‘We need Avernon,’ he told her. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  There had been no word from Trevalkin.

  ‘One man can’t save the world.’ Renata shook her head angrily. ‘Avernon can’t be expected to pull out some miracle that will destroy the Anomaly.’

  ‘Destruction is too grand an aim.’ Tom explained that his techs were working on ways to shield the world, to close off the hyperdimensions so that the Anomaly could not reach into Nulapeiron from its other locations thousands of light-years away ... before Nulapeiron became a hellworld as bad as Siganth or the legendary Fulgor.

  Then Renata rubbed her eyes, bit her lip, and thought hard about what she was going to say next. ‘The thing is ... I heard from Trevalkin, but I don’t know whether to trust him.’

  ‘You can trust him.’ Tom surprised himself with the certainty of his feeling. ‘He hates the Anomaly more than any of us.’

  ‘Then ...’ Renata looked at Elva, then back at Tom. ‘Trevalkin was in the Aurineate Grand’aume, but will have left by now. Gone to fetch Avernon, his message said.’

  ‘Bifurcating Chaos.’ Elva turned away. ‘The Grand’aume’s surrounded by Anomalous realms. They’re trapped.’

  ‘That’s not what Trevalkin thinks. He called it an exercise in exfiltration.’

  A chill wind seemed to blow through Tom’s heart, cold and hard. He never, ever, wanted to descend to Nulapeiron’s inhabited strata and enter an occupied demesne again; but in his mind was a clear image of himself, rappelling down a shaft with another figure at his side ... and he knew that the laws of Destiny trapped him, Tom Corcorigan, as much as an ant or an Oracle or a morning mist which swirled, and dissipated, breaking apart at sunlight’s touch.

  ~ * ~

  37

  TERRA AD 2166

  <>

  [10]

  It was blazing hot in Arizona. Deirdre, who had visited the state before, had never known it otherwise. A sky like unblemished lapis lazuli, clear and blue, stretched overhead, beyond their flyer’s membrane cockpit. Below, their shadow flitted across a tan landscape; the rust-and-icing-sugar strata of the empty Painted Desert; scattered green saguaro cacti, five metres tall and more; straggling mesquite.

  Tiny beige dots were ground squirrels, like little meerkats, standing upright on sentinel duty by their burrows. Kian wondered what they made of the big white flyer coasting overhead like some predatory bird with four human beings held in its stomach.

  ‘Ow!’

  Clear air turbulence bucked the flyer, but the AI compensated and the human pilot merely tipped back his Stetson and grinned at his passengers. Deirdre, stony-faced, returned a hard stare.

  Then the desert over which they flew was Martian red in all directions, sere and stark. Its harsh beauty did not conceal its true nature; if the flyer went down for any reason, this was an environment that could kill.

  ‘Home, sweet home, folks.’

  Far from anywhere, stood a cluster of blue glass pyramids; near them, black-and-silver structures formed hangars and administration blocks, while a baked yellow runway shaped like an elongated question mark angled out into the desert.

  All around, the clean red sand and hot still air crackled with latent energy.

  ‘Goin’ down.

  They swooped in to land.

  Their guide was an amiable, soft-looking man called Solly, pear-shaped, dressed in a short-sleeved shirt with a bolo tie. Solly revealed a habit of wiping his high forehead with a forefinger as he led them through the visitors’ registration process. He watched as Dirk, Kian and Deirdre downloaded encrypted parole-and-countersign routines into their infostrands; then he showed them where the restrooms and the drinks machines were situated.

  ‘This w-way.’

  Solly led them into the hushed, grey-carpeted expanse of the Human Engineering Department, where analysts worked quietly over pulsing holosimulations of control systems and Pilot/ship interface processors.

  ‘Th-this is where we’ll be monitoring your f-fitting session tomorrow.’

  Solly flicked a hand in the direction of a wide console, currently unmanned, where diagnostic displays pulsed and billowed, checking and re-checking transponders and i/o buffers. It was automated, triple-AI verified (no test was passed until all three independently evolved systems concurred), ready to pass the buck to humans the moment a potential fault revealed itself.

  ‘Is that our ship?’ asked Dirk.

  ‘Oh, y-yes.’ Solly beamed. ‘Ready to fly.’

  Deirdre looked at Kian and shrugged.

  ‘What?’ he asked her.

  ‘Seems thorough enough,’ Deirdre said, neutral-voiced. ‘Would you like me to check the deduction chains, maybe the interface dendrimers?’

  Offering to check UNSA’s system was provocative, but Dirk and Kian could see that Deirdre was uneasy. They had expected arguments when the twins tried to sign her in as a visitor with them, but the security people had immediately accepted her presence: almost took it for granted that she would be there.

  It made the twins wonder whether Security had expected her. Perhaps the mysterious Zoë had told the truth when she said - obliquely - that they were being watched.

  Dirk answered: ‘I guess we ought to trust them.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Kian grinned at Solly.

  ‘She’s got our best interests at heart.’

  ‘Um ... Yes.’ Solly wiped his forehead once. ‘We are a little behind schedule. Can I sh-show you your q-q-quarters?’

  ‘How far behind?’ asked Deirdre.

  ‘T-tom-morrow m-m-morning?’ Solly’s reply sounded like a question. Then a look of relief passed over his face as a slim, crop-haired young woman walked towards them.

  ‘Oh-ten-hundred,’ she said, matter-of-fact. ‘Ready to interface. I’m Paula, by the way. Assistant controller. I’ll be monitoring.’

  ‘In which hangar?’ asked Kian.

  ‘Right out there’ - Paula pointed - ‘on the main runway. No-one else will be using it.’

  Dirk frowned. ‘It’s just a static session, right? Fitting interfaces. No flying.’

  ‘Part of the delay was that flight control integration came in ahead of schedule, thanks to Solly here…’

  Solly blushed. His forehead shone with sweat.

  ‘... so if you want to take a little spin overhead, feel free ...’

  Kian and Dirk grinned in unison.

  ‘... but only in this universe, mind you. We’re not ready for mu-space y—’

  ‘Hey! We get to—’

  ‘—fly! That’s—’

  ‘—outstanding.’

  Deirdre looked at Paula and shrugged. ‘I apologize for my friends. They’re very grown up, really.’ ‘No apologies, please.’ Paula’s smile was directed at Deirdre. ‘I’m really pleased to be working with you all.’

  They spent the evening playing Go, having discovered - in a lounge set aside for Pilots’ use; there were no other Pilots here at this time - a traditional wooden table and two porcelain bowls filled with the polished ellipsoidal pieces known as stones.

  Cross-legged, staring down at the nineteen-by-nineteen grid etched in the low tabletop, Dirk laid down the first black stone with a clack. Deirdre, playing white, responded by occupying one of the pivotal intersections at the other side of the board.

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ said Kian, ‘how long she’s been playing.’

  Deirdre smiled. ‘I know the rules, is all.’

  ‘Ha.’ Dirk picked a stone from the bowl. ‘I’ve heard that one before.’

  The initial stages proceeded quickly, as black and white stones swirled across the board, increasing territory at each other’s expense. Then a strong envelopment from Deirdre’s forces caused a collapse in Dirk’s strength, and it was only through cunning play that he managed to deploy ‘eye’ formations which could not fall to the enemy.

  Dirk began to lay down counteroffensives, penetrating white territory. Deirdre fought back; but Dirk merged with the flow, became calm, and used a deft series of feints before enveloping her stones to achieve victory.

  Dirk’s body, when he brought his mind back to normal awareness, was coated with sweat.

  ‘So ... How long have you been playing for?’

  ‘A whole year.’ Deirdre looked at Kian and wrinkled her nose. ‘I thought I was going to win this one.’

  ‘We’re pretty much neck and neck these days,’ said Kian. ‘Evenly matched.’

  ‘After a year. Just one year.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Both twins had been playing since the age of four, a form of tutoring which Ro had considered as vital as physical martial discipline. Though they held no formal dan ranking, they had beaten strong players who did.

  ‘You’re a scary person, Deirdre Dullaghan.’

  ‘Well, Jeez ... You two should talk.’

  After that, they switched to an in-house holosystem which would allow them to play 3 Go, a new variant that added red stones to the other two sides, and allowed them to wage a three-way campaign which, when applied to political situations more complex than a single battlefield, was a truer simulation of real-life complexities.

  They wondered, as they played their first game with lighthearted banter and no conversation of deep import, whether Security was monitoring them even now, analysing voice tones and measuring body responses, constructing psychosomatic profiles. Perhaps UNSA techs were already implementing manipulative systems whose gameplay affected the fate of countries and even offworld colonies, and whose pieces were myriad; and every single one was a person.

  Later, the three of them went outside at sunset, walking across sand that glowed with vermilion warmth. Crimson sun dragged spectacular violet across the sky, before slipping below the empty horizon with a rapidity which disconcerted Dirk.

  ‘That’s the way it happens round here, bro,’ said Kian.

  ‘Amazing.’

  It was the lack of high mountains nearby, or human habitation besides the UNSA field at their back, which made the night sky magnificent: black velvet in all directions, a vast hemisphere over the world. Stars were silver points of light but gathered in a profusion such as neither twin had ever seen.

  ‘You’ll be going out there.’ Deirdre stared straight up. ‘Hard to believe.’

  A faint sharp scent drifted on the air and Dirk sniffed.

  ‘That’s mesquite,’ Kian told him.

  ‘Right.’ Dirk turned. Out in the desert, in shadow, stood a fat alien shape bristling with spikes. ‘And what the hell is that?’

  ‘Er…’

  ‘A boojum tree.’ In the gathering gloom, Deirdre looked from one twin to the other. ‘What? You think I’m kidding? I swear on my mother’s grave, that’s what it’s called.’

  Kian sighed. ‘Your mother lives in Portland, Oregon.’

  ‘Does that mean she can’t have a grave? She’s got a nice little plot all marked out.’

  ‘Jesus, Deirdre. You’re one—’

  ‘—sick woman, that’s for—’

  ‘—sure.’

  The twins’ conversation and examination of the desert night concealed a deeper vision, a mode of analysis they could not share with Deirdre while being monitored... and they were being watched. They knew it for sure.

  Low across the sand, a microward boundary glimmered invisibly. Scan-waves pulsed; bats turned back in the darkness, disturbed by the vibrating barrier only they and the desert mice and two young men who were almost human could sense.

  ‘Does the emptiness,’ asked Deirdre, ‘seem frightening to you?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Dirk.

  He shifted his shoulder minutely.

  There. Below the sand.

  Kian’s answer was a subtle mouth movement impossible for others to read even in daylight.

  I see it.

  A bunker, or a ... launch silo, that was it. Covered by a hatch or membrane over which sand lay. There was the faint sense of ducts and fans - or perhaps a polymer spray of some sort, capable of transforming dry sand to manageable sludge - waiting to suck the desert away and clear a path for defensive fighters to launch.

  ‘There’s another universe beyond that one.’ Kian spoke as though only the surface conversation counted, turning to gesture at the night sky while scanning further along the nightbound sand.

  Another silo, there.

  There was a subliminal answering sound from Dirk.

  Got it. And there.

  They had the pattern now. Laid out in a ring, spaced every klick around the perimeter, submerged fighters waited for the ‘go’ signal, in permanent readiness. Mother had never told them that the base was so heavily defended. Perhaps she had not known, or perhaps it had not been this way the last time she was here.

  ‘I wonder why the Zajinets,’ murmured Dirk, ‘are our enemies? Not that any of them’s been seen since Mother and the others evacuated Beta Draconis.’

  Deirdre inhaled quickly, surprised that they should raise the subject: she could not sense the surveillance devices, but assumed they were there.

  ‘That was our settlement, a human settlement,’ she said, ‘on the Zajinet homeworld. Beta Draconis III, is that right?’

  ‘Yeah, BD-3. Except’ - Kian turned again, still scanning - ‘it turned out not to be their homeworld, after all. Subsequent reconnaissance flights showed wasteland, nothing more. Just a colony which they abandoned as soon as we caused trouble.’

  ‘Some kind of internal politics, Mother thought.’ Dirk shrugged in the near-complete darkness. ‘She and the other humans witnessed a gathering that was something like a court case, yet utterly different. The thing is, Zajinets are alien. Not just in two minds about everything: more like a thousand minds, for each individual.’

  ‘And,’ said Kian, ‘the majority disapproved of the ones who were killing humans. At least, that’s what Mother and UNSA analysts think was what happened.’

  Deirdre looked at them, deciding whether to say what she was thinking. Then she nodded. ‘You said the Zajinets could enter mu-space, right? Had ships like yours?’

  ‘Like the one that’s going to be ours.’

  ‘Perhaps they wanted to guard their trade routes and such. You know, like Dutch and Spanish and English fleets going to war over who controlled the oceans, five or six hundred years ago.’

  ‘Maybe. But ya gotta wonder why, in that case—’

  ‘—they seem to have vacated mu-space, too, which is—’

  ‘—vast, in any case. Loads of room for everyone.’

  They were silent for a minute. Then Dirk said: ‘Want to go back in?’

  ‘Yeah, I think we should.’

  But, as they headed back, boots padding mutely on the cooling powdery sand, neither Dirk nor Kian could prevent a small, dry chuckle escaping.

  ‘What?’ demanded Deirdre.

  ‘Nothing.’

  They could not tell her how their infra-red sensitivity enabled them to detect the targeting beams that swung through the still air, or the way a night-sighted sentry inside a near-invisible bunker was tracking their movement with his cross-hairs centred firmly on the moving target formed by Deirdre’s perfectly curved buttocks.

  ‘Nothing. Really, dear.’

  At 5:13 a.m. the twins’ eyes snapped open. It was still dark in their shared room. Their heartbeats rose, then deliberately slowed as they remembered the surveillance bead-cameras embedded in the walls and ceiling, one trained over each of the two beds.

  Dirk mumbled and turned to one side, as though he were still asleep.

  Outside in the hallway, a man was coming closer, and the pheromones he was broadcasting in the air were like a screeching siren, a transmitted chemical fear that would have had guard dogs yowling had there been K9s stationed here.

  Coming this way. To this room?

  Kian twitched minutely: a gesture of agreement.

  One man, Dirk subvocalized. If he enters, I’ll attack low and left.

  A grunt from Kian. I’ll go high, right.

  Kian would use the bed as springboard, leaping high with a knee-strike as the primary technique, aimed at the man’s throat if the threat appeared deadly. Dirk would probably go for a leg takedown, snapping his hands against kneecap and heel as his shoulder struck the thigh. Kian’s attack would complement the throw ... but the situation was fluid and could change in a tenth of a second, which was why they were prepared to—