The vessel manages to loose a buoy into realspace, broadcasting its endlessly repeated message.

  ** MAYDAY, MAYDAY. Pilot Dart Mulligan requesting aid ... MAYDAY, MAYDAY. **

  In mu-space, the pattern brings all its attention to bear.

  ‘It was his maiden voyage.’ Chalou shook his head. ‘His only voyage. And yet, he will always be remembered.’

  I ought to leave.

  Dirk tensed his legs, ready to stand; but something kept him in place, to hear more of a tale garnered only in fragments from his mother.

  They lead her in darkness - only the cool air, with a hinted scent of distant mesquite, tells her that this is true night, not just the endless dark: it is a full day since they removed her eyes - to a waiting TDV. A short drive, breeze tugging at her hair, takes her across the runway.

  Then strong hands guide her to a lift-chair, and she is hoisted up, then lowered through the dorsal opening, into her vessel’s control cabin. Fibres click into her eye sockets. A faint mist of mathematical spaces, of shadowy geometries, lies just beyond sight.

  It takes two more days of lying there, while the diagnostics run and technicians adjust and monitor, before phase-spaces billow in her awareness, and someone touches her shoulder.

  ‘Ready to fly, ma’am.’

  ‘All that wheeling and dealing at UNSA.’ An ironic smile creases Chalou’s hard face. ‘Not to mention blackmail. Karyn got what she wanted: a ship, and the means to extricate her trapped lover, or so everyone thought.’

  ‘Merde.’ Dirk had not meant to interrupt.

  ‘Exactement. She was already pregnant when the cortical rewiring commenced. The medics should not have performed the viral insertion ... unless someone had ordered them to. Now, we’ll never know for sure.’

  ‘But Grandmother knew she was pregnant when she entered mu-space.’

  Chalou’s voice was grave.

  ‘Yes, my young friend. That much is certainly true.’

  Scarlet-analogue flashes across Karyn’s non-vision as proximity sensors blare: Destination achieved. In golden mu-space, his ship still shines bronze.

  ++ COME IN, DART. COME IN. ++

  Bronze, impaled by fractally branching tendrils of scarlet and purple lightning: they coruscate across the hull’s event membrane, beginning to bore through.

  ## KARYN? IS THAT YOU, BABE? ##

  ++ DART! ++

  If she had eyes, she would have wept.

  Karyn has hurtled through mu-space as fast as possible ...from Dart’s point of view. In the counterintuitive relativity of fractal spacetime, her voyage has lasted thirty-three subjective weeks.

  There is a stirring in her womb.

  ## I DON’T WANT YOU HERE. ##

  ++ TOUGH. I’VE COME A LONG WAY. ++

  She brings her enhanced field generators online. The event membrane shivers.

  Black light pulses across their conjoined vessels: the tiny silver form of Karyn’s ship, the massive bronze of Dart’s. The ships bond, interface. It will need both their efforts to throw off the energy pattern.

  ## JESUS CHRIST! ##

  Inside her Pilot’s cocoon, Karyn laughs.

  The infoflow has been fast and deep; he has seen all her internal status-fields. He knows she is pregnant.

  ## YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME. ##

  Scarlet tendrils brighten, tighten around both hulls. Questing: not blindly, but algorithmically driven. Shifting frequencies, searching for pseudo-quantum tunnelling across the event-membrane barrier.

  ## IT’S NOT GOING TO LET ME GO. ##

  Boring deeper.

  ++ THE HELL IT ISN’T. ++

  Lightning gathering, tendrils flaring with energy.

  ## KARYN. YOU HAVE TO LET GO. ##

  ++ NO CHANCE. ++

  Glowing figures, highlighted: Dart pinpoints the intensity manifolds and sends the data back to her. Intensifying... A contraction ripples through her.

  ## KARYN. ARE YOU ALL RIGHT? ##

  Their ships are very closely interfaced: he senses everything.

  ++ TOO EARLY, DAMN IT. IT’S TOO EARLY! ++

  Op-codes stream through her input buffers. What do they—?

  Dart has control.

  ## I LOVE YOU, KARYN. ##

  Waves oscillate across the black field.

  ++ DART, NO. I— I LOVE YOU, TOO. ++

  Datastreams freeze.

  Event membranes pull apart.

  ## LOOK AFTER OUR DAUGHTER. I— ##

  Separation.

  Dart’s vessel explodes into a million fragments. As Karyn triggers reinsertion she glimpses a cloud of sparkling bronze motes, and then it is gone.

  Black cold realspace slams into being.

  Orla took hold of Dirk’s hand, then glared up at Chalou, at McLean, as though daring them to say she should not touch him.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ said Dirk.

  But he continued to clasp her hand.

  Realspace. Drifting.

  Too soon. The baby should have waited.

  Her ship’s systems were never designed to help a pregnant woman give birth. Sensors trained on her swollen womb, where the baby is pushing her organs away from their ordinary location, reveal the problem: Karyn’s daughter-to-be is sideways on to the cervical opening, and no amount of painful muscular pushing will allow a normal birth.

  With Karyn’s mind raving from pain, it is impossible for her to track her position among the stars, or to decide how many light-years she might be from the nearest surgeon capable of delivering by Caesarean section.

  Crisis...

  There is only one thing which comes to mind, and then it is happening. Internal robot arms pull cocooning material back from Karyn‘s abdomen, and then she screams as the lasers bite through skin and muscle, an explosion of heat and pain.

  Before her consciousness disintegrates, the robot arms’ co-processors complete the intended action, gently lift the struggling baby from her opened womb: a baby with eyes of glistening jet.

  She will be named Dorothy, after the astrophysicist on watch at Metronome Station on far orbit around the pulsar known as Delta Cephei. That Dorothy will hear the beacon broadcast, the pre-recorded message as well as the realtime audio of a newborn baby’s wailing, and direct a retrieval shuttle to find mother and daughter.

  Of course, with a teenager’s wilfulness, the girl will later refuse to be known by any other name than Ro, though Pilots will refer to her as Admiral.

  ‘But that’s not really a ghost story,’ said Orla.

  ‘Does it matter?’ McLean took a swig of whisky, and blinked. ‘I was riveted.’

  ‘How’ - Dirk stopped, swallowed - ‘how does it end?’

  ‘Well, the official records show that mu-space voyages rarely ended in mysterious disappearances after that date. You could put it down to experience, and techniques of avoiding any patterns that might be waiting.’

  ‘Or...’

  ‘Or,’ said Chalou, ‘I can tell you what happened when my ship was caught in a geodesic maelstrom, and I was minutes away from death.’

  On the floor, Sam picked up his ears and softly growled.

  ‘I think he’s heard this one.’ McLean raised his glass in mock toast. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

  ‘It sucked my vessel in, beginning a sliding chaotic trajectory which would last literally for ever, and I fought for as long as I could but in the end I relinquished all system control and just...’

  ‘Just what, Uncle Claude?’

  ‘I prayed. Aloud, on open channel.’

  ‘Oh, God.’ Dirk turned away.

  ‘Perhaps. Or something very like Him. At any rate, a strange band of stillness passed across the maelstrom and carried my ship to safety.’

  ‘Just a freak—’

  ‘And a feeling of calmness and warm amusement settled over me. As if a benign presence was watching out on my behalf.’

  ‘Sounds like pure relief, Uncle Claude. Emotional reaction.’

  ‘Except that a geodesic maelstrom never behaves like that... Unless you broadcast a prayer to Dart.’

  You prayed to my grandfather? My dead grandfather?

  It was a concept Dirk could not quite connect to reality.

  ‘The thing is, Orla’ - Chalou smiled - ‘that is the only ghost story I know. But every single word is true.’

  Holoflames flickered in the grate, though nothing burned.

  Dirk stood with Orla in the kitchen, while a small machine labelled Plasmonic Barista flash-heated lattes.

  ‘You grew up in a convent?’ asked Orla, pretending not to notice the drinks were ready.

  ‘Sort of. It was fun, but ... It left me a bit institutionalized, I think. Mother always makes fun of the Holy Rollerettes.’

  ‘And she’s away most of the time. Your mother, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, but ... She’s an awful, lot more fun than most older folk, y’know? What about your—?’

  ‘My parents died. Uncle Claude helped raise me after the— Afterwards.’

  ‘Is that why he retired?’

  ‘Part of it. But he no longer had the reflexes, apparently ... It’s not fair!’

  The sudden depth of feeling surprised Dirk.

  ‘What isn’t fair?’

  ‘Here, he’s just another old blind man, right? But in mu-space ...’

  Her voice trailed off.

  In mu-space, he was a fearless explorer who communed with a god.

  If you believed in that sort of thing.

  ‘Orla, I think your uncle is a—’

  But Orla’s hands were on Dirk’s shoulders, and she was raising her lips to his, and her kiss was a soft explosion of sweetness which pushed aside old tales and misery, a soaring promise of an elated future where things could never fall apart, grow old or die.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  26

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Tom was surprised to see asymmetric forms loom in the darkness: buildings constructed on the ocean floor. A comma-shaped building, softly luminescent, grew large as Feltima directed the mantargos towards a wide membrane.

  If the Anomaly manifests itself here, there’ll be no escape.

  Anywhere else, there was at least the faintest chance of running. But at the bottom of Nether Ocean there was nowhere to go.

  ‘Gently now,’ Feltima murmured, and her co-pilot nodded.

  Then they were through the membrane and surfacing in a docking-bay pool, floating flat-winged. On the ceiling above them, graser batteries swung to bear.

  ‘Just precautions.’ Trevalkin made a control gesture, and the control cabin’s ceiling furled open. He called out: ‘It’s only us.’

  There was no response from whatever system or human being controlled the weapons. The dock itself extruded a nest of tendrils. One of them elongated, extended itself to the mantargos, dipped inside and wrapped itself around Trevalkin’s waist.

  ‘See you in a moment,’ he told Tom.

  The tendril lifted him across the pool, deposited him on the platform and released him.

  At least he’s safe.

  It begged the question of what these people intended to do to the renegade Lord Corcorigan in their midst. Was the Anomaly his only enemy now?

  Elva. I ought to be with Elva.

  If these were the final days—

  A tendril plucked Tom from the cabin, and hauled him up into the air. It placed him down gently beside Trevalkin. Then more tendrils lowered, reaching into the mantargos for the remaining passengers.

  All of them, Tom and Trevalkin and Doria and Grax and their operatives, assembled before a bank of drop-tubes. Then the whole party descended together to a waiting antechamber, where a solitary grey-uniformed soldier bowed in salute.

  ‘Welcome back, sir.’

  ‘Good to be here,’ said Trevalkin.

  ‘The ... emissary will be here shortly.’

  Doria and Grax took up opposing flanks, guarding Tom: a small gesture in the midst of another organization’s stronghold. Whether that organization was an ally or an enemy remained to be seen.

  ‘Safe.’ Trevalkin looked around at the solid walls. ‘Thank Fate.’

  Grax laughed shortly.

  ‘Does that mean,’ said Trevalkin, ‘that you don’t believe we’re—? Ah, welcome, honoured sir.’

  A modest lev-chair slid slowly through a door-membrane. On the chair sat a pale, drawn man of Zhongguo Ren ancestry. His moustache was long and narrow.

  ‘Zhao-ji!’

  ‘Hey, Tom. How’s life?’

  A subtle palsy kept up a constant shaking of Zhao-ji’s bony left hand.

  ‘It’s called Oracle’s Dreams, old chum.’ Zhao-ji had seen what Tom was looking at. ‘If you’re exposed, however hard you fight... eventually, it gets you.’

  ‘Fate.’ Tom remembered the flash of sapphire he had glimpsed earlier at Zhao-ji’s wrist.

  Years before, when they were both at school, their friend Kreevil had been convicted of theft. They had visited Kreevil once - and only once -after he had begun his sentence.

  Inside a vast chamber filled with fluorescing blue fluid, strange shadows had been clumped. The convicts moved slowly in the fluid, breathing it and subsisting on it, their bodies linked by tendrils to the unknown shadowy forms.

  At the time, Tom and Zhao-ji had been frightened off by the custodians of that place; but it came to Tom now that Zhao-ji had touched Kreevil, and been burned - or chilled - by that blue glowing stuff. Had it been working strange changes on him all these years? Another thing: why was it the exact same hue that Tom associated with Oracles and Seers?

  ‘Kreevil must be dead by now.’ Zhao-ji spoke with a stone-cold finality that chilled Tom. He had known just what Tom was thinking.

  And how long do you have to live, old friend?

  Zhao-ji’s dark eyes were giving nothing more away. Behind him, through the still-softened membranous door, shadowy outlines were visible: 49s, footsoldiers of the Strontium Dragons who would sell their lives - hard - to ensure Zhao-ji’s safety.

  These aren‘t our schooldays any more.

  Around the oval conference table, three small groups sat. Doria had made sure that her and Grax’s team members were being cared for, in a comfortable chamber equipped with food and drink and couches. Now Doria took the seat on Tom’s left, while Grax sat on the right.

  Zhao-ji, in his lev-chair, positioned himself beside another Strontium Dragon officer. This other man was no mere footsoldier. Nevertheless, his elbow-length sleeves revealed white hairless forearms that were bulbous with muscle; and dark oval calluses covered his swollen knuckles.

  Zhao-ji introduced him only as Lao.

  Tom bowed to Lao and said: ‘We are honoured to have a Red Rod in our presence. And my old friend has surely advanced to pak tsz sin, White Paper Fan. Perhaps I do not go too far in suggesting he might someday be considered worthy of heung chu status?’

  There might have been amusement in Zhao-ji’s eyes when he answered: ‘My Lord Corcorigan does me too much credit.’

  Lao, the Red Rod, might have been quietly impressed. Though his rank was Zhao-ji’s equal, he was still an enforcer, with little hope of further advancement; but a White Fan was an Incense Master in waiting, and that was powerful indeed.

  At least I know one party we’re negotiating with.

  As for the other group: Trevalkin sat with Feltima on his left, and she bore herself with a watchfulness that suggested she was more than just an arachnargos (or mantargos) pilot. An unnamed man dressed in grey sat on Trevalkin’s right.

  Did Zhao-ji speak only for the Strontium Dragons, or for allied Zhongguo Ren secret societies as well? Was Trevalkin representative of all the reactionary Action Leagues, or just his own small group of associates?

  And was this a negotiation? With what goals?

  The Anomaly is in our world, and we‘re not even talking yet...

  Then Feltima made the introductions for her party: