The arachnargos lowered Tom and Jissie to the ground. Then, before the oddly etiolated Valkeu guards had time to verify Tom’s credentials, the dark-green arachnargos sprang across broken ground, ducked low to slither through an abandoned colonnade, hauled itself past the border checkpoint, and raced out into raw cavern: interstitial territory that no-one wished to rule. In seconds, it was out of sight.

  Then one of the guards blinked in a way that made Tom step back: with a sideways flicker of nictitating membranes. Their leader spoke in a dislocated, fluting voice.

  ‘Transport for you is readied.’

  ‘Er ... Thank you.’

  Tom and Jissie, with their narrow-limbed otherworldly escort, passed through a gateway formed of polished white stone, while faint vapours slid across their skins.

  No lev-disks awaited them here; they had to walk. The tall soldiers had stilt-like legs and a jerking motion which allowed them to eat up distance with no sign of fatigue. By the end of their trek, Tom could remember only a succession of identical white halls, of strange-looking people who paid no attention to two strangers in their realm, and gleaming arcades and mazes formed of glass and diamond, their purpose impenetrable.

  At some point, when Jissie could walk no more, Tom swung her up onto his back. She rode in silence, fingers clutched in the collar of Tom’s cape, her small stump hooked over Tom’s left shoulder, her legs looped around his torso.

  Finally they stopped and Jissie slid down, and stood beside Tom on a balcony. Beneath, on a wide elliptical floor, five white dart-shaped shuttles stood. Overhead a vertical shaft led upwards into shadows. High above, invisible, was the night-shrouded opening to the planet’s surface and its clear, waiting skies.

  Tom might have convinced himself that free humanity was collaborating to remove him to safety, were it not for his final conversation with the guards of Valkeu Demesne.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tom said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Not required.’ A wave of a long, skinny hand. ‘This individual performed task on track.’

  ‘Er, yes. But you didn’t have to help us. I was just—’

  ‘False-to-facts that must be, since these individuals did perform such.’ The spokesperson (for the hard-looking asthenic soldiers looked sexless to Tom) pointed with a loose-jointed forefinger that seemed too long to be human. ‘Path followed, therefore Destiny is manifest.’

  Jissie moved closer to Tom, her lips squeezed shut.

  ‘Quantum predestination,’ said Tom, ‘doesn’t mean you can’t—’

  ‘If only one path, then no choice. If many paths and randomness, still not choice: only randomness. Free will not required.’

  The individual Tom had thought of as an officer bore no insignia or markings. Perhaps any one of the group might have been nominated as the one who spoke with strangers.

  ‘But when did you stop believing in it?’ Tom asked. ‘In free will?’

  ‘Seven Standard Years ago, this realm renounced idea.’

  ‘Renounced it? But, but...’

  Impossible ...

  Yet Tom wondered if a concept so fragile that it could be destroyed merely by professing its non-existence could ever form a fundamental truth.

  They have no free will because they stopped believing in it.

  Then Jissie tugged at his sleeve.

  ‘They’re calling us from below.’

  The shuttle launched.

  Acceleration and the hand of fear squeezed Tom and Jissie back in their seats. The vertical shaft’s walls raced past in darkness. Sensor displays scrolled fast as the IR-scanned circle up ahead grew from a dot to a wide, protective membrane. Then they were almost on it, about to—

  Impact.

  —fly through and break into a silvery night lit by all three moons. The landscape fell away beneath.

  Jissie laughed.

  It was a startling reaction. No-one faced the agoraphobia-inducing skies without a programme of deconditioning; but she was fearless, that was all.

  Then the blood drained from Jissie’s face.

  ‘What is it?’

  Jissie pointed into an image of the ground below, at a wide shadow sliding from the field of view. ‘I thought it was the ... lake. You know.’

  Ah, Fate.

  ‘You mean’ - Tom’s scalp tightened - ‘the Lake of Glass.’

  ‘Mother and Father are there.’

  Tom squeezed his eyes shut.

  Just two of the quarter-million people I killed.

  Jissie touched his stump, in a matter-of-fact way no-one else had ever done.

  ‘You freed their souls, my ... Tom.’

  Her face was serious.

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘They were Absorbed and you freed them.’

  ‘Sweet Fate, Jissie.’ Tom’s voice was a dry whisper. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  Still, Tom and Jissie had a long flight ahead of them. As the shuttle whispered above moonlit clouds, Tom closed his eyes and allowed sleep to claim him. Then suddenly—

 

  The voice booming through the comm system punched him out of his dreams.

  ‘Uh ... Axolon? That you?’

  Hours had passed. Tom felt drugged.

 

  Tom blinked, took in a deep breath. Beside him, Jissie was wide-eyed but not afraid.

  ‘Yeah. I have a ... friend with me. Her name is Jissie.’

 

  Tom placed his hand over his eyes, and stayed very still for a moment.

  Elva ... Oh, my love.

  ‘Thank Fate.’

  Jissie stared into the view-images as sunlight brightened post-dawn skies to a creamy apricot-and-yellow mix. Tom tried to compose himself: dream-fragments briefly surfaced then spiralled back into the subconscious depths. A strange, reedy voice said:

  ‘The kaon persists.’

  It was the old abbot who spoke to him.

  ‘The universe decays.’

  Strange, curlicue particle tracks across the blankness of sapphire vacuum: a pattern flicked across Tom’s mind, was gone.

  Then Axolon spoke once more:

 

  The everyday world clicked back into place, though the term kaon-koan, kaon-koan continued to whisper in Tom’s mind. The great stone sphere grew larger in the forward display, as the shuttle decelerated on the final approach to Axolon Array.

  To home.

  ~ * ~

  35

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Tom and Jissie ate breakfast outside, at a small table on the ring-shaped balcony, while creamy gases spewed from the terraformer’s apex and the air blew cold and clear around them.

  ‘How have you been, Axolon?’ Tom sipped his daistral.

  Jissie was tucking in to her third boljicream pancake.

 

  Tom put his cup down, stood and crossed to the balustrade. He leaned over and stared down at the convex bulging stone surface which hid the equatorial rim where Axolon’s head was melded with the sphere, his nerves and sinews and cables splayed and rooted across the terraformer.

  ‘You’re looking pretty good,’ Tom called down, ‘for a burst of gamma rays.’

 

  Tom walked back to the table. Jissie looked up briefly without a pause in her eating.

  ‘Ah,’ said Tom. ‘The other sphere. After Trevalkin swapped identities in the system.’

 

  Picking up his daistral cup, Tom paused. ‘I don’t like feeling indebted to that man.’

 

  ‘Precisely.’ Tom replaced the cup without drinking. ‘And I wonder what he’ll want in return.’

  But if the Anomaly fell across the world, there would be no human debts to repay. Before Tom could follow that thought further, Axolon caused a small holo image to appear above the breakfast table, low-resolution and blurred against the day’s brightness.

 

  ‘Are they—?’

 

  Tom leaned closer to the holo, as though it brought them nearer in reality.

 

  ‘What?’

 

  ‘Is there any sign of pursuit?’

  There were small fighter-darts aboard the terraformer, ready to launch; but if the Anomaly or its suborned forces knew where Axolon Array was—

 

  Tom whirled away from the table, ignoring Jissie’s concerned expression, and strode inside to the hemispherical conference chamber where a lifetime ago he had slain an Oracle.

  Even as Tom brought up his tactical displays, he had time to wonder why Elva had not tried to talk to him directly. He called his lieutenants, ordered autodocs to be made ready, and braced himself for bad news as the ragged formation drew near.

  But Elva had been busy tending to the wounded. Charcoal-smeared and with blood across her swollen lip, escorting a lev-stretcher, she came out of the docked shuttle at a jog. She smiled at Tom before returning her attention to the moaning patient. This was the reality of war: whimpering and screaming, the stench of burned flesh, of blood and faeces, and the awful stares of those who saw death coming for them now.

  ‘Outlying parts of the realm, and the lowest strata, won’t hold for more than three days. The rest is already gone.’ Elva stepped back and wiped sweat and slick blood from her forehead, as medics took over the stretcher. ‘Realm Strelsthorm is lost.’

  At that moment, one of the wounded soldiers shuddered, turned away from her and died.

  ‘Fate.’

  ‘How many people’ - Tom pulled her back from the incoming flow of injured - ‘did you bring?’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty. Maybe more. Maybe ...’

  Maybe fewer, depending on how many survive.

  ‘Fate, Elva. I love you.’

  ‘I love you, Tom.’

  Then Axolon announced:

  Axolon meant that the Anomaly’s forces might not be aware of the vessels.

  ‘Are the vessels shielded?’

 

  ‘You’ll have to give me details.’

 

  Tom stared at Elva.

  ‘Look,’ Elva said. ‘If comms or SatScan are breached, these are Anomaly fighters, and they’ve no need for subterfuge. I’d say they’re genuine free forces, come to join us.’

  ‘Ah, Destiny.’

  In that moment, Tom knew who was aboard the new shuttles: the Action Leagues, the natural enemies of the LudusVitae movement to which Tom and Elva had once belonged. He did not know whether to cheer or sob.

  ‘It’s Trevalkin.’ It was the only explanation. ‘He’s spreading the word, through the Leagues that remain secure.’

  And I wanted to be in charge. I’m a fool.

  Elva looked around, at the medics and ordinary staff still carrying in the wounded. ‘How many people can we support?’

  ‘Not even this many.’

  It was two hours amid the Chaos-laden process of getting refugees on board, and docking shuttles, and beginning repairs to the damaged craft, before Tom could stop to think. Two of the shuttles had torn or twisted flight surfaces, and would not have been able to make it this far without heroic feats of piloting which would never be told. Scarcely any craft was untouched by graser fire.

  Shuttles continued to rise from the surface.

  The motley armada of refugee vessels was growing larger. On every continent and from beneath the oceans, they rose into the air, broadcasting their encoded signals of despair and hope, as darkness consumed the realms they left behind.

  So few among the population.

  Axolon Array was already full.

  Yet too many for us to cope with.

  Suddenly, incredibly, Tom laughed - the act surprised even him - and people turned shocked stares in his direction.

  ‘Axolon! Are you there?’

 

  It was comforting to Tom that his floating stone fortress was alive and powerful, a kilometre-wide sphere with a mind and armaments of its own.

  ‘Exactly how many terraformers are there? I know it’s thousands…’

  There was a pause.

 

  ‘Ha. You’re way ahead of me. What state will they be in? How many already have people living in them?’

 

  ‘And the other spheres? What about food?’

 

  ‘Axolon ... You’re a bloody genius.’

  Tom turned away, heading for the conference chamber which had become his command centre. A bloodstained man in the torn uniform of a Halberdier captain was standing; he had obviously heard the conversation.

  Now, he went down on one knee.

  ‘No, my Lord, with respect,’ the Halberdier said, bowing his head. ‘There is one leader now, one genius, and we all know who it is. Sir.’

  When Tom reached the command centre, Elva was pointing out arcs and nodes within a tactical holo while the men and women around her, mostly in uniform, nodded agreement. When Elva saw Tom, she said: ‘Give me a moment, people,’ and crossed over to him.

  ‘The place is crowded, Tom. I’ve moved our stuff into a smaller bedchamber, and I mean small. I think it used to be a storage cupboard.’

  ‘It’ll be better when the other spheres become ready.’

  ‘Yeah ... And I’ve made room for a third person, too. Not much privacy.’

  ‘Um, all right.’

  Tom looked over at the display. More vessels were rising to join the floating armada; some were already headed for other spheres. That was Axolon’s doing.

  ‘Oh, and ... Nice thinking, Tom, about the terraformers.’

  At that, a junior trooper came up carrying something dark and supple, and bowed to Elva. ‘They’re ready, my Lady.’

  To Tom, Elva said: ‘This is for you, my Lord.’

  It was a tunic she held out, black and with a red circular knot-design upon the chest, formed of interwoven tricon-facets denoting Courage and Determination. A military leader would have worn such a garment during the Founding Wars, at the beginning of Nulapeiron’s history: it was the kind of thing no-one had worn for centuries. There was no left sleeve.

  Held across the trooper’s forearms was a second one-sleeved tunic, nearly identical save that the red design was missing and it was a fraction of the size.

  ‘The spare one,’ said Tom, ‘doesn’t look as though it will fit.’

  ‘It’s not for you, my love.’

  ‘Ah.’ Tom leaned over and kissed her. ‘Excellent, my Lady.’

  Most of Nulapeiron’s ten billion inhabitants kept to the same diurnal cycle, following a single timezone which had been established more than a millennium before. On the terraformer, where they floated in the open, that cycle bore little relationship to the hours of light and darkness: a cycle that continually changed as Axolon Array drifted through the skies.

  There were other problems besides disrupted sleep-patterns and the anxiety of those who were terrified of open spaces. In the midst of darkness, Tom jerked awake, and realized that the images of encroaching forces blowing terraformers apart in the nightbound sky were from his dreams, and not reality.