12

It was the same landing field. The pilgrims’ SUT, the broken POC-TAD-GOL, was still by the edge. A couple of alien-looking SUTs (anything not obviously human equals alien) parked some distance away. The collection of warehouses and towers a mile distant. There were no signs of life. It was mid-morning and the atmosphere was already heating up. No sign of the few pilgrims who’d decided to remain on planet in order to mix with, and hopefully understand, the different variety of aliens who visited there.

It was bittersweet to set foot on a planet that had known their triumph, but that none of them had wanted to see again. Marc used a small forklift to move the Cancri’s cage outside, where Kara unlocked the door. Tatia was nowhere to be seen.

The Cancri hound shot into the open as if fleeing death, the symbiotic bug embedded on its back rocking from side to side. It stopped fifty or so metres away, turned around and stood looking at them.

Marc waved an ironic goodbye.

The Cancri lifted one of its front paws.

“How sweet,” Marc said, as if aware that the chances of it being any kind of exchange were remote. “What do we do now?”

“We wait. We reckoned the bugs are telepathic, remember?”

Five minutes later a dust cloud in the distance announced the arrival of more Cancri. The same type of mismatched, cobbled-together vehicle as before. Two hounds in the front, one driving, their symbiots snugly fitted into the rear seats. The vehicle stopped, the returning Cancri placed its symbiot in the back, climbed into the front and away they went.

“Is there any reason why this was important?” Kara mused. “Other than some inexplicable plan dreamed up by a dead pre-cog?” Then, more briskly, “Let’s break out a scooter. I want to check something.”

Tatia volunteered to stay with the SUT. Roaming around the planet held no attraction for her. Kara agreed, and told Tatia to contact her immediately if anything happened, and left with Marc. First they checked out the POC-TAD-GOL, found it deserted but with signs of occupation.

Clothes were drying on a rack. There was what seemed to be a common room, and others that were obvious sleeping cabins. In addition to this were two large metal tanks, one containing water, the other empty. They reminded Marc of the tanks Tatia had once described, which mysteriously filled with food and water when the pilgrims had been held captive.

“If it’s the pilgrims living here,” Kara said, “they need help.”

They rode two scooters to the warehouses which had held human memorabilia, and found the pilgrims busily rearranging the exhibits. They barely had time to talk to Kara and Marc. In fact, they gave the impression that they wished they’d go away, leave the planet, because the pilgrims had a good thing going and didn’t want it spoilt.

It seemed that the warehouses were a tribute to human civilisation and creativity. Aliens came regularly to visit and presumably marvel. The pilgrims weren’t sure, and frankly not too fussed. In time they’d find out. Meanwhile there was a museum to create. Exhibits to be categorised by function and by date, by continent and country. Special exhibits to be planned and arranged. The two mummified corpses to have a special place.

No, it didn’t matter if the aliens failed to understand. It had to be done.

They were fine. Food and water was provided. The occasional free spacer coming by to check on them – in far better spacecraft than GalDiv.

“Why the hell aren’t the Wild and the free spacers handling this damn mission?” Marc asked.

“Greenaway comes from the Wild.”

“It’s all down to Tse and his bloody visions!” He looked back at the pilgrims busy sorting and arranging. “I asked one why. She said because someone had to do it.”

* * *

They returned to find a sulky Tatia waiting for them. No, there hadn’t been any problems. Could they please get off this planet soon as? It was giving her the creeps. Then said she wanted to be alone and went to her cabin.

> Did she try and take off? Kara asked her AI.

< Apparently might have thought about it. Asked the SUT’s AI if it could take off on its own, just in case. Was told no, you’d blocked any attempt. She then went and looked at the Ent. They seem to be close.

Kara decided not to tell Marc. He had enough on his mind.

Twenty-seven hours later they left n-space to find themselves in orbit around a planet with a similar blue, green and cloud-white colouring to Earth. There was no sign of cities or any major buildings. Without being asked, the SUT’s AI delivered them to a large patch of open ground surrounded by what looked like trees, but taller and broader than the average European pine. Their foliage was a silvery-green, and a close up on the vid screen showed thousands of thin oval leaves all the same size and individually connected to the smooth trunk by thin stalks. It was late afternoon; the setting orange sun and vast trees created deep shadows that turned the dark-blue ground foliage black.

< Approximately Earth sized. Gravity ten per cent less. Breathable atmosphere. No sign of animal or insect life in the immediate area. Provisionally safe.

The air was fresh, the temperature a comfortable twenty-three C. Kara and Tatia watched as Marc unloaded the Ent in its cage. The door opened, but the Ent just stood there, unmoving.

“Does it know it’s free?” Marc asked.

“Does it want to be?” Kara answered, keeping one eye on Tatia. And then, “What the fuck?”

A crowd of much smaller trees were moving out of the forest towards them. No, not trees. Ents. A welcoming committee or guards? They used their lower limbs much as an octopus uses its tentacles, rippling together to propel themselves forward.

“I never liked ours,” Marc confided to Kara as Tatia watched, enthralled.

“There’s something unpleasant about it,” Kara agreed, as their Ent finally stirred itself, rippled out of its cage and went quickly towards its advancing fellows.

“Let’s get the hell away from here,” Marc said.

“We should stay,” Tatia said firmly. “Make contact with them.”

Kara moved a little closer to the younger woman. “Why’s that, Tatia?”

“Because they’re a very advanced race,” Tatia said. “I’m surprised you haven’t realised that.”

The lone Ent stopped and waited. Six of the group surrounded it. Their top fronds reached out and made contact.

“It’s reporting back,” Kara said flatly. “It’s being loved!” Tatia contradicted.

“Evens bet it’s the same one we saw on Dartmoor. That Marc saw in Scotland. It had to have human help to get around. What did it sell you, Tatia? Peace and love throughout the galaxy? An end to all your fears?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand how much you’ve changed. And I remember from before how susceptible you are to the pre-cog civilisation. These Ents are part of it, right?”

Marc hid his surprise.

< She had help, boss. Ishmael spelled it out for her.

He remembered that Kara’s AI had named itself.

> Can she hear us?

< Nah. Kara isolated her. Ooops. Here we go.

Tatia drew herself up. “You are evil. Both of you. I hoped to bring you to the truth. But you are not ready. You will never be ready.” She spoke in a high monotone, her eyes focused somewhere above and beyond.

“It won’t make Daddy love you any more,” Kara said crudely. As Tatia gasped in sudden emotional pain and confusion, she stepped forward and applied a combination nerve and choke hold. Tatia struggled for a few seconds then collapsed.

“Help me get her inside,” Kara said urgently. “Couldn’t tell you. Didn’t know if you were also affected. Not until just now.”

The Ents had stopped communing and were now moving rapidly towards the SUT. There was a stink of rotting compost, sour and catching the back of your throat.

Kara and Marc manhandled Tatia inside the SUT, airlock doors closing with a pleasing clang.

“Get us out of here,” Kara said loudly to the SUT’s AI. Then to Marc, “And take Tatia to her cabin.”

“This is the first time I’ve run from a bunch of giant asparagus. Gone to seed.”

Tatia regained consciousness lying on her bed, with Marc and Kara standing over her.

“You hit me,” she snapped and sat up. “Bitch!”

Kara shook her head. “So much for peace and love… I didn’t hit you. But sorry about the daddy crack. You were about to do something stupid.”

“I was going to join them,” Tatia said angrily. “You had no right to stop me.” Her face crumpled. “It… it loved me. I felt so happy and secure.” The tears came. “Now I’m alone.”

Marc reached out a consoling hand, stopped by a glance from Kara.

Tatia’s tears became a sneer. “So what now? You want to fuck?”

“She’s got issues,” Marc said.

“Oh, don’t we all.” Kara squatted down to be level with Tatia. “Listen. You can stay here on your own, locked in, but watched. Or you can be in the control room with whoever’s on watch, but in restraints. Your choice.”

“I’ll stay here. Anything better than mixing with you.” Her voice lost its overt anger. “But when we get back, I’ll have something to say to my father about this. You just see.” When, not if. Ignoring that Greenaway had never acknowledged her. Forgetting that he’d put her in harm’s way.

Once there’d been happy pills to calm down an SUT mission manager, before he was traded to the Gliese for a new n-space drive. Now it was restraints or isolation.

“You want something to calm down?” Kara asked.

“Just fuck off.” Tatia turned her face to the wall.

“Your AI can’t help,” Kara said. “It’s no longer in contact with the SUT.”

Tatia’s shoulders shook with frustration.

* * *

Tatia was locked into her cabin. The SUT was rising to meet space. Mark and Kara sat in the control room, each nursing a gin and tonic. Sometimes only a G&T will do, so much so that Kara had broken her own rule.

“How did—”

Kara cut him off. “My AI, Ishmael. He’d been monitoring her. Apparently Tatia went into a kind of fugue when she was with the Ent. The scans showed the high dopamine levels and brain activity that are often associated with an extreme religious experience.”

“I didn’t know AIs could do that. To other people, that is.”

“Mine can.”

“Has it been monitoring me?”

“In exactly the same way that your own AI monitors your vital signs and tells mine.”

He stretched in his chair. “I never knew that.”

“It’s mutual.” Kara sounded a little impatient. “I have to know if you’re alive, or going mad, whatever.”

“Intrusive, though.”

“Really? Tell me that when you’re moments away from death and I save you because my intrusive AI was monitoring you.”

“If you say. And what if I’d gone the same way as Tatia?”

“I’d have left you both there.” She smiled at his mournful expression, glad that his resentment had passed. “No. Happy pills and restraints all the way.”

“The Ent was following me,” Marc said soberly. “I wonder why.”

“Bigger question is why the Wild would send it with us. As far as I can tell, it’s to see if we were vulnerable. But I’m not convinced. The thing is, we can’t go on explaining every weird thing because it’s part of Tse’s plan.”

“Two down and one to go.”

“Gliese home planet. And the Originators. Hopefully.” She put down her glass. “Remember what Tatia said when we first came on board?”

He did. “Which part?”

“Not dying frustrated with regrets.”

“Ah.” He carefully avoided Kara’s gaze. “And the trip maybe ending badly.”

“Which has to be juggled against operational efficiency.”

He nodded. “Always a passion-killer, that.”

“Look at me.”

He did. “Your eyes are still grey.”

“And yours are black. Marc, you have to know that I want to make love with you very much.” She said this with a simplicity greater than any orchestra or peal of ancient bells. “Not have sex, make love.” She paused, as if a little shocked by the admission. “But if we do the mission suffers. That’s unavoidable. So we’re on hold.”

“Tell me why?”

“Because I need you to know. In case it does end badly.

” Marc nodded. “You always make sense… Kara, me too. I feel the same. Thanks for telling me. I’d never have had the guts.” He got regretfully to his feet. “Before I make a fool of myself, going to talk to the Gliese.”

Kara smiled up at him. “Have fun. N-space in twenty minutes.”

* * *

But the Gliese wasn’t feeling talkative, so Marc went to the engine room to admire the huge globe with its channelled surface on which fitted the platens that guided it through netherspace. He was still there when the five-minute warning bell rang, so he stayed and watched the engine come to an unearthly life, afterwards helping to adjust the platens as his AI instructed, remembering to avoid the swinging arm that first selected and initially placed them. He went back to the control room suddenly filled with longing for Kara but determined not to let it show. She wasn’t there. Only an AI’s message that watches were now expanded to six hours on, six off, and he was first.

That became the pattern for the next twenty-four hours. Never avoiding each other, never making an effort to be together. When they did meet there was warmth, an intimacy that neither had known before.

Tatia spent all the time alone, except when Marc or Kara brought her food. Alone, often in bed and watching rom-dram or rom-com vids, desperate for a happy ending.

* * *

They came into normal space in a two-sun system that according to the SUT’s AI was some three thousand light years from Earth, towards the central core. Two suns, one bright orange the other more yellow. Twelve planets, including two gas giants. One planet, an Earth-sized one and a mere two hours away using a standard rocket drive. It seemed that for complex reasons, it was unwise to get any closer using netherspace. The two suns generated a wide range of exotic energy fields and…

Marc’s head began to hurt.

> Just tell us how long to landfall.

< Four standard Earth hours. You really should know these things.

> Why keep a dog and bark yourself?

< We don’t have a… oh. I see. Ha.

The SUT reached orbit in two hours and twenty minutes. Marc and Kara sat in the control room and watched the planet unfurl beneath them. Continents. Oceans. No sign of advanced life. Atmosphere breathable. Temperature similar to Earth. Icy deserts at the north and south poles. Hot deserts scattered around the equator.

Kara yawned. “Just once, once, exotic would be good. Vast, impossible towers. Huge ships floating on canals circling the globe.”

“Ent-world was interesting,” Marc said, then thought about it. Very tall tree-like things, true. But they were all the same. That might excite some, but to Marc it was a sign of a nature that lacked ambition. Ents, yes. Undoubtedly strange. Yet nothing compared to the stone tor coming alive on Dartmoor, or the ancient something in Scotland. “Well, at least the Gliese have a certain…” He remembered that Kara had once killed one to prevent it being dissected live. “… fascination.”

It wasn’t so much awkwardness as wariness between them. They’d admitted their feelings for each other, beyond affection and intense sexual attraction. All they could do now was keep out of each other’s way unless it was unavoidable, and hope that neither would die.

“Hold on…” Kara told the SUT to take a closer look at an area at the junction of two rivers. The image zoomed in, showing an obvious landing zone with several craft parked at the sides. Beyond that a collection of rounded buildings without any common design, gleaming white in the afternoon sun. Squint at them and they’d become a collection of so many assorted pebbles. “Bit like the Cancri city,” Kara said, disappointed. “Except for the parks.” She meant the green and red patches of what had to be vegetation scattered amongst the buildings. “Right. We’ll land midnight, their time. Best get something to eat and sleep. The AIs can look after the SUT.” Kara gave Marc a smile as she left the control room. “And think about what we do with Tatia.”

* * *

Tatia had stirred herself to shower and get dressed; now she sat enthralled as the vid screen displayed pictures of the planet beneath.

She could see with more clarity now. A diet of mindless but harmless vids had cleared her head of anger and anxiety. She could accept that the Ent had, perhaps, taken her over… but that was the force of its regard, she the neophyte to an alien teacher. Now she was aware of even more powerful and refined voices, voices that understood her in a way that the Ent never could. She’d first heard them on the Cancri planet, had thought them cold and controlling. That had been wrong, a misinterpretation of power and supreme logic. The absolute certainty of purpose of a society that only wanted the best for all the myriad races it represented. Tatia had enough self-awareness to wonder, briefly, if she was insane. But the very question suggested she wasn’t. Well, no more than anyone else she knew. Besides, she’d grown up as a child of the alien age, of technology incomprehensible to humans. For Tatia’s generation anything could happen, and given enough time it probably would.

* * *

When Marc and Kara unlocked her door, they were greeted by a freshly showered Tatia in new clothes and smiling her apologies for her past behaviour. She now understood, Tatia admitted, that she was overly susceptible to alien thought and emotion, without being able to process it properly. She’d been overwhelmed by the Ent’s mentality and by discovering that Greenaway was her natural father. So apologies, and could they please start over? It was a quiet plea for understanding that offered everyone a solution with honour.

“And if you see me going squirly again,” Tatia smiled, “give me a good shake, okay?”

Privately she was thinking how easily humans who hadn’t been touched by the light could be fooled. She doubted that these two ever would be – a shame, for they both had excellent qualities. But it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be around them much longer.

Tatia assumed Kara and Marc would behave in a way that would help achieve her objectives. Naivety and longing had made her optimistic.

“We’ll do just that,” Kara promised, privately reserving judgement because Tatia was a little too happy, fresh-faced and eager to forgive… as if acting out one of the rom-drams she’d devoured over the past twenty-four hours. Still, it would be better to have Tatia with them when they explored. They could hardly leave her alone and locked up on the SUT; given the run of it, she could damage the engine, life support or navigation systems. Better that she came with them.

The plan was to land at midnight and stay inside the SUT as the AIs explored the area. Then to leave at dawn in a general reconnaissance of the landing field and adjacent buildings. The main objective was to establish if any alien race who could be the Originators, who supplied the Gliese with technology, actually existed. If so, attempt to establish contact if it was considered safe. On the other hand, if it became apparent that the Gliese really were responsible for the advanced tech, to ascertain if they had weapons or were capable of violence. The implication being that if the Gliese were the boss makers of shiny stuff, how easy would it be to take them over?

“What a lot of if’s and alternatives,” Tatia smiled as they sat drinking coffee in the common room. There were fresh-from-frozen croissants warming in the microwave, Swiss butter and French preserves ready to welcome them to the table. It was a relaxed group of three humans, although two of them had mild reservations about the third.

“There usually are,” Kara said. “In fact, it’s better than having a single, rigid plan. One other thing: our safety is paramount, okay? Do not be ashamed to run away. If we’re attacked, do not be worried about killing aliens.”

A serious-faced Tatia nodded in compliance. “Got that. I guess I also mean, well, it’s not very much, is it? I mean, all this way to discover who makes widgets? Just the three of us? Or rather, the two of you, because I’m only here by accident, right?”

It was the question that Marc had been asking; instead of why me, why us? Two against the galaxy. Two against a something that no one knows. The butterfly in Brazil that flaps its wings and causes a star to go nova. And all because a dead pre-cog had once dreamed a future that included an artist, a mercenary and a good-time girl?

Kara was never so sure of her answer as now. “You don’t need armies to make a difference. The right person in the right place at the right time can do that. The lone assassin takes down a ruler and starts a war. A scientist is killed by a mugger, so a cure for cancer takes another fifty years. Don’t ever think you can’t make a difference, Tatia. You can and probably will. Just leave the assassinations to me, okay?”

* * *

They left the SUT a few minutes after dawn. Tatia had refused a weapon. She’d never been trained, would probably shoot Kara or Marc by mistake. Instead she carried the medical pack.

They took three scooters, two slaved to Kara’s. Where she went so did they, unless she released control. First they checked the craft parked on the apron. One was made from an asteroid, as before on the Cancri planet, so much cheaper than building in space. Another was all silvery beams and girders surrounding a central hub. And there were a collection of globes linked by passageways lying collapsed on the dusty ground. There was no sign of life, so either the Cancri were late risers or somewhere in the city.

* * *

The buildings were made of a concrete-like substance that was beginning to glow scarlet as the two suns rose, one a few minutes before the other. The doors were all closed.

“Lazy bastards,” grumbled Marc, the self-righteous comment of a man up far earlier than usual. “Do we knock at a door?”

“No,” Kara said. “We wait. Let’s check out the parks.”

There was vegetation of various shapes, sizes and colours with one type predominating, a tree-like organism about four metres tall and with a single thick reddish trunk. Its dark green branches swept down to the ground like a weeping willow. At the end of several was a large round black pod hanging only a metre or so above the ground. Tatia touched one before Kara could stop her.

“It’s warm,” Tatia whispered. “It feels alive.”

“It is,” Marc said. “Some sort of plant.”

The pod she’d touched fell to the ground, landing with a soft plop.

“You’ll have to pay for that,” Marc said.

“Shhh. Watch.” There was wonder on Tatia’s face.

On Kara’s face only an intense watchfulness.

The pod moved.

Tatia gave a little scream.

Kara’s finger slipped over the trigger of her gun.

Marc checked the immediate area.

The pod heaved and then slowly split down the middle.

Kara pulled a reluctant Tatia away.

Another heaving motion and a thing began to emerge from the pod. It was like a small mound of leather, glistening with mucus. Several bony, jointed arm-like limbs. Short, stubby legs like a caterpillar.

“Fucking hell!” Marc exclaimed. “It’s a Gliese!”

It was. Smaller but still a Gliese. A master of technology that stood for a moment next to its abandoned pod, then scurried towards the nearest dense patch of vegetation and vanished beneath a small bush.

> It is, right? Kara asked her AI.

< Seems to be. Interesting. Tell you one thing. Evolution never produced that on its own. It had help.

More pods began to fall as the suns rose higher.

“We’ve got company,” Marc warned. “Adult Gliese.”

“Out of the park,” Kara ordered. “Don’t get in their way but observe. There is no record of a Gliese ever being violent, and I doubt they’ll start now. But be careful.”

A small procession of Gliese came into view accompanied by self-driving low loaders mounted on squishy balloon tyres. The Gliese ignored the humans, moved into the park to collect the newly hatched and place them onto the loaders. A full loader moved off, oblivious of a young Gliese in its way. With a muffled wet-fart sound the loader moved on, revealing the Gliese still alive and quickly collected by an adult.

“That explains the tyres,” Marc said. “Still, the little ones have got to be tough.”

Kara ordered them back to the SUT. From her own observation, from the AI’s comment, it was obvious that the Gliese did not have a society based on science. Plants just didn’t. And that’s what they were: highly modified, genetically engineered plants.

* * *

They saw the Originators’ craft as they neared the landing field.

It had to be. It was identical to the one they’d seen after Tse had blown up the Gliese SUT, come to see what had happened to its messengers before vanishing in a cloud of contempt for humans.

A vast skeleton of curved metal surrounded by a flickering force field through which pods of various sizes could be dimly observed. Similar to one of the parked craft, but so much bigger, so much more complete.

“It’ll know we’re here,” Kara said. “Do nothing until I say.”

The craft drifted slowly down and landed without raising dust. The force field flickered off, revealing a cobweb of spars and walkways, one large pod and a dozen or so smaller ones. There was no airlock, but perhaps an entrance hall at ground level. As they watched, a large, box-like object floated from the hall and onto the ground outside.

< Good use of anti-grav, Ishmael told Kara.

> Get anything else?

< Super advanced tech. You’d expect it. Do they still despise you?

< All I get is a sense of peace.

> People that advanced can afford to be.

Kara looked at Marc. “Want to check that box?”

“I’ll go,” Tatia said eagerly and was off her scooter and running towards the Originators’ craft.

Kara didn’t bother to call her back. She sensed that Tatia was about to have her own “Why me?” question answered.

The box was made of a metal that Tatia recognised from the Cancri planet, the containers that had miraculously filled with water and food overnight. Standing on tiptoe she could just see inside it. A collection of objects of various sizes and shapes were piled in the centre. That and nothing more. She knew what they were.

“It’s full of tech,” she called. “For us!” But how do I know? Because I just do! Just as I know that they’ve come for me. My new life is now.

Marc shook his head. “I get the same. A sense that this is a… a gift?”

“Do you trust it?” Kara asked urgently.

“Not one little bit. Beware the Greeks. Remember the first time we met? After the Gliese ship blew up? We were lower than scum. And now? I think we’re being conned.”

Kara nodded. “It’s too good to be true.” She raised her voice. “Tatia. Leave it and come back.”

Now was her time. “No,” Tatia called back. “I’m staying. With them,” she said, pointing at the Originators’ craft. “I’ll be okay. I will come back, but not now. Maybe in a month, maybe a year. But I will come back. Tell my father. Take care.”

“No!” Marc shouted, about to go after her, held back by Kara gripping his arm.

“Don’t,” Kara said. “It’s why she’s here. We can’t stop it. Don’t try.”

They watched as Tatia walked into the craft, turned to wave just as the force field flickered into life. The craft floated gently into the sky.

“That’s it,” Kara said briskly. “Let’s get this box loaded and we’re off.”

“But… Tatia…”

“The box is a gift horse, but so is all the other stuff. No point in wasting it. Tatia will be okay. This is why she was sent with us. Poor kid never had a chance.”

Marc stared at her. “Come on! That means—”

“That Greenaway’s an even bigger bastard than you thought? Yup. Will an AI please confirm?”

< She’s right, boss, Marc’s AI said. All the evidence points in this direction, if you accept pre-cognition and psi abilities. Tatia was chosen from the start. It’s possible she was deliberately exposed to the Ent to sensitise her mind for these Originators.

> That is so shit.

< And there’s nothing you can do about it.

* * *

They left the Gliese home world in a subdued state of mind.

Kara had lost one of her team. Tatia had gone willingly but she’d never had a choice. It was Kara’s job to see that her people did have choices. She’d failed.

The knowledge of being played so comprehensively, of dancing to a dead man’s tune, weighed heavily on Marc. As the SUT drifted Up he began to think of netherspace, and then of Scotland, thinking that Tatia wasn’t the only person with an out-of-this-world mission. The idea that there was more to come both disturbed and – to be honest – excited him.

They’d been in netherspace for a little over an hour when the alarm sounded. Marc had been in the shower, arrived in the control room wearing only a towel. Kara, fully dressed, was waiting for him.

“We’ve come to a stop,” she said.

“So? We pop back into real space and…?”

Kara shook her head. “Listen.”

He could hear it now, a faint scratching as a boojum picked at the protective foam.

“I tried leaving n-space,” Kara said calmly. “But it wouldn’t work. The SUT’s AI doesn’t know what to do.”

“Yes,” Marc said, surprising himself, “it does.”

“Marc…”

“It’s my turn.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re saying! Just because an old engineer went walkabout into n-space.” Tears glistened on her cheeks. “I forbid it!”

“They’ve been calling to me ever since we went into space,” Marc said. “You know that. And they are now, I can feel them. You have to get back, Kara. Tell that bastard Greenaway what’s happened. Make Tse’s plan work for everyone. You get back, park up next to my house and wait. I will come home, love. Promise.”

The same promise that Tatia had made. Kara wanted to believe but… but they couldn’t remain where they were. “Okay. What the fuck are those things out there?”

“They’re connected with the entity I met in Scotland,” Marc said slowly, wonderingly, as information poured into his mind. “The best I can explain is that they’re like pure emotion, obviously self-aware. I was sensitised the same way that Tatia was. Jeff, my stepdad, was involved and I trust him.” He smiled at her. “You have to trust people some time, love. Trust me.”

Kara bit her lip. “But we never—”

Marc laughed. “Something to look forward to. Next time we meet, I promise. Come on, before that curious thing scratches a hole. Let’s do it.”

One last try. “People have been driven mad in netherspace. SUTs vanish forever.”

“Didn’t know the rules. Or simply couldn’t cope. I will be okay. I’m not being noble. If I thought I’d die, I wouldn’t go. I’d spend my time back here with you until the air ran out.” He began walking out of the control room. “Watch on a monitor.”

“You’ve only got a towel!”

“According to a book I once read, that’s all you need.”

“Wait!” She rummaged in her pocket then pressed something into Marc’s hand. “Keep it with you, promise!”

Marc cupped her face with his spare hand and kissed her mouth. “Promise.” He walked away clutching the strip of wood Kara had taken from her childhood home.

“Find out about the call-out fees,” Kara called after him, as if asking him to remember the milk.

He nodded and left the room.

Tears streaming down her face, Kara watched as Marc entered the airlock. Saw him close the inner door, smile at the camera and then open the outer door. She saw again the colours and shapes that weren’t, that were always changing, somehow alive. And then, as once before, a tendril that became a tentacle reached up, wrapped gently around Marc and took him from her.

She closed the airlock doors, her mind numb.

And she felt him inside her mind. He was okay, he was marvelling, he loved her. Linked to her by the wood that had once measured her height.

I would think that, wouldn’t I?

But no more strange than so much else that had happened over the past few weeks.

He was alive, she knew, just as she would know when he died. Kara didn’t know how she knew, only that it wasn’t hysteria or shock.

An alarm sounded, the signal they were leaving netherspace. Kara wondered if the engine was broken.

< No, it’s not. In fact, we seem to be orbiting Earth.

> What!

< Where do you want to set down? Berlin?

* * *

She sat in the big GalDiv office facing an unrepentant Anson Greenaway. There was no need for a personal briefing, he’d data dumped from her and the SUT’s AIs.

“You knew,” she said, wanting to kill him.

“I knew certain people had to be at a certain place at a certain time in order for a certain thing to happen. Yes. Tse’s plan.”

“Your own daughter!”

“Who is alive. And yes, was bred for this. Her mother, by the way, accepted rape rather than disrupt the plan. What she didn’t see was that she would also be murdered. Don’t talk about sacrifices and betrayal, Kara. You don’t know the first fucking thing. I’ve no idea why Tatia had to go with the Originators, only that she must. Same with Marc and netherspace. And if I thought I was sending them to their deaths, I’d do the same. And then kill myself, as Tse did. You understand what this is about?”

“Kara nodded. Originators, pre-cog civilisation. It’s all the same.”

“Exactly. The pre-cogs use the Originators to distribute tech and they use the Gliese. Result: creativity, curiosity bred out of various races. Death by generosity and kindness. I can’t promise you that Tatia and Marc will return…”

“I always bring my people home!”

“And maybe you will. No one wants it more than me. Meanwhile, go home. Take some days off. Then back here in two weeks. We still have work to do.”

She looked at him in amazement. “If you think I’d ever, ever work for you…”

“I do and you will. I’m the contact with the Wild. With the people who understand what Marc met up there and how it’s connected to netherspace. You’ll be here, Kara, because you have to know. And because I need you. You’re the best we’ve got.”

Kara rose to her feet and walked out, no words said. She knew Greenaway was right, but was damned if she’d say so. And it would be good to see Marc’s home. Feel closer to him there. He was still alive.

* * *

Left on his own, Greenaway told his new assistant no calls or interruptions for fifteen minutes. He reached, not for paper and pen to write to his dead wife, but for the box that Tse had bequeathed him. Time to see what his best friend had said.

Inside was an envelope containing a three-page letter. Greenaway read the first few lines and smiled. It wasn’t so much for him as the world.

You’re reading this because it’s still a screwed-up universe.

Humans seek patterns and order everywhere. Not only as a survival mechanism (is that a tiger in the trees, or randomly dappled patterns of sunlight?), but as a reaction to your messy development as a race. Fits and starts with the occasional aberration which might or might not allow its sufferer to survive long enough to mate and pass on its genes, such as single-eyed giants, stomachs with enzymes that can digest milk, or an offshoot of humanity so long-lived and fertile it starved to death. No obvious end in sight, only the blind random drive to adapt no matter the consequences. The need to impose order on chaos. Except that same chaos also gives a sense of mystery, curiosity, always seeking new horizons. It’s the great contradiction of existence. Chaos and freedom versus order and tranquillity.

Tatia hung suspended within a large pod inside the curving metal skeleton of the Originators’ craft. In front of her floated three metallic globes, each a metre across, connected by a thick, flexible cord of the same metal. She did not know whether there were three beings inside each globe. If it was a three-part hive mind, or an AI.

She had been rendered unconscious the moment the craft left the planet’s surface. Had only just woken to find herself floating, enclosed in some sort of transparent membrane presumably to keep her alive.

There was no sense of being loved. No peace, and precious little hope. She reached out with her mind and found only the same implacable coldness she had once known on the Cancri planet.

I have to be needed. She clung to that thought. Why else would I be here? She was not a hostage, not an experimental lab rat. But there was something important that only she could do.

Tatia looked more closely at the globes and saw there were differences. One had a thin line around its equator. Another had a small protuberance at what was, for now, its north pole. And the third was shinier than the others. Different creatures inside them? Different functions of a controlling AI? Or even decoration? No. Not decoration. This being was totally utilitarian. She could sense it.

The globes changed position, forming a line with only one directly facing her. She felt a nibbling at her mind, knew it was curiosity, not surprised when it went away defeated. And she understood how misleading emotion could be, that an alien could feel ecstatic joy over an event that would make any sane human yawn with boredom. She thought of Marc and Kara, hoped they were okay. Of her father… but best not think about him. Her situation was stressful enough. It was best not to think about the past at all, only the present. She was needed, valuable.

She would survive.