9

"THIS WHOLE COMPLEX is amazing," said a habitat designer walking with Dr. Herat. "It looks like it was built by hand."

Herat nodded, looking around at the vast corridor they were in. "The detailing was done by monks of the Cycler Compact."

The designer ran a hand appreciatively over a wall carving. "It's beautiful. Intimidating. But almost… obsessive. Inward-turning, you know?"

"Alien to us, yes. It challenges our notions of time. Maybe that was the idea."

"Why do they call it the halo, anyway?" somebody else said. "That implies light. Those worlds are all dark."

Herat laughed. "There's a story about that. They originally called them orphan worlds, but try to imagine encouraging people to emigrate to the orphan worlds! So they renamed them the halo worlds. Just so people would find them attractive to visit." There was a general chuckle at this.

Admiral Crisler awaited them at the doors to what looked like a ballroom. Just inside was a short line of people: the halo-worlders.

Dr. Herat was the first in line to greet them. He shook hands down the line, followed by the man he'd been talking to— a Dr. Katz, it seemed. Then it was Michael's turn.

"Michael Bequith."

"Blair Genereaux." He was surprisingly young, sharply dressed in the latest Chandaka fashion. Michael wondered if he was one of the halo-worlders or a liaison.

"Michael Bequith."

"Dr. Bequith, nice to meet you. I'm Corinna Chandra." She was tall, of indeterminate age, with dark, shadowed eyes and dusky skin. Her iron-gray hair was tied back and cascaded in a fan down her back. She wore a simple red jumpsuit, and the only adornment she wore was a stud in her left nostril. Her gaze was direct and businesslike.

"Max Cassels. How ya doing?" Someone had made an attempt to dress Max well, but he wasn't having any of it. His shirt was untucked and his hair uncombed. He looked distracted.

Was this the famous «Bud» Cassels?

"Rebecca France, M.D." Tall and slender, with gray eyes and broad cheekbones. She seemed secretly amused by something.

"Evan Laurel." This was the man from the garden last night; Michael recognized his voice. He was tall and blond, with lines of care around his eyes, about forty-five years old. He had the sigil of the Cycler Order on his jacket. And standing next to him…

"Ah, yes, the man from the garden last night," she said before Michael had a chance to introduce himself. He felt his face grow hot.

"I'm Rue," she said. Her eyes were hidden behind black pince-nez sunglasses today. "And you are…?"

"Bequith," he stammered. "Michael Bequith."

"Pleased to meet you, Mike." She smiled distantly.

That was the end of the line. He stalked into the hall, still smarting.

They'd set up a long table at one end of the hall. This place was sumptuous beyond belief— the scenes painted on the walls were neither inscape illusions nor copies done by mesobots. The ceiling showed scenes of planetfall and the conquest of nature here on Chandaka, with fabulous beasts and vines carved into the native stone that formed the arches. There was even design in the parquet flooring. Hot coffee and a good Martian breakfast was waiting for Michael as he sat himself.

Once all the members of the expedition were seated, Crisler walked to the end of the table. Where he stood, his head was framed by the baroque jaws of a dragon on the far wall. He said, "Welcome everyone. This is the first assembly of our full scientific crew. There will be seventeen of us, plus the halo worlders and a support staff of forty-five on the Banshee. Today I'd like to go over the mission profile we've developed.

"We're going to rendezvous with Jentry's Envy one point-seven light-years out from Chandaka. That's farther from an inhabited star than most of you have ever been." He smiled woodenly at the halo-worlders. "Since the Envy is receding at eight-five percent c, we can't use a conventional starship to catch up to her. If you'll check your inscape, you'll see the ship we'll be using."

A public inscape window opened over Crisler. It showed the golden limb of some gas giant planet. Clouds swirled below.

"Where's the ship?" asked Cassels.

"Patience," said Crisler. "Here it comes."

As they watched, a dark rectangle, translucent like a fine gauze, moved across the face of the planet. It resolved into a black cylinder of indeterminate size. There were some mirrored spheres at one end and a set of black rings of consecutively larger sizes appeared to be drifting behind it.

"You can't see a lot of the Banshee," said Crisler, "because it's mostly thin spars and cable. There's sixty kilometers of line played out behind the engine you see here. It ends," the image changed, "here." This was a more familiar sight: two standard balloon habitats, joined by a V-shaped elbow at their tops. It seemed to be floating alone in space.

"Banshee's state of the art: a fullerene-wrapped superconducting magnet with a field radius of eight thousand kilometers, a pion drive, and a courier class fast hyperdrive. The drive unit normally tows the habitats, so don't worry about radiation, we'll never get near the thing."

"It's a ramjet?" asked Cassels.

"Hybridized to use antimatter from an onboard supply instead of doing straight fusion. Banshee is very, very fast. We'll approach the Envy's velocity in a little under two months. We'll use the hyperdrive first to get near the Envy, so we can accelerate in empty space. We'll come out of jump three light-months behind her and accelerate up from there. We'll have a six-week window to bail out once we get there. Then we'll have reached a point where it'll be just as worth our while to stay with the Envy until its next stop. So the mission is a five-week exploratory phase, followed by a possibly extended mission of a year and a half. Luckily the Envy is on a course that will take it near the K-class star Maenad in two years. Maenad has no planets or colonies, but it's a massive enough star to start our FTL drive. We can jump back to Chandaka from there."

Dr. Herat was shifting impatiently in his seat. "That's fine. What about the cycler? All we've seen of it so far has been a set of photos. What are we going to find when we get there?"

The admiral smiled. "Well, to answer that, I think we should defer to the owner of the cycler, Mr. Cassels. Max?" He turned to the rumpled halo-worlder, who glanced around and stood up.

"Actually…" said Max. "I'm Max Cassels, all right, but I'm not Bud Cassels and I'm not the real owner of the Jentry's Envy."

He was met with a puzzled silence.

Just as Admiral Crisler opened his mouth to speak, Max said, "We decided that while we were here, the real owner would let me play the part because I've got a bit more experience dealing with… people in powerful situations. She's confident she can take over now and frankly I think the deception really annoys her." He smirked at the other halo-worlders. "So, then, let me introduce the real owner of Jentry's Envy, Rue Cassels."

Michael squirmed in his seat. He was as surprised as the others at this turn of events, but even more embarrassed now than ever that she had seen him eavesdropping last night.

Max sat down and the young woman stood up. Max had made the introduction like a toastmaster and the lack of applause that greeted her was jarring. She stammered. "I… I'm from a station in the back of beyond, you know. Self-confessed rube. When we came here we didn't know whether we'd be conned out of the ship. I didn't know what to do, so I put things in Max's care for a while. Sorry for lying to you all."

Michael glanced around the table; the others were surprised, but not offended— except, perhaps, for Crisler, who was scowling at Max. Michael himself was completely enchanted.

This Rue Cassels was utterly unlike the one Michael had seen in the garden last night; there, she had been poised, confident, even eloquent. This Rue was a shy, barely adult young woman. She seemed to be hiding behind her dark sunglasses. Some of that might be real— but it came to Michael that she might be acting and if she was, she was superb at it.

"I know, Dr. Herat, that you want the facts and figures about Jentry's Envy," she said. "You'll get them. But I had a real hard time thinking of what to say today and I didn't know why for a while. Then I realized it was because the whole experience of being there at the Envy was so… huge, so wild, that I didn't have the words for it. I mean, I went into this whole thing without a clue what I was getting into. The Envy was a shock. I don't think it's fair to any of you to let you think that this is going to be like anywhere else you've ever been.

"Admiral Crisler and his aides have told me what star travel is like in the R.E. You get on a ship, eat some fine meals and use the exercise facility, hobnob with the other passengers for a couple of days, and then you're at your destination. It's seamless.

"Well, cyclers aren't like that." She glanced at Evan Laurel, who chuckled silently.

"To go to a cycler is not to go from one part of your world to another," she said. "To go to a cycler is to leave everything that you know and see it dwindle into specks and disappear in the hugeness. It's not like visiting somewhere, it's like leaving home for good."

Crisler cleared his throat. "With respect, Ms. Cassels, we're all experienced travelers. I think we know what to expect from your kind of travel."

Rue stammered. "Yes, of course…"

"What about Jentry's Envy?" asked Herat mildly. "What did you find when you got there?"

She smiled at the professor. "Well, that's just it. We'd arrived, but not at what we'd expected, and not at anything we could figure out. Radar showed a bunch of spheres of different sizes. There were other things, too— big half-empty gasbags that barely showed up in radar and little dense packets obviously made of metal. They all had thin lines trailing off them, joining up and ultimately connected to the plow sail. Most of them were at ambient temperature— a few degrees above absolute zero. A couple, though, were warm."

"You explored them," said Dr. Herat.

"Well." She adjusted her pince-nez. "We started to. But while the cycler was doing its turn, there was a slight pull on everything. If we parked our little habitat next to something, that something would drift away. If we used fuel to follow it, we were, well, using up fuel. So we found the warmest sphere in the whole collection and we attached a line to its line. Then we were hanging with the other cargoes, like some kind of weird chandelier."

"Surely you did some exploring," coaxed Dr. Herat.

"At first we thought the cycler was going to finish its turn in a couple of months. But it didn't, it kept turning; it was still going to pass Chandaka, but on the other side of the star from what we'd expected. We'd explored Lake Flaccid while we waited, then afterward I decided it wouldn't be wise to waste too much fuel, so we only explored one other—"

"Lake Flaccid?" Dr. Ophir was trying to keep a straight face.

Max gave a long-suffering sigh. "Our Rue has a talent for naming things," he said. "And, as captain, it's her right to name stuff however she wants."

"It is flaccid," cried Rue. "The name is perfect and you know it."

Dr. Herat held up a hand, a pained expression on his face. Michael could see that the professor didn't think much of Rue Cassels. He would never name a priceless alien site so irreverently.

Michael had to smile.

"What is Lake Flaccid?" asked Dr. Herat impatiently.

Rue appeared puzzled. "We took photos. You didn't…?"

Admiral Crisler half stood. "We decided to withhold the key pieces of evidence until we had everyone committed to the mission. Sorry, Dr. Herat, but we couldn't show you everything before."

"Ah." Rue frowned at Crisler. "Well, let's take an inscape look at it now, if you want."

The picture of the Banshee was replaced by another image. This seemed to be a shot down the length of a round tunnel. Evan Laurel stood balanced on one toe near the camera. He was grinning behind his suit's faceplate and he was brightly lit by a light source near the camera while everything behind him faded into shadow.

"That's the rotational axis of one of the midsize habitats," said Rue. "It's huge by cycler standards— sixty meters across, easily. The axis is about seven meters across, so the bulk of the place is 'under' this cylinder. The habitat rotates, so gravity at the outside would be about two gees. At the axis, it's micro."

"This isn't the habitat that has the Lasa writing on it," Crisler said to Herat, who nodded slowly.

Rue paused, staring at the image. "At first we thought we might set up camp here. The atmosphere's pure nitrogen and though it was about minus twenty, we were going to hook up some heaters and oxygenate a tent. Do some real exploring. But when we got to the lake we got too creeped, so we ended up back at the ship. Well, all except Evan and Corinna. They seemed immune to the creeps."

Evan shrugged. "Needed to get off the ship for a while, that's all."

"What is this lake?" asked Ophir.

"You can see it in the picture," said Rue. "See that dark line?" Behind Evan in the picture, a broad expanse of darkness ringed the cylinder. Michael had taken it to mean that most of the length of the cylinder was surfaced with some dark material. Now he could see that that surface was indented some centimeters below the white metal Evan balanced on.

"We shone lights into it," said Evan. "Couldn't figure out what it was. Some liquid, we figured, but if it was water it would have massed an incredible amount and you just don't ship that much water up to light-speed. Costs way too much."

Rue shrugged. "We only visited one other place— and it was even weirder than this." She shook her head. "I'm afraid we don't have much to tell you, Doctor Herat."

"Which brings us to the reasons for this expedition," said Crisler. "Obviously it's a huge undertaking and none of us would be doing this if we didn't expect to reap great reward from it. We all have our agendas and it's time to make those clear. Let's start with yours, Rue."

"I've been up front about it all along," she said. "I own the Envy. It's impossible or at least prohibitively expensive to slow it down to sub-light speeds— like it or not, it's a cycler and therefore the only issue is its course and ability to serve as a habitat for travel between planetary systems. I want to make sure it services the halo worlds. I also have to make sure that its course really is a 'cycle'—it has to pass by Erythrion again eventually. So this time out we're looking for ways to live off the habitats that are already there and change its course if we have to."

Dr. Herat sputtered. "That's… criminal. Well, no not criminal but I'm sorry, this is a priceless artifact, you can't turn it into a floating motel—"

"Doctor Herat," barked Crisler.

"Our civilization is held together by the cyclers and nothing else," said Rue coldly. Her shoulders were hunched now, as if she were anticipating a blow. "There are very few cyclers now and fewer every day, thanks to you people. Anything that can bring back a little of what you stole from us is to the good. If your precious investigation has to suffer so that billions of my people can continue to communicate, then so be it!"

"There is also the fact that not even the Cycler Compact has the systems in place to decelerate something as massive as this starship," said Crisler. "The Envy is not something you can tote home to a museum, Professor Herat. It will continue on its course until it erodes away. Ms. Cassels's plan is only sensible, provided we establish a permanent scientific presence aboard the cycler to investigate it during its occupation."

"Ah." Herat looked chastened. "I apologize, Ms. Cassels. Your people do deserve to benefit from this discovery." Michael could tell he was genuinely sorry for his outburst— but also knew that Herat would still feel the exploitation of an alien artifact for personal gain was wrong. "Of course, if we have a permanent presence on the Envy, in the long run…"

"You'll have to pay for that yourselves," said Max Cassels. "The halo cannot afford to subsidize the Rights Economy."

"So," said Crisler, "one of our priorities is to secure the Envy as a viable cycler for use by the halo worlds. Dr. Herat, what are your priorities?"

"Where to start?" he said. He cracked his knuckles under the table; Michael winced. "This is a find of unknown importance. We have no idea what we're going to discover there. It's imperative that we not make any course corrections until we know what the cycler's programmed course is. We need to find out how old it is, who made it, where it comes from. We may be on the verge of contacting an entirely new civilization. I think Ms. Cassels would agree that this is at least as important as securing a single cycler for the halo— especially if this alien civilization is friendly and also uses cyclers. Imagine what it would mean if they cooperated with the halo worlds to build more!"

Rue, who had sat down, arched an eyebrow.

Crisler ticked off points on an inscape scratch pad. "Origin. Makers. Course. Of course, any technological advances that result from the investigation will be shared by the halo and the R.E."

"So what is your interest, Admiral?" asked Michael.

"It's very simple," he said. "If there really is a hidden civilization out there, one that comprises more than a single species, we need to reach it before the rebels do. I hardly have to tell you that our attempts to create a unified galactic parliament have failed; the other spacefaring species are too alien for us to deal with. The whole construction of the Envy hints at a multispecies civilization, which has been humanity's dream since before we even had space flight. If such a civilization exists, the first faction to make an ally of it will inherit the galaxy."

Michael glanced across at the halo-worlders. Crisler seemed unaware of it, but he had just driven home a deep insult that they must all feel: The people of the Cycler Compact had seen themselves as the inheritors of the galaxy before the Rights Economy had burst out from Earth to steal the lit suns from them. Cyclers had been the essential glue binding the original interstellar human civilization. In thinking only of the polarity of rebels vs. R.E., Crisler was openly relegating Rue Cassels's people to the ash-bin of history.

No hint of this showed on their faces. They politely listened as Crisler set about negotiating the hierarchy of priorities. But as Michael looked around the table, he could clearly see what others might not: competing interests and old wounds ignored for now, but perhaps not forever.

They worked through more details of the expedition. When the formal meeting wound up, everyone remained to shake hands and proceeded to snack on the breakfast that had been provided— everyone, that is, except Max Cassels, who begged off and practically ran from the room.

Michael found himself avoiding the other Cassels. He felt embarrassed about eavesdropping on Rue last night. As he was skulking by the drinks table, Linda Ophir appeared next to him.

"I'm a great admirer of your and Dr. Herat's work," she said, hiding a smile behind a tumbler of orange juice.

"Thank you." He wracked his brains for a suitable complimentary reply.

"Listen, Dr. Bequith, before we get all formal in our roles, I was wondering…"

He reached for a drink. "Ah…?"

"There's some… anomalies… in the data that you should know about," she said quietly. "I'd like to discuss them in a less crowded environment. Would you like to take a walk in the garden later this morning?"

"Oh. Well, sure. Uh, what anomalies are we talking about?"

"Nothing special. But please don't mention this to anyone. Okay?" She smiled winningly at him, and walked quickly away.

Michael realized he was standing holding the ladle to the punch bowl like a weapon. He put it down, shook his head, and went to join the knot of people talking with Dr. Herat.

* * *

L INDA DIDN'T SHOW up at the gardens. Michael wasn't sure whether she had been trying to pick him up or talk business, so he waited around for a while, increasingly annoyed. Finally he decided to abandon the wait, and went for a walk. As he stepped through the giant gates of the old Compact fortress, he smiled at the feel of warm air and sunlight on his face.

The sky was blustering today, but it was warm and muggy. The air smelled like cinnamon. Chandaka's star was G-class, like Earth's; the skies were blue here and full of big puffy clouds, and the light seemed natural. He knew that this world had not always looked like this; centuries ago, Compact engineers had blown off the planet's old atmosphere using directed cometary impacts, and had imposed a carbon cycle by force. Free atmospheric oxygen was a new factor in Chandaka's environment; in many places, apparently, deserts and rivers still spontaneously burst into flame now and then. Oxygen was absorbed out of the air almost as fast as it was introduced— sucked into iron-rich rocks and into the oceans for the most part. Though the hills that rolled away to the horizon on both sides looked green and peaceful, the terraforming effort required to keep them green was massive. And expensive.

The streets and towers of the city that sprawled in the valley below the Redoubt at first looked like fabulous confections spun in glass and chrome. Michael tuned his inscape to full realism, and the illusion vanished: Now he saw the buildings and streets of Chandaka's capital as they really were. The older towers were of carved stone, beautiful and baroque; everything new, though, was made of gray concrete, undecorated in reality. Looming beyond the blocky cityscape were giant stacks belching out oxygen; Michael had swallowed some mesotech scrubbers to remove the extra CO2 from his bloodstream, otherwise he would die in this air.

There were no physical signs to designate shops or public areas— or rather there were some, but they were old and faded almost beyond recognition. The people were likewise unadorned, mostly dressed in utilitarian pant and shirt combinations. This spareness was typical of colony worlds that had little real money or resources; real wealth was siphoned from the citizens to the offworld Rights Owners through thousands of daily microtransactions.

Ironically, it cost Michael money to view the city without inscape filtering. He flipped his inscape back to full representation and instantly the streets became canyons of light, full of virtual pennants and floating holographic ads. The gray concrete walls became marble, a thousand kinds of music sprang up around him and what had been bare stalls along the side of the road turned into a carnival market. There weren't that many kinds of item for sale here, but they were presented in thousands of different inscape wrappers. Even buying vegetables became an adventure when you had to choose between the microspirits in each farmer's stock, each of which strove to be entertaining or wise or salacious as it danced upon the potato or breadfruit that housed its broadcast nano. You paid for this wrapping; you paid just to breathe in this place.

Some of the citizens who had been visible a moment ago were blurred out, edited by their own choice from this version of the street. Those that remained were now dressed brightly, even outrageously, in jewels or light or flame or swirling TV images.

There were other versions of the city, though not as many as you'd find in the inner systems. Michael tuned to a religious view and the hawkers and stalls turned into rows of bronze silent Buddhas. The light changed to something limpid and clear and overhead graceful white forms flitted between the clouds. There were very few people visible in this view, most replaced by ghostly cloth-wrapped figures so you didn't walk into them. Once upon a time there would have been NeoShinto shrines here, physically present along with all the other sects of Permanence. But it was illegal for a religion not to charge for its services in the R.E. There was in fact a Church of Permanence here— the bastardized version whose doctrines and rites were «owned» by a cabal of fallen brothers back on Earth. Michael would have had to pay just to walk through its doors.

This view was so crassly deceptive that he couldn't stand to look at it, so he tried a few other views of the city, finally settling on a garden view that emphasized the bowers and fountains that really did dot the streets. He found an outdoor cafe and sat in the sun sipping coffee while gene-adapted finches sang to him from their perches among the crimson leaves of bright bamboolike trees. With some judicious tuning he was able to bring the brightly clad citizenry back into this view and he watched them go by for a while, enjoying the ambience.

The expedition would be leaving for Jentry's Envy in a couple of days. Dr. Herat had given Michael the choice: He could come along or stay behind. The offer was made with seeming lightness, but both knew the implications. This investigation was not like any of the others and it would likely last for years. If Michael stayed behind, he would be leaving Dr. Herat's employ.

Common sense told him it was time to leave. He had to resolve his own problems; he couldn't put it off.

And how would he do that? He could return to Kimpurusha— but the monasteries had become gaming houses and he didn't know if he could find any of the brothers if he tried. Anxious and depressed, he finished his coffee and went walking again.

His footsteps seemed to naturally lead him into the older quarter of the city. Here he was able to switch off inscape entirely, and merely enjoy the architecture for its own sake. Human hands had crafted the stones here for the eyes of generations yet unborn, but not unimagined.

As he was crossing a plaza that had once had an active fountain at its center, he heard a distant clap of sound. At first he took no notice, since the city was full of noises. Then the clap came back to him, from the buildings across the plaza: an echo of a distant and apparently powerful explosion.

Michael shaded his eyes and looked up. A twisting contrail rose up from outside the city, vanishing almost directly overhead. That looked like a rocket launch.

Another bang came from the opposite direction. He turned, and this time he saw the thing rising from somewhere in the suburbs. Michael had time to realize that he shouldn't be standing where he was before the one directly overhead exploded.

The flash was insignificant, merely making him blink. With it came a loud clicking that seemed to come from inside his own head. And the bone behind his right ear felt hot suddenly. That was all: But throughout the plaza, people who had been walking like him only seconds ago were falling to the cobblestones, like dancers obeying music he couldn't hear.

And that was it, of course. He felt behind his ear. The skin there was quite warm— and that, of course, was where his inscape antenna was located, inside the bone. He didn't need to try accessing inscape to know his implants had been fried by the microwave bomb that had gone off a kilometer overhead.

Those who were using inscape at the time— nearly everybody— would have had their world go mad for an instant. There were too many fail-safes in the implant system to permit real brain damage, but these people were as stunned as though lightning had hit right next to them.

Michael took a few steps toward the nearest person, some vague notion of helping in his mind. Then he noticed how the few others who had not fallen were jogging purposefully across the plaza, in the direction of downtown. As he watched, one drew a pistol from inside his tunic.

Only now did Michael start to feel afraid. He was caught outside in the middle of a rebel attack. Common sense told him he should get indoors before real missiles— the explosive kind— started flying. It wasn't the fear that paralyzed him for long seconds, though, but simple déjà vu. He had seen this happen before.

Nor was it fear for his physical safety that had him turning in his tracks, looking for another exit from the plaza, but the realization that if he were caught up in a mass police sweep, they would find his rebel history. Herat might be able to vouch for him; then again, he might not.

Michael ran away from the city center, leaping over people who lay groaning and clutching their heads. He crossed an avenue full of cars, all stopped in orderly lines, drivers slumped in their seats. As he ran he remembered that other time years ago, when he had run through similarly silent, shocked streets carrying dispatches on foot because inscape was down, wire and fiber had been cut, and microwave bombs continued to go off, regular as a metronome. He remembered the echoes, which had bounced between tower and mountain over and over until the louder thunder of government lasers cutting down from orbit had drowned them out.

The rebels would use the current confusion to finish what the microwave bombs had started. They would go on an orgy of destruction in which not a single stone of the city would be damaged, but the values in every nanotag would be wiped clean. Ownership, credit histories, monetary value itself resided in the physical objects traded in these streets. There were no central records, as there might have been in centuries past. In the Rights Economy, information was immanent, and by the time the rebels were done, the citizens of this city would no longer own anything, not even the shoes on their feet. Whole inscape domains would be erased, taking with them jobs and pensions.

Any object that lost its nanotags automatically became government property, so hard-working people and those who had lived for generations in ancestral homes here would see their properties expropriated. The farmers who had brought their produce to sell no longer owned that produce. The government knew this would drive people into the rebel cause in droves, but they had no alternative. Their orders came from Earth, after all. Earth was very far away, and the Rights Owners there would not be sympathetic.

As people climbed to their feet, they would begin to realize all this, and then the rage would come. Within an hour, the city center would be a riot scene. Anyone identified as a rebel would be lynched, but that hardly mattered because resentment against the government economic hardship would drive those who had done the lynching into the rebel fold eventually, in weeks or months.

Michael circled the city, panting with exertion after the first few minutes. People were getting back to their feet, cursing and helping one another up. Some watched him go by suspiciously. And in the distance, he heard the sound of aircars droning low over the buildings.

New echoes came: "R-r-r-remain calm calm calm." Police cars spun in fans of dust ahead of Michael. Officers were leaping out into a milling crowd of workers who were locked out of their office building because its AI doorman no longer recognized them. Michael tried to hang back, but the growing crowd behind him was pushing him forward. Before he knew what was happening he was in a sea of running people, and he heard guns firing. Someone started screaming.

Somehow he managed to make it to an alley, and from there to an underground highway used by automated freight vehicles. Light came from ceiling grates; the vehicles were all frozen in place, and so he wove among them, and by this means made his way back to the streets near the Redoubt.

A few minutes later he paused at the top of the hill to look back at the city. Smoke was rising from a dozen places in the towers, which were now all unrelenting gray, the illusion of faerie riches ripped away. Michael stood still for a minute, letting his breathing slow as he tried to compose himself. Then he walked through the gates into the Redoubt. Just inside the doors, he let himself slump against the walls. He'd made it.

"Dr. Bequith?"

He looked up. A slim figure clad in black stood before him. Rue Cassels was inscrutable behind her black sunglasses, but her forehead was pinched in the suggestion of worry. "What's happened?" she asked. "You look like you've run a marathon!"

"I have." He turned and put his back to the cool stone. "Rebel attack— on the city…"

"You were there?"

He started to nod, but a commotion from deeper inside the Redoubt caught his attention.

Rue Cassels pointed. Someone was shouting at the gates to the garden— several people, one yelling, "Help!"

They ran that way. The entrance to the garden was one of those giant valve doors that were the only egress from the Redoubt. A woman crouched there. "Gods and kami, gods and kami," she was saying. A small knot of people was clustered around her and something lying on the ground. These all looked like local people, Michael noted— townsmen come to trade to the large transient population that stayed in the Redoubt.

"They're on their way," said a man as he stood. At his feet a woman lay in a position that couldn't possibly be comfortable; Michael's scalp crawled as he realized she was dead.

"Linda!" Dr. Herat had appeared from somewhere. He knelt beside the prone figure and only now did Michael realize who this was. His vision dimmed for a moment from the shock.

"Dr. Ophir," whispered Rue. "What happened…"

"Shot," said the young man who had just stood. "I found her like this— it was just a minute ago! Whoever it is…" He gestured vaguely at the entrance hall, which was the way Michael had come.

"No, they must be gone by now." The woman who spoke looked around herself nervously.

Michael felt sick. Had he not gone walking in the city, he might have been with her and able to shield or hide her from the killer. Or he might have been killed as well…

He had to distance himself and so looked clinically and closely at everyone in the small crowd. Then he turned his attention to the body. Dr. Ophir's eyes were open, but her face was expressionless. She lay on her side, one arm flung back, and there was blood all over her chest and back. There wasn't much blood on the ground where she lay, but a splash of it stained the great doors that towered above her. Only a weapon could cause such a wound and not the sort of trifling rat-shooter you could buy from standard black market sources. This had punched a hole right through her chest.

Yes. This was just like that other time, when having been caught, Michael was marched through the streets by troops of the Reconquista, his message pack in the hands of the squad leader. They had passed Michael's designated rendezvous point and there in a doorway a man had lain crumpled like Dr. Ophir, with a hole in his neck and the same expression of dull surprise on his face.

And standing next to that dead man…

He turned away.

"It's the rebels," someone said. "Look, they didn't touch her satchel."

"Who is she? A visitor?"

Dr. Herat took Michael's arm and led him inside. Herat's other hand encircled Rue Cassels's arm.

"I've called Crisler," said Herat. "We'll tell him all about it. But from what you said to me the other day, Bequith, I don't think you'd fancy having to explain ourselves to the local authorities." Captain Cassels pursed her lips for a second, her head turning almost imperceptibly in Michael's direction.

"But who could have done such a thing?" she said. "Why?"

"The rebels?" It took a moment for Michael to realize Dr. Herat was asking him. He felt a surge of resentment at the implication that he might know.

He shook his head— not to deny it, but in confusion. "Why would rebels do this? — shoot one person, then run? It doesn't make sense. Unless…"

"What?"

"Unless the rebels know about the expedition."

"People know about us," said Cassels. "We got interviewed and everything."

"They don't know about Jentry's Envy, do they?" asked Michael.

"Well, we said it was a wrecked halo cycler. Nobody knew the alien bit except the people we contacted— the ones who got us in touch with the admiral."

Michael and the professor exchanged a glance. "Somebody knows," said Herat.

The captain wanted to talk to her people, so they escorted her back to her chambers. Then Dr. Herat and Michael went to find Crisler.

On the way, Dr. Herat said, "Does any of this make it easier for you to decide?"

"Decide what?"

"Are you coming along on this trip, or not?"

"I can't leave you now, after what's just happened."

"That's ridiculous, son. I can take care of myself."

Michael shook his head. It was shameful, the bombs, the people falling, and his own race through the streets— all this had made him feel alive in a way he hadn't felt in years. Something fundamental had happened today, and memories were flooding back of his brief time with the rebels: the excitement, the feeling of commitment.

There was one other memory that he could not deny, though. On the day when they had made their attack and Michael had been captured, he had been marched through the streets and had seen the body of a friend, shot like Linda Ophir had been today.

Standing next to that body, laughing with a colonel of the security forces, had been Michael's commander, Errend. Errend, free and relaxed, watching Michael being marched past after having betrayed all his comrades to the army.

"I'm going with you," Michael said firmly.