“For you, maybe,” Rob retorted. “I didn’t even know it was you last time, and I wound up with a two-hundred-year life suspension.”
“We almost made it though, didn’t we? Almost stopped the Second Chance. If we had, we wouldn’t be here today.”
“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”
“Just pointing out how things go full circle.”
“Elvin, you took no part in the Second Chance assault,” Paula said.
“I planned it, I organized it. The damn thing would have worked if the SI hadn’t thrown in on your side.”
“Look,” Rob said. “I didn’t know I was working for you. And the only reason I took the job was because I owed some very bad people a lot of money. Okay? We’re not comrades, we’re not buddies; that’s it, period.”
“Were you recruited through an agent?” Paula asked.
“It’s in my file,” Rob said. “I cooperated fully with the police. Much good it did me.”
“Give it a rest,” Adam snapped at her. “We’re about to face the Starflyer itself.”
“I ask, because Vic may be right. This is very easy. Why has the Starflyer left the gateway open to Half Way?”
“You think it’s going to ambush us? We’re ready for that. This is what I do, plan combat scenarios. I know you don’t like the idea, but have some faith in me, Investigator; you wouldn’t be chasing me unless I was good.” Even as he said it, he checked his virtual vision grid. The maser cannons were being taken out one at a time, slumping over to the ground as their mountings turned sluggish. They were only a hundred meters from the gateway now, bumping along the single track that led to Half Way. It was discomfortingly easy, he had to admit.
“Remember Valtare Rigin?” Paula asked.
Better than you realize. Adam still got chilly when he thought how close they’d been that day on Venice Coast, and she’d never seen him. “Owner of the Nystol gallery on Venice Coast, the one Bruce targeted.”
“Yes. We didn’t release the information at the time, obviously, but our forensic team found that Rigin’s memorycell had been removed postmortem.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Tarlo took the head of the Agent on Illuminatus, complete with memorycell. Do you understand, Elvin? The Starflyer is building up a very intimate database on your activities. Now I don’t know how many more of your contacts it has captured and subjected to download. But it knows who you use, who you want, what equipment you’re buying. Tell me this: if it has all that, is there any way it can deduce what you’re doing today, now?”
Adam hated the question. He knew what he would like to answer, no, no way, but the stakes were too high for that kind of pride now. “I don’t know. I never tell the Agent what the operations are, especially last time. I just needed people with combat experience.”
“Let’s hope that’s not enough.”
“Wait a minute,” Rob said. “You mean that thing knows my name?”
“Yes,” Paula said.
“Oh, shit.”
“We’re ready,” Rosamund said.
The last maser cannon had been eliminated. They were right in front of the gateway to Half Way. Mild ruby light shone through the milky opaque pressure curtain force field. Nothing was visible through it.
“Send the drone through,” Adam said.
The little winged bot zipped through the force field. Its camera showed a landscape of naked rock beneath a dark fuchsia sky. A single set of rails ran from the gateway into the head of a deep valley, dipping down toward the calm sea.
“Nothing,” Rosamund reported. No electromagnetic activity, no thermal spots. They’re not there.
“Take us through,” Adam ordered. “And send the drone out over Shackleton; let’s see if there are any planes left.”
Vic watched the last Volvo truck disappear through the red pressure curtain. He’d jogged away from the Guardians as they knocked out the maser cannon; the big T-shaped weapons had keeled over to lie smoldering on the scorched ground amid the still-burning wrecks that the zone killer had taken out. It was like being back on Illuminatus, walking through the aftermath of Treetops.
He knew their easy passage was all wrong. The local network had crashed thanks to Edmund, but the hardened security links should have been resistant to the disruptor software. Tarlo would have retained fire control. If he’d wanted, he could have engaged the Guardians. The maser cannon were old, but they could have probably taken out a couple of the Volvos. It didn’t make a lot of sense, unless Tarlo wanted the Guardians to get through to Half Way. Why?
Vic reached the geodesic hall containing the force field generator. His sensors couldn’t detect any personal force fields or weapons power packs. There was an infrared source lying just inside the door, human-sized. He went in.
The corpse sprawled on the enzyme-bonded concrete only had half of its head left. An ion pulse had blown the face off and incinerated most of the rest. Vic was pretty sure it was Edmund Li. It certainly wasn’t Tarlo. Of course, there was no way of knowing just how many Starflyer agents there were left on this side of the gateway. He switched his suit sensors to active scan, and swept around the dark hall. The two shots that had disabled the generator were easy to detect, the casing was still hot where they’d hit. There was no sign of anyone else in there.
A huge explosion outside made Vic crouch down instinctively as his force field strengthened. As soon as he went back out through the door he saw a giant gout of flame and black oily smoke rising up from the long building that housed the Half Way wormhole generator. The gateway at the front of it was now nothing more than a concave semicircle packed with complex machinery. There was no red luminescence, no alien starlight diffused by the pressure curtain. Another explosion ripped out from the generator building, sending debris flying for hundreds of meters. Flames took hold inside, licking around the huge holes blown in the roof and walls.
Vic started jogging toward the dead gateway, heedless of the exposure. His sensors scanned around constantly, searching for any motion, any hint of human activity.
Someone was walking toward him, stepping unhurriedly over the burned earth in front of the gateway, making no attempt to conceal themself. Vic didn’t need confirmation, he knew who it would be, but his visual sensors zoomed in anyway.
He stopped ten meters short of Tarlo. The Starflyer agent wasn’t using any of his wetwiring, his inserts were inert, power cells switched to inactive mode. He simply stood there in a glossy suit of semiorganic fabric refracting a moiré shimmer; his blond hair swept back and held in place with a small black leather band.
“Vic, right?” he asked the hulking armor suit. “Gotta be Vic.”
Vic switched on the suit’s external audio circuit. “Yeah, it’s me.”
“Cool. How’s Gwyneth?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“Part of me, man, yeah.”
“She’ll be okay. Why did you do it?”
Tarlo’s handsome face gave a sympathetic grin. “It’s what I had to do. Man, that Paula Myo, what a ball-buster. I always knew she’d be the one who blew me.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Both of us, I guess. My part is over, so it doesn’t care anymore. It’s just waiting for you to kill me.”
“You failed, though. The Guardians got through.”
“The Guardians got through. I succeeded.”
“It was a trap.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’ll take you back for a memory read.”
“Man, it’s too late for that; Qatux has gone through with the rest of them.”
“How did you know—” Vic’s suit sensors showed one of Tarlo’s inserts powering up. He fired his ion rifle, which blew Tarlo’s body in half.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
All the trees in the forest were identical, elegantly rotund, and rich with red-gold leaves that reminded Ozzie of New England in the fall. This, though, was high summer, with a bright sun high over
head, and warm dry air gusting through the branches. Ozzie had stripped down to his T-shirt and a pair of badly worn shorts; not that it stopped him sweating hard from the effort of carrying his pack. Orion was wearing cutoff pants and no shirt; his expression martyred as he lumbered on in the grinding heat of the afternoon. Tochee seemed unaffected, its colorful fronds flapping loosely as it slid along.
Ozzie was pretty sure he knew where they were, though his newfound pathsense wasn’t quite as precise as a satnav function. He’d started to pick up on a few signs in the last half hour. This path was now quite neat, the kind of track that you’d get when someone took care of it, rather than just a route that people and animals walked at random. There were no dead branches lying across the way, and remarkably few twigs. Several boggy puddles had been filled with gravel so travelers didn’t have to detour. Then he even saw where branches had been cut on trees close to the path; they were long healed over now, just knobbly warts in the sepia bark. All the things a government land management agency would do to keep the path open for walkers.
His insert functions were slowly coming back on-line, which gave him a very positive feeling as he strode onward. Ever since they’d left the gas halo, his bioneural arrays and inserts had reverted to the usual erratic basic operational ability that characterized the Silfen paths. The day after they’d talked with Clouddancer he’d picked up a path right in the middle of the forest that cloaked the reef. That was four worlds ago. It wasn’t that Ozzie knew where to go; rather he could now sense where the paths would take him. Several times he’d started off down one only to turn around and discard it, searching for another, one that would take him closer to the Commonwealth. There was no mental map, more a simple awareness of direction.
The graphics in his virtual vision were strengthening with every step forward. Processing power increased in tandem. Signal strength between his inserts and his handheld array rose dramatically. Then the array detected another signal.
“This is it,” Ozzie yelled out. He started to run forward.
“What is?” Orion asked. “We left the end of the path a while back.”
The forest began to thin out, revealing a rolling landscape of gray-green meadows. Alien bovine animals with six fat legs and an amber hide were grazing indolently. Sheep mingled among them, unperturbed by their strange stablemates. He saw hexagonal metal troughs filled with hay. Long lines of wire fencing divided the land up into huge pasture fields. Beyond them were some crop fields, their green wheat shoots just on the cusp of ripening. Hills rose up in the distance, mottled with the gold-brown shading of extensive forests.
Ozzie’s inserts interfaced with the planetary cybersphere. Achingly familiar unisphere icons popped up into his virtual vision. The shock of seeing them again after so long was like an ice shower. I’m home. He turned to his companions who were just emerging from the small wood without any sense of urgency. “We did it,” he yelled. His legs gave way and he sank to his knees. A wicked vision of early papal visits to the worlds he and Nigel first opened filled his mind. He bent down and kissed the ground. “We fucking did it,” he yelled up at the blazing sun.
“Did what?” Orion asked curiously.
“We made it, man.” Ozzie struggled to his feet and hugged the startled boy. “Look around you, man. Don’t you see it? Sheep, fences, farmland, I think that’s a load of barns over there. We’re home, we’re back in the good old Intersolar Commonwealth.”
Orion gazed around curiously, a tentative smile on his freckled face. “Where?”
“Er, ah, good question. Hang on.” His virtual hands danced over icons, pulling information out of local systems. “Bilma. That’s in phase two space. Haven’t visited before, and it’s out of range of my wormhole. Never mind. We’re on the Dolon continent, other side of the planet from the capital. Nearest town Eansor, population twenty-two thousand. Seventy-two kilometers”—he spun on his heel, a huge smile on his face, and shot an arm out, pointing over the hilly land—“that way. And there’s a road three point four kilometers”—he turned again—“there.”
“Friend Ozzie, friend Orion, I am delighted you have completed your journey.”
“Hey, man”—Ozzie laid an arm over Tochee’s back—“my house is yours. And I’ll apologize in advance for people making a fuss over you and generally behaving badly. You’re going to be quite a celebrity. The ambassador for your whole race.”
“I believe the translation routine has made an error there, but I thank you for the caution. What do you propose doing now you are home?”
“Good question. One: a bath! Two: decent food. Maybe switch that around.” He took another long look around the bland farming landscape they’d emerged into. One thing really bothered him with the unisphere icons: the date. According to the display, he’d been away from the Commonwealth for over three years, whereas in his personal timescale he’d been walking the Silfen paths for eighteen months. “Okay. I need some time to check up on what’s happening. According to Clouddancer we’re in the middle of a war. We also need to organize some transport, especially for Tochee. So let’s see.” He began to pull information out of the unisphere, as slowly as any beginner who was just getting to grips with inserts and virtual vision for the first time. A list of local vehicle hire companies materialized. He ran down their inventories, and settled on a Land Rover Aventine, which had enough room to take Tochee if ten of the fourteen seats were folded down. He paid for it, and loaded instructions into the big four-by-four’s drive array. “Let’s head for the road, guys. Our car’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
“Ozzie,” Orion asked cautiously.
“Yep?”
“This town, Eansor, has it got, like bars and such in it?”
“Of course, man.” He’d just pulled the town’s commercial register out of the unisphere to find the best hotel.
“So, tonight”—Orion squinted up at the sun, which was in the last quarter of the sky—“are we going to visit a few places, you know, social places, ones that have girls in them?”
“Oh, right, not a bad idea. We’ll definitely hit the town over the next few days, I promise.”
“That’s good. I’ve remembered all the pick-up lines you gave me.”
“You have?”
“Yeah, I still think I can pull off the heaven one.”
“The what one?”
“When you look at a girl’s collar and read the label back to her, and tell her—”
“She’s made in heaven. Ah. Right, I remember now. Sure. Look, man, those kinds of lines are strictly last resort, okay. Your big advantage is going to be telling them what we’ve been doing and what you’ve seen; no other kid can compete with that, you dig? You’re going to be the hottest brightest dude on the block. The chicks’ll need sunscreen just to stand near you.”
“Okay.”
“But first, you need a decent scrub and some flash clothes. We can sort that once we’re relaxing at the hotel.”
“I don’t understand why you need verbal trickery to ensnare a temporary mate,” Tochee said. “Are you not attracted to each other by what you are?”
Ozzie and Orion shared a glance.
“Our species tend to amplify things a little,” Ozzie said. “No harm in that.”
“You speak an untruth to potential mates?”
“No, no. It’s not that simple. This is like a ritual.”
“I believe the translation routine is insufficient once again.”
“Is Tochee going to come with us to the bars?” Orion asked.
Ozzie glared at him. “Probably best not.”
“I would like to see all aspects of human civilization. From what you have told me, it is richly textured and steeped in artistic culture.”
“Oh, brother,” Ozzie muttered.
They sat on the side of the road for ten minutes before the Land Rover Aventine pulled up in front of them. It was a dark metallic red four-by-four, with curving windows of mirrorglass along both sides. The broad malmetal door
at the rear flowed apart, and Tochee wriggled itself into the back.
Ozzie sat up at the front, and loaded some new orders into the drive array. It was strange being in a technological artifact again. Even the smell surprised him, the pine-bleach cleaning fluid and polished leather scent of a vigorous valet service.
“This is fast,” Orion said as they set off.
“Uh huh.” They were doing under a hundred kilometers an hour. The road was just a simple strip of enzyme-bonded concrete, a minor route linking isolated rural communities. Same the Commonwealth over. “How old were you when your parents moved to Silvergalde?”
“Dunno. Two or three, I think.”
“So you don’t like remember much about the Commonwealth, then.”
“No. Just the stuff people brought to Lyddington. Not that much of it worked there.”
Since they left the Ice Citadel, Ozzie had conveniently forgotten the kind of parental responsibility he’d assumed when he allowed Orion to tag along. He was going to have to look out for the boy as much as he was Tochee. Both of them were excited by the car journey, asking questions about the farms and other vehicles they passed. It was like having a couple of five-year-olds to contend with.
When the road finally turned onto a two-lane highway that took them into the town and the Land Rover Aventine really built up some speed, Orion whooped like a roller coaster passenger. Tochee inquired if all human vehicles were so fast. Ozzie knew enough now about their big alien friend for its body language to tell him it was nervous. He limited the car to a hundred eighty kilometers an hour.
Eansor was a pleasant enough town, though hardly spectacular by anyone’s standards except those of Orion and Tochee, who were mesmerized by the buildings and roads and people. The highway wound through the industrial parks on the outskirts, over bridges in the suburbs where the best houses lined the river, and finally dipped into the gentle rumpled valley where the city center colonized the slopes with big stone and glass buildings.
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