What Tom was holding was a blank crystal, its internal lattice neatly reset to the original configuration, all record of its tales of Pilots and Zajinets and mu-space wiped clean.

  Useless.

  ‘Pilots…’

  The crystal was useless. But perhaps it was the idea, not the medium, that was important.

  ‘What, Tom?’ It was Elva. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  His black tunic was wet with blood, but none of it was his.

  ‘I’ve looked at the tac displays,’ said Elva. ‘Ninety-seven of our terraformers have been destroyed.’

  ‘Fate.’

  ‘Things are going badly down inside the remaining free sectors. There’s no point in even trying to coordinate things. It’s too messy, and everything’s a rout.’

  Tom looked at General Ygran, who was leaning against the conference table, his face ashen, his left arm tucked inside his belt: broken, for sure.

  ‘Do the best you can.’

  Then he turned to the remaining carls.

  ‘You’re with me.’

  Young Pentor Vize was still in the chamber, and he jerked his rifle up when Tom came in.

  ‘Relax. We’re safe for now.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Inside one holo, a bulkhead was visible, and the edge of a man’s arm.

  ‘Do you have contact with the shuttle, Pentor?’

  ‘Yes, Warlord.’

  ‘Good man. Let me sit there.’

  Tom took his place, and called into the holo: ‘Avernon. Are you there?’

  ‘Oh, Tom. Yes.’

  ‘What happened? What went wrong?’

  ‘Those orders of magnitude ... I misjudged a single factor in the equation, approximated it as a constant when I should have known ... Should have.’

  ‘How do we fix it?’

  ‘We can’t. We just... can’t.’

  Tom kept his breathing shallow and calm. ‘Theoretically, what could we do to make it work? The devices perform their basic function, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know ...’

  ‘Do we just need more of them? To disperse them in a different configuration?’

  ‘I...’

  ‘Are the ones in orbit right now still operational, or do we need to start again?’

  Tom paused. He was pushing too hard.

  But we don’t have time.

  In the image, another man’s hand appeared, offering a cup to Avernon with the murmured words: ‘Here. Drink this, my Lord.’

  Tom waited.

  Finally:

  ‘Most of them still work. We need more, but not many more. A new configuration ... Yes, kind of.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Tom, I ... There’s no way to work with the precision I need. The geometry ... It’s so sensitive to the initial placement that a tiny perturbation from the exact point throws the field wildly off kilter. It’s Chaotic!’

  ‘Send me the equations.’

  ‘There’s no point. No-one can work in orbit to that exact a—’

  ‘Send it now.’

  ‘I... Yes, Warlord.’

  Tom held up the blank crystal, hesitated.

  It seems appropriate.

  So that was the crystal Tom used, downloading Avernon’s equations into the core which once held tales of ancient Pilots.

  ‘Is that everything, Avernon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I hope to see you later. Out.’

  The more Tom considered, the more he could think of only one person who might help: Brino of Kilware Associates. But even if he lived, Brino could be anywhere in Nulapeiron.

  Elva will try to stop me.

  Tom looked at young Pentor Vize.

  ‘Here.’ Tom began to pull off his black, bloodstained tunic. ‘I need you to—Mmph.’

  He dragged the heavy garment over his head.

  ‘I need you to wear this,’ he told Pentor. ‘I’m sorry about the blood.’

  Tom’s white undershirt was crimson where it had soaked through.

  ‘Um ... Yes, Warlord.’

  Pentor Vize tugged the tunic on.

  ‘Keep the doorshimmer half-manifest,’ Tom said. ‘I want it translucent, so if anyone looks inside, they’ll think that you are me. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, Warlord. Um ... No, not really.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tom plucked his blood-damp undershirt away from his skin, then shrugged and pulled it right off. He wiped blood from his bare torso, and tossed the garment aside.

  The stallion talisman hung against his sternum. The air was cool against his bare torso, and welcome.

  Moving quickly now, Tom inserted the crystal inside the talisman, sealing it up once more as he strode towards the doorshimmer.

  ‘Fate be with you, Warlord.’

  In the corridor outside, if the carls were startled to see their one-armed Warlord bare above the waist, they revealed no sign of it.

  ‘I want three of you to come with me,’ Tom said, ‘and the rest to remain stationed here.’

  ‘But, Warlord. We took an oath to protect—’

  ‘I guessed that. And if anyone sees you here, they’ll think I’m inside the chamber. Right?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Then that’s how you’ll be protecting me. Because I won’t be here.’

  ‘Er ...’ Then a knowing expression spread across the carl’s face, and his voice grew hollow with disappointment: ‘Yes, sir.’

  You think I’m fleeing.

  But, ‘Good,’ was all Tom said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  With three carls tagging along, Tom crossed to the corridor’s end, checked there was no-one to see, then took descending stairs to the next level down. They were near the highest level of drop-bug bays, designed for emergency escape.

  ‘Can you three clear that corridor? I don’t want anyone to see me.’

  ‘Aye, Warlord.’

  The carls moved ahead.

  After a moment, one of them waved Tom forward. ‘All clear,’ the carl said. ‘The drop-bug in that bay is ready to go.’

  ‘I’m using the other bay. Once I’ve gone, try to look ... unobtrusive.’

  ‘But sir...’

  ‘What, warrior?’

  ‘That bay is empty. There’s no drop-bug inside it.’

  ‘I know.’ Tom grinned at him. ‘You don’t expect me to miss the fun, do you?’

  Inside the bay, cold draughts moaned. There was no membrane sealing off the bay from the outside, nothing to obstruct Tom’s view of the cloudy lemon sky.

  There‘ll be Anomaly vessels to darken it soon enough.

  Tom did not know how much time he had.

  But it can’t be much.

  So why was he delaying?

  Tom grasped the stallion talisman in his fist. He remembered Father’s big blunt hands moving the graser cutter, sculpting the raised hooves and flying mane from a featureless metal block. He remembered the Pilot, Petra deVries: her fine triangular olive features, and the tension in her voice when she secreted that first crystal inside the stallion, entrusting it to Tom before she fled.

  Before she died.

  It’s all led up to this.

  Tom trembled from more than the chill.

  Everything. Since I was fourteen SY old.

  Trembled from more than fear.

  Every single step since then.

  Tom walked to the bay’s outer doorway and stopped. Wind caressed his bare chest. He moved so his toes were at the edge.

  Standing at the threshold of the void.

  ~ * ~

  59

  NULAPEIRON AD 3426

  Lashed to the terraformer, crucified before the elements, back arched against hard freezing piercing stone, Tom wept and whimpered and Saw.

  It hurts.

  Tom Saw everything.

  The climb down had been fast. He picked his way down the convex surface, slowing as he neared the equatorial rim and the slope became almost vertical. Here, a mistake could not be corrected, would spring him out over the drop.

  Tom halted his descent at the rim, hooked his hand around a cable and crouched near Axolon’s pale weathered face.

  ‘Did I do right by you, old friend? Bringing you this instead of death?’

 

  ‘I know. What I mean is—’

 

  Tom shook his head, blinked away tears caused by the wind.

  ‘Then will you help me now?’

 

  After a moment, Tom nodded, and swung himself to one side. Then he began to descend further, on the underside: a convex overhang, and he a tiny insect on the vast stone globe, using counterpressure against the tug of gravity.

  Some five metres below Axolon’s head, he stopped.

  ‘Here, I think.’

  Then he turned to face outwards as cables that had once formed a cyborg’s sinews wrapped themselves around his torso, his three limbs, and splayed him against the terraformer sphere.

  Crucified him.

 

  ‘Yes.’

  Pain caught his breath. Cold slipstream rushed past.

  Now.

  Tom opened himself up to the visions.

  And Saw.

  The Lady cries as the bronze talon slides closer and above the lake the edelaces wait to drop while the great hall stands empty and glassbirds sing where none is left to hear and flames lick across the abandoned warehouse as hemp catches fire and smoke blackens and in the church they are praying without seeing the doubt that lurks behind the priestess’s eyes or the empty tunnel empty hall empty boulevard empty lake and all the empty empty empty realms and that is just the start.

  Tom howled into the wind.

  Face like paper as the old woman prays over her husband stroking the forehead but the eyes unmoving and the resonance catches and they overlap in their thousands all those mourning widows with their new-fallen men but they could have been Absorbed moving in their mindless armies in steady enthralled marching rhythm through corridors that once formed their homes where the ruined babies lie unmourned and none to taste the stench that hangs in the silent boulevard or the quiet family home where the stocky man holds his children to his chest and stares at the faded hanging and waits.

  It was not enough.

  How can you See an entire world and every person in it?

  Even components of the greater whole must eat but their nutritional intake is balanced only chemically as in the mess a thousand Absorbed individuals in scarlet uniform eat fresh slop with synchronized raising and lowering of a thousand spoons while in the destroyed tunnel a family crawls through the gap left by the rubble in their search for food and a ciliate feasts upon a fallen Lord and a Lady gasps as the noose—

  Tom. I’m with you.

  —tightens around her neck and the spatter of urine on tiles below as her body jerks but her spirit is free and her chief of security finds her just in time to turn his graser upon himself before black flames push the air apart while in the Aqua Hall the old councilman with the bandaged eye doles out careful rations of—

  I can help the search.

  —water to the queuing broken men and women except that at the door a big man with a livid scar holds a curved knife at the ready—

  Focus there.

  —and wipes a stain from the blade and straight blade in its sheath and another and a needle-like stiletto lies in her lap ready for anything like a whistling glassbird the scimitar whistles as the cycle-eunuch swings and the Dragoon’s sabre and his comrade’s lance—

  Weapons. Resonate on weapons.

  —and the endless shining array of weapon upon weapon upon weapon and the steady grip and the shaven head saying to the wounded man that everything will be fine as he washes the wound and applies the healing gel and Tom knows Brino’s voice and the olive features of the man who helps him and that is something.

  You’ve found him!

  Both.

  The agony was unbearable.

  I want both of them.

  Struggling to maintain the vision.

  Hang on, Tom.

  Blue fire exploding all around.

  Come on.

  Blue nova.

  It’s happening.

  Try ...

  Something snapped in the air.

  Got them.

  A link tunnelled through realspace.

  Tom’s crucified form was on Axolon Array but it also hung in the weapons shop deep below ground where Brino and the Pilot, Janis deVries, were treating the wounded. Janis wore contacts, as he had when he visited Tom on the day of his wedding.

  ‘I need your help.’ Tom’s words split the air like sapphire flames.

  ‘What?’ Janis deVries rose quickly.

  ‘To contact Labyrinth. Someone in the Admiralty Council.’

  Perhaps the term was outmoded, but Janis would know what he meant.

  I’m still with you, Tom.

  ‘I can’t—’ Janis looked at Brino.

  ‘You ought to help, Pilot,’ said Brino. ‘That’s my opinion.’

  Those wounded who were conscious were moaning in fear, but Brino gestured and black hangings slid into place, deadening sound: forming a space where only he and the Pilot and the floating apparition that was Tom Corcorigan appeared to exist.

  ‘I was looking for Brino,’ said Tom. ‘But truly, I need a Pilot.’

  ‘I’m supposed to observe. Not fight.’

  ‘Can you open a comms channel inside mu-space? To Labyrinth?’

  ‘I won’t ask how you know of that place. I can, but... Not from here.’

  ‘Take me with you.’

  ‘You mean ... ?’

  ‘Go to your ship, and I will follow as I am.’

  Janis smiled grimly.

  ‘Follow, then. If you can.’

  The floor rotated and a shaft opened beneath his feet.

  ‘With me.’

  Janis dropped.

  Tom followed.

  The ship was submerged in molten magma that boiled red and yellow below the habitable strata. Janis slid through an impermeable shaft while Tom followed.

  The Grey Shadows. Of course.

  It was Pilots who had formed that centuries-old organization, though few of its members would be aware of it.

  Then Janis was inside the control cabin of his vessel and the hatch was sealing shut. He stared at the crucified apparition floating beside him.

  It hurts.

  Tom felt the stone terraformer breaking his back and the cold wind tearing at his skin even as he felt the heat inside this cabin. He was in both places; he was in neither.

  It is agony.

  He was in a Pilot’s ship, a thing that he had dreamed of.

  Hurts—

  I know. I’m here, Tom.

  Janis was opening something like - yet unlike - a holodisplay, swirling with perspectives no human mind could grasp.

  ‘Your ship can exit into mu-space from here,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes.’ Janis looked at him. ‘How did you know that?’

  Tom remembered the old tale, and the empty hangar in a spaceport the morning after Kian McNamara disappeared.

  ‘Lucky guess. Can you hang there, without movement?’

  ‘Relative to insertion? Does that mean you’ll be able to tunnel through the event barrier, if I hold steady? To enter mu-space with me, from ... wherever you are now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then here goes.’