger, clutching him by the lapels of his jacket, hoisting him high on the wall as easily as a stuffed animal. "Do not molest the Royal Family," he hissed, cold and deadly. "Even a Syndicalist and Federation lackey such as yourself should have the self-control—the decency—to refrain from descending to physical violence..."

"Egan," blubbered the terrified senator, writhing helplessly, his feet a meter above the floor, "Put me down! You can't... I won't let you..."

"Be silent. Holland, my friend, would you be so kind as to summon those two Guardians, to escort Senator Eisinger to his arrest, please?"

"Already done it, Doc. You guys at the consoles—stay where you are; the cops are on their way."

"You can't get away with this, Egan! I—we—won't be intimidated any longer! Won't be silenced..."

But Doctor Egan showed no signs of tiring as he held the squirming Senator pinned to the wall. The two Guardians of the Flame who had accompanied the Prince and Princess reappeared, weapons at the ready. Junior prayed that they would vaporize the miserable Eisinger at once, but they only saluted to the royals, Doctor Egan and Viyuuden. "You seem to have things in hand, sir," said the nearest one. "What's the trouble—" he looked up at the Senator with unconcealed loathing "—this time?"

"Senator Eisinger is under arrest," said Doctor Egan. "Please notify IPFSec and place him in a maximum-security cell, pending public trial before the Parliamentary Senate. The charges are treason, violence against the Royal Family and simple Assault and Battery. He may be permitted to speak with legal counsel—but no one else—without permission from Acting Security Commander Jean-Baptiste Arban."

"With pleasure, sir," the Guardian said. "Er, if you would please lower him...?"

Doctor Egan permitted himself the shadow of a smile. "I think that he has already sunk as low as possible. Nevertheless..." Abruptly, he released Eisinger, who dropped to the floor like an armload of dirty clothes.

"There'll be hell to pay for this," murmured Dad to Dr. Egan as the Guardians force-marched Senator Eisinger from the room. "The Antipats in the Senate are already making noises about us being too high-handed." Junior edged in to hear more. "Putting Eisinger under arrest is going to give them some fairly potent ammo, no matter how much he earned it."

Egan inspected his hands with an air of abstraction, as if evaluating their performance. "I fear we must concern ourselves with more pressing matters at the moment." He inclined his head toward a technician in the uniform of the IPF. "Sergeant—is that an alert I see appearing on your monitor?"

"Yes, sir." She sat up very straight. "It seems there's been an explosion from the hotel...down in Ocean Dunes."

But Junior's mind was already far, far away, rapt in contemplation of the glorious Princess Ariadne.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Fourteen

Awakening

-#-

Hal lifted himself from the floor with one wobbly arm. He wondered why the suite had gone so terribly quiet, before realizing that the twin explosions of only seconds before had deafened him. Or...was it just seconds ago? I've been unconscious. How long?

Disoriented, struggling against the waves of nausea that choked him, he came to a seated position on the rich, deep carpeting. The front door of the hotel suite lay on either side of its opening, shattered into half a dozen pieces, one of them still dangling from a bronze hinge. Beyond, the simpler door to the bedroom he and Phaedra had briefly shared was now flat on the floor beyond. The dusty air reeked of explosives and other, less identifiable, odors. One window appeared to have been blasted outward by the force of whatever had smashed its way into the room.

Hal's heart sank. Phaedra. He pushed himself upward, staggering; nearly falling, before reaching a more-or-less stable stance. A few of the security personnel, in their various uniforms, stood across the room, chattering into communicators but looking every bit as confused and frightened as himself.

As his hearing began to return under the slow influence of the Coralian Gift, he could make out snatches of speech: "That's right...blew their way in...trained strike team...no, sir, she was all right last time anyone saw her...hostages...six floors above...barricaded..."

Hal shook his head against the lingering concussion. At his feet lay Dagmar, unconscious, one arm of her uniform unevenly scorched, but breathing in regular rhythm. Her RPP sidearm—apparently she'd drawn it but never fired—was half-hidden by her body. Hal knelt as if checking her condition and snatched it up, stuffing it into one pocket. The heft of its heavy bulge brought with it a new decisiveness.

"Hey," he cried out to the guards. "What the hell happened here? Where is everybody?" Do I really want to know?

A woman in the black uniform of a Guardian of the Flame—Hal remembered her name as Yastrebova—looked up from the from the scrap of cloth she'd been examining with a small blacklight.

"There's been an attack, Mr. Farnsworth. Not by any of the Antipat malcontents; it was clearly the work of professionals, probably Federation. They overwhelmed the ODSP sentries outside the door and blew it in with explosive grenade rounds. Once the door was down, they flooded the room with anesthetic gas and apparently broke into your wife's room while we were incapacitated. Then—"

Hal tightened both fists. "Phaedra. Did they harm her?"

"No. It was a kidnapping, not an assassination. Not yet, at least. We've traced them to the Grand Ballroom, three floors below the roof. Mr. and Mrs. Aruno were out at the moment, but they took Sir Alan and Dame Maeter as well."

"Why, dammit? What the hell did they think they were—"

"We don't know!" Yastrebova's mask of professionalism fell away, exposing her helpless rage. "But the ballroom is wired for videocasts. Our best guess is that they want to execute the captives in the most public way possible. That'd be..."

"That'd be in front of the whole InterDominion." Hal's mind flew through the thousands of possibilities, all of them terrifying. "They're going to try to establish an outside link. Which means that they didn't realize at the time that broadcast transmissions in and out of Ocean Dunes have been blocked." It means there's still time. I hope.

Behind him, Dagmar gave a rough whimper and stirred. Soon she would come back to consciousness—and notice her missing weapon. "Are there more of your people on the way here? What about the City patrollers, the ODSP? Or IPFSec...?"

"Look, Mister Farnsworth, there aren't any more of 'our people!' We're cut off, isolated, alone! We're already doing all that we can!" She raked him from head to foot with her eyes. "Why not try it sometime?"

But Hal was already out the door, running, his ideas tumbling into place as he raced for the stairwell.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Fifteen

Revelations: 1

-#-

Matt Stoner lowered Sigrid's limp, unresisting body to the floor of the deserted candy shop. The place had been locked and steel-shuttered against the rabble outside, but somehow Gene and his companion Manon had worked a shimmer of blue magic over the rear door, and it clicked open without resistance.

While Jobs chattered urgently on his communicator with the local Security forces, Stoner found a seat cushion, tore it loose, and slid it beneath Sigrid's head. "She will live," Tommy said. Or at least Tommy's lips said it.

"Yeah, I know. But the shock of what those bastards did to her..." He trailed off, overcome by both rage at her violation and regret over his own failure to reach her in time to prevent it.

"There will be no lasting effects." She made no visible movement, but Stoner knew that Tommy—or the presence she harbored—had reached out to Sigrid's seething mind. Outside, the mob's shrieks and the occasional clank of a rock against the antitheft shutters reminded Stoner that this was no hospital room. "The wounds to her body are healed."

Sigrid's eyes fluttered. Stoner had expected her to stare wildly about her, on the verge of a scream, but she only looked to him with wide eyes, as if discovering him in a crowded train station. "Matt? What's this place? What'm I doing here? There was—"

She thrashed about, trying to sit, as Stoner held her with both arms. "Easy. You've been through a lot, we could see that."

"'We?'" With both arms folded across her chest, she trembled. "Who? Who's we? Are they gone? I remember, now. They cut me. They—"

"I know, yeah. But don't think about it yet. It's over, now. You're safe, now, Sig."

"Safe? I'm never g-gonna feel safe again." Her shivering grew stronger, and she burrowed more deeply into Stoner's arms. "Tomika Stevens? And Job Stevens. Why're they here? And who're those other two...?"

Keep her talking, Matt. Keep her mind off what those Federation sadists did to her. "It's a long story; even I don't know most of it, yet. Listen, we tracked you to that place on the beach. We came as soon as posssible, before they could..."

Sigrid screamed at last, giving a voice to the pain and degradation that still rotted away at her mind. Ears ringing, Stoner held her closer, appalled at his inability to bring her any meaningful comfort. Nice job, Matt. "Yeah, we could see what they were up to, no need to dwell on it now, you hear? We pulled these clothes off of some of them; that's what we dressed you in, before we got you back here to the town. Jobs is calling the Ocean Dunes Security office to pick up the ones that're left." If the local security forces can spare any personnel. "The hotel's not safe any more, or so we hear, so we're hiding out here for a little while."

"Hiding out..." She nodded slow understanding. "How'd you get me out? What'd you do to those...to those..." The string of incoherent obscenities she snarled out nearly brought Stoner to a smile.

"Yeah, that's what they are. A Federation strike team, actually. And I've gotta admit, I can't take much credit for getting you free." He turned his head over one shoulder, up toward Tommy. "That was these guys, actually."

"But...they're musicians, aren't they? And those other two...?"

"One thing at a time, Sig. Think you can sit up, yet? Here, lemme help you to a chair...there, that's better. Now, this is gonna be a little hard to explain, even for me. See...these are Gene Onegin and Manon Lescault. Or, at least part of them is. The rest is..."

The turquoise glow in Tommy's eyes intensified. "We are your Observers. Some have named us Dancers. We have been long observing your kind."

"You're aliens?" Sigrid looked from her to Stoner and back to Tommy again, clearly unsure if this was the ideal time for a practical joke.

"As you use the term, yes. We observe and we report. And we prepare. Now we wait for the optimum moment."

"Report to whom?" asked Stoner, standing beside Sigrid's metal chair with one protective hand on her shoulder.

"Not explainable at this time. Much of your history is still hidden from you. But for now there is time to tell you more, Matt Stoner, that you may relay the knowledge we give you to your own people. Listen, then."

The blue light shifted to Jobs' eyes, and he picked up where his wife's voice had ended. "When a new species in this galaxy reaches its plateau of..." he paused; the light flickered for a moment. "Sorry, the Observers can only use the words that are in my mind, but sometimes they have terms that don't translate...call it 'creative intelligence.' When they achieve that level, the species is directed to receive a Guide. Yours was sent to you, and you named it the Coral." Stoner could not be sure if a different Observer was now speaking through Jobs, or if the same one still used his voice.

"Wait a minute," he said, holding back a journalist's fierce excitement over what might be the biggest story since the arrival of the Coral itself. "You mean to say somebody sent the Coral to Earth?"

Tommy nodded. "Yes. Its spore was caused to attach itself to one of your early extraplanetary probes, which returned to this world with it."

"Thanks for nothing. It damn well did return, and then it came within a hair of wiping out every living thing on Earth!"

"Yes. It was not meant to be so. The purpose of the Companion is to guide, teach and assist. To enhance your lives, not destroy them."

"And who sent us this...Companion?" Stoner turned, surprised and grateful. It was Sigrid, smearing away tears and crusted blood with the back of one hand, but showing real interest in something beyond her own recent agonies. Good girl, Sig.

"Another species, which achieved full awareness before you. As you are meant, in turn, to seed other Companions to other new races, when your time comes. This is the way it has been since time beyond reckoning, spreading outward from the Unknowable First, always expanding, to what incomprehensible end, none of us yet know."

Tommy rubbed at her temples as the glow in her eyes dimmed, and it occurred to Stoner that translating for an Observer must be no small job. "What made these Observers pick you and Jobs—and the other two—to be their mouthpieces?"

"They're pretty much nonmaterial beings," and Stoner could tell it was Jobs himself, speaking. "Don't ask me how I know that, because I can't understand it either. They can't find their way around in three-dimensional space as easily as us creatures of gross matter, you see. The Observers've been hanging around Earth since the InterDominion was created, waiting to see what happened next. Somehow, Eureka and Renton—and the other Coralians, too—are very, very important to them."

"So why didn't they contact Eureka and Renton directly," said Sigrid. "Or did they?"

Jobs' face warped into the wry smile Stoner had known for so long. "They're not allowed to. That 'Unknowable First' thing that they mentioned, it has some kind of moral authority; I can feel something like awe coming from the Observers when they talk about it. Our Coralian royal families aren't to be contacted directly—not to be interfered with—in any way. But Maurice and Ariadne were attending a reffing tournament up in Shiretoko, in the Honshu District, when the Observers found out...when they were told...that something significant is about to happen."

"So they all just happened to be in Shiretoko at the same time?" muttered Stoner. "Hell of a coincidence." Outside, the chanting of many voices passed by; another damn Antipat demonstration, he guessed.

"No, not coincidental. They've been waiting and...watching us. Them and others. Even the Arkship..." He threw up his hands. "They've all been observing us, even more than the other worlds with Companions. We're unique in some way, like an undefined variable. And now we're ready."

"Uh-huh. Ready for what?"

Tommy—herself, and not the Observer or Observers lurking inside her—said, "They won't tell us, not yet. But something...interesting...is about to happen, and the Observers have some kind of part in it. They attached themselves to Gene and Manon, so they could get here quickly."

"What a clumsy way to get around. You sure these aliens are from an advanced civilization?"

"Trust me. They protected Manon and Gene from harm, and guided them here to Ocean Dunes, without giving their presence away. But with all the violence around this place, it's been getting hard for them to keep themselves a secret. So they...revealed themselves to Job and I." She smiled in her husband's direction.

"Aren't you the lucky ones. Why did they pick you two?"

"It's all hard to explain," said Jobs. "Somehow, they're sensitive to human personality types. Gene and Manon have the right kind of minds for them to inhabit—to carry Observers from place to place in our world. 'Transporters' is the closest word I can think of to describe them. But Transporters can't translate the Observers' thoughts; the Observers can't speak through them. Tommy and I can. And we agreed to do it."

"If you don't mind my asking, then...what makes you two so special?" A rough gust of wind rattled the awning outside the shop's shuttered windows.

Tommy shrugged. "The Observers say...'we have the music.' That's as clear as they can put it."

Sigrid rose to her feet, determined yet still shaky in the oversized shirt and trousers stripped from one of her attackers. "But Matt...how did you get involved with all this weirdness? You're not either a Transporter or a Translator, are you?"

"No, I'm not." He found himself hesitant, almost apologetic. "But the way the Observers—through Jobs and Tommy, here—explained it to me was that I'm the one best qualified to pass the truth on to the InterDominion, as soon as we can get the hell out of Ocean Dunes. They seem to have the idea that I've got some kind of talent for reporting news, y'see."

"Oh." Stoner put out his arm to steady her; Sigrid's face wrinkled as she struggled with her own thoughts. "So that's why they wanted you. But then—" her eyes found his and held them "—where do I fit in? Why did you all track me down and rescue me from...from those Federation slime?"

For only a moment, silence held the little shop, broken only by the ragged shouting beyond its shutters. Then Gene spoke up, in his own voice: "You just don't seem to get it, do you, Miss Arnoldson?"

"Huh? Look, pal, I'm kind of foggy right now, but—?"

"Because he wouldn't come, of course," said Manon, at Gene's side. "Minister Stoner wouldn't come with us and help the Observers. Not until we agreed to find you first, and bring you back safely. Not without you."

Sigrid shook her head and put her hands gently to Stoner's cheeks, utter wonderment written in her face. "Matt did? I don't..."

And then she saw, in the corner of the little shop where the shadows gathered. The faint brush of movement, quivering, knees drawn up before the face, hidden from the light.

Stoner understood at once and held out a restraining hand. "No, Sig! There's—"

But she shrieked out her raw hatred and pushed Stoner aside, pouncing for the creature crouched in the corner, both arms outstretched like the claws of death itself.

"Number Twelve!"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Sixteen

The Ghost of the Machine

-#-

"Should we really be down here now?" Kazuya kept near to his wife, speaking softly so the IPFSec guard marching behind them would not overhear. The hotel's long, luxurious hallways muffled their every step, which only increased his sense of foreboding. Kaz knew well the turmoil and chaos going on within only a few minutes' walk, and the hush of the corridor only heightened his feeling of dreamlike unreality.

"Yes." Then Lark raised her voice for the guard's benefit: "I need to have your help in my Guided Meditations. The Mist is drawing nearer, and it's important I be able to tune it out, to keep it from overwhelming me."

Knowing full well she was lying—or at least not telling the entire truth—Kaz nodded and kept walking. That the interstellar being called The Mist was approaching, he had no doubt. But knowing his wife as he did, he could see that something else was gnawing on her mind. A mind kept stable only by constant Vodarek meditations and massive doses of antipsychotropic drugs. "This's the room, Officer," he announced when they came to the door of their personal suite, the one they'd occupied before the Antipat riot and assassination attempt.

"Unlock the door, please, Mr. Aruno," the man said. "Then stand aside while I sweep the interior for traps."

"Oh, there aren't any," Lark assured him, with a hurried laugh. "Moonbeam, our dog friend, has been standing guard in there."

"Yes, m'am. Nevertheless, please open the door."

Having no idea what strange secret Lark was obviously hiding inside, Kaz slipped his keycard into the door slot and heard the lock buzz open. A green light flashed, just above the handle. "There you go," he announced. He swung it open, struck at once by a strange reek of ozone, assorted hot plastics and something else he could not identify at all.

Lark drew in her breath; the guard stepped forward. And at once, a booming rumble set the walls and heavily carpeted floor of the corridor to vibrating. "What the hell was that?" Kaz muttered.

The IPFSec man stiffened and drew his sidearm. "An explosion. From somewhere on the upper floors."

Moonbeam's furry nose appeared from around the edge of the half-open door. "Anything wrong?" he barked.

Seeing the dog, the guard seemed to come to some agonizing decision. "All right, Mrs. Aruno, it looks as though things are secure, here. Right now, I've got to get back upstairs on the double and see if there's been some new threat to the Royal suite. Please, all of you, go inside, bolt the door and don't let anyone in who isn't authorized. Someone will be down for you," he called over one shoulder, already sprinting back the way they'd come, "as soon as possible."

"Let's get inside," said Kazuya, ushering Lark through the doorway. But she was already ahead of him, and when he turned from double-latching the door behind them, what he saw left him without any coherent response. The entire suite, as far as he could see, had been turned into an intricate webwork of string, yarn, bits of colored wire and even short glass tubes, merging here and there into bottles, jars, cans and small pitchers, some of them filled with red or blue liquid.

His heart sank. Oh, God, she's lost it. It's my fault—I should have been down here with her all along, making sure she was taking her pills, keeping her on a rational course when the fantasies started to overwhelm her. I should never have let her spend all this time down here alone with her voices. "Uhhh... What is it, exactly?"

"The machine." Lark beamed proudly. "The one they told me to build—the people in the other world." With gentle fingers, she stroked the edges of a saucepan, a blue jar resting in its shallow puddle of green liquid. "In just a couple of hours, our two spheres will be in alignment; the energies from their Ixeinite workings will connect with it, and a Gate will open between our two universes."

"I see." Kazuya chose his words with care. "And when this 'Gate' appears...then what happens?"

"Why, I'll be able to cross over, of course. In the other world, they can cure me, shut off the voices from all the minds, for good! The laws of physics are different there, you see. I can finally have peace."

Kaz saw nothing of the sort, but he dared not allow his fears to show in his face. "Well, look...if you go away to another world, how will I be able to visit you?"

"Oh, but I'm taking you with me! Don't you see? How could I ever go without taking you with me? I'd never think of leaving without you." She flung her arms about him, tightly, demonstrating the intensity of her affection. "You've been so good with me, Kaz, so patient. But soon, we'll be able to have a real life again, a normal life, where I'm not always drugged up, tied to pill bottles and meditation therapy. It'll be wonderful. It's an amazing world over there; they've told me about it! Animals can talk and think, just like here, and there are research centers, where they..."

"But what about the Mist, Lark?" He grabbed for her shoulders, anything to cut off the torrent of imaginary wonders that he feared must soon overwhelm her. "You said it was coming back, returning from wherever it went last time. Everyone still needs you to speak to it, to let us know—"

"No, no they don't. Not any more. I could feel it when it spoke to me, that once it gets here, it won't need to talk through me any more. I don't really understand why—" she screwed her face together "—but it's true. It'd be here already, except for...for the Crisis."

"What 'Crisis?' What're you talking about?"

"Hard to describe; it doesn't make sense, in human terms. The Adversaries, the Advocates, the Observers... Some kind of battle coming. But I'm not needed for it, not any more." Her face brightened again. "I'm free—we're free—to live our own lives, without endangering the InterDominion." Lark spun in a happy little circle, like a young ballerina. "We can finally begin, you and I, the way it should always have been."

Sadness and terror fought within Kazuya's tortured heart. Above the refrigerator, three polished metal cans, held together with evenly-spaced elastic bands, glinted down at him like mocking demons. And he held his wife near to him, tightly, so she would not see the misery in his eyes.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Seventeen

Above the Sky

-#-

Hal Farnsworth panted with the exertion of running up the seven flights of stairs to reach the Ballroom floor, taking them two at a time, knowing only the absolute need to reach Phaedra before... But he would not let himself complete the thought. At least that explosion's drawn all the guards away from the stairwell shafts for a few minutes. If there ever were any here; they're spread pretty thin, all of them. And so am—he slipped on the polished tile of the landing, but recovered at once and kept climbing—and so am I. Slipping. I've been slipping for years. "Fatally lacking in self-confidence," that's what Dagmar said. But never any lack of self-pity, was there? And I thought I'd put it all behind me. All this is my fault, my own damn —

He shook his head as he ran, wringing away the old habits with each step, the toxic web that had slowly poisoned his life over the past three years. Enough of that crap!

The echoes of his footsteps grew duller now. Hal saw the landing for the Ballroom floor looming above, some five meters overhead. And you're an easy target for anybody who looks out that door, he reminded himself, coming to a stop on the landing below. The bare utility stairs had been designed only for staff and emergency use, and offered no hiding place whatever. Okay, tough guy, now what? First of all, slow your breathing; you're out of shape and wheezing like a drowning man. Drowning in booze; too many nights drinking yourself to sleep on the couch, instead of...

"Stop it!" With a strength of will he only now rediscovered, Hal kept the scream to a grunted whisper. No more self-accusations! Think. Think about what to do next. There can't be much time till those bastards who took Phaedra discover their mistake.

He edged nearer to the next flight of bare ferroceramic stairs, peering up toward the metal fire door. Would the kidnappers have left a sentry there? Maybe. So bounding up the stairs like a madman might not've been the best possible move. And what exactly did I expect to do once I got here? Charge in like a video hero and start blasting away? Time to get organized, Hal. A plan, I need a plan. The windows? Not a chance. They'll be heavy-duty armored glass, and they're twenty-three stories up; there's no way I could reach them from outside, anyway...

From somewhere far below echoed the clamor of shouted orders and stamping boots, growing gradually louder. Hotel guards. Dammit, they're quicker on the draw than I expected. They'll be up here in a minute or three, tops. Gotta do something, Hal, old man, and quick.

Wait a minute. That guard down in the suite said the ballroom was three floors below the roof of the hotel. So what's on the floor above it? The training hangar where I was stationed in the old days had high-intensity cesium laser illuminators fastened to the ceiling, and behind them intrusion detectors and electrical conduits all over the place. Maybe...

The crash of a service door being rammed roughly open added to the racket beneath. Louder, this time. Sounds like they're pulling guards from other floors. Odds are, they'll charge in once they get up here, surround the ballroom and hold it under siege. But Federation strike teams don't bargain for hostages. They...kill them, first—and then themselves—rather than surrender. He pushed the thought to the back of his mind. Well, so far nobody inside's come out to see what all the noise is about, so maybe it's safe to run by that door; gotta take the chance. Here goes...

Hal kept low as he hurried past the doorway to the ballroom, expecting a hostile face to appear at its small wire-reinforced window. But none did, and he ran unmolested up the final flight.

Once at the next landing, Hal paused long enough to breathe again. STAFF ONLY, screamed the yellow-and-black sign on the door, emphasizing the point with TRESPASSERS WILL BE ARRESTED AND FINED in slightly smaller type. The simple metal latch handle on all the previous doors was here replaced by a steel-cased panel with a single keycard slot. There would be no easy entrance.

From far below, but growing rapidly nearer, came the crashing feet of the security forces. He flicked open the status window on the RPP's oval receiver pod. Fifteen rounds sleep darts; ten rounds ballistic projectiles; eight rounds standard concussion warheads. Good enough. Hal spun the selector dial all the way down, aimed with both hands, nudged off the safety and fired.

The blast, contained as it was within the walls of the stairwell, hammered at his ears, leaving them ringing with a shrill, dull squeal. Never mind, the Coralian Gift'll take care of it soon enough. At least the shaped charge of the round sent most of its heat inward, he realized, too late. Otherwise, I'd've been blinded, too. Dizzy and disoriented, Hal staggered across the landing, wheezing and hacking at the propellant fumes that burned at his lungs. Through the clearing smoke and dust, he saw that the metal door's dented remains had been blown inward by the force of the detonation. He smiled. Something, at least was going his way at last.

As his hearing faded back in, Hal hopped across the threshold, fanning at the clouded air. The irregular patter of footsteps, half a dozen of them at least, pounded up the stairwell from beneath. Obviously the explosion had spurred the security forces to greater speed.

A wild, adrenaline-soaked rush of confidence surged through him. Catch me if you can, he chuckled privately. Is it really this easy? This easy to break away from wallowing in an endless boozy gutter? This easy to convince yourself that you're really good enough for your wife? Hal knew the answer was No, but what revealed itself beyond the doorway left no time for either exhilaration or introspection.

The entire floor of this level—how many dozens of meters he could not accurately judge—was a single windowless room. The bare walls and ceiling stood out as stark and cold as an arctic landscape, serving only to emphasize the complexity of what he had to think of as the floor. But what a floor. It seemed to consist of a low synthetic dome that stretched from wall to wall on either side, thickly dotted with small black sockets connected by a complex webwork of color-coded wiring.

In one form or another, it was what Hal had been expecting. This level's floor was the ceiling of the ballroom beneath, and like the hangar roofs he had known in the Federation Aero Corps, the wiring would be to control the overhead lighting arrays. But this wiring's sheer intricacy surpassed anything he'd ever seen or heard of in a military hangar. Probably for special-effects overhead displays, he decided. Stars, moon, clouds, that sort of thing. But why the hell do they need all those catwalks?

For the entire expanse of the dome had been crisscrossed with open expanded-metal walkways in a grid pattern, from wall to wall, as though someone had planned on an enormous chess board that had never been completed. Never seen anything like that before. What were the architects of this place thinking? There's plenty of room here to just walk around on the dome to replace the illumination controllers or the laser elements themselves. So why do they need...?

On sudden inspiration, Hal dropped to his knees and reached down to the dome surface, less than a meter from the blasted doorway. He tapped it lightly with first a knuckle, then a single fingernail. It had the unmistakable fragility of thin, cheap plastic. No, not cheap. Not this place. The bloody dome's a single sheet of photoconductive molecular matrix. Hal nearly laughed at the extravagance of it all. The entire ballroom roof is one single huge video display. And all these synchronizer sockets are for three-dimensional effects generators! Only, the display's too fragile to walk on when synchronizers need replaced or adjusted. That's what the steel catwalks are for—so the maintenance techs can reach down to the electronics without falling right through.

His heart raced; soon he would know if Phaedra were alive or... Never mind that. Hal took a cautious step out onto the nearest walkway, finding it a bit springy but otherwise solid enough. Another step, then another... He settled into a rhythm that minimized the bounciness of the meal mesh beneath his feet.

When he reached the approximate center of the dome, he crouched down over the nearest display synchronizer. Shifting the RPP pistol to his left hand, he stretched forth his right arm till it just barely touched the device and its multicolored wiring harness. Easy, Hal, you mustn't do anything that'll attract any attention from those Federation hired killers down below. His fingers brushed the wires, then closed over their connector and the synchronizer protruding into the dome. Reach just a little further... He leaned a few more millimeters outward, groping, finding the synchronizer socket. There! Got you! Hal pulled, and the device popped out of its hole with little resistance.

He released his breath. The opening in the thin dome was no larger than he might have gouged out with two fingers. Whose were those voices, drifting up from the ballroom, thin and unintelligible? With his hearing still slightly muffled, Hal strained to make something of them, failed, and swore under his breath. I've gotta get closer to that damn hole, so I can look down and see what's going on.

Trembling with the fear of what he might see, he shifted his position on the elastic walkway, clutching its edge with his free hand. If I can just get my eye down to that little opening... Still further he stretched, balancing himself with one leg stretched out behind. There, on a low couch next to one of the arched Ballroom entryways—a bare foot, bound in a strip of thin dark cloth. The kind Phaedra's nightgown was made of? Dammit, I can't remember! If I can just get a little closer and get a better look in that direction...

"Freeze, you!" The commanding voice echoed through the bare chamber.

Hal looked back, startled and horrified to see a black-suited Guardian of the Flame in the blasted doorway, aiming a heavy-caliber ballistic handgun. Behind him, ODSP security guards appeared, one by one, their chests heaving with the effort of ascending the long stairwell.

What the hell? They shouldn't be here for a couple of minutes longer, at least. I heard them, far down the stairs... Then he remembered—with his hearing still dulled, he had fatally miscalculated their distance. Hal drew a breath, about to identify himself before they opened fire, when he realized that the Federation kidnappers below would hear him—might already have heard the Guardian—and dragged their captives elsewhere. If not worse...

Hal waved one arm furiously, trying to warn them to keep quiet, to understand the urgency of the situation. Didn't they realize the Ballroom and its fragile prisoners was no more than a plastic eggshell's thickness below? Evidently not. He waved again, accompanied by a finger to the lips, signifying Keep Quiet!

"On your feet!" commanded the Guardian, oblivious to Hal's pantomime. "Get up, where we can see you! And keep your hands in the air!"

Sweat crawled down Hal's forehead, burning his right eye, but he dared not move to brush it away. You damned morons! Phaedra and the others might have only seconds left...

He made the decision. There was no other course than to obey the Guardian's orders, and hope he would be recognized as Baron Farnsworth before the Federation strike team decided what to do about the racket from their ceiling. Hal brought both knees together on the wobbling metal tread, struggling to hold his balance as he straightened and rose. He held both hands up, still unsteady...

...and remembered, too late, that one of them still clutched the RPP.

The Guardian's single shot exploded into roaring echoes throughout the enclosed maintenance floor, creasing a hot slash of pain across one thigh. Hal did not cry out, but the leg crumpled beneath him. He windmilled both arms in a useless battle to maintain his balance, then dropped backward, onto the delicate dome, which shattered around him like a storm of tinkling snowflakes. And the fearful Ballroom lunged upward to meet him.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Eighteen

Passing Through

-#-

"They'll be here very shortly, Dr. Morita," came the thin voice from his communicator. "Within a couple of minutes, depending on the headwinds, which are getting pretty erratic with all this anomalous weather."

Katsuhiro Morita nodded to no one in particular and looked to the concrete-colored sky. The turbulent clouds roiled like ocean surf as they screamed southward, toward distant Ocean Dunes. No one had ever seen a weather pattern like this one, not even in the days of the enormous semipermanent cyclone that the military fliers had dubbed the Great Wall. "Understood. I shall be down shortly to prepare for Their Majesties' arrival. But if their flier should touch down earlier, notify me at once."

"Yes, sir."

Morita tugged his white lab coat tighter about his shoulders. Here, on the service deck of the Smolensk research facility's jutting communications tower, both the unseasonable wind and cold penetrated the thin fabric with contemptuous ease. And what sort of ill wind might it yet blow for Humanity at large? What does this alien intelligence that Wossel and his team have been tracking want from us?

"My God, you must be freezing up here."

He turned to see Sonia, his wife and colleague, emerging from the tower's access hatch. Sensibly, she had put on a thermal jacket over her own lab coat, but her pale hair streamed out beside her like a silver-gold banner. "I suppose I am," he admitted, taking her hands in his own. "Or perhaps I only wanted to distract myself from whatever's approaching Earth."

"They say it's become visible in the night sky. If we could actually see the night sky, that is. But why don't you come on...oh, look." She pointed outward, toward the southeast, where a small New Tresor airship wallowed dangerously in the surging currents of wind and trapar.

At the same time, Morita's communicator buzzed again. "They've arrived, sir. Their ship is..."

"I know, I can see it from up here; I hope they've got a skilled pilot. In any case, I shall be right down to the landing pad. Morita out."

-#-

Dr. Morita and his wife made their way out on to the Smolensk landing area, leaning into the fierce wind with every step. A small honor guard consisting of half a dozen Security guards waited outside the New Tresor airship, while its crew hurried about, securing the wings with steel cables.

The two passengers stepped down from the craft, Prince Maurice first, then assisting his wife. Her brief white gown—almost a trademark of the emerging Coralian royalty, it seemed—whipped and snapped in the wind, but neither of them seemed otherwise inconvenienced. Morita lowered his head, observing the niceties of protocol, though privately he considered it all a bit silly. I remember Maurice Thurston as a ragamuffin orphan boy, tagging after his adoptive parents, who were barely teenagers themselves. But still...there is an aura of stature about them, now, even of authority. Soniya, always a more fervent devotee of the Light of Vodarek than Morita himself, dropped to one knee before them and touched a reverent hand to her forehead.

"Welcome to Smolensk," said Dr. Morita in formal greeting. "If you will follow me, we'll arrange for some refreshments and..."

"There won't be any time for that," the Prince broke in, firmly but leaving no doubt.

"No matter what Dr. Egan may have told you," continued the Princess in her clear voice, "this isn't a social call or a state visit. We're here on much more important matters, Doctor. Please take us at once to the Pinwheel accelerator."

"I..." Morita could only stammer, taken completely unawares.

"Your will is the Will of Vodarek," said Soniya, rising. "Please follow me, Your Highnesses. All of the Pinwheel's control systems have been brought back online after our recent terrorist attack. An armed escort is awaiting us inside, so I suggest we rendezvous with them at once, and get out of this vulnerable open space."

Morita had no choice but to agree. "Exactly so." He signaled the security guards to form a rough circle about them, and march back toward the main building. "Prince Maurice," he began, not without hesitation. "If you don't mind...would you perhaps give us some idea just what the 'important matters' behind this visit might be? We've only been operational again for less than twenty-four hours, and whatever demonstration you..."

"It won't be a demonstration," the Prince told him. "First, we're going to show you how to get through the barrier around Ocean Dunes. Then we'll need one of those metal capsules you're using for your tests. Like the one you sent out on the first trial, only the biggest you have, "

The doors into the facility opened automatically, and they all stepped into the sheltered warmth of the main building. Soniya shook the tangles from her hair and pinned it into a long ponytail. "We have several sizes of those transport pods in various stages of equipage, Your Highness. They're mostly filled with instrumentation of various sorts."

Morita noticed how the Coralians' forehead nodes twinkled in unison when one of them spoke, but he made no comment. "Yes, we saw that when we examined your engineering diagrams," said the Princess. "We'd like you to remove it, or at least as much of it as your technicians can remove in a few hours." Her smile was dazzling, even in the flat overhead lighting. "It's to carry passengers, you see."

"Passengers?" Dr. Morita nearly stumbled, horrified at the very thought. "But Lady Ariadne—this research is highly experimental! We can't ask any of our people to risk their lives on such a—"

Prince Maurice interrupted him. "We wouldn't, either, Doctor. The passengers will be us."

Morita had no ready answer at all, and even Soniya's normally-placid face went blank with dread. "Sir? Sir, I strongly caution you against this... I'm sure we can make enough room in one of our probe pods for two, but—"

"No," said Ariadne. "Not two. Four."

Dr. Morita began to understand, then, and his stomach turned to ice. "Come with us, please, both of you. I cannot operate the Pinwheel alone; it requires a staff of specialists. And they will require a very great deal of explanation."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Nineteen

Sidelined

-#-

PLEASE ADVISE ON EXPLOSION FROM HOTEL. Anemone's slender fingers pattered over the display sign's keyboard. REPEAT: WHAT IS STATUS OF THE EXPLOSION IN THE HOTEL?

Dominic, back from assisting the crew in securing the panel against the wind with guy wires and stakes, put one hand to her shoulder. "That blue key over on the left is the autorepeater function," he said. "When it's pressed, the unit automatically redisplays the previous message, at five-minute intervals."

"I know." She lowered her head over the keyboard. "But while I keep on typing it myself, I can almost feel like I'm really doing something. Instead of sitting here, staring in through that stinking force-field, wondering if they're...y'know..."

Dominic pulled off his protective gauntlets and smacked them against one thigh, releasing a blossom of dust that was instantly swept away in the wind. "I know. I'm worried, too." He felt her sick anxiety, reflecting his own. "But we don't even know if the display on the hotel is operational yet—or if it is, if anyone knows how to operate it. Things must be pretty chaotic in there, right now."

"Beggin' your pardon, M'lud." Captain Keiser came up beside them, brushing dust from his uniform jacket. "But it's not only inside where things're in a mess. Reception's gettin' a bit spotty, lately, so we've kept a man monitoring radio traffic nonstop. And it seems that the Fleet's havin' more than a little trouble up there." He indicated the sky far above Ocean Dunes with a glance upward. "Not just wind, but the trapar itself. It's surging and shapin' itself into something of a vortex, they say. The High Admiral hasn't yet suggested bringin'em down to a lower altitude, but then, he'd not be a man to do that unless there was no other way."

Dominic, who knew Gunter Juergens well, could not deny that Kaiser was right. But he found himself far more concerned about the implications of a swelling trapar density and what it might mean for the city here beneath. Not to mention the planet itself. "Is any of this affecting the people inside the field?"

"Other than in the obvious emotional ways," said Major Haydn, "Not that I can see." He pulled his jacket tightly against himself and came next to Anemone at the keyboard, ignoring Keiser's frankly resentful glare. "The immediate danger will be here, on the outside. Mrs. Sorel...I fully understand your concern for your daughter and her husband. Nevertheless, I see nothing to be gained by remaining here, so close to the perimeter of this force barrier." He locked his dark eyes to Dominic's. "Conditions are worsening rapidly. I respectfully recommend that we pull back from this position while your transport is still able to fly."

Dammit. Behind a mask of confidence, Dominic fumed and worried. He's got a point. No one inside has responded to any of our messages. I'm endangering the crew by staying here, but at the same time, I can't just retreat to a safe distance, not with Phaedra and Hal—and all the others—still trapped.

"You murderin' Federation bastard!" Shouted Keiser. "You're askin' the Lord Commander to just abandon all those folk! T'leave 'em caught in there, like trapped animals, in that vile, unnatural prison."

"It's not a prison." Major Hayden took Dominic by both shoulders and held him, not letting him look away. "I've already told you that! But now you've seen it with your own eyes, felt the energies spiraling around us! You can't ignore it any longer, Sorel—Ocean Dunes is no prison!"

A fresh rush of dust-laden wind rattled the transport. Two of the crewmen came hurrying out, faces held low. They stopped next to Captain Keiser, looking uncertainly from him to the Major, to Dominic, none of whom uttered a word. Dominic found his hands beginning to tremble.

"Then...if not a jail," demanded Keiser at last, "what in blazin' hell is it?".

Anemone's fingers fell still over the keyboard, and her soft voice cut across the rushing of the winds. "It's a weapon."

There. It's out in the open, now.

"I know," Dominic admitted. "I've been hoping against hope that it wasn't true, praying for some piece of evidence—anything—that'd prove it wasn't real. But just look at this thing!" He thrust one arm upward, following the immaterial shaft of the barrier to its invisible apex. "The Ocean Dunes Hotel is the tallest building in the InterDominion. And now it's surrounded by an impenetrable tubular field, while all the trapar on the planet spirals in to feed it. Like the cathode of a plasma cannon in its charge cycle, it's waiting. Waiting for...firing orders."

"Orders from who?" said Keiser. "The Coral's not capable of this sort'o thing, M'Lud. This's too complex, too fast. For all its power, the Coral's only barely sentient—even the Vodarek say so. Somethin' called the Limit of Intelligence, or so they teach."

Before he could answer, one of the men from the air transport raised a timid hand. "Begging your pardon, Lord Commander, but there's been an urgent encoded message from the Heart of the World." He held out a flimsy communication sheet.

Dominic took it, almost grateful for the distraction. "It's from the Prime Minister." He began to read aloud, before trailing off to an unbelieving murmur. "My God. Please request a confirmation of this from the capital, at once."

"We can't, My Lord. That's the problem—electromagnetic interference has been rising sharply in the last few minutes. We were only able to get this much by assembling together three re-transmissions. Our small transmitter on the ship doesn't stand a chance of breaking through in the other direction. And the relay satellites aren't even responding any more."

Mechanically, he balled the thin sheet in one hand and stuffed it in his pocket. "Have you tried parawave? Piggybacking a message on one of the planetary Ley Lines?"

"Working on it now, My Lord. But...to be frank, Sir, we're not hoping for much. The Lines're at a higher energy level than anyone's ever seen, and..."

Dominic heard no more. From the distant tower of the Ocean Dunes Hotel, a line of brilliant blue sparks was twinkling about the uppermost floors. Anemone came to his side, and from her mind, a single thought flowed between them: Is this it? Is the weapon ready, now? Is it the end?

But he held her tightly to him and forced himself to watch as the sparks grew, and recombined and resolved themselves into letters that marched in cool formation:

HOTEL CHIEF ELTRCL SUPRVSR HERE. WELCOME TO OCEAN DUNES LORD SOREL.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty

Revelations: II

-#-

Stoner moved faster than he had in years—faster than he would have thought possible—to intercept Sigrid on her way to the crumpled figure moaning in the corner.

"No, Sig!" He flung out both arms, snatching her in mid-leap, then wrestling her down and backward, to the floor. "Look, I know what you're thinking—"

"No, you don't!" Writhing with a mad strength wholly out of proportion to her size, Sigrid twisted and pushed and pounded at him, landing hammer-blows on Stoner's face and chest and abdomen. But still he clung to her, pinning her to the floor planks. "She was the goddam leader of, of those vicious bastards, she was the one who ripped at me and—"

Tommy—or the invisible Observer shining out of her eyes—leaned over them, raising one of her—its—arms. "Sigrid Anderson is distraught, and may injure you..."

"Let her alone!" Stoner warned.

He dodged a fist to the face, throwing up one elbow to deflect Sigrid's next one, careful not to harm her in any way in the process. "Sigrid, listen to me. Stop swinging—" She landed a stinging blow to his ear; he grimaced but pressed her forearm to the floor, rocking under the impacts from her flailing feet. "Listen! Sigrid, she's not who you think she is. Not any more."

"She's...then who...I don't..." Still she struggled against him, but less violently than before, and her fists no longer battered against his face. "She's...not? So who is she?"

"Her name's Rosalie Thorpe. Her real name. Listen, can I get off you now? Promise you won't try to hit me—or her—any more?"

She looked only partly convinced, but Sigrid nodded weakly and lifted herself from the floor, wiping her eyes with the backs of her too-large sleeves. Stoner noted that she still could not look directly at the girl in the corner for more than a glance at a time.

"The Federation...," he began. "Listen, they didn't just pick their Swallowtails off the streets, y'know. Once upon a time, they were normal girls, drafted into the Federation military. But the most talented of them were tortured, brainwashedand pumped full of all kinds of rotten drugs. In the end, what the Ministry of Joy created was sort of an artificial personality, forced into place over their real selves."

Sigrid lifted both fists in frustration. "Tough. But what the hell did you have to bring her here for?"

"Because the Observers told us to, and I wasn't about to argue." Stoner held her about the waist, well aware that being savagely tortured would have left her in no mood for forgiveness. "See, when we rescued you, our Observer pals here blasted Rosie and her gang with their blue fireworks. And it erased her overlay personality. She's back to normal, now."

"Easy for you to say." Sigrid seemed less than wholly convinced. "She wasn't about to rip your guts out. Okay, okay, for your sake, I'll buy it. For now. But I still don't get what's going on around here. Why're we all hiding out in a candy shop with a couple of invisible aliens, while Ocean Dunes goes crazy all around us?"

"So that you may learn," said Jobs' Observer. "Listen, for there is much to tell you, and little time. Beginning with your incomplete Companion—that which you call 'the Coral.'"

"Why's it incomplete?" Stoner wanted to know. He kept one arm tightly about the warmth of Sigrid's waist, lest she try another attack upon the former Swallowtail.

"It was...interfered...with. There is an equilibrium in the properties of this universe, that manifests itself in ways that even you can perceive. Male/female; light/dark; attraction/repulsion; nodal/anodal; positive/negative... And so it is with the Companions. They are created in pairs—"

"Created by who?" Sigrid asked.

The Observer ignored her. "—but..each unit...is incomplete without the other. Only when they join can they become a monad, whole and capable of fulfilling their mission."

Sigrid tried again. "Which is...?"

"A Companion's purpose is to guide its host race in development, to help when help is needed, to protect your race's place in the Greater Whole." The Observer paused minutely, perhaps waiting for another question, then went on: "The unfinished Companion that encrusted your world and still encrusts one half of it had only a dim awareness of this. The result, you already know: near-complete elimination of all life, and the incomplete Companion covering the surface entirely."

"It botched that pretty badly, I'd say," said Stoner, not troubling to hide his bitterness.

Jobs' eyelids drooped and he slumped forward slightly; the Observer shifted and began speaking through Tommy. "Yes. And yet it has shown a resilience that has amazed us all. For, once your kind returned to this Earth from the stars, the partial Companion began to show independent thought. Still more astonishing, it took independent action."

"What action?" asked Sigrid.

But Stoner understood at once. "The Archetypes," he said. "It created them deep inside itself, hoping it could use them to communicate with us."

"Yes. But not only did the experiment fail, you used them as weapons of war."

Stoner snapped his fingers, excited at the implications. "So that's why all our LFOs shut down a couple of years back! Once this half-Companion of yours understood that we weren't going to do anything but kill each other with them, it turned them all off!"

"Yes. But it had already manifested other signs of awareness as well. Once it understood the danger of exceeding the Limit of Intelligence, it sent half of itself into other-space, to protect this world. Yet even that incredible accomplishment was dwarfed by a feat that brought a trembling to the Web of Worlds."

"What's the 'Web of Worlds?'" Manon asked.

"You mean Eureka," said Stoner.

"Yes. Using its experience with the constructs you call the 'archetypes' as a guide, the incomplete Companion threw all effort into the creation of a being half of itself and half of Humanity. Through her eyes, it could experience your kind and your world as never before. It began to comprehend the enormity of its mistakes, and of yours. Still more remarkable, its creation took on a mind and a seirei all its own. She chose a human as her other-half, and they produced another hybrid which in turn mated with a human other-half. Nothing of this sort has ever been known before!

"And as it gained knowledge and skill, the incomplete Companion was able to interfere in certain Human experiments, in order to create a second line of hybrids. It has surpassed even the most imaginative expectations. Humanity now has two parallel dynasties of Companion/Human hybrids—and a militant spiritual order to both protect them and to allow Humanity to begin exploring some of the Greater Truths—"

"The Vodarek," said Stoner, this time with a fascinated smile. "You're talking about the Vodarek." Wait'll Viyuuden hears this!

"Yes. With your remarkable incomplete Companion, your kind has made tremendous advances in an inconceivably short time. Your hybrid dynasties have shown you the potential for greatness. With a Companion made whole, none can say how far you could together rise."

Slowly, Matt Stoner shook his head, lost in a kind of awe himself. All of Humanity's philosophers've always said that we had the potential to be great. And I never believed it. Or was that just my own excuse? "Okay, but what was it that kept the Coral...what you call the Companion...incomplete? Why did only half of it get to Earth? Did you people forget to send the other part, or what?"

"We forgot nothing." The Observer shook Tommy's head, and her hair danced with pinpoints of blue sparks. "The 'other part' is what you have named The Mist. It was deflected away from this Earth to your moon, where it remained in unknowing stasis. Only recently was it awakened, and returned to make contact with us."

"Awakened by what?" Sigrid asked, drawing closer to Stoner.

Tommy squinted with the effort of struggling to transliterate whatever concepts her Observer was now passing her. "You have been told that you have...ancient and powerful friends. But also there are ancient and powerful enemies. Those who are opposed to races in alliance with Companions."

"Uh-huh." Stoner nodded. Positive and negative, I guess. "But you Observers've beaten them now, right? And our Coral can get together with its, uh, other half, right?"

Jobs' eyes glowed again, as the Observer moved back to his mind. "We have not defeated the Antagonist. Its avatar is all around us, now, shrouding this planet. Soon, it will make its attack."

"But then—"

"Our brief time of safety here is nearly over, Matthew Stoner. Remember all that we have told you and all you have seen. Prepare to move again."

The young couple from Shiretoko turned in silent unison, staring toward the rear of the shop with blank azure eyes. "Hey, wait a minute!" cried Stoner. "It's still dangerous as hell out there! And besides, where can we go? In case you haven't noticed, this place's surrounded by some kind of solid energy barrier."

"Yes, we have noticed," said Gene's lips as he moved to Manon's side. "We constructed it. The girl called Rosalie—she can now walk, though poorly. You and Sigrid Anderson must help her to follow. Quickly; events are proceeding in precise order, now."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-One

After the Ball

-#-

Go limp! Ride with the fall! When you hit, roll with the impact! All the old training commands from his Federation military basic training roared through Hal's mind as he dropped, weightless, toward the frighteningly solid ballroom floor. But all he had time to do in the fraction of a second remaining was to somehow twist his falling body around to avoid hitting face-first.

Something hissed past him, leaving a thin trail of gray vapor. An RPP round. I've gotta—

And then he smashed into the hardwood planks, ripe with the chemical stench of polishing wax. All the breath driven from his body, Hal could only watch for an instant as jagged white flakes of the dome overhead clattered down around him. Somehow, he had remembered to lift his arm before his head as he fell, keeping his skull from shattering like an overripe pancha fruit. But the blinding dizziness and spotty vision were beyond anything he'd expected. Hal rolled to one side, conscious only of the absolute need to move, to keep moving, anywhere, fast. For Phaedra's sake—and his own.

Phaedra. The memory energized him as nothing else could. Still dizzy, he tried to come to his feet, but skidded in the shards of roofing plastic covering the floor like a spring snowfall. And another RPP projectile pierced the spot where he would have been without slipping; Hal managed to rise as far as a crouch and waddled to the cover of a stainless-steel refreshment table waiting on its rubber rollers near to one wall.

Each movement drew pain from unexpected parts of his body. He knew that the Coralian Gift would heal whatever injuries the fall had earned him, but that would take a good twenty minutes, maybe more. Got to live with it. Hal wasted several precious seconds looking around as far as he could see, scouting the layout of the immense Ballroom, looking for the source of the RPP fire.

Seems like I've landed near the centerline of the room, but a little off toward the eastern wall. Padded couches everywhere, for sitting down between dances, I guess, and refreshment tables. But where's Phaedra? And Alan and Maeter? For that matter, where the hell're the kidnappers? Don't tell me—

Not far away, perhaps eight or nine meters, stood a small metal tripod with telescoping legs. Atop it was screwed a device that could only be a pocket video camera. And at once, Hal knew that he was in the right place. This was going to be videocast, then. Whatever these sons of bitches were going to do, they planned on broadcasting it. Which means they don't yet know that outside transmissions're being blocked by the Barrier. And it also means...the hostages are still alive.

He slithered himself nearer to a chrome-and-plush couch, then risked a quick peek. But a quick dagger of pain through his neck made him lean out further than he'd intended, and the price of the move was another RPP round that buried itself in the expensively gilded wall behind him. Hal drew back at once. Not a fragmentation round; just a standard hollow-point projectile. These guys must have a lot of faith in their marksmanship. A Federation terror squad, just like everybody figured. The thought brought with it an urgent load of fresh fears. Where the hell is Phaedra?

Hal froze. A thought...no, a concept had planted itself in his mind, unbidden. He'd felt it before, more than once, before the booze had closed in like an oily fogbank, shrouding it away. He tuned himself to it, listened for it...

There! Not a message, but a shape in his thoughts, a warm presence. Without looking, Hal knew his forehead was glowing as the node responded to Phaedra's neural link. There's a couch next to that furled curtain over there, by the big filigreed table. Its back is to me, but that's where she is.

He risked edging further beyond the couch, putting his weight to his left arm as he held his own RPP steady in the right...and then dropped to the ground when the elbow flamed in piercing pain. Broken, he understood. Left elbow must've cracked when I landed on the floor. Not healed yet. Hurts like all hell, but at least I didn't shout. Maybe I've got what it takes to make a hero, yet. Hal gave the view ahead a quick once-over. Still nobody in sight; they're pros, all right. And at least one of'em's a Swallowtail. Don't get overconfident, Hal, my boy.

From overhead came the hissing crack of an RPP round, followed by the explosion of a buckshot cannister projectile against the floor not far away. Hal pulled back and looked up to the starry ceiling, interrupted by the dark, jagged opening he'd left there himself. And beyond the artificial sky, like gods or devils of old, knelt a cluster of ODSP patrollers, their sidearms pointed downward. How much can they see from up there? Do they think I'm one of the kidnappers?

Another shot echoed from very nearby as the Federation strike team returned fire with a single incendiary round. NO, dammit! If a crossfire starts, Phaedra could be hit! The painted universe overhead erupted for a moment in magnesium brilliance, and when it cleared, the ODSP officers were no longer to be seen. Injured? Dead? Gone for backup? Hal couldn't be sure. But it means these Federation scum're at least as confused as they are. For how long?

Fresh pain grabbed at his lower back and left elbow. With his body still erratically healing, rushing the kidnappers would be out of the question, even if it would do any good. Yet he had to get to where Phaedra was being held, and fast. Holding back panic, Hal forced himself into something resembling logical thought as he searched for something he could turn to his advantage. The only furniture consisted of dozens of high-backed couches and silvery refreshment carts stacked with magnums of cheap champagne. Not much to work with! He stared at the back of the couch hiding Phaedra...

Phaedra.

She was taking shape in his thoughts again, but stronger this time. Trying to enter his mind, as she had never done before. Hal sucked in his breath and pushed himself against the back of the couch that hid him. No. She mustn't.

—Hal.

No, I can't let her in. I can't let her see what I'm... Can't let her know how much I...

—Hal, it's Phaedra. Can you get this?

But she's a Coralian goddess, and I'm just a...

—Hal, listen! They're getting edgy; getting ready to move, I think...

I don't want her to see all the fears inside me...

—...and I'm not sure they intend to take their hostages with them. They might just settle for killing us right now...

Hal's eyes popped open as the full implications burned their way to the bottom of his heart. Fear and regret and most of all, a terrible rage filled him until nothing was left but the steely resolve to get Phaedra safely back in his arms or...die trying. Inside, he opened something in his mind, something he had suspected but never opened before, giving way to Phaedra's probing thoughts.

+I'm here, Babe. About four meters behind you. What's the situation?

—Hal! There's one holding a gun on me, an RPP. The rest're kneeling next to the wall, four of them, while the Swallowtail talks to them. Whispering. Something about clearing out, fast, but not leaving Maeter and Alan and me behind. They were gonna broadcast us on video, torture us, then kill us, but I think they're arguing about cutting their losses and...

+I get the picture. Listen, Phaedra, there's something your mother told me about, once. Something her and your father can do. They can see through each others' eyes. Can you do that? Can you?

Her fear was a sour discord, confusing her thought.

—Seeing through...? I know what you... Hal, the one holding the gun on me is looking my way!

+Okay, doll, okay. Just let me see him, okay? The way Anemone can. Through your eyes.

She's ready to panic, Hal knew. She doesn't know if we can form that kind of connection. Because I never would let her in, dammit to hell! I wouldn't let her in before, and so she's not sure she can do it now, it's all my—

No. Enough of that crap. Enough! FOREVER.

+You can do it. If Anemone can do it, so can you. Just look straight ahead, and let it all come to me, the way you're letting your thoughts out right now. I'm ready for you, Phaedra. Ready and waiting.

Dim fragments touched him, from the edges of her thought. Doubt and uncertainty and a wounding horror of inadequacy that Hal had never suspected she was hiding spiraled in her mind, eating at her confidence, blocking her concentration.

—I'm not sure I can...

+Yeah, you can, doll. Look in front of you. I'm gonna make my move, but you've got to look in front of you and let me see what you see.

Precious milliseconds trickled away. Hal knew that even if she could do the thing he needed her to do, his own hasty plan was a wild gamble from which all their lives now dangled by a single filament. He flattened himself on the floor, drew his RPP and cycled the projectile preselector: Standard Ballistic, then Fragmentation. If everything worked... Everything's gotta work. He crept nearer to the back of the couch where he knew Phaedra lay bound, millimeter by millimeter, feeling more and more exposed, as if a gigantic spotlight held him in its rays.

A hazy, disorienting sensation of vision slid into his mind. He shut his own eyes to avoid the dizzying, seeing-double confusion.

+That's it, Phaedra. That's it. Keep it coming. Not quite clear enough, yet...

In the field of view taking slow shape behind his eyes, Hal could make out a dark blur—her Federation guard, he was sure—standing just ahead, with a larger, shifting blur next to the wall. That would be the rest of the group, deciding their next move... The bigger blur shifted upward, elongating...

—Hal, the others're standing up! I think they've made up their minds—

+It's all under control, Babe. Just focus on what you're seeing—

It all came to Hal's mind in an instant. A brown-haired girl with cold eyes, surrounded by four black-clad Federation covert commandos coming to their feet. And in front of Phaedra, a single guard, male, holding out his own RPP, pointed directly at her head. Tears blurred her vision for an instant, but there was no time, no time.

+I love you, Phaedra.

Aiming through the vision in his wife's eyes, Hal touched the trigger. His ballistic round ripped through the back of Phaedra's couch and into the Federation kidnapper's heart just beyond. The man jerked backward, collapsing as his own shot, intended for Phaedra, went wild, into the ceiling.

Hal lurched to his own feet, still seeing through Phaedra, and sent his Fragmentation round into the shiny cart laden with champagne bottles beside the rest of the strike team. The bottles exploded in a messy eruption of glass fragments and white suds that sent the startled operatives scattering, sliding on the suddenly slippery and glass-sharp floor. Before they could recover their wits, Hal opened his own eyes and unloaded round after round of the splintering fragmentation shells into them, over and over, till their screams dulled to wet sighs and their own weapons fell silent.

Diminishing footsteps echoed across the ballroom floor and beyond, but Hal was paying no attention. He leaped over the couch with the smoking hole in its backrest and found Phaedra, still in her gauzy nightie, one shoulder strap ripped away to the chest.

He smiled, and blinked back tears. "I love your outfit," he told her.

"I wore it just for you. Untie me, please?"

He fumbled behind her, where her hands and feet were bound cruelly beneath her wings with ordinary electrical cord. "I'm working on it...this stuff was knotted by experts...there." The cords dropped free and Phaedra flung her eager arms about him, squeezing as though to make up for too many missed embraces.

"I love you, Hal," she laughed and wept. "I love you. You came for me. I love you."

Hal kissed her, again and again. "I love you, doll. Look, I'm sorry for...you know, everything. But that's over, now. Phaedra, we've got so much to talk about, now, I've got so many things to say..."

"Then how about saying them later?" The voice was Maeter's, and it came from along the wall, half-hidden by one of the elegant draperies.

He remembered, then, that she and Alan were prisoners, too. They sat bound back to back on one of the satin couches, looking very impatient. "Sorry." Hal hurried to them and unwound the electric cord ensnaring them. Both of them, he noticed, were lightly speckled with champagne foam.

Alan stretched with a crackling of joints, then helped Maeter to her feet. "Are they dead?" he asked, pointing to the clutter of bodies lying next to them.

"I don't know. One way or another, we'd all better be out of here before the Gift can heal the ones that aren't. We should—"

He was interrupted by the pounding of running boots. Hal pivoted, crouched and drew the RPP once again as he spun round to face whatever fresh threat might be bearing down upon them now.

"Hold fire, Baron Farnsworth!" shouted the ODSP captain of the guard, raising one hand and signaling the half-dozen men behind him to stop. "We're Ocean Dunes Security Patrol! You led us on a merry chase before we recognized you and saw what you were doing. Sorry it took us so long to get down here, but you seem to have things in hand." His eyes strayed to Phaedra's torn nightie. "Um, that was a pretty smart move, sir, breaking through the dome like that. But damn risky."

It was an accident, Hal nearly blurted. Or was it?

Before he could decide, Alan spoke up: "The leader of this team got away, Captain; I saw her. It was a Swallowtail, direct from Federation External Intelligence. Dark eyes and light brown hair down to her jaw. She was in charge of this kidnapping-assassination operation. Don't underestimate her, they're the most dangerous operatives the Federation has."

"I know." He gave a solemn nod of agreement. "I've heard about that lot. O'Brien; Dunlop—you two'll stay here with me and guard these casualties while they start to heal. Chain'em up while I call for reinforcements. The rest of you, escort these ladies and gentlemen to a suite and secure it till you hear from me."

Hal wrapped one arm around Phaedra as they departed from the Grand Ballroom. "Aren't you going to tie up that top piece?" he whispered.

"You think I carry safety pins around with me?" She held her head high, marching barefoot beside him. "Besides, Mother always says never to pass up a chance to be the center of attention." But she hesitated for an instant, and looked around them. "Hey, did you hear somebody calling us?"

"I don't know...maybe. It seemed like..."

"Oops, be careful, the floor's wet over here. It's champagne. Don't slip on the wine."

Hal winced. "No. Never again."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Two

A Letter from Home

-#-

"ESCAPED?" Holland leaned forward, staring at his monitor with eyes as red and caustic as his temper. "He was one man, locked in a single guarded cell, in the middle of a stone pyramid, for God's sake! How in the hell could he have escaped?"

The squirming image of Jean-Baptiste Arban on the screen composed itself with some obvious effort before continuing. "It wasn't as simple as all that, First Speaker. The Senator demanded to see his lawyer, Mr. Leo Stokowski—which of course was his right. It now appears that Stokowski's been harboring secret Antipat leanings. In fact, we now have reason to believe that there's been a secret cadre of Syndicalist sympathizers all through the city, waiting."

"For what?" Holland's voice cracked with the effort of holding it steady.

"Apparently for just such a crisis situation as this, sir. Our organization has suspected such a movement for some time, but they're sophisticated and very slippery, and we've never had any clear evidence against them. Senator Eisinger seems to be very highly placed among them; they made his escape a high priority."

Holland's knuckles showed white as he clamped them about the arms of his chair. He ran through a series of silent Vodarek meditational exercises to clear his mind before proceeding. It wasn't working yet.

Dr. Egan, as though sensing his rage and frustration, leaned back and folded both hands in his lofty way. "How was Mr. Stokowsky able to carry out this brazen crime, Commander? Did he have the assistance of traitors here in this very building?"

"No, Prime Minister; all Pyramid staff have had thorough and ongoing background checks, and no one is reported missing or engaged in any unusual activity." A tiny droplet of sweat crept down Arban's temple, disappearing behind his right ear. "Eisinger's breakout was very well thought-out. The lawyer's briefcase contained canisters of an anaesthetic gas, which he released as the Security personnel were allowing him into Eisinger's cell. You'll understand, sir, that we've always been understaffed, and the current crisis has stretched our available strength to the—"

Egan nodded gently. "Understood. Please continue, Commander."

"Yes, Sir. It seems that Stokowsky carried a set of nose filters to protect him from the gas; presumably, he passed a pair to Eisinger as well. Afterward, he handcuffed the Senator to his own wrist and led him out, as though taking him in legal custody. In all the confusion on the lower levels, no one thought to question them. Probably most were still unaware that the Senator had been arrested at all. Our main concern, Sir, has been to make certain no subversive elements can mount an attack from outside the Pyramid. We had no specific plan in place to deal with anyone escaping from the inside. For that, Prime Minister, I must accept full respon—"

"Skip it, Jean-Baptiste," said Holland, and dropped back into his chair. "What's this about attacks from outside? I haven't heard anything about that."

"No Sir, you and the Prime Minister have been very much preoccupied with other matters. Within the last few hours, several of our people in the City have reported rumors of Antipat disturbances, even whispers of riots. Everything's in controlled chaos on the streets already, what with the weather disturbances, trapar-electrical displays in the skies and the extraterrestrial mass now spreading out around the Earth. It's all been fairly low-key so far, First Speaker, but frightened people can become dangerous, if the right spark is applied." He swallowed, and another sweat rivulet made its way along his jaw.

"And you suspect Eisinger is heading for his box of matches. Okay, what's done is done. Just have your people—if you can spare any—keep on monitoring the situation down there on the streets, and report anything you hear to us. Carry on, Commander Arban." He switched the monitor to the secure Parliamentary Information channel before the Commander could perspire himself into heat exhaustion, then began typing:

THIS IS FIRST SPEAKER HOLLAND NOVAK TO ALL REPRESENTATIVES OF THE INTERDOMINION SENATE. ATTENTION!

SENATOR DETLEV EISINGER, IMPRISONED FOR TREASON AND FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST THEIR MAJESTIES, HAS ESCAPED WITH THE AID OF AN ANTIPATRICIAN UNDERGROUND GROUP. WE DO NOT YET KNOW THEIR INTENTIONS. WE ADVISE ALL SENATORS TO TAKE MAXIMUM PRECAUTIONS FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY. THE SITUATION IS OF THE UTMOST SERIOUSNESS! IF YOU OR YOUR FAMILIES ARE THREATENED IN ANY WAY, PLEASE REPORT IT AT ONCE.

-HN

"There. At least they won't be able to say we didn't give them any warning."

Across the room, one of the temporary Command Center military assistants turned in her chair and raised a tentative hand. "Er...First Speaker?"

Holland winced. It could only be more bad news. "Yeah?"

"Admiral Juergens is online. He requests contact with you and Dr. Egan at once."

Egan sent a sharp glance Holland's way. "Put him on our screens at once, Lieutenant."

The High Admiral's rocky face, transformed as it was by the age reversal of the Coralian Gift, nevertheless managed a forbidding aspect of rage and worry as he scowled into the video sensor on his flagship's communicator. Blotches and streaks of many-colored interference only added to the sense of urgency. "Egan? Novak? You're both there? I can barely see you."

"We are here, Admiral," Dr. Egan assured him. "We await your information."

"Well, you're not going to like it. The short of it is, I'm going to have to disperse the Fleet. The trapar density up here is so damn uneven that it's all we can do to keep our ships in the air. And what little trapar's still available has gotten so thin that it's almost useless anyway. And worst of all—" he leaned nearer to the sensor "—my staff is telling me that the continental trapar shield itself is thinning drastically. I doubt that it's doing the InterDominion much good in the way of protection, the shape it's in now. That damn thing in the city below us is trying to suck in all the available trapar from all over the planet."

"We know that," said Holland, rubbing at his eyes. "Woz and his group at the University are monitoring things for us."

Dr. Egan nodded agreement. "If the IPF Fleet can no longer remain airborne, you have full permission to return to your bases and remain on high alert. If that is not possible, ground all airships which cannot maintain flight altitude long enough for return. Have them land as safely as possible, wherever their captains think best. You have done a commendable job of remaining on duty for this long, sir, but for now we must all acknowledge that we are outmatched."

The High Admiral turned away for a moment to shout some orders that came unintelligibly over the deteriorating communications link. When he reappeared once more, he said, "I've relayed your orders, Prime Minister, but we'll spread out, and stay airborne till the last possible moment. Damned if we'll turn away without a fight, from an enemy we can't even see. Is this the 'alien invasion' you were thinking of?"

"That is not yet clear, Admiral." He frowned deeply and pressed both hands together, the muscles of his arms quivering. "Though we may yet hope that we are not so entirely defenseless as you fear. Please give my compliments to you and your courageous crews."

Always the optimist, aren't you, Greg? Holland looked away from the now-dark monitor, toward Yuki, who watched heavy-eyed from a soft chair in a corner of the command room. Not far from her, Junior lay sleeping across three of the smaller utility chairs. The unspoke devotion that kept them here moved him in unexpected ways, and at that moment Holland wanted nothing more than to preserve for them both a future without fear, without the looming threat of annihilation. That alone, he knew, would complete the atonement he had so desperately sought—they had sought—so long ago on the wings of a stolen airship.

Another of the IPF technicians—Holland found that he could no longer remember all of their names—broke into his reverie. "We're getting another message, sirs. It's from...from the Presidium of the High Council of the Federation."

Dr. Egan perked up at once. "Indeed? Is it genuine? How was it transmitted?"

"It's still fragmented, sir. Professor Wossell's team is decrypting it and filling in the missing pieces; they seem to think it's authentic.. The Federation transmitter is sending it over and over, and as each incomplete pass is received, the missing bits are added to the whole message. Our decryption group says it's being transmitted on an ancient AM frequency, bounced off the highly-ionized upper layers of the atmosphere. There's—"

"Clever," said Holland. "Put it on our monitors, Lieutenant...?"

"Deutsch, Sir. Oliver Deutsch. The Federation—whatever part of their government is behind this—isn't even encoding it, so you can read it in clear text."

Holland blinked to clear away the blur from his vision, and read:

TO THE LEADERS OF THE INTERDOMINION TERRITORIES. IN THE CURRENT STATE OF EMERGENCY, IT SEEMS WE MUST JOIN OUR RESOURCES TO DEFEND EARTH FROM THE UNKNOWN CLOUD NOW ENVELOPING THE PLANET. IT IS MY PROPOSAL THAT WE SHOULD WORK TOGETHER FOR OUR COMMON DEFENSE. OUR DIFFERENCES MUST NOT DIVIDE US IN THIS HOUR OF GREAT NEED. PLEASE REPLY ON THIS FREQUENCY, WHILE WE ARE STILL ABLE TO DO SO.

CESAR FRANCK, PREMIER AND SUPREME COUNCILOR

THE FEDERATION OF PREDIGIO TOWERS

Dr. Egan pressed both sets of his fingertips together. "Interesting. How do we know this is genuine?"

"Professor Wossel's transmitting an addendum, Sir. He says cryptanalysis shows that the word patterns are consistent with those of Cesár Franck. And the signals definitely originate from the vicinity of Pilgrim Island, probably from the Central Tower of the Federation State Networks."

"Well, I'm damned," said Holland. "I never thought I'd see the day that the Federation would sue for peace. Please forward this message—and Woz's addendum—to all senators."

Lieutenant Deutsch hesitated. "Even the hostile Antipat ones, Sir?"

"Yeah, them, too. Maybe it'll help bring them to their senses. And get Senator Hidemaro Konoye here in person, if you can. Have him bring any other Monarchist senators he can get with him. I imagine a lot of them are trying to see to the safety of their families right now, but if they're available, they've got a right to be here."

"Very wise, Holland," Egan mumured. "Very much so. Now our immediate problem is how to respond to this offer."

Holland snorted and straightened in his seat, bringing sudden sharp rips of pain to his lower back. He did his best to conceal them. "Exactly how 'immediate' is it, Doc? More than the alien cloud wrapping itself around the Earth? More than our entire military airship fleet near to helpless? More than Eureka and Renton going missing on us? You mean we actually get to prioritize this stuff, now?"

"You are both mistaken." Viyuuden swirled in the nearest door, bringing with him a draft of humid air from the corridor and an irritatingly unperturbed Lewis Ragowsky. The Professor, Holland noted, had shaved away his rough beard—evidently razors had been in short supply during his years on the Arkship—and changed into plain workman's coveralls. But otherwise he still radiated the smug content of a frog on a lily pad.

The priest pulled off his long black cloak of office and dropped it to the nearest empty visitors' chair. "I came as soon as I heard of the fleet's difficulties. And to reassure you that the true contest is not between us and the Federation, nor even between us and the alien construct."

Holland's answering smile dripped with sarcasm. "Do tell. Shall I pass that on to our pal Cesár Franck and his buddies in the Federation High Council?"

"There's no need; they wouldn't understand it anyway; not yet." He folded his arms across his chest, as though posing for some heroic sculpture.

"Then don't bother trying to explain it. Lieutenant—get Woz's communications specialists to stand by for a reply to the Federation. Have them use the same AM wavelength and signal-bouncing technique as the original message."

"Aye, First Speaker."

Holland expected Viyuuden to object over some abstruse theological point, but he only stood, watching like a referee at a football match. "You've got nothing to say, for a change?" Holland asked.

"About the developments between our InterDominion and the Federation? No. For all its apocalyptic implications, that is not the proper domain of the Community of Vodarek. No, Holland, I have—we have—become increasingly troubled of late, over the...emanations of the Coral." He waved his fingers in the air, striving for the proper words. "There is a profound...unease. In human terms, almost a combination of terror and yearning. We are all balanced upon a knife-edge between great joy and blackest despair, and it all focuses upon Ocean Dunes. Many of the faithful are in the Temple at this moment, meditating profoundly, seeking the meaning of it."

For all his skepticism, Holland had no liking for such ominous pronouncements. "Yeah, well, if Eureka and Renton were here, they could probably throw some light on it. But they're not, so we'll all just have to slog through on our own. We can start—"

"First Speaker!" called one of the technicians, from the other side of the room. "There's an urgent message from Commander Arban. It seems there's...an insurrection going on in the city!"

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Three

Standoff

-#-

One of the IPF City Patrol administrative assistants, his long strides barely keeping up with Jean-Baptiste Arban's, tried his best to dissuade his Acting Commander to remain behind his desk.

"But sir," he panted, "The IPFSec Commander, can't go alone into the front lines of a combat area!"

"This isn't the Federation, Takemitsu. I'm not bound by Battle Protocols. We're spread too thin to send anyone else out there. Besides—" he slowed a bit to tug on a pair of black reinforced gloves "—there's treason going on. A dangerous mob that wants to bring back all the things we spent so much of our lives fighting against. The people of the Heart of the World—and the rest of the InterDominion—have a right to know that their top law-enforcement officer is out there standing against it, not sitting on my butt in a nice, safe office."

They passed through a room full of Dispatching clerks, some of whom looked up in surprise to see the Acting Commander marching toward the nearest exit from the Pyramid. "There are twenty-three City Patrol officers stationed around the Pyramid at the moment, sir. I've informed them you're coming. The rest are scattered about the City."

"Fine. Have someone announce from the public emergency speakers that there's a treasonous uprising going on." He plowed onward, tightening the buckle of his gunbelt, where a pair of RPPs waited patiently.

"But Commander—"

"Hurry, Takemitsu! And have the Ministry of Information broadcast the same warning. We want to keep casualties down to a minimum." Jean-Baptiste paused for only an instant to give him a reassuring smile. "Don't worry—this is exactly what Lord Sorel would have done, I'm sure. And once you've got those announcements out...well, one more officer would be welcome company."

Corporal Takemitsu, nodded, once, and turned on his heel, taking off at a full run back toward the administrative offices on the next level. His thoughts fully focused, Jean-Baptiste resumed his double-time march toward the Pyramid's side-entrance portal, the one used by the City Patrol.

Passing through the guarded doors, Arban decided that this must be how it felt to step out on the surface of another world. The sky overhead roiled and swirled with dark clouds the color of dirty laundry, and a violent wind whipped through the streets, sending small objects, dust and a stinging sleet rushing before it. He leaned forward against the wind, just as a ragged thread of blue-green lightning exploded among the clouds. The video monitors don't tell half the story. This is much worse than I thought.

A helmeted figure—one of the regular Temple guards—staggered into the gale, to hand Arban a pair of goggles and a wired Patrol helmet. "Here, sir," he bellowed, his voice a soft murmur against the roaring weather, "you'll need these."

Arban nodded, and slipped the protective gear on, gratefully. He turned on the radio transceiver and motioned to the guard to use his own radio and helmet mike. "Any signs of trouble out here?"

"Not yet, sir." The reply came in a thin squawk, broken by bursts of static. "People are worried all right, but these weather conditions are mostly keeping them at home."

"Only the good ones. There've been reports of an irate crowd gathering at E and Fourteenth streets. No word on what their purpose, if any. But Senator Eisinger is leading them, and they're heading this way, toward the Pyramid."

Corporal Takemitsu rushed out, breathless, bearing a heavy-gauge projectile rifle as he peered down the wind-swept streets. "I delivered your message, sir. The Senator's not wasting any time, is he?"

"No." Privately, Arban had hoped that Eisinger's obviously long-planned insurrection could wait until the City Patrol could be mustered into one place to protect the Pyramid and its maze of shrines, Royal residences and governmental offices. "My guess is, he's hoping to stage some kind of palace coup d'etat while we're in such a disorganized state over this extraterrestrial crisis."

"Yes, sir. There's—" he shouldered his weapon and assumed a fighting stance. "Wait a minute, we have visitors."

Arban saw that it was true. From along the side of the Pyramid he could see, black-suited figures were emerging from hidden exits, running nearer. Others came from around the distant corners, to take up stations at three-meter intervals. "At ease, Takemitsu," he said. "It's just the Guardians." In spite of a prickle of resentment, Arban could not help feeling relieved at seeing reinforcements of any kind.

One of the Guardians—the close-fitting black uniform revealed the outline of a woman—approached him, switching her helmet communicator to the IPF frequency. "Major Magda Wesselényi, Commander Arban. Guardians of the Flame. You seem to be very short-handed at the moment."

"You already know we are; the bulk of our City personnel are dispersed throughout the Heart of the World, on patrol."

The Major's black helmet dipped in acknowledgement. "Of course. But our report is that a sizable mob of Federation sympathizers is headed this way, and swelling rapidly. Senator Eisinger seems to have more support than anyone knew."

"It's not that simple," said Takemitsu. "He has a couple of hundred hard-core followers, and we have files on them all. But people are scared." He gestured upward, toward the churning, glowing sky. "Scared people sometimes flock to anybody who sounds confident and seems like he's doing something."

"Yes. But what he intends to do is the overthrow of this government, and the dispersal of the Fellowship of the Light of Vodarek. You cannot allow the former, and we will not allow the latter."

To that, Jean-Baptiste had no real answer. He was grateful when a call came through his radio, from one of the outlying patrol officers. "Arban, here. What is it?"

"Sergeant Goodman here, sir." The voice was rough and broken with static, but still understandable. "My team is at the intersection of D and Tenth streets. Eisinger's mob is on the move. He's at the head of an ugly-looking crowd. And most of them seem to be armed with government-issued small arms—RPPs, needlers, projectile rifles. But also a couple of concussion mortars, if I saw correctly. Our guess is that someone had access to one of the IPF arsenals."

Arban seethed. "And that 'someone' is very likely the Antipat senators. Maybe Eisinger himself. Anything larger?"

"Not that we've seen, sir. What are your orders? Shall we attempt arrest?"

"No. Fall in behind them and follow at about a thirty-meter distance, but do not initiate any aggressive moves. Have all the other sub-units in your sector do the same. If they attempt to enter the Pyramid—and we must assume that's their purpose—we want to keep them in one place. Give me a status update every five minutes."

"Aye, Commander."

Jean-Baptiste relayed this information to Major Wesselényi and Takemitsu. "Major, have your people seal all the entrances to the Pyramid, would you?"

"Already done, Commander Arban. Though not even the armored doors could stand long against repeated concussion-mortar fire." A cardboard box, borne on the dusty wind, flapped toward her like a huge, predatory butterfly. With two magnificently-executed RPP shots, she blasted it from the air.

"A bit trigger-happy, aren't you, Major?" asked Arban. He was grateful that she could not see his smirk.

If she felt any chagrin, she did not show it. "These are trigger-happy times."

"Goodman here," announced his helmet radio. "The mob has reached D and Ninth streets, Commander, and it's still growing."

"Already?"

"Aye, sir, They're double-timing it all the way. Almost as if they know something's going to happen, and they want to reach the Pyramid before they lose some kind of window of opportunity. Units 120, 87, 65 and 98 have joined us; we're shadowing them, as you ordered. Wait, there's a sound...it's the City emergency PA announcement system, warning people about the mob and urging everyone to stay indoors. But it seems that someone—the Senator himself, I think—has a bullhorn up there. He's telling everyone to ignore the announcements, to keep on marching. He claims that the, er, 'cowards and incompetents' in the government have lost their grip, and that the Royal Family is..."

"I get the picture, Sergeant." On the off-chance that the Guardians might be monitoring local IPF frequencies, Arban had no wish to inflame them any further with Antipat insults to the Coralian monarchy. "Maintain your positions. Arban out."

"The traitors are approaching more rapidly, Commander," said the Major.

"Yes." He would not give her the satisfaction of asking how she knew. "How many of your people do you have stationed around the Pyramid perimeter?"

"Seventy-eight. With at least another sixty scattered throughout the City. Reverend Viyuuden has just given orders that they should converge here, with us. The Will of Vodarek is making itself manifest."

Maybe I should have listened more closely to Lord Commander Sorel's discourses about Vodarek philosophy. "The real problem is, what are we going to do once they reach us? We can't just go shooting into a crowd of InterDominion citizens, however misguided. It'll only make more people sympathetic to them."

Magda's lips moved silently behind her visor as she spoke with other Guardians on their reserved frequency. "Fortunately," she said at last, "the Royal Family is not in the Pyramid at the moment. Our duty is limited to protecting the Temple and its various shrines. No matter what the political implications."

"You can't just ignore them, though. Our people up there in the Command Center are doing a balancing act right now, trying to steer us through an unknown threat from space and high treason here on earth. If Eisinger and his rabble interrupt them now, we're all done for."

His headphones crackled again. "Sergeant Goodman, here, Commander. The mob is now crossing over to A street, sir. You should be able to see them yourself, very soon."

Jean-Baptiste peered up the broad main thoroughfare that ran directly to the Pyramid's main entrance. Through the dust and windborn debris, he thought to see a dark mass rolling, like the foam of some polluted river. Another flash of blue-green lightning revealed it as a line of marching humans, rolling inexorably on in irregular formation. And as Eisinger's mob turned the corner down A street, it grew, and kept on growing, till Arban could make no useful estimate of its size. "Weapons at the ready," he announced to the waiting IPF troops around the Pyramid. "No one is to fire until I give the order."

Beside him, Major Wesselényi issued the same instructions to her Guardians, no longer troubling to keep her voice low. Behind and above, an RPP projectile spent itself against the Pyramid's unyielding stone, harmlessly sprinkling metal fragments below. Coproral Takemitsu cocked his projectile rifle.

"Steady as she goes, Lieutenant," warned Arban.

"Just being prepared, sir. Is that Eisinger himself, at the head of the mob? It's hard to tell in this damn dull light."

"We'll know soon enough."

"Down to Seventh street, Commander Arban," came the voice in his helmet earphones. "Some loyalists have been throwing things at them from the sidewalks. Bricks, garbage and such...there goes a burning wastepaper can, tossed out a window. But nothing organized."

"Acknowledged, Sergeant. Don't interfere—yet. We don't want the streets falling into anarchy. Too many people could be harmed." The wandering wind shifted for a moment, and Jean-Baptiste could hear snatches of speech, now, Eisinger bellowing exhortations to his mob.

"The man is insane," said Magda.

"Maybe. Now there's a philosophical question for you, Major Wesselényi: why doesn't the Coralian Gift treat insanity as an illness and heal it? How is 'insanity' defined in this case? Or is it only we humans who claim the right to make that distinction?"

She turned to face him, her visor glittering in the lightning. "Are you a communicant of Vodarek? I don't recall ever seeing you in the Temple."

"Maybe you will. If we make it through this." Once again, he warned the pitifully few patrollers around the Pyramid not to fire without orders. Dammit, we should have had more City patrollers, right from the beginning. Trouble was, we were always preparing for a direct attack from the Federation, not for treason right here at home. Hindsight is always so clear.

Another status report came in from Sergeant Goodman; Arban scarcely noticed, for the mob filled the street ahead, now. Almost comically, some of them were even carrying flaming torches, like something out of an ancient historical drama. But then, this is history isn't it, Jean-Baptiste? And you're living it.

"We shall be one with the Will of Vodarek," Magda chanted softly beside him, and he realized that she was repeating a meditational antiphon of sorts. And the others within her radio range responded:. "We shall preserve the Flame of Vodarek against all enemies; none shall extinguish the Light of Vodarek..."

The crowd ahead began resolving into individual faces, now. Angry faces, sullen faces, frightened faces, all of them weird and demonic under the writhing light from above. Eisenberg stood in front of them, wild-eyed and exhausted, a dented bullhorn in one hand, an RPP in the other. He wore a pair of workman's coveralls, and might have been any hung-over laborer staggering home from a hard night on the town. Behind him, in the first rows of his followers, he glimpsed several of the more prominent Antipat senators: Makiko Kinoshita; Sándor Kónya; Vaughan Williams and others less immediately familiar. It's like a social register of high-placed treason.

"Arban," the Senator rasped, his voice a faint creak. He lifted the bullhorn and tried again. "Jean-Baptiste Arban. Where is your superior?"

"The Lord Commander Sorel is away on assignment—as you already know."

Several in the front rows of the mob made jeering noises, and cried out in derision. But the Senator raised his arm to silence them, and beckoned Jean-Baptiste to come forward.

"Don't do it, Commander," whispered Takemitsu.

Arban managed a smile. "If I'm taken down, defend yourselves and the Pyramid with everything you've got." And before the Lieutenant could object further, he removed his helmet and stepped forward, into the street.

The twelve paces were the longest he had ever known. Focusing his gaze solely upon Eisinger's unshaven face, he crossed the pavement. There was no sound but the wind. "You wanted to talk, Senator?"

"It's useless to bluff, Arban! You know damn well I'm no longer a participant in your schoolboy government. It's over. You, and Egan, and those bizarre Coralian adolescents have had your day, and now the people are taking what's theirs."

"The only people I see here are a frightened rabble, tagging along behind a man who was once great." He dropped his voice, hoping to reach some remaining shred of rationality in the Senator. "Come back to us, rejoin us, while you still can. Things are rough, and we need everyone we can get to help us pull through."

Eisinger forced a guttural laugh, that trailed off into a coughing fit. "You're damned right, things are rough—for you," he said when it had passed. "Your insane policies are endangering us all. The Federation is onto you and your warmongering; they know you've sent your IPF Fleet out to the borders, taking advantage of the chaos created by your alien friends to mass for an invasion."

"That's nonsense, and you know it! The Fleet was dispatched to Ocean Dunes to—"

"It is not nonsense!" He lifted the bullhorn and screamed it into Jean-Baptiste's face. "We're not listening to your cowardly little make-believe aristocracy any longer, Commander! Once we've reclaimed power, we intend to make alliance with the Federation. Because if nothing else, the Federation understands the uses of strength. And we will finally use our own strength to strike back at this monstrosity that holds the Earth in its alien hands."

Jean-Baptiste held himself upright only with immense effort. Both his ears sang and echoed with the amplified blast of sound, twin spirals of pain that stabbed into his head. The Coralian Gift, he told himself, It'll heal them. Shouldn't take long. Can't hear a damn thing right now...wait, it's coming back, I can hear him again. I won't show the son of a bitch any weakness.

"...to step down peacefully," Eisinger was preaching, waving his arms for emphasis, gobbets of spittle flying from his lips. "And it will all begin here—as we hang Gregory Egan, Holland Novak, that hive of half-alien freaks and all their followers from all the lampposts of this city!"

Arban throttled all trace of rage from his face and voice. "So be it, then. Senator Detlev Eisinger, as a duly empowered legal instrument of the InterDominion of Coral and Humanity, I do now remove you from office and place you under arrest. The charges are high treason, escape from lawful custody and conspiracy. I order you to come with me now, and face the charges proclaimed against you in a court of law." In one quick movement, he snatched the bullhorn from Eisinger's sweaty hand and turned it toward the mob. "In addition, I...ask you citizens of the InterDominion to please return to your homes. We are not, and never have been, plotting to make war on anyone. Coming out here like this accomplishes nothing. I can guarantee you that the InterDominion government is doing all in its power to—"

Eisinger wrestled the bullhorn back with shocking strength. "What do you say to that, people? Shall we continue to be ruled by bunglers and mystics whose fantasies would lead us to oblivion? I say no, and again, NO! Come with me, my friends, as we take the first steps toward reclaiming our world!" He lifted his gun toward Arban's chest...

Jean-Baptiste heard something, then. A rising thunder that shook the pavement beneath his feet with its power. He looked overhead, expecting to see some fresh manifestation of the unknown force choking the earth, but found there nothing new. To his astonishment, ex-Senator Eisinger screamed as a black shadow, cut sharply from a flare of green lightning, fell across him. The front lines of the mob, mad with terror, broke and ran, screaming and trampling each other in an insane rush to get away from...

From what?

Arban turned, and understood.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Four

Family Reunion

-#-

"...and so your probe returned here, fifteen point three-five seconds before it left," said Ariadne.

Dr. Morita leaned back from the table where he'd been taking notes. The boy—Prince Maurice, he reminded himself—had been speaking without pause for twenty minutes, interrupted only by his Coralian wife. The two of them picked up so smoothly from each other that only from the change in voice pitch could a listener tell that more than one person was speaking at all. At first, Morita had been amazed. Then annoyed. And finally, frightened. "There you have it, ladies and gentlemen," he told the blank-faced scientists gathered about the table in his private offices. "A consistent theory to account for the anomalies in our experimental observations, and a request for help—which, in itself, constitutes an experiment to verify that theory. What do you have to say?"

Around the table, the Smolensk research management staff sat, clearly nonplussed by everything the Royal couple had told them. Now, they looked toward Morita himself for enlightenment. He had none to give, so he ignored them for the moment, waiting for them to break their stunned silence.

"Lord and Lady," began Dr. Konishi, as calmly as he could, "let me see if I understand what you've told us. You say that our hyperaccelerated trapar beam displaces objects not only in space, but to a certain extent in time, as well?"

"Yes, Doctor," said Princess Ariadne. "We know it's all rather sudden for you to accept, so Maurice and I have put together a theoretical basis for you. This will explain it all." She pushed a numbered stack of papers across to him, each one closely packed with double-spaced mathematical formulae. Konishi took the top page, scanning it quickly while Morita and the ten others passed the rest among themselves.

Soniya shook her head slowly. "This is very advanced work," she said, frowning. "I recognize a great many of our own findings here and there, but the rest is...ingenious, to say the least. Not to mention, somewhat...unfamiliar. If I may ask, my Lady, who has produced this formulation? Professor Wossel's group hasn't communicated anything like this to us."

"I should say not." Dr. Haffner lifted her own page up for them all to see. "Here, on only the fifth line, I see that the value of pi is assumed to be three. Forgive me, Lord and Lady, but that is such a fundamental error..."

"Please look closer, Doctor," said Prince Maurice. He held his hands folded before him on the tabletop, and it seemed to Morita that he was working very hard to be patient. "We know that pi is an irrational number, and that it's usually expressed as 3.14, stretched out to as many decimal places as you need. But what we wrote there is π[5]. We had to make up a notation for it as we went along, see; it's explained in the appendices. It means 'pi applied recursively in a fifth-dimensional context.' Which turns out to be three. Because that's what happens when you put enough of the right kind of energy into accelerated trapar—it jumps out of the third dimension for a little bit, and into the fifth. And while it's there, it leaves three-dimensional time behind. Funny things happen, then, and the value of pi's one of them."

Though Morita had heard it already, still he smiled at the elegance of it all. Incredible. If this is true... "How, then, do you explain our first series of tests? None of them showed any abnormal temporal effects. We even ran a brief demonstration while Mr. Stoner was here, with a potted rose as the target. None of our instruments registered any time displacement on the target during that experiment."

The Lord and Lady looked to one another for an instant, and the oval jewels on their foreheads blinked, like sunlight from dewdrops. "That's because there're so many variables," said Lady Ariadne. "Levels of input energy; frequency of input energy; mass of the target object; distance from the beam emitter...and some really strange ones that we haven't had time to figure out, yet. The rose was too small, and so were your other experimental targets. When you tried to displace that big capsule, that was when the time effect showed itself."

"You...figured it out?" Dr. DeMorales' fingers trembled as he pointed to the sheet of equations. "You mean...you and your husband? The two of you worked this out by yourselves? In the space of two days?"

"Yes," said the Lady without hesitation, as though she thought it obvious. "Maurice and I discovered that we've got a...a sort of talent for doing this kind of thing when we work together. In just the right way. We looked at your research reports and data, and...this was the only answer that fit. Oh, we knew you wouldn't believe it," she added quickly, as everyone began to object at once. "That's why we decided to bring it to you directly. So you can analyze it yourselves. Without any delay."

"Without delay?" asked DeMorales. "But this will take months of experimentation to verify, Princess. Surely there's no hurry."

Slowly, Morita stood, facing them all. "Yes, there is. We must be ready to begin another run with the Pinwheel within...two hours."

The assembled researchers all made noisy and uncoordinated objections, until Morita raised his hands for silence. "My friends, hear me out. I am all too aware that acting hastily upon unverified data is not the way of scientific experimentation. But in this case, we must look beyond our own narrow interests. The world itself is in very great danger at this moment, and the Prince and Princess have convinced me that using the Pinwheel to displace a manned capsule to the town of Ocean Dunes is the only hope for our salvation."

"Ocean Dunes?" said Konishi. "But that place has been surrounded by an energy barrier of some sort. Haven't you been watching the Ministry news reports? Nothing can get in or out through it."

Prince Maurice drummed his fingers on the tabletop as though restraining a vast impatience. "If you'll look on page two of our outline, Doctor, you'll see how that fits in with our figures. The last experimental capsule appeared here exactly fifteen point three-five seconds before it left. Radio signals from Ocean Dunes are so garbled that no one can make sense of them, but the messed-up signals keep looping at fifteen point three-five second intervals. That ratio keeps popping up all through our figures, there. In fact, it comes up so often that we made up a constant for it, that we call the 'Trapar Temporal Constant.'"

"I noticed that, My Lord" said Soniya. "But what has it to do with the barrier around Ocean Dunes?"

Ariadne smiled and brushed a truant strand of metallic blue-green hair back from her face. "It's that signal-looping delay from inside the town, you see. It happens at the same interval as your returning capsule. In fact, it was your experiment that gave Maurice and I the clue we needed to see how to get around the barrier."

"I don't..." Soniya spread her hands helplessly. "But what has that to do with...?"

"It's kind of obvious, don't you think? The reason nothing can damage the field around Ocean Dunes is that it's never really there. It exists fifteen point three five seconds in the future. That's why nothing can touch it or get through it."

Inappropriate as it was, Morita had to laugh at the perfect simplicity of the explanation. "And that is why our Royal friends need our help, ladies and gentlemen. In order to pierce the barrier, they require us to transmit a capsule into Ocean Dunes. It will arrive fifteen point three five seconds in the past, thus nullifying the barrier's effects. And it will pass through without hindrance."

Dr. Purcell—a Vodarek communicant, Morita recalled—jumped to his feet, horrified. "No, my Lord and Lady! You mustn't! Yes, I admit that your theories seem sound, but...they are still theories; unproven. So many things can go wrong...so many risks...an untried technique. To put it plainly, you are far too important to the InterDominion to risk your sacred persons. Let one of us make the journey instead. I, myself, will gladly volunteer, sacrificed if need be..."

Ariadne cut him off, gently. "You're very brave, Doctor, and Maurice and I appreciate your offer. But it must be us who make the trip."

"And two others," added Maurice, looking suddenly very grave.

An amber signal blinked on Morita's communications board. But he already knew its significance, and he made no move to pick up the audio receiver.

"Others?" Purcell wanted to know. "What two others?"

At the rear of the room, the electronic security lock on the office door flashed red—indicating a break-in—then yellow, then green, then all three at once. A bright flash of blue-green enveloped it for an instant, and with a final click, the door swung slowly open, revealing two tall, imposing figures silhouetted against the harsh glare of the Pinwheel's overhead cesium lighting.

"That would be us," said Renton, gesturing Eureka before him into the room.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Noose Tightens

-#-

Junior Novak rubbed at his sleep-gritty eyes and sat up. All hell was breaking loose in the Operational Command Center, and he wished at once that he hadn't nodded off and missed the start of it.

"First Speaker!" one of the technicians shouted from his console. "There's an urgent message from Commander Arban. It seems there's...an insurrection going on in the city!"

"Now what the hell?" Dad muttered, looking down at his console. Craning his neck, Junior could see an image of the streets outside, dark and cloudy, the camera's view made murky by billows of blowing dust. In the middle of it all was a mass of people, moving without going anyplace, like peas in a pot of boiling soup. Someone with a dented bullhorn stood in front of them, but the rushing winds made it hard to make out what he was saying.

"It is Senator Eisinger," said Dr. Egan. "It seems he has had a number of supporters here in the City, awaiting his signal to call them up. Evidently the Senator has put an end to their wait."

Dad slammed his fist to his desktop, making his notepad jump. "Dammit, I'm sure that Security hasn't got that many operatives to counter them." Something seemed to occur to him, and he looked up, concerned. "Can they get in here, to the Pyramid?"

One of the technical assistants—Junior remembered him as Lieutenant Deutsch—called out, "Senators have keytabs to the locks on the secure portals, sir. Eisinger—and any other senators that might be in that mob—can open them. And once they get in..."

Dr. Egan finished his sentence. "Once they get in, they can disrupt our communications, including any and all operations here in this command center." His eyebrows drew together, the closest Junior had ever seen him come to outright anger. "It seems we have been woefully lax in securing the Pyramid. Nor did we ever anticipate a situation in which fear would drive so many casual sympathizers to join in Senator Eisinger's revolt."

"Well, they're damn well—"

Another of the assistants interrupted Dad by crying out from her workstation, "First Speaker! Another message is coming through from Pilgrim Island! I've patched the Decryption Group's output directly to your console!"

Junior, well aware that no one was paying him the slightest attention, got up and quietly stood beside Dad's desk. The babble of technicians urgently murmuring into their headset microphones swirled around him like the rustle of autumn leaves as he read:

FROM MIKHAIL GLINKA, SUPREME CHAIRMAN:

TRAITORS AND REBELS. WE ARE AWARE OF YOUR PITIFUL FLEET DROPPING TO ALTITUDES BELOW RADAR DETECTION. WE SEE HOW YOUR PLANS UNFOLD AS YOUR ALIEN-SUPPLIED WEAPONS DISRUPT TRAPAR FLOWS OVER ALL THE EARTH. ALL IS UNFOLDING AS THE LATE REVERED COLONEL DEWEY PREDICTED IT WOULD. WE WILL NOT SIT IDLY BY AND WAIT FOR YOUR ATTACKS ON FEDERATION TERRITORY. THIS HIGH PRAESIDIUM COUNCIL NOW FORMALLY DECLARES WAR UPON YOUR INTERDOMINION AND WILL

Dad blinked. "Is that all? Where's the rest of it?"

"That's all we received, sir. The Decryption group confirms it."

"Then the day we have so long dreaded has come at last." Dr. Egan rose to his full height, every ear and eye in the room focused upon him. "We have no alternative left to us, and very little time. Please open a channel to High Admiral Juergens and all IPF military installations. Also to Lord Commander Sorel at Ocean Dunes. Inform them that we are at last at war with the Federation of Predigio Towers, and that they must go to full combat status at once. All four of our antimissle facilities are ordered to Crimson Alert. Whichever elements of the Fleet can reach operational altitudes are ordered to do so, and attack all designated Federation cities listed in the Emergency Battle Plan. The Coralside provinces are—"

"NO!" Dad jumped to his feet, and all activity stopped.

Junior knew that interrupting Dr. Egan was a serious offense against Protocol. Everybody in the command center stared at Dad in horror, but he did not stand down or even flinch. "Belay that order! Nobody make a move!"

-#-

Dominic sat hunched over the keyboard of the display device, his wings folded against the raging wind. FEDERATION ASSASSINS IN CITY, he typed. XTRMLY DANGEROUS. BE READY FOR MURDER ATTEMPT.

Two crewmen struggled with guy lines and stakes to keep the display screen itself from blowing away. In spite of their efforts, it twisted and vibrated on its pedestal, threatening to wrench free and join the airborne dust and debris at any second.

Major Haydn, leaning forward into the gale, made his way to the console. "Sorel! You are endangering your life out here! At least bring that keyboard inside the ship."

"We don't have a cable long enough." Dominic kept his goggled eyes upon the upper floor of the distant hotel. "I've got to warn them, got to know that Phaedra and Hal are all right."

"I understand. But while you wait for your answer, there is something that I must know: what was the message you received from your superiors?"

Reluctantly, Dominic turned to face him. "I didn't want to say it in front of the crew. But you have a right to hear this. It said...the Federation has declared open war on the InterDominion. They think we're the ones causing all of this."

For a moment, he could not be sure that the Major had heard him. He only stood, eyes wide behind the protective lenses of his dust goggles, staring at nothing. And then, Dominic saw that he was weeping.

"No. NO!" he railed. "NO! They can't have been so damned stupid! It's suicide! This will be the end of the Federation, the end of your InterDominion, the end of everything! Damned crazed, power-mad, blind Deweyite fanatics! Damn them all! I have failed, my mission has failed." Haydn sank slowly to his knees, beating at the ground. "Forgive me, Helena. Forgive me. Forgive..."

Before Dominic could ask whose forgiveness the Major so desperately wanted, the parade of bluish lights around the summit of the Ocean Dunes Hotel appeared once more:

TWO ASSN. ATTEMPTS ALREADY. BOTH FAILED. SOME KILLERS CAUGHT, SOME DEAD. LEADERS STILL AT LARGE. WE ARE STILL SEARCHING, BUT WE HAVE TOO FEW PEOPLE. CITY IS IN CHAOS. WHAT IS GOING ON?

The display panel quivered again as Dominic hurried to type: WE DONT UNDERSTAND IT EITHER. ITS NOT FROM EARTH. FEDERATION THINKS ITS OUR SECRET WEAPON AND HAS DECLARED WAR. PLS ADVISE YOUR PEOPLE TO TAKE SHELTER. And then, quickly, he added WHAT ABOUT PHAEDRA FARNSWORTH AND HUSBAND? ARE THEY OK?

There was a long, frustrating pause, during which he guessed the electrical engineer operating the hotel's display was passing on messages to someone at least nominally in charge. Then:

MSG RCVD ABOUT WAR. THNX. BARON & BARONESS OK. WYNGARDS OK. THERE IS S

The text stream cut off in mid-word, and Dominic wondered with a sinking heart if the first inevitable Federation missile strike might have taken out the City power. That's foolish, Ocean Dunes is self-sufficient, with its own Ley node. But what's going on up there? He lifted one hand over the keys to ask for confirmation, when it came in unexpected form:

CMNDR. NO TIME. MUST STOP SENDING NOW. SOMETHING STRANGE DONT KNOW

Another pause, and then:

VISITOR

Dominic waited, but nothing further came from the faraway tower. Then with a final gritty bellow, the wind seized his display panel and wrenched it from its support. Guy wires snapped and sang as they lashed overhead. He stood, angling both wings for stability, and motioned the remaining crew back to the shelter—but for how much longer?—of the airship. Groping through the darkening air, he nearly tripped over Major Haydn, who still knelt in the sandy earth, lost in the depths of despair.

He lifted the Major to his feet, a limp sack of a man who no longer cared for either life or death. "Come on, Haydn, back inside. I've got some good news for Anemone." But will it be the last good news we ever get? He flung one of the Major's arms about his own neck, as they trudged together back toward the airship's feeble haven.

-#-

Where'd the sky go? thought Jean-Baptiste, turning round and staring up into darkness. And then he understood that he was looking up at the bottom of an enormous rearing black animal, the largest bull he had ever seen, balanced on its massive haunches and pawing at the angry air with hooves like iron rams.

It's Mouao. That bull who was the leader of the bovine delegation. Still stunned, Arban could only stand and gape as the creature crashed back to the street with a snort and a shower of shattered pavement, less than a meter away.

"Federation monsters!" he bellowed with a toss of his great horned head. "Unrepentant slaughterers of our kind! No more! You kill never again!"

Mouao trumpeted out a wailing battle-cry—presumably in the language of his own kind—and the entire herd that had been waiting out the crisis for a resumption of their Senate hearing now thundered out from beyond the Pyramid, a living avalanche of death that parted around Jean-Baptiste and his two companions. Flooding into the street they surged, unstoppable, roaring and moaning out the ancient rage of millennia of degraded slavery. Horrified, Jean-Baptiste saw Eisinger fall, stagger to his feet and fall again as the tide of throbbing death engulfed him, engulfed the mob, choking the broad avenue from side to side with their fury. Gunshots snapped out, then heart-stopping human screams, quickly cut off, mingling with the weird baritone ululations of the cattle as the maddened herd stampeded its way up the now-empty street.

Arban staggered on legs gone wobbly and unresponsive. "My God," he whispered. "My God."

Major Wesselényi came up beside him, slowly, trembling as she put one hand to his shoulder. She waved her weapon in the general direction of the wet and sickening debris of the late Detlev Eisinger's lynch mob. "M-may Vodarek's Light guide them," she muttered, making some sort of ritual gesture. "Do you think any of them... Is there enough left for any of them to be restored by the Coralian Gift?"

"I don't know." Numbed, he could only shake his head, fighting back the most intense nausea he had ever known. "I don't know. Have your people watch...that, for an hour or so, and see if any of them do." Jean-Baptiste shifted the helmet communicator to the IPF frequency. "Arban here. The mob attacking the pyramid has been...neutralized. Maintain positions until further orders, but the immediate threat is past."

"Acknowledged, Commander. Please advise if the..."

But he was no longer listening to the tinny little voice, for he had ripped off his helmet as the aching need to vomit overwhelmed him at last.

-#-

Kazuya found himself reluctant to take his arms from around Lark, half-expecting her to drift away into some more rarified reality if he were to let go. All around them, in their little suite of rooms, the strange sculpture she had made out of whatever assorted junk had come to hand spread itself from the kitchenette and into the lounge. And probably into the bedroom and bathroom, too. Lark, Lark, I'm losing you. You're fading away into yourself, and I can't reach out far enough to grab you back any more.

She sniffled, and wiped at her eyes with the back of one wrist. "I guess I got a little carried away. Are there any tissues around here? Seems as though I've covered them someplace. With the parts of the Device, I mean."

"It's okay. Here." Kaz handed her a small pocket pack of facial tissue. A desperate idea came to him in that instant, one that might serve to get her away from this den of madness long enough for something—drugs, meditation or whatever—to stabilize her tenuous mind. "Hey... Look, if you're really planning on going away..."

"I'm not planning it, I'm doing it!"

"Right, right. But what I mean is, if you don't tell anyone else about it, they're liable to think you're, well, dead or something. It's been pretty violent around here, after all. Wouldn't it be a lot more considerate if we were to go up to the VIP suite, you know, where Dame Maeter and Sir Alan are staying? That way, you could explain everything to them, and they could take the message back to the Heart of the World, once this...crisis is over. See?"

"Oh." She nodded, and scowled at the floor, in the way that Kaz knew meant that she was trying to focus her thoughts against the seductive chaos of the voices.

For once, he prayed, let her be too confused to think this through. I've got to deceive her, just for a little while.

"All right," she finally decided. It's not quite time yet, so I should be able to do that. Let's go."

Kaz did not hesitate. He shepherded her back out the door of their suite, into the hotel corridor, which he was surprised to find alive with hurrying guests. Most of them were being herded this way and that by armed security personnel—mostly ODSP, but also a few IPFSec and even an occasional Guardian of the Flame—in a rushed manner that suggested some great and unpleasant urgency.

One of them, in the blue ODSP uniform, stopped and raised one hand like a traffic cop. "Wait a minute, sir. We're evacuating everyone from these floors. Something's going on up there—" he pointed upward, indicating the higher levels of the hotel "—and we have orders to move everyone to a safer location. Please come with me."

Lark made a strangled cry of dismay, but Kaz only shook his head and stood unmoving. "I appreciate that, but up there is where we have to go just now. I'm Kazuya Aruno, and this is my wife Lark. An IPF patroller escorted us down here, but he was called back by some emergency before he could take us back upstairs. We need to get to the Royal Suite."

"Sir, I need you to..." The man hesitated, then checked the video screen of his personal communicator, scrolling rapidly through several blocks of text. "Aruno, you say? Kazuya and Lark? Okay, you're on the list. Right, the Royal Suite it is. Come with me, please, and mind you don't get separated in the crowd."

-#-

Everyone was still gawking at Dad, not saying anything. A couple of the technical assistants made some wary glances toward Dr. Egan, as though they were expecting him to tell Dad to shut up and sit down, but he didn't.

"You disagree with my assessment of the situation, Holland?" Dr. Egan said. He didn't seem really mad, just curious.

"Damn right. Those clowns on the Council aren't some high-toned gathering of scholars, diplomats and philosophers. You're expecting them to be all dispassionate and logical—like you." He put his hands on the desktop and leaned forward. "The reality is that they're a gang of thugs, brawling over who's going to get the most power. I'd lay odds that there's an actual fist fight going on in the Council chambers right now, to see who comes out on top. That's why the message was cut off. If we go to a state of war now, we'll be giving the Deweyites all the ammunition they need to end up kings of the hill. It's the Franckists who seem to be the least paranoid of the lot, so they're the ones we want to deal with."

Dr. Egan leaned back in his chair and touched his fingertips together, the way he did when he was thinking things over. "The Novak family—including your late brother—have historically been more familiar than I with the sordid workings of the Federation High Council, I admit. But what, then, do you suggest? We must act quickly, lest the unpredictable events at Ocean Dunes be compounded by an all-out Federation attack upon our territories. The lives of millions now hinge upon what we do in these few remaining minutes."

Somehow, Junior knew, in that critical moment, that something important had just changed between Dad and Dr. Egan. Dad straightened up and pointed to the assistant who had read the last message from the Federation. "Send this communication back to the Council, before the trapar storm gets so strong that nothing at all can get through any more. Send it to 'Cesár Franck, Premier and Supreme Councilor.'"

"What?" The technician turned to make sure he'd heard Dad correctly. "But sir, the Federation message was from a Mikhail Glinka—"

"I know that, dammit! But we're going to pretend we never received that one. We're going to reply to the first message, the peace offer from Franck's faction. If we get lucky, that'll strengthen his position and give us some breathing space. Now listen, while I dictate."

To Junior's surprise, Mom got up from her chair, then, and walked over to Dad's desk. She stood there beside him, saying nothing but giving him all the support she had to give. Instinctively understanding, Junior went and stood at Dad's other side, just to let him know that he wasn't alone in whatever it was he was doing.

"'Premier Franck,'" Dad began slowly, squinting as he dictated the message. "'It is with great gratitude that Prime Minister Egan and I accept your offer of peaceful co-operation. Our aerial forces have been grounded by the strange trapar effects. We are helpless against...' No, strike that, make it 'We do not understand the nature of the power that is interfering with trapar flows over the entire earth. We are preparing for the worst, and recommend that you do the same to protect the people of the Federation.' Sign it 'Holland Novak, First Speaker of the InterDominion Parliamentary Senate.' Okay, read that back to me."

The communications technician did so. "Okay," said Dad. "Send that. Don't bother with encryption. Keep on looping it for five minutes, just to be sure the whole thing gets through intact. And let's hope to hell that the interference hasn't gotten bad enough to block it."

Once again, the tech looked to Dr. Egan for confirmation. But the Doctor only lifted a single admonitory finger and said, "Do as the First Speaker has ordered."

As the message Dad had dictated was relayed to the transmitter at the University, Dad sighed and slumped just a little, looking a lot like he'd just finished walking a tightrope over a fiery pit. He slipped one arm around Mom's waist and the other around Junior's shoulders.

"Now what?" asked Mom.

"Now...now we wait. We cross our fingers and hope that the world isn't going to war."

"And if it isn't sir?" Lieutenant Deutsch asked from his corner of the hot, oppressive Command room. "If we escape war with the Federation, what about everything else? The thing surrounding the earth, and the trapar energy spiraling into Ocean Dunes?"

Nobody answered right away. Then Viyuuden spoke at last, his deep voice a ghostly echo. "That matter, Lieutenant, is beyond our influence. Our fate now lies...in greater hands than ours."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Six

Taking Leave

-#-

No one spoke as Eureka and Renton approached the conference table with measured, deliberate steps. All stood; Soniya and several of the others—the Vodarek communicants—bowed their heads in profound respect.

Come now, Morita! You've known them both since their earliest years. You were there when we pulled her unconscious out of that trapar-drenched cave. You knew him as a callow and foolish boy, always in the way. Don't give in to superstitious awe. Gather your wits about you, man! "Renton," he began. "Eureka. Or is it more appropriate to say 'Your Majesties' these days? Please—take these two seats at the head of the table. After what Ariadne and Maurice have told me, I have been expecting you."

"Thank you, Dr. Morita." Renton held one of the chairs for his wife, who seated herself with a grace that Morita found astonishing in such a mundane action. "Maurice and Ariadne have outrun all our greatest hopes, these past few days. Have they told you about their trick of 'tandem analysis?' Linking their two minds, to bring them to bear on a problem?"

Princess Ariadne nodded. Morita had the feeling that she was suppressing an urge to run joyfully to her parents and hug them, but found herself restrained by the obligations of duty. "Yes, Mother. We've explained all our calculations to them. They know, now what must be done."

"My Lord and Lady," said Sonyia, not without some hesitation. "The Prince and Princess have explained it, yes. But are their conclusions correct?"

Eureka smiled at her. When, Morita wondered, had that smile, once so empty and unformed, taken on such dazzling power? "You can trust their conclusions as you would trust our own. Or the Coral's. But just at this moment, the Coral is completely preoccupied with other matters. And that, of course, is why we're here, all of us."

"But let us start with the basics, if we may." For the benefit of his staff, Morita wanted a few of the recent mysteries resolved before moving on to the moment's urgency. "Where, exactly have the two of you been for the past several days? And why?"

Eureka turned her amazing eyes upon him. And when did she become so incredibly beautiful? "Nowhere very exotic. We were on a little camping trip in the mountains. The Coral...well, it told us to stay away for a while."

"You speak directly to the Coral now, My Lady?" Dr. Clyburn asked.

"Not exactly speak," said Renton. "It's more like...we know what it wants us to do. And it wanted us to go away from the Heart of the World for a while. I think...I think it wanted people to start getting used to the idea."

The assembled scientists whispered to one another. The royals, seeming to have expected a certain amount of disarray, said nothing.

Clyburn spread her hands, pleading. "Then it's true, My Lord and Lady—this...sacrifice of which your children have told us? Surely there must be another way?"

"No, there isn't." Renton's voice was gentle but unyielding. "Maurice and Ariadne've explained that need to you already? Good. I'll repeat it, anyway: For years, Eureka and I've been the main focus of the Coral's manifestation on Earth. Without us to hold that focus, Earth's trapar energy level—something like what Dr. Egan's always called the 'limits of intelligent life'—will jump 'way up for just a minute. That's critical, of course."

"But who'll be the focus of the Coral's power if you're gone?" Soniya asked him.

"Why, Maurice and Ariadne, of course," said Eureka, as if it ought to be obvious. "They're ready for it, we're sure of that."

"But...excuse me, My Lady, but—begging the Prince and Princess' pardon—they're so young."

"They're about the same age as we were, when we began, you know. And they've been far, far better prepared than we ever were." She smiled toward the two of them, proud and yearning. "The Coral has faith in them...and so do we."

For a moment, the only sound was the background hum of massive electrical equipment in the building outside the conference room, and a steady clank of machinery as the installation prepared for the mighty challenge it must soon face. The Prince and Princess squirmed a bit, as though the responsibility being readied for them already weighed heavily upon their young shoulders, but they said nothing.

Dr. Morita knew his staff well, and he recognized the signs of dread uncertainty among them. This has all been a shock to them, as it has to me. Time to bring them to their full working awareness once more. "Dr. Galway," he said. "Are the coordinates the Prince and Princess have given us been entered into the Pinwheel's control unit?"

"The coord— Oh, yes, sir, Dr. Morita. They've been checked and refined beyond any chance of error. The topmost floor of the Hotel Ocean Dunes."

"Good." Now that the moment had come, Morita felt an entirely unexpected surge of feeling that beat at the failing walls of his sober, logical facade. And perhaps that's as it should be. For this will be a time of endings, and of new beginnings for us all. He felt the corners of his eyes begin to burn, and he took Soniya's, hand in unconcealed love. "Eureka and Renton. I've had the privilege to have known you from the very beginning. And I confess, now, that I did not always share in Holland and Gregory's faith—let alone Viyuuden's—in your leadership." He cleared his throat, feeling his face warm, but pushing on with the things that must be said. "I was wrong. My wife has seen more clearly than I. And before...before it is too late for words...allow me to say a profound 'thank you' for all that you have done...and all that you have given, to make our world what it is today. And what it...what it will be in the future."

He fell silent, pulling off his glasses and swiping at his eyes with one sleeve of his lab coat. The others babbled out their own spontaneous praise and gratitude; he heard none of it clearly, caught for the first time in a tide of emotion too long dammed away.

Someone handed him a box of tissues. Dr. Morita nodded, took one, and cleared his throat again, loudly. "Very well, then, ladies and gentlemen. We must put our self-indulgence behind us, now, for there is much work to be done, and very little time remaining in which to do it. Your Majesties, if you will kindly follow me?"

-#-

"Professor," said the grad student, without looking up from the three-dimensional oscilloscope display above his lab table. "The unknown entity—it's surrounded the earth completely, now. We're wholly shrouded by its substance."

Professor Fernando Wossel stroked his short beard. He had been expecting this, of course. Still, to actually watch it unfold, without any indication of resistance...something should have happened by now, if it was going to happen at all. "Thank you, Mr. Morales. It appears, also, that its emissions in the 40-meter band have increased by approximately eight percent, and rising."

The University's Radioastronomy lab had never been designed with crisis monitoring in mind, nor did extra video monitors and all the swivel chairs that could be spared from classrooms entirely suit it to the task. Still, the Professor found the presence of the 120-meter interferometer above them on the roof a comforting presence. As long as there was data, no situation could ever be truly hopeless.

"Yes, sir. But the zone of enhanced emissions is localized to a bulging area, off to our south. I'm sending the 3-D mapping to your monitor now."

But Professor Wossel already had a view of the anomaly on his monitor. In fact, he had been watching the malignant thing swell for several minutes. The entity that had been so busily wrapping itself around the planet was now sending down a massive protrusion of itself, from the main body's two hundred and three kilometer altitude. Helium-3, in superfluidic form. It bothered the Professor that it should be impossible for such a substance to behave in this way.

He keyed up several more views on his monitor, from an impressive battery of cameras and sensing devices in all possible frequencies. No good; all bands were blocked, and what might lie beyond that now-impenetrable veil no one could say with any certainty. The sky, for all practical terrestrial purposes, no longer existed. No data would be forthcoming. And that made Fernando Wossel begin to worry.

The rubbery-looking tendril, larger than a terrestrial peninsula, continued to descend, quivering, but with the steady deliberateness of intelligence, now entering into the outer layers of Earth's atmosphere. Professor Wossel tapped a touch-sensitive corner of his screen, opening a new channel to the InterDominion Command Center. "Gregory?" he said.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Processional

-#-

Kaz tried not to be too obvious about showing his relief when the guard escorted them through the doors of the Royal suite. But at once, he saw that some disquieting changes had taken place since he and Lark had last been here. A reek of smoke and scorched plastic hung in the air, defying the efforts of the air-circulation system, and smears of flame and smoke discolored the walls. The number of guards seemed to have doubled.

Maeter Wyngard was still there, along with her husband Alan, both in intense conversation on one of the couches. Information Minister Stoner and the woman Sigrid Arnoldson stood quietly next to a flame-blackened crater in one wall, looking down toward the floor at something Kaz could not see. Both of them glanced up when Kaz and Lark entered, but said nothing.

Baron Hal Farnsworth's rumpled appearance showed he'd been through a rough time of it recently, but something in the stony cast of his face suggested that he was no longer playing the role of a tipsy idler. Baroness Phaedra herself stood near him, wings tightly folded, unself-conscious in a sheer nightgown, one broken shoulder strap held together by a tiny safety pin.

Kaz heard voices from the bedroom beyond—he remembered it as having earlier been occupied by the Farnsworths, or at least one of them—but could make out none of what they said, most of which seemed composed of cryptic mutterings anyway. He was surprised to see two hard-faced guards, in the black garb of Guardians of the Flame, hurry out and begin to speak softly and urgently to the other uniformed personnel.

"Glad to see you two're okay," said Minister Stoner. When he stepped forward to offer his hand, Kaz was startled to see behind him a disheveled girl with auburn hair, seated cross-legged on a floor cushion. She wept with downturned eyes, and paid no one else any notice whatever.

"Thanks, we are. And you too, Miss...Arnoldson?"

"Yeah, that's right." She tilted her head sideways, toward the seated girl sobbing quietly to herself. "I'm okay. This is Rosalie, but she's not in the mood for company just yet. She used to be a Swallowtail."

Lark sucked in her breath. "She is, yes she is. I remember her! You were number...twelve. They called you..."

"Tanager." The girl wiped at her tear-shiny cheeks, but still did not look up. "I was—the other one was—called Tanager. The other me. The cruel one, the one with my face. The one that they created, the one who did...who did..." She trailed off into fresh tears once more, quivering with the effort to contain some awful sorrow.

So she was a Swallowtail, too. Kaz could make a good guess as to the nature of that sorrow, and he held Lark more tightly to his side. Well, just as long as they all keep talking, and distract Lark from this crazy fantasy of hers. "Were you...sent here to assassinate the Baron and Baroness?"

"To assassinate anyone of importance that we could." She put both hands to her head, as though to crush the unbearable memories trapped inside. "One of us...one of them...is still at large."

"Then, have you—?" Before he could finish, the door to the suite opened. Weapons were raised all around at the unexpected interruption, but just as quickly lowered when a pair of uniformed ODSP patrollers lurched into the room, panting and perspiring from what seemed to be a strenuous run. Kazuya was not pleased to see that one of them was the same officer who had brought he and Lark up from their floor a short time earlier.

"What is it?" asked one of the IPF guards. "Some new attack?"

The patroller in the lead—the one Kaz had recognized—shook his head, wheezing hoarsely. "N—no. But there's—there's something happening..." His eyes found Kaz and Lark, and he shuffled unsteadily in their direction. "It's... Mrs. Aruno, we...we've seen the machine in your suite. And we've got to know—what the hell was it doing?"

Kaz felt Lark stiffen at his side, speechless and beginning to tremble.

"The machine! Mrs. Aruno, we know it's a machine of some kind." He held out both hands, pleading. "But we don't know what it was doing! Does it have something to do with what's going on outside? Please, you've got to tell us." From his corner of the room, Moonbeam rose to his feet and growled softly.

Lark opened her mouth, twice, before any words could emerge. "Did you say...did you say what 'was' it doing? Isn't it any more? Did you... You didn't touch it, did you? You didn't touch it?"

The patroller's partner, her face twisted in sudden regret, said, "We didn't realize it was a machine of some kind, at first. When you came up here, you must've left the door of the suite open. We had to go inside, to make sure no one had broken in—an Antipat terrorist, or an assassin, or... Anyway, the rooms were full of junk. Jars and wires and boxes, all of them strung together in no real order... We had to push some of it out of the way to get to the living-room lounge... It wasn't until it started throwing sparks, pink sparks, all over the place that it occurred to us that it was a... Why didn't you tell us, Mrs. Aruno? What was your machine doing?"

Lark let out a shrill scream and swayed, almost falling, until Kaz caught her in his arms. "The Gateway... It's ruined, now, closed! And there's no time left to—" She went limp, in a dead faint, and he lifted her, looking helplessly around, finding only more questions in their searching eyes.

At that moment, Job Stevens and his wife Tomika strode side by side through the doorway to the bedroom that had formerly been occupied by Baron and Baroness Farnsworth. Kazuya shivered to see that the pupils of their eyes had vanished, overlaid by a cold blue glow. Job Stevens looked toward him, apparently noting Lark's limp figure in his arms, yet showing no particular emotion. "Bring her," he commanded in a strangely echoing voice.

"What? Bring her where? What do you—?"

"Bring her," repeated Tomika. Then she began pointing here and there, to others in the room. "Also: Matt Stoner; Sigrid Arnoldson; Harold Farnsworth; Phaedra Farnsworth." Two young folk, whom Kaz had not seen before, emerged behind the Stevens couple, fear and incomprehension written on their faces. "Eugene Onegin; Manon Lescault; Maeter Wyngard; Alan Wyngard; the dog Moonbeam; Rosalie Thorpe. The time is come. All must follow; all must witness; all must take part."

Without waiting to see if anyone obeyed, Job and Tomika walked toward the exit. To Kaz' amazement, the various guards not only did nothing to interfere, they stood respectfully aside and even opened the door before them. He felt a nudge at his elbow. "Come on," said Minister Stoner. "Do what the Observers said. And hurry up about it."

"The what? Where are we—?"

Moonbeam gave him an ungentle push. "Go," he barked. "Bring Lark. Hurry."

Too terrified even to question this bizarre turn of events, Kaz could only nod, hoist his unconscious wife into a steadier hold, and take his place in the strange parade.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Waiting for the Dawn

-#-

Matt Stoner took up the rearmost position in the lineup led by Jobs and Tommy as they filed into an Authorized Personnel Only stairwell, whose steel security door unlocked without being touched. Up the echoing stairs they paraded, without question or hesitation. After the first landing, Matt watched dewdrops of sweat forming on Kazuya's neck as he plodded upward, step by step, his wife's unconscious body cradled in his arms.

"Should we maybe offer to help him lug her up?" whispered Sigrid, at Stoner's side.

He shook his head No. "A couple of the ODSP guys offered already." He waved around them, at the ODSP, IPFSec and Guardian troopers creeping along behind them, waving their weapons this way and that as they looked in every direction for hidden threats. "He turned them down. I guess I can understand that. If it was you, I wouldn't want anyone else carrying you, either."

She squeezed his arm. "What made the guards so ready to go along with all this, anyway?"

"The Guardians of the Flame. A tough outfit, but neck-deep in Vodarek mysticism. Whatever it was that the Watchers inside of Jobs and Tommy told them, it convinced them right away. They're an elite unit; Temple guards and all, sworn to protecting the Coralian royalty. When they got on board with the Watchers, it didn't take much convincing for the IPF and ODSP guys to follow along."

"Uh-huh." Sigrid looked above, where the stairs doubled back to the next landing. Baroness and Baron Farnsworth were at the head of their ragged column, just behind Jobs and Tommy. The forehead jewels of both of them shone like the landing lights of an airship. "Did anybody tell you where the hell we're going?"

The lights in the stairwell flickered and dimmed but did not quite go out altogether. Their armed escort crouched lower and clutched their weapons more tightly, but still kept moving. No one faltered or stopped, and as the lights came back at full brightness, they rounded a stairwell marked ENGINEERING LEVEL: NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE.

"'To the highest level' is what the Watchers said, and this looks like it. I guess it means the topmost part of the hotel, since we were already pretty close to the top in that fancy suite. Wish I knew what's going on outside. Or maybe I don't." He allowed himself a weary sigh. "I don't know how much further we have to go."

Sigrid sighed, and kept near to him, and followed upward. "We never do. We just have to have the guts to keep going."

-#-

"...and as you can see," said Professor Wossel from Dr. Egan's monitor, "the extrusion reaching down from the cloud has penetrated the atmosphere almost down to the boundary between the mesosphere and the stratosphere. And it's gotten thicker, as well. It's nearly seventy kilometers across at its narrowest point. Still centered above Ocean Dunes."

"Indeed so." All eyes in the humid Command Center were riveted to the images being transmitted from the University's Radioastronomy Unit, now. "And do I also see electrical discharges rippling up and down the length of the extrusion as well?"

"It appears so. This cloud is very electrically active. Those discharges are huge, big enough to make anything ever seen on Earth look insignificant. What will happen when it contacts the Ley Line network, we can't predict. But I suspect it won't be good. Viyuuden's there with you, isn't he? Has he got any light to shed on any of this?"

Holland lifted his eyes above his monitor to look at the Vodarek priest, who, for the past ten minutes, had stood rigid, unmoving, unspeaking, eyes blank with some invisible horror that no one else could see. Now and then, Professor Ragowsky calmly dabbed the sweat from Viyuuden's forehead with a wadded-up napkin, none of which he seemed to notice at all. "He's frozen in some kind of trance right now," said Holland. "Don't count on much help from him. And reports are that the entire Vodarek priesthood is down in the main Temple hall, chanting up a storm."

"Wait a minute." Wossel's voice turned sharp. "Something's happening...not in the cloud, but on the ground. Ocean Dunes...let me zoom in closer..."

In the radiative satellite-image display, Holland could see the enormous spiral of trapar energies centered on the resort city, like the map of some impossibly gigantic hurricane. Then the onscreen image jumped once, twice, showing a much nearer image, shimmering and blurred by the massive interference from the invading cloud. At its direct center, something was beginning to glow. "What the hell is that little thing?"

"You must take into account the misleading effects of scale, my friend," said Dr. Egan, pressing his palms together in either isometrics or prayer. "That 'little thing' is the Hotel Ocean Dunes."

-#-

Major Haydn pressed himself against one of the transport's inner bulkheads, shivering with dread. Soon, any moment now, Federation missiles would be finding their targets here in the InterDominion. Shortly afterward, the Independent Planetary Force, backed by the unknowable powers of the Coral and its half-human avatars, would strike back. And then...

Sieglinde, my dearest. Are you safe, with the children? Is anywhere safe, any longer? He struck his fist against the uncaring metal hull. At least I can pray that your end will come quickly and mercifully, and not in the lingering decay of poisonous air, or earth, or water. Damn Glinka and his Deweyite gang, may they writhe forever in a thousand hells! He focused his thoughts, with all the force of concentration that had served him through a long career in the Federation Intelligence services. For he knew that once the flood of tears began, there would be no containing it, ever again, until he went mad with the...

"Major Haydn?"

It was Captain Keiser, the IPF Ranger officer. Slowly, it penetrated Haydn's consciousness that the Captain was not addressing him with his usual condescending loathing. "Yes?"

"The Lord Commander's told us. About the war, I mean. Since we're, as you might say, all in this together now, I thought you might be liking to come forward to the cockpit with with the rest of the crew. The storm out there's gotten ever so much worse, and it seems as though there's light of some kind coming from inside that filthy barrier."

Haydn cleared his throat and held his face low, lest his red eyes drowning in unstoppable tears shame him before the crew. "I...I don't... Should I really be...?"

The man moved nearer and touched his shoulder. "We've all of us got family in one place or the other. At such times, 'tis best for to be among others. To keep the devils of fear and sadness at arm's length for a while, y'might say."

He looked up, then, and saw Keiser's own glistening eyes sparkle in the emergency cabin lights. "Yes. I suppose so. All right, I would be honored to join you, Captain."

They moved forward, from the cargo bay to the command cockpit section. Several times, the ship shook and lurched, and Haydn wondered if it might overturn altogether in the now hurricane-force wind. But the crew had done a thorough job of securing it to the ground, and they moved on without incident.

He found himself still able to be surprised by the spaciousness of the control section. All of the flight crew as well as the IPF personnel under Keiser's command, could fit in without unbearable overcrowding. Several of them looked up at Major Haydn as he entered, but if they still clung to any lingering bitterness, no one showed it.

The ship quivered again, and something large and dark flew past, thumping against the reinforced panoramic windshield for an instant. All was darkness, now, and he wondered if the other IPF airships had gotten away in time. Far beyond, through occasional thin spots in the clouds of wind-lashed dust, he could see a sort of column, luminous with a pale greenish light that rippled constantly upward. Only after staring at it for several long seconds did Haydn begin to grasp just what it was.

"My God. The hotel! You were right, Captain, it's the Hotel Ocean Dunes. What's causing that peculiar illumination? It's like liquid light, pouring somehow up, toward the sky."

Keiser gave him the barest of nods as he stared outward. "Aye, Major, strange it is. Like trapar, maybe, but a little more bluish, I'm thinking. It started just a few minutes after we sealed the hatches. It's for sure that something's going on in there."

"But... Shouldn't we be informing your government of this?"

Someone chuckled bitterly, like pebbles on metal, but Keiser allowed himself no expression of whatever might be going on inside his own thoughts. "You'd be most welcome to try. All of that windswept dust you see yonder is electrically charged, y'see. And that's in addition to the EM fields already hammering us from our alien visitor—and from the Barrier 'round the city itself. Not even by the slickest of communications tricks can we get us a signal out of here any longer."

Haydn's mind reeled. Is this some kind of Federation last-ditch weapon, turned now upon Ocean Dunes? But for what possible reason? Or is it that thing from space, with its alien power, revealing its purposes to us at last? Dear God, we are such small things, in such a very large universe. "What of Commander Sorel? Where is he? He is a hybrid, part-Coralian himself. Surely he must be privy to some understanding of what's happening out there. Does he know of this?"

The woman in the uniform of an IPF co-pilot pointed out the windshield. "He knows," she said. "They both know."

Almost afraid to see what she meant, Major Haydn edged nearer to the reinforced transteel curve of the windscreen. And when he came close enough, he drew a hissing breath of astonishment.

There, just ahead of the airship's nose and to the left, stood Commander and Lady Sorel, hand in hand, motionless within a globe of translucent green light. Whatever its power might be, it was deflecting the dust, stones, hail and other debris roaring around them, as if it were the most solid of obstacles.

"Good God! We've got to bring them in before they're swept away! Can you not call to them? Persuade them to...?"

"We tried," the co-pilot said. "They just ignore us. We're not even sure they can hear us through that bubble, or whatever it is. There's..." All of them fell silent as the glow of the distant structure abruptly brightened to a pale gold.

Haydn's eyes widened. "What... What does it all mean?"

And then the world ignited.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Stairway to Heaven

-#-

"Everybody stop!"

Gene put up no argument. Even though it seemed somehow exposed and precarious here on the highest landing in the entire hotel, things had been going much too fast for him. Ever since the disquieting discovery that he and Manon had been occupied—Possessed? Infested?—by the eerie alien Observers, absolutely everything seemed to have gotten dangerously off-kilter.

Manon. He felt her brush against him and gave her an encouraging smile. Her deep brown hair seemed somehow enhanced by the harsh lights in the stairwell, and there was no resisting the temptation to slip one arm about her shoulders. She smiled back, and nestled closer to him.

Ahead of them waited the Baron and Baroness Farnsworth. From the occasional glimpses of their flickering forehead jewels, he supposed that they were carrying on some kind of wordless high-speed conversation. And ahead of them, Job and Tomika Stevens stood like a couple of figural sculptures, evidently still inhabited by the Observers. Well, better them than us.

"Why are we stopped?" he called out, more to impress Manon with his initiative than in any hope of hearing anything he really wanted to know.

One of the Guardians of the Flame—they were the ones in the tight black uniforms—rose from her knees and looked back at him. "The door to the Electrical Engineering level has a lock. Our ODSP colleagues told us to expect this, of course. But what we did not expect is that the lock has been broken."

Information Minister Stoner stood on tiptoes for a closer look, him and his apparent girlfriend, Sigrid something-or-other. "It doesn't look broken," he said.

"No, sir." The Guardian held up a flat silver device no bigger than the palm of her hand. "But the magnetic induction reader shows that its innards have been misaligned, and some of them forced out altogether. Probably by a pressure-wave impact tool."

"And who around here's likely to be carrying one of those?" Sigrid asked. "Except for..."

"Except for a Federation insurgent strike team," Stoner finished for her. The girl named Rosalie abruptly stopped her blubbering, seemingly unnoticed by anyone but Gene.

The Guardian nodded. "Exactly so. Therefore, please wait while we enter the room first."

"No," said the Observer in Tomika Stevens. "There can be no delay. We will enter first."

"Now, hold on there," Minister Stoner objected. "You two—or however many there are of you inside Tommy and Jobs' bodies—might be un-material, but they're not. If there's a gang of murderers in there, Tommy and Jobs'll be the ones who get killed!"

"We will not allow that."

"But you—"

Manon snatched Stoner's arm as he tried to bull his way to the top of the stairs. "No, wait! The Observers won't let them come to any harm, Mr. Stoner. They protected Gene and I all the way here to Ocean Dunes. Trust them."

"Look, we don't know—"

"She's right," said Gene, holding her waist all the more tightly. "Trust them. We do."

"I..." But the Information Minister relaxed visibly—if reluctantly—and made no further move. "Okay. But you damn well better be right about this."

The Observers at the top of the stairwell turned back toward the door, motioning the Guardians away. The one in Job Stevens' body lifted its left hand and, without touching anything, caused the heavy door to open smoothly outward. "Come," said the other one. "All of you, enter. Now."

Is this the reason the Observers wanted Manon and me to come along? wondered Gene. Because they knew we could convince Minister Stoner not to interfere? The implications raised by this casual demonstration of their subtlety and foresight gave him a shiver. But there was no time to ponder it, for the Watchers walked into the Engineering room and the group, along with their nervous armed guards, filed along behind.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirty

The Welcoming Committee

-#-

Stoner found the Engineering level much larger than he'd expected. It turned out to be a circular steel-paneled chamber about ten meters high and thirty wide, interrupted on all sides by girders and massive bundles of electrical cables. All the exposed metal surfaces had been painted with some kind of gray antirust insulating coating that stunk like a toxic-chemical dump.

"Pretty stark up here," said Sigrid. "Not the kinda place I'd have picked for performing miracles."

Stoner agreed. "It's like the interior of an IPF warship. All brute functionality, and the comfort of mere human beings be damned. I know what you mean about miracles, though—there's a kind of haunted house feel to it."

After their precarious trek up the stairwell, the little group seemed to be instinctively spreading out somewhat, putting a bit of space—though not too much—between themselves and the Observers glowing behind Jobs' and Tommy's eyes.

The Aruno kid, his arms trembling from the effort of lugging his wife up the stairwell, let her down with a grateful sigh. She was whimpering softly to herself, but seemed able to stand on her own feet, with a little help from her husband. And Rosalie, late of Dewey Novak's Swallowtail elite guard, had finally stopped crying altogether and stood to one side, speaking to no one, her eyes round and wary, flicking from side to side.

"There!" shouted one of the ODSP guards, pointing off toward a dark console across the room. "It's the Chief Engineer!" Two of his comrades, along with four IPFSec operatives, hurried to look.

Stoner, curious, took Sigrid's hand and led her toward the racked control equipment, fronted by a video monitor and low chair. "Watch where you step," he whispered. "There're cables all over the floor."

As they drew nearer, he could see that this was some sort of control station for one operator. The central video console was not, as it had seemed, dark, but had several lines of glowing text running across the top. He looked closely:

VISITOR

CMNDR. NO TIME. MUST STOP SENDING NOW. SOMETHING STRANGE DON'T KNOW

MSG RCVD ABOUT WAR. THNX. BARON & BARONESS OK. WYNGARDS OK. THERE IS S

"What the hell?" said Stoner.

One of the IPFSec men looked up sharply. "You know something about this, Minister Stoner?"

"That stuff about 'Baron and Baroness' has got to be Hal and Phaedra, there. And the 'Wyngards' are Maeter and Alan, naturally. But who's the 'Commander?' And who was up here sending these messages about them? And to who? Er, to whom?"

"Ah!" shouted one of the ODSP officers—Stoner remembered her as Petrovka—bending low to pull at something below one of the equipment tables. "Under here!"

The others joined her, and hauled up the form of a man, alarmingly limp and unresisting. "God," said Sigrid. "Is that guy dead?"

Petrovka shook her head. "No, but he came pretty close to it. This is Franz Danzi, Chief of Engineering for the hotel. This is the master console for all the lighting systems, but what he was doing up here with it, I can't imagine. Somebody seems to've clubbed him, hard, at the base of his skull."

Stoner connected the dots at once. "That would be...'VISITOR.' He was attacked by somebody, and they ended whatever he was typing."

An IPFSec officer prodded the man's neck, then lifted one of his eyelids. "They nearly ended his life. He'll survive, but if it hadn't been for the Coralian Gift, this precise blow would have killed him in seconds. Someone knew what they were doing."

"So...if this was a professional job, why didn't they end his life?" Stoner grew uneasier at the implications. "Why didn't they finish the job and kill him?"

"Because they were interrupted," said Sigrid, and the IPFSec people all looked toward her at once. "The lock outside was broken. Somebody got here before us, and screwed up the lock to get in. Then they made a pass at killing this Danzi guy. But it didn't work the first time, and before they could finish up, somebody interrupted them." She looked from face to face, letting the unspoken suggestion sink in. "Us."

Petrovka looked at her with respect, wonderment and suspicion. "You mean..."

"I mean that we were the interruption, all of us. Just a couple of minutes ago."

The apparent leader of the IPFSec group grew tight and apprehensive at once. "Then the killer or killers are probably still in this room. We should never have come in here. Everyone has got to be cleared out, pronto. Listen to me...!"

The Observer in Tommy's body, apparently overhearing even from five meters away, turned in his direction. "No. All are here for a purpose. And it will be revealed...now!" It raised Tommy's arms in warning. "All of you! The time is come! Prepare yourselves for the impact!"

"For what?" shouted Manon. "What the hell are you talk—?"

Stoner dropped to his knees, dragging Sigrid down with him. "When one of them says to brace yourself, then brace yourself!"

Already, he could feel it, a sort of electrical prickling all around. Then a brilliant violet flash, deep and pure, and—

The floor shook with the whiplash crack of the explosion, and a hot wind of displaced air roared from the Engineering room's center, lifting anything not fastened down and rattling the rack-mounted equipment on all sides. A toolbox sailed past Stoner's face, spilling its contents on the metal floor, and sheets of official-looking paper cascaded down in a gaudy snowstorm.

Ears ringing, Stoner held to Sigrid with all his strength, waiting for more, but the violent detonation had already spent itself. He stood again. Well, the Observers're still upright. So're Hal and Phaedra. Just what I'd expect. The rest were all scrabbling to their feet, except for Lark Aruno, who still sprawled on the floor, sniffling and resisting all attempts of her husband to persuade her to get up.

"What is it?" Sigrid wanted to know as he gave her his arm. "What happened? Hey, are they...?" She was staring toward the dead center of the circular chamber, where an oval aluminum pod lay, its sides folding back to reveal four very familiar newcomers.

And somehow, I'm not surprised. "Yeah. They are. Come on, Sig. Let me introduce you to Renton and Eureka Thurston. And their kids."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirty-One

I Don't Know Why You Say Good-Bye

-#-

Maurice had known this moment was coming, of course. But now that it was almost upon them, not even his Vodarek calming meditation could entirely still all the fears and regrets.

The shadowed, circular room in which they'd materialized—or been transposed to, as Dr. Morita would have insisted—held an odd mixture of spectators: Matt Stoner; some blonde woman Maurice had never seen before; Jobs and Tommy—both of whose eyes glowed with the sullen blue of Dancers—Kaz Aruno and his very frazzled-looking wife, Lark; the dog Moonbeam; a strange red-eyed girl who looked bitterly unhappy and a cluster of armed guards from several different security branches. And Hal and Phaedra, of course. But he and Ariadne had already known that Hal and Phaedra were here; known it all along.

They'd all been through a lot, obviously. But Stoner, as disheveled as any, stepped forward, the eagerness for a hot story shining in his face. "The Thurston family, all together in one place! Now maybe we'll finally find out what the hell's been going on down here. First of all, meet my..."

Eureka held up her hand and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Matt, but there isn't time. Maurice and Ariadne will tell you everything...later. Are you ready?" she asked Tommy and Jobs, or rather, the Dancers inhabiting them.

The one in Jobs said, "Yes. We have constructed the Weapon to all parameters. The Adversary is nearly here. Only your departure remains to complete the weaving."

"What departure?" asked Stoner, but no one answered.

Maurice and Ariadne turned to their parents. This is it. This is the moment. All of the things he had never told them, all of the missed chances to let them know how much he appreciated what they had done for him, for Ariadne, rose to his mind in a sour geyser of regret. Tears nearly overcame him, but Ariadne shed tears enough for them both.

—There's no need for tears, Eureka assured them. This is the best way, for all of us. You understand that.

Ariadne's thoughts rebelled:

+But Mother...it's not right. After all you and Father have done, you deserve to be here for what comes after.

=We'll be watching, said Renton with a wistful smile. We'll see it all. And we'll see the two of you, too. We know you'll make us proud, because you've made us so proud already. More than you'll ever know.

Maurice tried his best to come up with a last-ditch counterargument. But the trouble is, I can't. They're right. I know they're right, and I still don't want them to do it.

&But this world owes everything to you. And so do I. You're Ariadne's real parents, but you took me and Link and Maeter in when we had nothing, and then you and Mom made a home for us, together, the only home we ever knew.

Eureka smiled, and it was somehow the purest distillate of all the understanding smiles she had ever given to Maurice and Ariadne:

—But our part is over, now. And it's your turn to look after the world, and all the people in it who need you. The world that Renton and I brought about is coming to an end, which it must, because it was only temporary, a foundation for what must come after. You will build on that foundation, both of you, and lead it into the new world. Our work is behind us; yours lies ahead. And this time, there are others like us, to give help and advice. Never forget, either of you, that you are never alone.

&But...

But their attention had already turned to the more urgent matter. "Is the bending complete?" asked Renton aloud.

Jobs and Tommy nodded in unison. "It is. No more time can you spare; begin the initialization now."

-#-

Sigrid clutched at Matt Stoner's arm for all she was worth. "What the hell're they doing?" she whispered.

"Damned if I know. But it's big, you can bet the bank on that. It look like the Observers've been getting something ready for them all along, and now they're going to—"

From somewhere in the shadows behind the equipment racks, a shrill shriek echoed from wall to wall as a wild-eyed girl—another of those goddam Swallowtails, Stoner realized—launched herself in a muscular arc from the topmost shelf, a glittering blade held high. "DIE," she screamed with all the bitterness she could rip from her throat as she plummeted down like a descending meteor, "DIE, ABOMINATIONS, IN THE NAME OF OUR SACRED COLONEL—"

Rosalie, slumping against a metal cabinet, flared instantly to life, all her long-trained reflexes firing. "NO!" she shouted back, making an incredible standing leap that carried her four meters into the air, where she intercepted the descending Number Five with a devastating side-kick to the midsection. Both the knife and Number Five went tumbling end over end until both Swallowtails smashed to the metal floor. Rosalie only rolled over with a groan, but Number Five raised herself, wincing with the pain of, fumbling for her lost weapon.

-#-

+This is the moment when you begin your stewardship, said Renton.

&Right.

Before any of the shocked onlookers could intervene, Maurice made a quick mental gesture to Ariadne, and the two of them joined hands and sent a flood of incandescent trapar pouring toward the groping Number Five. For a moment, they levitated her from the floor, letting her slowly tumble in the greenish light, until the lessons they'd learned at the side of Eureka and Renton told them that it had been long enough to sear the poisonous Federation conditioning from her mind.

"She'll be all right, now," said Ariadne as they lowered her to the floor, unconscious. "Very well, Mother and Father, you can go ahead, now."

-#-

Stoner shivered. "That's why they wanted her along," he murmured.

"What?" said Sigrid. "Who?"

"The Observers. They knew, somehow, that there'd be an attack, and that Rosalie'd be the best one to deal with it. My God, they knew. What kind of powers do those things have?"

-#-

Eureka and Renton joined hands and faced each other. A trapar-colored aura condensed around them, and the electric prickling of the air increased. Strands of their hair stood out straight, and Eureka's thin gown rippled as if in the stirrings of an unfelt wind. "There's still one more thing we all need to do, now, just before we pass," Renton said. +Maurice. Ariadne. I know you're with us. Phaedra? Hal? Dominic? Anemone? You know we can't do this alone.

*We're in contact, came the answer from them all. *We're ready when you are. And then one more wry trickle of thought that they all knew was Anemone's alone:

^You guys always did try to hog the spotlight. Get moving, show-offs.

Ariadne raised one hand, and a brilliant bolt of raw trapar energy, amplified by the combined channeling of the Coralian hybrids, lashed out into the shadows. And when the afterimage of the strike had cleared, a hazy window, perhaps three meters in diameter, hovered in the air before Kazuya and Lark.

Beyond stood a man with a short beard and a girl with long, straight black hair, both looking very much astonished. Others stood ranked in the darkness behind them, and in the foreground, a small terracotta lamp on a stone table burned with a liquid flame. It had all the characteristics of a ritual.

"Hurry up," said Hal Farnsworth, squinting with effort. "We can't keep this thing open all day!"

Eyes wide in wonder, Lark tottered closer. "Cymandiel? Are you there? Are the others there?"

"Come to us, Lark," a soft voice called from the shadows beyond. "We nearly lost the flow; the spheres are beginning to draw apart. You must cross now."

Lark's face glowed. "Then the pathway is still open! We haven't lost it!"

She held out one hand to Kazuya, who stared, still uncertain. "Is it real..? But I thought... I mean, Lark, is this really...?"

"Rrrr! Stupid human! Do you trust your wife?" Moonbeam leaped at him, prodding him in the back with his full body weight, toppling Kazuya forward.

"Yes. Yes you're damn right, I do! All right, let's go!" Kaz took Lark's hand and they ran for their lives, into their future, leaping ahead, with Moonbeam right behind them. The window shivered and shrunk to a fading point, and the three of them were utterly gone.

No one spoke a word; no one moved except Tommy and Jobs, possessed by their Observers. "It must be now," one of them said in its flat voice.

Renton sighed, and did not release Eureka's hand. "I know."

Just to one side of them, the atmosphere quivered and puckered like the disturbed surface of a pond. And the shimmering expanded to a ring, that rolled back until it became an doorway—but not into the darkened chamber to which Kaz and Lark and Moonbeam had gone. For this was another kind of power, bridging the unseen gap into another destination entirely.

Ariadne stared. "It's beautiful," she said, her Coralian eyes round.

But Maurice could stand passively by no longer. "Don't do it!" he shouted into the silence. "Please."

"We have to, son," said Renton. "We've already talked this through, and you know we have to."

"But you saved the world! It's not fair that you should have to leave it now!"

"We saved it for others," Eureka told him gently. "For all the people of the New Earth. And for both of you, and for Maeter and Link. Soon, the transformation will be complete, and it will be for the two of you to carry on what we've begun."

Ariadne spread her hands, on the edge of tears. "But Mother, we can't take your place—"

"Yes, you can. We're sure of that, now, Renton and I. You have strengths and capabilities you haven't even begun to imagine, yet." She rubbed her cheek to Renton's shoulder in an old and familiar gesture. "Just as we did."

Maurice began to splutter out fresh objections, but then, as if they had turned their heads and seen the room from another, unsuspected, angle, they perceived Renton and Eureka, standing before the opening...no longer alone. On either side of them, stretching to infinity, were row upon endless rows of other Eurekas and Rentons, in every imaginable—and some that had to be beyond imagination—state or configuration. Some looked exactly like the parents that Ariadne and Maurice had known and loved. Others were different in subtle ways that might pass unnoticed, save to those who knew them well. Still others played upon video screens, or across drawn paper sheets, or seemed to be formed of letters and characters that marched through the printed page. Even more disturbing, Maurice and Ariadne now saw unending analogs of themselves reaching to the sides, along dimensions previously unsuspected. Ariadne crept nearer to Maurice.

Eureka, her hair and gown floating lazily in the trapar breeze, did not turn from the vista now forming in the opening before them. "Don't be afraid. For those outside, time has paused. We are in an intersection, a bubble, a time beyond time, a place where there is no place."

"That sounds like Viyuuden," muttered Maurice. In the opening, a landscape now focused into clear view. Rolling foothills of endless green meadowland, dotted with the confetti of flowers, blue, red, yellow, white and every other hue of beauty. Trees waved, heavy with summer's leaves, yet brightened by the coppery shades of autumn beneath a contented sun.

"That shouldn't be surprising, should it?" Eureka said, blessing them with one final smile. "Viyuuden is right. He always has been."

"What is that place?" pleaded Ariadne.

Renton winked at them. "The tenth dimension," he laughed. "We love you, kids, all of you. Till we meet again."

Beyond, over a nearby rise, hurried a boy and girl in their teens, the boy with shaven head and a long dark topknot, the girl's face streaked with blue beneath a head of deep-blue hair. They called out, happily, and Renton and Eureka, arms about each others' waists, stepped through the portal, together in that bright new world as they had always been in the old one.

The portal collapsed under the weight of an impatient Universe; time existed once more. Tommy and Jobs said something that could be heard not with the ears but only with the mind. Maurice and Ariadne accepted the full power of the Coral, and with an internal twist of their joined consciousness, directed it inward, into the structure of the Hotel Ocean dunes itself.

And the great machine constructed and primed by the nonmaterial Observers blazed to life.

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirty-Two

Birth Pains

-#-

Professor Fernando Wossel went rigid with shock, then leaned nearer to his monitor, scarcely able to believe what he was watching.

An enormous pillar of blazing energy, a great golden rod of light fully seven kilometers in diameter, lanced up from the beleaguered town of Ocean Dunes. The optical sensors of the weather satellite capturing the phenomenon quickly dimmed to avoid damage to its sensors, but Wossel could still see that the brilliant shaft's light was more than sufficient to illuminate the earths' surface for dozens of kilometers around. "They're getting a spectacular false dawn down there," he said softly. Then, reconsidering: "Or maybe it's not so false at all." He waved one hand to his assistant. "Energy so dense...it's almost solid matter! Morales! Are you getting this?"

"Yes, Professor. What is that—?"

"Never mind that, yet! Get this transmission over to the Command group in the Pyramid, right away!"

-#-

"Hell's Bells!" shouted Holland as the brilliant image appeared on his screen. "Is that a Federation attack? Did we fail after all? Looks like an orbital plasma cannon—"

"The Federation has never had plasma weapons of such immensity," said Egan, though Holland thought he sounded a bit less certain than usual. "And its source is on the planetary surface, not space. It comes from...from Ocean Dunes."

Yuki, still standing at his side, clutched tightly to his shoulder. "Oh, God. All the people who're trapped in that place..."

"It's even worse than that, Mrs. Novak." Oliver Deutsch, the military technician, turned round in his seat. "The interference has begun to clear a bit; I've just received an encrypted message from Dr. Katsuhiro Morita, at the Smolensk site."

Holland scowled. "The Pinwheel? What's he got to do with this?"

"He said...he said that the Royal Family—all of them, including Their Majesties Renton and Eureka—were there, at Smolensk."

"At Smolensk?" Professor Ragowsky smiled in a way that Holland didn't like. "All of them?"

"Yes, sir. But that the Pinwheel team has...has somehow transmitted them to...to Ocean Dunes."

Holland's stomach twisted. Oh, no. Renton and Eureka and the kids, down there in that...that inferno? "Are they...?"

"The golden beam," said Egan, showing a deep interest bordering on excitement. "It is intensifying. Holland, look—the tendril that the cloud was extending downward to the ground is now retracting."

In spite of his fear, Holland looked. There was no denying it, the alien cloud surrounding the Earth had withdrawn its bulging extension. Even more remarkable, it was now trying to pull away from the golden light, making a concavity in itself, as a man might withdraw his finger from a fire. But whatever intelligence guided that shining beam seemed to understand this, and increased its intensity, pulling trapar from the rest of the planet in a hurricane of power, channeling it upward and into the cloud.

The light penetrated the alien entity, spreading its power across it, into it. From somewhere deep in his mind, Holland could feel—one glance around the room was enough to tell him that everyone else was sensing it, too—a dark storm of something akin to rage and fear, though in an utterly unhuman context that expressed itself in cold bleakness, like invisible knives of ice.

Junior cried out at that alien touch; several of the techs at their consoles cursed or clutched at their heads. And still the energy beam from Earth raked the now-agitated cloud, setting it aglow with the shining hues of the rising sun itself. Long minutes crept by; great burning scars of golden lightning flashed like thunderbolts among the shadowy billows, and wherever that cleansing light touched, the cloud recoiled and churned, and ultimately vanished before its power.

"It's retreating," said Yuki. "The cloud—it's moving away from Earth!"

But Dr. Egan shook his head, smiling. "No, Mrs. Novak. It is not retreating. It is dissolving."

Holland saw that it was true—the alien was breaking up, shredding into smaller wisps of superfluidic matter that in turn writhed and melted away into the nothingness of space. The deadly beam from Earth flickered and went out, and the cloud contaminated the world's skies no longer.

Someone began a cheer of deepest relief. And yet almost at once, Holland saw that the time had still not come for celebration. "Wait a minute, wait a damn minute. Something's still not right. Why can't we see the stars yet? Is there another one of those things out there?"

"No, Holland." It was Woz's voice, crackling over the comm link. "That's the thing we called The Mist, five years ago. It's back."

"Back? What the hell for?"

"How should I know? But I can tell you this much: it's accelerating."

"In what direction?" asked Dr. Egan.

"Downward," said Woz. "Toward the Earth."

Someone screamed; Holland turned and saw that it was Viyuuden, out of his trance at last, but toppling slowly to the floor. Ragowski caught him, grunting as he took the bigger man's weight in his arms and deposited him slowly to the floor. "No mere human can long endure the ecstasy of the Coral," he said, with a wink.

Holland returned to his monitor. I've got no time for mysterious prophecies from crackpot philosophers. Besides, Woz was right—the encircling Mist was contracting itself like a doughnut engulfing a plum. What now? Does this crap ever end?

-#-

The light roared through him, through his body, through his thoughts. Even with his eyes clenched tightly shut, Major Haydn could still see the golden blaze that even the airship's heavy metallic hull could not hold out. All round him, the screams of the terrified crew echoed like tortured metal. Was it a Federation fusion bomb after all? Am I dead? Is this what it's like, to have one's body stripped away, reduced to a mere viewpoint, timelessly floating in an eternity of light?

He was still pondering the possibility when the unbearable glory of the light went away, and he found himself and the crew still very much alive within the undamaged hull.

"What in bloody hell was that?" someone said. "And where's that glare outside comin' from?"

The co-pilot, still standing next to the windscreen, squinted upward. "It's... the sun! I haven't seen it in so long... And look, it's the Commander and Lady Sorel. They're still there."

-#-

Without any sense of intervening time having passed, Maurice and Ariadne found themselves once again at the center of the circular room, standing alone. Everyone else seemed to be staring at them, waiting, poised between one breath and the next.

—Maurice, it worked. Can't you feel it?

+Yeah. Mom and Dad were right. The Coral was right. Once they were gone from this dimension, the Observers' weapon could focus all the trapar energy of the Earth through us, blasting the Adversary. But now that it's over...

—Now that it's over, we're the focus of all the power of the Coral. And the new Coral is so much stronger and more powerful than before.

+Ariadne...there hasn't been any time lately to really think about this, but...what do we do now?

Not far from them, Job Stevens groaned, and sat, and helped his wife up from the floor. He looked toward them with eyes that no longer bore the blue aura of the now-departed Observers and shook his head in slow wonder. "Did you hear it?" he whispered. "Did you hear it?"

"Hear what?" said Ariadne.

Tommy's wide smile glowed with rapture. "The music! Oh, their music! It's like everything we ever felt or heard or imagined. And we were a part of it! We were..."

The two of them fell into each others' arms, and would not speak again for hours.

-#-

"Holland!" called Woz, "Our satellites! They're coming back online, one by one, all of them. Communications; weather; observational..."

"Right. Get us a look at the Federation side of the Earth, quick."

"The Federation side? Well, whatever you say." Holland waited impatiently as Woz made the necessary adjustments, and a view of the hemisphere occupied by the Coral-shrouded Federation territories blossomed on his monitor.

As he'd both expected and feared, the Mist was concentrating itself on the Coral still remaining after it had blasted half of itself into the mysterious Tenth Dimension, years before. But what the hell's the Mist up to? Is it attacking the Coral? Trying to blow it away?

"There appears to be an extremely powerful energy flow between Coral and Mist," rumbled Dr. Egan, as though reading Holland's mind.

"In which direction?"

"Strangely enough, in both directions. Both entities are generating and receiving massive currents of power. And it increases as the Mist lowers itself to the earth."

"Incoming message from the High Admiral," called Lieutenant Deutsch. "He says trapar levels are rising, and wants to know if the state of war still exists."

Holland waved him away. "Tell him no, just put things on standby till further orders. Hey, Doc—didn't you conclude that the first cloud and the mist were both 'superfluids' of some kind?"

"So we theorized," Dr. Egan said, without taking his eyes from his monitor. "And observation now supports that conclusion. Have you not noted how the Mist is entering our atmosphere without mixing with it? Not only a superfluid, but one with wholly unexplainable properties."

"That's putting it lightly," said Woz. "From what we can see here, it's starting to permeate solid matter, including the Earth itself."

Holland stiffened. "Is it toxic?"

"If it is, we're dead already. It's reached our level, and we're breathing some of it right now."

"I don't... Wait a second, what's going on now?" No one moved from their monitors. On the Federation hemisphere, the Coral had begun to shift in some subtle way, as though under a strong but moving polarized light. "Is that an earthquake? The surface is rippling. I've never seen one so powerful—"

Woz cut him short. "But that isn't the surface of the Earth. It's the surface of the remaining half of the Coral, remember?"

"Yeah. But for the Federation and the Coralside provinces, it doesn't make any damn difference." Having experienced more than enough Coral-based seismic events in his earlier years, Holland could easily picture the terror that had to be spreading across the Coral-covered side of the world. "Surface is surface, and with the ground heaving under their feet, nobody'll be splitting any hairs."

"It's the Mist," cried Woz. "It's combining with the Coral in some way!"

Holland saw that it was so. "God. The Coral's lifting from the planet's surface."

Like a heavy rug shaken by the hands of an unseen titan, the Coral encrustation that had concealed the lands of the entire hemisphere for thousands of years now rose up, slowly folding into itself, creasing and whirling.

Only Professor Ragowski, muttering a Vodarek chant, spoke. The rest—even Doctor Egan—stared in silent horror as they watched what had to be the slow annihilation of more than half the human race. The Federation, the Coralside InterDominion provinces, all of it, uprooted like so many useless weeds from a garden.

"I can't watch this," said Yuki, her voice a sob as she turned from Holland's monitor. "That hemisphere's mostly ocean underneath the Coral. Whoever isn't getting crushed is going to drown. Oh, God, all those people..."

"No, wait!" cried Woz over the comm link. "It's not... I mean, the IR sensors aren't reading it that way. Heat signatures are in chaos, but they're not diminishing. We're not reading any signs of..."

Viyuuden swayed to his feet, one hand on Ragowski's shoulder. "No signs of death, Professor Wossel." He wiped a stream of dampness from his cheeks with the back of one sleeve. "Nor will you find any. The Coral—the complete Coral—is now wholly aware of we puny humans who have scuttled for so long upon its skin. And never again will it endanger our welfare."

"You're saying that no one is being killed in that upheaval?" This guy can be obscure, but never outright absurd. Holland forced himself to look at his screens once again, hardly daring to hope.

The remaining swirls of surface Coral—it seemed to be diminishing as it moved, like ice in a mixed drink—danced a hideous ballet over the two newly-exposed continents. "Those are North and South America," said Woz, spellbound. "This is the stuff of ancient legend. Neither of them have been visible for two and a half thousand years. And there's the Japanese Archipelago, all of it. And over there, Western Europe and West Africa. And—"

"Academically fascinating, no doubt, Professor." Only Dr. Egan's eyes moved, scanning across his monitors. "But for the moment, our greatest attentions must be reserved for the millions of human beings currently suspended by the shrinking Coral. I believe I can see debris, a great deal of it, dropping to the ground below. The remains of factories, homes, roads, bridges—anything built by the hand of Man upon the Coral's surface—are now falling slowly earthward, toward the continents."

Viyuuden, still looking much the worse for wear, came to his side. "Yes. It is releasing heavy and dangerous debris, so as to cause no harm to the humans who will soon follow it."

"No harm?" Holland prickled at his easy dismissal. "Listen, when all those millions of people are wafted down to earth, they're going to find themselves in a world without infrastructure of any kind! With no shelter, no food, no water, no police forces... It's going to be anarchy!"

"Yes, Holland, there's no denying that you're correct. And so we must intervene as quickly as possible, to minimize the period of suffering."

Dr. Egan nodded quickly. "Indeed, that must be our first priority. And what of the Coral itself, my friend? Is it in fact dissolving, as it appears to be?"

"No." Viyuuden folded his arms, unable to suppress a smile. "Thanks to Their Majesties Eureka and Renton, the invading cloud has been destroyed, and the two components that were originally destined to form the Coral have at last combined. Now, they are one, and it is transmuting to what you call a superfluid, which is sinking into the mass of the Earth itself. Though no longer visible, it is still with us. And will always be. A true planetary intelligence, guide and companion in a suddenly larger and more perilous universe."

Holland looked at him through narrowed eyes. "You seem to know a hell of a lot more about this business than any of us. And what's this about Renton and Eureka? Have they been in some kind of danger? Are they all right?"

The priest would not meet his eyes. "They have gone beyond my inner sight; I know no more than I have said."

"Well, then—"

"Message coming in from Ocean Dunes!" shouted Lieutenant Deutsch. "It's from Information Minister Stoner!"

Dr. Egan smiled for the first time. "Is it indeed? And at a moment when we are in most desperate need of information. Transfer his transmission to our screens at once, Lieutenant."

"Aye, sir."

Holland nearly shouted for joy as Stoner's familiar ironic features filled their monitors. And yet he saw at once that the news was unlikely to be entirely good. Stoner seemed to be standing in an enclosed equipment-strewn room, surrounded by faces known and unknown. All of them were clearly much the worse for wear, but most disturbing of all, Maurice and Ariadne were in the background, both of them wearing shell-shocked looks of disbelief. And no sign of Eureka or Renton anywhere. "This's Holland, Matt. Good to see you again. What've you got to tell us?"

"Matt Stoner, Minister of Information—with the news story of the century. I've already got my people at the MOI simulcasting this broadcast on the public network, so the people of the InterDominion are getting it at exactly the same time as our government in the Heart of the World."

Dr. Egan lifted one finger. "Please continue, sir. We shall not interrupt."

"Right." Stoner took a deep breath and moved closer to the video pickup. "I'm speaking to you from the engineering level, the topmost floor of the Hotel Ocean Dunes.

"You heard me right—I said Ocean Dunes, the resort town that was, till just a little while ago, cut off from the rest of the world. But not because we were being held prisoner. It's because this entire town and the hotel at its center, were turned into an almost unimaginable weapon, created by an alien race that calls itself the Observers. It was to protect us from an enemy we never even suspected we had. And it was only the gallant sacrifice of Eureka and Renton Thurston that enabled that weapon to be put to use."

Holland went cold. Sacrifice?

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let me introduce the others who've been with me over these wild couple of days..."

-#-

-#-

Chapter Thirty-Three

First Steps

-#-

Maurice itched beneath his black uniform, and tried not to squirm.

The last time he and Ariadne had been present here in the Pyramid's Executive Conference room, they had been surrounded by loyalist senators, for a briefing on the current state of the crisis. But no sooner had the crisis of the Mist, the alien cloud and the Coral passed, than new ones began to multiply around them like dandelions in the spring.

—Stop fidgeting, will you? flashed Ariadne. You should be trying to look more dignified and royal.

+Easy for you to say. You're just wearing that fluffy little gown of yours, not this damn tight uniform. Even Dad could never stand these things.

Ariadne hesitated for an instant.

—Do you think we're really doing the right thing? I mean, letting everyone think Mother and Father are dead? I hate lying like this...

+It was your idea, remember? Besides, we never actually told anyone they died. They just assumed it, and we let them.

—Still, it seems so dishonest. Just look how everyone's wearing those black mourning armbands. Everyone but us.

+We can straighten it out, somehow, eventually. In the meantime, the whole world's in complete chaos, and everybody needs some kind of noble ideal to draw them together while we get on with rebuilding.

—Well, yes, that's true. I can agree with that. Do you think Viyuuden suspects the truth?

+I don't know. Not even Mom and Dad could always be sure what he's thinking. But if he does suspect, he's keeping quiet about it, so I guess that means he agrees.

—I suppose so. But... Wait, Maurice, Doctor Egan's getting up to speak.

-#-

Holland felt his wife's arm slide into his as Gregory Egan drew himself up to his full imposing height, somber and very serious in his formal suit. Mischa, seated next to him, looked very proud. And considering how close she once came to losing him, it's no wonder she's happy. It's been a damn long road for both of them. And for us all. He squeezed Yuki's fingers, and did his damnedest to look serious.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began Egan. "The reviewing stands outside the Pyramid are in readiness for the solemn ceremony that awaits us. The Ministry of Information cameras and commentators have already begun the worldwide broadcast of this historic event. In less than half an hour, the State orchestra will play a fanfare, and Maurice and Ariadne Thurston will walk together down the red-carpeted runway. There, they will receive their titanium crowns from Viyuuden, and the InterDominion will have in fact, what it has long had in practice—a constitutional, parliamentary monarchy."

Once again, Holland let his eyes tray to the thin, dull-silver titanium circlets in front of the Vodarek High priest. He had no doubt that both of the royals-to-be had vetoed long and loud any weighty, clumsy crowns, no matter how impressive looking.

"But before that happens, my friends, I must reveal to you all certain new developments which have just been made known to me.

"First, both satellite scans and reports back from our first expeditions into the newly-revealed lands have confirmed Viyuuden's impressions—as well as those of our soon-to-be King and Queen—that fatalities from the dissolution of the solid Coral from that side of Earth were astonishingly few. Only seven reported deaths have been confirmed, and it appears that all of them were due to unfortunate, if understandable, panic.

"As a corollary, I shall add that Major John Michael Haydn, late of Federation External Intelligence, has been granted permission by Lord Commander Sorel to be flown to the northern continent immediately, there to search among the countless refugees for his wife and children. Three of his companions have gone with him on similar quests."

Yuki gave a low whistle. "They've got guts. That could take years—if they find their loved ones at all."

"Quite so, Mrs. Novak. Secondly, now that all the—" Egan cleared his throat politely "—surviving members of the Parliamentary Senate have reconvened in full session, today's coronation has been affirmed by unanimous vote."

At the other side of the table, Senator Konoye gave a nod of acknowledgement. "Prime Minister, I think I can say with some certainty that the so-called 'Antipat' movement is permanently finished. The noble sacrifice of Their Majesties Renton and Eureka has destroyed all rabidly anti-Royal sentiment."

"I pray that it be so, Senator. It is to that end that when Ariadne and Maurice are crowned this morning, Viyuuden will also announce the retroactive coronation of their parents as King Renton I and Queen Eureka I."

This surprise announcement was greeted with a patter of spontaneous applause from all present, including Holland. All those years ago, when I sprung Eureka from that damned Federation surgical prison, who could've guessed it would all end up like this?

"I shall detain you for only a short time longer, my friends. The immense task now before us is, of course, the reclamation of the newly-revealed ancient lands and the relief of the suffering now rife among them. It will be no simple task. Certainly, we wish to avoid a new Federation forming itself among the ashes of the old. Yet at the same time, the InterDominion must never become a 'world government,' with well-intentioned tentacles insinuating themselves into the lives of every person upon the globe. Accomplishing this goal will require imagination, diplomacy and practical management skills beyond anything demanded of the InterDominion so far."

Outside, Holland could hear the State Orchestra begin a slow processional far below them, and he glanced discreetly at his watch. Ten more minutes.

"Complicating matters, of course, is the immediate humanitarian challenge to simply keep the inhabitants of the new continents alive. Happily, the Coralian Gift seems now to be granted to those in the newly-revealed lands. Yet as we are all painfully aware, the InterDominion can barely feed itself, let alone tens of millions of ageless new dependents. Viyuuden informs me that the Coral is causing new food crops to grow in the revealed territories, but that will provide only a temporary solution. Also, winter will soon be upon us in the northern hemisphere, and shelter and sanitation will become still more urgent."

Egan paused to let it all sink in before continuing. "We now find ourselves in a world stranger than any we have ever known—even though it has been returned to us in its original configuration. For the first time, universes parallel to our own, though long suspected, are now known to exist. We have learned that we are surrounded by alien races, most of which wish us well, but some of whom, for reasons unknown, do not. What are their agendas? Their goals? And what if we choose to pilot our own course, independently of even the most benevolent influence? We are beset upon all sides by uncertainty.

"These are matters with which I feel personally qualified to address. The Arkship—which we now know to be infused with a kind of created intelligence—is releasing information to us at a steady, but controlled rate. It has already transmitted the first of its precious cargo; we believe it is giving up its treasure of scientific data, both Human and alien, as it considers us ready for it. Making quick and efficient use of that data will be a supreme challenge for our scientific community."

Holland went rigid. No. Oh, no, he's not heading where I think he's heading, is he?

"Therefore, I announce that in one month's time, I shall be stepping down as Prime Minister, to return to pure research. That is my proper place."

Senator Konoye jumped to his feet. "No, sir! You can't leave us—not at this time when we need you most! Who could possibly replace you?"

Holland wanted very badly to find some excuse to leave the room. Doctor Egan's placid eyes swept the table like twin plasma beams, before finally coming to rest on him. "As Parliamentary majority leader, Senator, I now proclaim to you that before this day is out, I shall stand before Parliament and nominate First Speaker Holland Novak as my successor. For as long as I have known him, Holland has demonstrated superior leadership, daring and fine judgment under pressure. And during our recent experience with the alien cloud, he has shown an admirable ability to carry out a crucial task even when it means contravening a—" for an instant, Egan's face softened with the tiniest creases of a smile "—higher authority. I can think of no man more suited to lead the InterDominion at this time. First Speaker, will you accept my nomination?"

"I don't..." Holland found his jaw working stupidly without sound. It's crazy. I never wanted to be the damn Prime Minister! He's putting me on the spot! I can't...

And then Yuki's arm tightened on his, and he saw that she was smiling at him, her eyes bright, nodding eagerly. "Say yes," she whispered.

He knew then, that she was right, as she had always been. "Yes," he managed to mutter. Then, louder, "Yes. I'll accept."

Relief exploded across Konoye's face. "Very well, sir. You will have my full support and that of the Loyalist Party."

"And ours, too," said Ariadne, standing.

"All the way," Maurice shouted with her.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you all." Egan looked down at his watch, though Holland had little doubt that he had known precisely what time it was all along. "And now, we must all descend to the reviewing stands, where this historic Coronation will take place. May we be one with the Will of Vodarek."

His mind working furiously, Holland watched, barely seeing, as they all filed from the conference room, talking intently with one another. First Speaker. Who'll be the new First Speaker?

Yuki was the last to stand. "Coming, Prime Minister?" she said, holding out one hand.

"Yeah. Yeah, just give me a minute, to make a little last-minute arrangement, okay? You go on ahead and I'll meet you in the governmental box."

"But..."

"No, it's okay, I promise. Just one minute and I'll be along. You don't think I'd miss this for anything, do you?"

"Well... All right. But if you're late, I'm coming up to drag you down myself, I swear."

When she was gone, Holland grabbed for his communicator and snapped it open. He punched in an official numeric code and waited.

"Hello?" came the very annoyed voice on the other end

"Dominic? This's Holland Novak. Listen, I hear you're looking for a job..."

-#-

The sun blazed down upon the streets of The Heart of the World as though it were making up for so much lost time. Bigger crowds than Maurice or Ariadne had ever seen crammed its streets like overflowing waves of confetti, poignantly reminding them of the rolling flower-dotted hills they'd glimpsed in the Tenth Dimension.

They stood just behind an open portal on the Pyramid's second floor, opening now onto a walkway thirty meters long and covered in soft red carpeting. At its far end waited the solemn Viyuuden in his most formal black robes, beside a table on which rested the narrow titanium circlets that would soon brand them as King and Queen of the InterDominion.

"Just wait for the fanfare, Your Majesties," said Madrigal, the priestess. Do not walk too slowly, but do not appear to hurry, either."

Considering that the walkway was lined on either side by armed IPF and Guardians of the Flame honor guards, Maurice wondered if she understood the irony of her gentle urgings.

+'Don't hurry,' she says. But we're not so popular that there aren't still a few crackpots out there who might like to see us royal scum blasted away before we even reach those crowns.

—That's true. But we must demonstrate the courage to go through with it anyway. It's what Mother and Father would have done.

+Yeah, you're right, it is.

"We the people of the InterDominion, welcome the Flame of Vodarek!" boomed Viyuuden's voice over the sound system, and the fanfare blared from the amplified State Orchestra, to the accompaniment of a wave of cheering that seemed to echo from the Earth itself. All video cameras turned in their direction, and the faint rainbow flicker of a sky-fish flock shimmered briefly, high in the noontime air.

Maurice slipped his hand into Ariadne's.

+Together.

—Yes, always. I'm...scared, though.

They took their first step into the future.

+Don't be. Things can't get any more complicated than they are already.

-#-

Deep within the Great Pyramid, the immense vaulted cavern of the Vodarek Central Temple sat empty for the first time in decades, as the Great Coronation and Elevation of the Flame took place on the ground level above.

And yet, not quite alone.

The Acolyte sat very near to the great transparent Core of the Mind, the immense six-meter-tall triangular column at the Temple's center. The softly-glowing green liquid inside bubbled and seethed continuously, like the working fluid of the now-obsolete Compac interfaces that had once been the control units of nearly every large device on Earth.

He sighed, and his concentration faltered for a moment. Reverend Viyuuden, had he been present, would surely have noted his lapse and gently guided him back into the proper meditative state. But still, the Acolyte fumed, it wasn't fair. The greatest event of his entire short life was going on outside, and here he was, stuck on Monitor duty, keeping vigil lest the Coral choose to belch forth some crumb of transcendental knowledge while the rest of the world watched, enthralled, the Coronation of Their Majesties. Years from now, he reflected bitterly, decades from now, people would ask each other where they'd been when the Flame of Vodarek received their crowns from Reverend Viyuuden himself. And he would only hang his head and mumble that he'd been alone in the Temple, far even from a video monitor, staring into the blurry currents of a tank of green—

The Acolyte blinked. Had that been...?

He unfolded his legs from beneath him and stood in the emerald glow of the Core of the Mind. Yes. Those weren't just bubbles wobbling up from the base. He shivered, and watched in awe as the glowing letters rose, one above the other, and hung wavering before him.

The Acolyte's mouth fell open. Only one course lay before him, now—he must inform the Reverend at once. He turned, nearly tripping on his own robes, and ran off, sandals slapping and echoing in the empty cavern with the urgency of his errand.

Behind him in the stillness, the shining letters waited patiently, singing their silent new verse to that song that had begun so long ago, with the descent of a wounded war machine to a backwater repair shop in a now-vanished land called Bellforest:

A

L

C

Y

O

N

E

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The End

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Afterword

by the author,

Maeter Thurston Wyngard

And so, after lo these many years, the full story can finally be told. All security restrictions have been lifted, all restraining orders cancelled, all records declassified. These three lengthy volumes—The Fire In The Heart; Shine On, Shine On, and In Some Brighter Dreams—represent the most complete available record of the unsung tale of my adoptive parents and their world, from the Coralian Epiphany to their departure from this realm.

In this, I have relied heavily on the recollections of the many friends and colleagues who were involved in the transformation of our world. I'm sure I have driven them to distraction with my detailed, frequent and exhaustive interviews, for which I thank them deeply.

In the reconstructions dealing with the private thoughts and actions of the players on this stage, I have had to fall back on both memories, or—where even these were not available—extrapolations from those closest to the persons involved. They shared their thoughts freely and patiently, and the responsibility for any inaccuracies is mine alone.

As for the private conversations of Renton and Eureka themselves, Maurice and Ariadne's meditations have provided hints from the Coral itself, which I have used in reconstructing these lost exchanges. Whatever their shortcomings, they are the nearest approximations of what was said that we can hope to achieve at this time.

In my pursuit of the truth, I have spared the feelings of no one, not even myself. Though I blush today to remember my early crush on Maurice, I could not leave it out of the record without calling into question the accuracy of the other portraits I have drawn. If I have caused embarrassment to anyone else, I can only say that this is how things were, and making them softer or more complimentary would be a crime against History itself.

The list of acknowledgements for this record is necessarily immense. So much so that even another volume as long as this one would inevitably contain accidental omissions. And so, I will list only the very top few, and consign the rest to the copious historical footnotes in the Appendices. They are:

My husband, Alan Wyngard, without whose tireless assistance none of this project would have been possible.

Professor Emeritus Matthew Bouchard, head of the Royal Historical Institute, who generously made available to me the entire resources of the Institute itself.

Former Prime Minister Holland Novak, and his wife, Former Senator Yukiko Novak.

Baron Harold and Baroness Phaedra Farnsworth, Joint Directors of the Royal Cultural Trust.

Mr. and Mrs. Eugene and Manon Onegin, Executive Officers and Majority Stockholders, General Catalytics, Ltd.

Former Agricultural Resource Director Hilda Bouchard, whose legendary management of relief efforts spared the people of the former Federation and Coralside Provinces untold suffering in the years following the Great Transformation.

Probably the most immediately controversial part of these pages was the revelation that in the early post-Transformation years, Their Majesties Maurice and Ariadne deliberately concealed the fact that Eureka and Renton had not died, but had rather ascended to the Tenth Dimension. My own opinion is that we must bear in mind that this was a hastily-made policy decision—and in the light of the political situation at the time, probably the right one.

And yet, as I look back over my adoptive parents' breathtaking lives, I'm inclined to wonder just how anyone could have believed that two such vital and passionate individuals had blithely surrendered to extinction.

Eureka Seven could never die.

Maeter Wyngard

President and Owner,

the a la Mode Fashion

Publishing Group, Ltd.