They burst into the passageway. Forty meters away Vadja started running toward them. Behind him a compartment door popped open.
“Down!” Jo yelled, and tripped Haget. They landed in a sprawl as oxygen and methane met.
Thunder, flame, and the indignant wail of alarms filled the passage for the few seconds that Jo retained consciousness. The last thing she saw was Era Vadja flying toward her, spread-eagled on the knuckles of the blast.
— 28 —
Simon Tregesser’s bell drifted out of shadow, onto the dock, as Noah secured the pay comm. The artifact left the booth, headed for a sanctuary whose location had been given him.
Valerena thought there was a chance he might be suspect, that he ought to run.
His pace slowed as the wrongness penetrated his self-involvement.
The silence screamed.
It had been a typical dock when he had gone into the booth. Dense. Loud. Hectic. Now it was as empty as if all life had been obliterated.
He froze.
In so short a time?
Short of cosmic intervention, there was only one power capable of clearing a dock so fast.
The crew of the Voyager appeared ahead and to either hand. Each carried a naked hairsplitter. They closed in.
Mad laughter rolled behind him. This time, he knew, he would not dodge the lightning.
But he tried, knowing he could not bluff his way through.
— 29 —
The thing hidden at the heart of Simon Tregesser’s end space citadel sensed a quivering on the Web. The vibration beat upon it from every direction, like the subtle neutrino flux of the universe itself.
For a minute the message drove it totally sane.
By means provided it called, “Simon Tregesser!”
Simon Tregesser did not respond.
It called again. The news had to be related! A juggernaut of disaster was rolling down the Web, and only inspired improvisation would keep it from bursting into the end space long before it was due.
Fate had carved itself a big slice. Fate and the machinations of enemies the Outsider had not known it had.
Tregesser would not answer. The madman must be off amusing himself. If enough alarms sounded, he would have to respond.
The Outsider’s period of sanity ended as it began stressing the limits of its habitat. It twitched, spasmed. Its components turned upon one another. A convulsion cracked a gap in a seal supposedly proof against violence. High-pressure methane squirted through.
There was no explosion. A three meter sword of flame stabbed a control panel. Heat interrupted circuits. Smoke boiled. Plastics began to burn. Alarms whooped. Fire-suppressant systems reacted too late or not at all. Temperatures went up and up and up. More systems failed.
Fire reached a storage compartment for chemicals used inside the closed environments of Tregesser and the Outsider.
The Lupo who first reached the cavity witnessed the blow, which sent shrapnel rocketing unpredictably off the walls. But the Outsider knew nothing of that. Its components were dead already, some of asphyxiation, some of oxygen poisoning, some of decompression, or, failing all of those, of being broiled medium well.
The Lupo watched the violence subside, shook his head, went back topside to see if instruments had recorded anything that would explain what had happened. He doubted he would learn anything.
He did not.
He did get to wondering.
— 30 —
In a place no Canon human knew or would go by choice, in a murk of methane and ammonia, a dozen colonial intelligences harkened as another thrumming blast of agony echoed across the Web. Their components rearranged themselves in some expression of shared emotion. It may have been sorrow, or anger, or despair, or something no human could conceive. Certainly there was a period of inactivity that might have been memorial or mourning.
Then that council joined its multiple brains to consider new machinations.
— 31 —
Turtle had been given quarters reserved for visiting dignitaries, the best living arrangements he had known since the Dire Radiant. A prison cell without bars. Only prisoners mad enough to attack their jailers would need restraint aboard VII Gemina. The Guardship was aware of every sentient corpuscle moving through its metal and plastic veins.
He had the freedom of the ship, with the exception of the Core. What harm could he do?
He was caught more surely than any fly in a spider’s snare.
Amber Soul had been installed in the cabin next to his, where her pain was monitored remorselessly. Initially Turtle went nowhere else. He refused to pretend to be anything but a prisoner of the ancient enemy.
Midnight had quarters beyond Amber Soul’s but seldom saw them. She spent her time with Hanaver Strate. Turtle felt no rancor. She had to be what she had been created to be.
He was sad, pitying Midnight her pain and Amber Soul her needless agony.
Maybe one of Amber Soul’s own kind could penetrate her barriers. To Turtle it was as proof as a Guardship’s screens.
Frustration at his helplessness translated into a restlessness he assuaged, eventually, by wandering. But he did so far from the habitats of living crew, out in remote reaches near the rider bays, the nests of pursuit and interceptor fighters, and the Hellspinner pits. There were places out there that offered direct views of naked starspace.
He suspected thousands of Guardship crew never saw space except as a telerelay. A screen had boundaries. A screen never portrayed more than a small, flat section of reality. These humans did not like to admit that they were of no consequence in the eye of the universe.
He found a dead Hellspinner pit. Gemina permitted him access. From the O Bubble on the Readying Room he had a view of as much universe as his mind could encompass. He could lie on the Twist Master’s couch and subside into seductive, freckled darkness where there were no yesterdays, no tomorrows, no worries or fears.
He could get as morbidly philosophical as he liked.
WarAvocat found him the third time he visited the pit. Of course, Gemina would report. Amazing, though, that the man would come out and invest time visiting.
WarAvocat took the console seat, stared out at the void. VII Gemina was off the Web, doing Turtle knew not what. He could see a small moon, a station, the moving sparks of local traffic.
It looked as though he had nothing to say. When he did speak, it was only a confirmation of what Turtle read from his stance. “It’s restful out here. When I look back, I feel nostalgic only about my time as a Twist Master. Out here you’re alone with yourself. Sometimes you end up facing yourself and what you might be.”
He grinned, apparently without calculation. “Nothing like popping off a’spinner and having a Lock Runner slide through and you have to twist a new one and get him before he gets you.”
Turtle countered, “Nothing like banging through knowing you have to spot the pit and take it before the Twist Master gets you and your team. Are you really that old?”
“WarCrew sleep a lot. Did you pilot a Lock Runner?”
“I invented the tactic.” Successful Lock Runners had deposited commandos on the skins of Guardships. Guardship soldiers had been no match for Ku warriors.
“It wouldn’t work now.”
“There are no more Ku. No other species has the reflexes. WarAvocat, where are the children?”
“The what?”
“Your children. Your little ones. I’ve been aboard three Guardships. When we took XVI Cyreniaca, briefly, before it blew. XXII Scythica, before WarCrew drove us out. And now VII Gemina. I have yet to see children.”
WarAvocat puzzled it out. “We’re our own replacements. Everyone aboard has been here since VII Gemina was commissioned.”
“But... I know WarCrew age only on duty. But the others look like they live uninterrupted lives.”
“They do — till they get elected or Deified. Most crew just die, then a recorded and edited version gets impressed on a young clone.”
 
; Turtle did not comprehend the rationale. “They live their lives over and over?”
“As the jokes goes, over and over till they get it right.”
Turtle shook his head. It made no sense. He had studied these people all his life. They were predictable but incomprehensible.
“It works for VII Gemina, Kez Maefele. Other Guardships evolved other directions. They’ve gotten strange.”
Strange. “They say nothing ever changes. They blame you. You are wonderful devils. But I have lived every minute of several thousand years. The entire universe has gone strange. You may not have noticed.”
“Why wouldn’t we notice?”
“You do not look outside as long as Outside does not fracture the rules you enforce. Canon has changed, WarAvocat. I mark the watershed when the rage for tier cities swept Canon. Before that there were few nonhumans in Canon space, except along the Rims and on the Closed Treaty and Reserved worlds. Artifacts were rare. Like me, they were created for noble purposes. Now they are everywhere, nonpareil toys, to be played with, abused, and discarded. Humans’ worlds were choked with people. The Web was acrawl with ships. Trade was brisk Outside. Where have the trillions gone, WarAvocat? There are thousands more worlds now. But they should be filled. They are not. Few are more populous than that pesthole where you found me. Why? Your normals are not breeding.
“These days those held in deepest contempt are the glue binding what is left. Humans own Canon, but nonhumans and artifacts keep it going.”
WarAvocat ruminated. “Is there a point?”
“Not if you don’t see it already.”
“Are you saying this long die-off is our fault?”
“I have no opinion. I am an observer. But others watch. Maybe they see with greater acuity. They are more free than I to roam.”
“Food for thought, Kez Maefele.”
“I will pass you hearsay, WarAvocat. There are races Outside with ambitions toward Canon space. They perceive a vacuum. But one force holds them at bay.”
“Us?” WarAvocat smiled. “‘What cannot be achieved by strength must be gained by stealth.’”
Turtle grunted. “You have studied me closely.”
“You accomplished more with less than anyone before or since. Your tactics set the tone for every incursion and rebellion since.” WarAvocat chuckled. “As long as they pursue tactics that almost worked instead of looking for what will work, I ought to be pleased.”
“Is there a way?”
“There must be. There always is.” WarAvocat mused, “I wonder if anybody considers what would happen if we got knocked off. Seems obvious that whoever did the job would be somebody nastier than us.”
“I don’t expect that aspect garners much thought.” WarAvocat was right. Who defeated the Guardships would replace the Guardships, almost certainly with a grander tyranny.
He stared outside, unseeing, wondering if greed and cruelty and brutality were as much absolutes of life as entropy was an absolute of the physical universe. Did the climb out of the slime write programmes no mind could overcome?
— 32 —
Two said, “The boy recognized you last night.”
“He has a marvelous eye,” Lupo replied. “And a mind to match. He capitalized on it instantly. He lessened Valerena in the eyes of her supporters, made them look incompetent to her, and pointed them out to us. House Tregesser will receive excellent leadership in his time.”
“If he survives Simon and Valerena.”
“He’ll have to be nurtured. And weaned from traditional Tregesser obsessions.”
“You’re very thoughtful this morning.”
“Too much of what is happening is beyond my control. This, here, while our Guardship is moving toward the end space. You feel it, too. The need to be there.”
“This will end today. You expect to fail out there, don’t you?”
“If anyone can capture a Guardship, I can. What I doubt is that a Guardship can be captured. It hasn’t been managed since the Ku Wars. It didn’t take then. XVI Cyreniaca blew itself up.”
“Overload won’t suffice?”
“We’ll find out the hard way. The Directors are gathering. I want to be there when Valerena arrives. Let’s go.”
Valerena was a Tregesser. She had had twelve hours to compose herself. She was a Tregesser. When the Tregesser rage reached the heat of molten lead, it transmuted into cold, hard gold. Tregessers were most dangerous when they achieved that elevated state.
It gripped her as she passed through the ground-level entrance to the Pylon, Blessed in tow and armed with the inevitable kaleidoscope. She had examined her position minutely, dispassionately, and the best she could call it was hopeless. Lupo Provic had penetrated the true nature of the gathering at Maserang’s.
With no hope of profit and little of salvage, she had chosen a course she thought would surprise Lupo, an almost mystical acceptance, a decision not to defend, nor to argue, nor even to participate.
The ground level of the Pylon was vast and open, carpeted in yellow ochre living carpet that subsisted on spillage and droppage, though during off peak hours keepers sprinkled it with water and fish food. Itinerant refreshment centers roamed the islands and archipelagos of furniture, their operators dispensing altered moods and states of consciousness.
The denizens of the Pylon were encouraged to mix there. Simon Tregesser wanted it known that he was a democratic guy. A waste management technician could relax with his head of section and defuse the age-old conflict between labor and management.
Valerena sneered.
It was crap. All crap, pure crap, and nothing but crap. Just a ploy to cozen the troops. It hadn’t pulled anything over anybody’s eyes.
Among the islands stood countless trophies of Tregesser triumphs. The refreshment barks were out tacking among them, business brisk even at this hour. But the refreshments were on the House. One of the little perks of working for Simon Tregesser.
Blessed said, “There’s Lupo and his friend.”
Valerena saw them. They would meet a few meters from the lifter banks, where that group were ogling some addition to the exhibits....
It was the artifact Noah, stuffed and mounted, looking like something out of mythology. She scowled at Lupo Provik.
“Very clever, Lupo,” Blessed said. “Slick, even, getting Grandfather switched so quickly.”
“There are times when you do what the adversary desires, but according to your own timetable.”
“Who’s your friend?”
Provik said, “You were quite clever yourself.”
“I think Mother will finally take your advice about waiting.” They entered a lift shaft as a group.
“Welcome news. If it lasts till we see what happens in the end space.”
The surrounding walls presented ascending murals. But Blessed stared at Provik’s companion. “I’m Blessed Tregesser. Who are you?”
The woman just smiled.
Lupo said, “You’re clever, Blessed, but don’t let it go to your head. You lack experience and finesse.”
The youth’s hand jerked a millimeter toward his mother.
Valerena had been paying no attention, but now she let her gaze drift to the back of her son’s head. She mulled that remark. Clever Blessed! Had he indeed, with a few words, demolished everything?
Lupo had given the boy a gentle caution against prying. He had missed it twice.
The unsubtlety of youth.
If the boy had... No. If he had done that, he was no child anymore.
Lupo looked at her over Blessed’s shoulder, smiling. Then he stepped out of the lift. They had come as high as they could in this shaft. Now they came to the first security barrier. Lupo’s companion followed him. Both palmed a reader and passed. Each barrier she did pass would be one more datum about her place in Provik’s enterprise.
Valerena left the lift last. As Blessed palmed the reader, she plucked the kaleidoscope from beneath his arm, ran fingertips over its barrel.
&nbs
p; “Clever, clever Blessed,” she said, and dropped it into the waste receptacle beside the security officer’s station. “Naughty, naughty Blessed. Mother has to remember that you’re a big boy now, doesn’t she?”
— 33 —
Alarms wailed like newly orphaned children. A computer voice droned, “There has been an explosion on B Deck. Passengers please remain in your cabins. There is no danger. Hull integrity has been maintained. Damage control parties are at work.” Over and over.
Cold air stirred a wisp of hair lying on Jo’s cheek. She cracked an eyelid, thought, I’m still alive. That seemed absurd.
What a mess! Metal and plastic torn, warped, melted, hammered into grotesque sculpture by blast and heat. But she saw no structural damage. House Majhellain built their spaceframes to endure the ages.
The air was shivering cold and fresh. That contaminated by the explosion had been evacuated. But she still smelled singed hair.
Her skin looked broiled. Felt like it, too. Flash burn.
“Oh!” she groaned, touching her scalp. What hair she had left was hair that had been shielded by her arms. She must look like hell.
“You all right, Jo?”
Haget had gotten himself into a lotus position, sort of. He looked ridiculous. She laughed weakly. “Yeah. Underdone.”
She got her knees under her, started a painful crawl toward Vadja, three meters away, sprawled in a pool of blood. “Commander, we got a problem. Something cut the artery in his left arm. His color is bad. Pulse and breathing, too.”
“Where the hell are those damned civilians? Where’s that damage control party?”
“That’s just to keep the passengers from panicking. Go get somebody. I’ll get a tourniquet on him.”
Haget crept down the passageway, grunting, cursing softly.
Jo could not resist. “Dignity, Third WatchMaster. Everything with proper dignity.”
He by damned got up on his hind legs and tottered, one hand on the bulkhead.