"Reality Dysfunction - Expansion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F.)

Chapter 03

Including Tranquillity, there were only five independent (non-Edenist) bitek habitats to be found within the boundaries of the Confederation. After Tranquillity, probably the most well known, or notorious depending on your cultural outlook and degree of liberalism, was Valisk.

Although they were both, technically, dictatorships, they occupied opposite ends of the political spectrum, with the dominant ideologies of the remaining three habitats falling between them, a well-deserved mediocrity. Tranquillity was regarded as elitist, or even regal given its founder: industrious, rich, and slightly raffish, with a benevolent, chic ruler, it emphasized the grander qualities of life, somewhere you aspired to go if you made it. Valisk was older, its glory days over, or at the very least in abeyance: it played host to a more decadent population; money here (and there was still plenty) came from exploiting the darker side of human nature. And its strange governorship repelled rather than attracted.

It hadn’t always been so.

Valisk was founded by an Edenist Serpent called Rubra. Unlike Laton, who terrorized the Confederation two and a half centuries later, his rebellion was of an altogether more constructive nature. He was born in Machaon, a habitat orbiting Kohistan, the largest gas giant in the Srinagar star system. After forty-four years, he abandoned his culture and his home, sold his not inconsiderable share in his family’s engineering enterprise, and emigrated to a newly opened Adamist asteroid settlement in Kohistan’s trailing Trojan cluster.

It was a period of substantial economic growth for the star system. Srinagar had been colonized by ethnic-Hindus in 2178 during the Great Dispersal, a hundred and sixteen years earlier. Basic industrialization had been completed, the world was tamed, and people were looking for new ways of channelling their energies. All across the Confederation emerging colony planets were exploiting space resources and increasing their wealth dramatically. Srinagar was eager to be numbered among them.

Rubra started with six leased interplanetary cargo ships. Like all Serpents he was a high achiever in his chosen field (nearly always to Edenist embarrassment, for so many of them chose crime). He made a small fortune supplying the Trojan cluster’s small but wealthy population of engineers and miners with consumer goods and luxuries. He bought more ships, made a larger fortune, and named his expanding company Magellanic Itg—joking to his peers that one day he would trade with that distant star cluster. By 2306, after twelve years of steady growth, Magellanic Itg owned manufacturing stations and asteroid-mining operations, and had moved into the interstellar transport market.

At this point Rubra germinated Valisk in orbit around Opuntia, the fourth of the system’s five gas giants. It was a huge gamble. He spent his company’s entire financial reserves cloning the seed, mortgaging half of the starships to boot. And bitek remained technology non grata for the major religions, including the Hindu faith. But Srinagar was sufficiently Bolshevik about its new economic independence from its sponsoring Govcentral Indian states, and energetic enough in its approach to innovation, to cast a blind eye to proscriptions announced by fundamentalist Brahmians on a distant imperialist planet over two centuries earlier. Planet and asteroid governments saw no reason to impose embargoes against what was rapidly evolving into one of the system’s premier economic assets. Valisk became, literally, a corporate state, acting as the home port for Magellanic Itg’s starship fleet (already one of the largest in the sector) and dormitory town for its industrial stations.

Although Valisk was a financially advantageous location from which Rubra could run his flourishing corporate empire, he needed to attract a base population to the habitat to make it a viable pocket civilization. Industrial stations were therefore granted extremely liberal weapons and research licences and Valisk started to attract companies specializing in military hardware. Export constraints were almost non-existent.

Rubra also opened the habitat to immigration for “people who seek cultural and religious freedom”, possibly in reaction to his own formal Edenist upbringing. This invitation attracted several nonconformist religious cults, spiritual groups, and primitive lifestyle tribes, who believed that a bitek environment would fulfil the role of some benevolent Gaia and provide them free food and shelter. Over nine thousand of these people arrived over the course of the habitat’s first twenty-five years, many of them drug– or stimulant-program addicts. At this time, Rubra, infuriated with their unrepentant parasitical nature, banned any more from entering.

By 2330 the population had risen to three hundred and fifty thousand. Industrial output was high, and many interstellar companies were opening regional offices inside.

Then the first blackhawks to be seen in the Confederation began to appear, all of them registered with Magellanic Itg, and captained by Rubra’s plentiful offspring. Rubra had pulled off a spectacular coup against both his competitors and his former culture. Voidhawk bitek was the most sophisticated ever sequenced; copying it was a triumph of genetic retro-engineering.

With blackhawks now acting as the mainstay of his starship fleet, Rubra was unchallengeable. A large-scale cloning programme saw their numbers rising dramatically; neural symbionts were used to give captaincies to Adamists who had no qualms about using bitek, and there were many. By 2365 Magellanic Itg ceased to use anything other than blackhawks in its transport fleet.

Rubra died in 2390, one of the wealthiest men in the Confederation. He left behind an industrial conglomerate used as an example by economists ever since as the classic corporate growth model. It should have carried on. It had the potential to rival the Kulu Corporation owned by the Saldana family. Ultimately it might even have equalled the Edenist He3 cloud-mining operation. No physical or financial restrictions existed to limit its inherent promise; banks were more than willing to advance loans, the markets existed, supplied by its own ships.

But in the end—after the end—Rubra’s Serpent nature proved less than benign after all. His psychology was too different, too obsessional. Brought up knowing his personality pattern would continue to exist for centuries if not millennia, he refused to accept death as an Adamist. He transferred his personality pattern into Valisk’s neural strata.

From this point onward company and habitat started to degenerate. Part of the reason was the germination of the other independent habitats, all of whom offered themselves as bases for blackhawk mating flights. The Valisk/Magellanic Itg monopoly was broken. But the company’s industrial decline, and the habitat’s parallel deterioration, was due principally to the inheritance problem Rubra created.

When he died he was known to have fathered over a hundred and fifty children, a hundred and twenty-two of whom were carefully conceived in vitro and gestated in exowombs; all had modifications made to their affinity gene, as well as general physiological improvements. Thirty of the exowomb children were appointed to Valisk’s executive committee, which ran both the habitat and Magellanic Itg, while the remainder, along with the rapidly proliferating third generation, became blackhawk pilots. The naturally conceived children were virtually disinherited from the company, and many of them returned to the Edenist fold.

Even this nepotistic arrangement shouldn’t have been too much trouble. There would inevitably be power struggles within such a large committee, but strong characters would rise to the top, simple human dynamics demanded it. None ever did.

The alteration Rubra had made to their affinity gene was a simple one; they were bonded to the habitat and a single family of blackhawks alone. He robbed them of the Edenist general affinity. The arrangement gave him access to their minds virtually from the moment of conception, first through the habitat personality, then after he died, as the habitat personality.

He shaped them as they lay huddled in the metal and composite exowombs, and later in their innocent childhood; a dark conscience nestled maggot-fashion at the centre of their consciousness, examining their most secret thoughts for deviations from the path he had chosen. It was a dreadfully perverted version of the love bond which existed between voidhawks and their captains. His descendants became little more than anaemic caricatures of himself at his prime. He tried to instil the qualities which had driven him, and wound up with wretched neurotic inadequates. The more he attempted to tighten his discipline, the worse their dependence upon him became. A slow change manifested in the habitat personality’s psychology. In his growing frustration with his living descendants he became resentful; of their lives, of their bodily experiences, of the emotions they could feel, the humanness of glands and hormones running riot. Rubra was jealous of the living.

Edenist visits to the habitat, already few and far between, stopped altogether after 2480. They said the habitat personality had become insane.

Dariat was an eighth-generation descendant, born a hundred and seventy-five years after Rubra’s body died. Physically he was virtually indistinguishable from his peer group; he shared the light coffee-coloured skin and raven hair that signalled the star system’s ethnic origin. A majority of Valisk’s population originated insystem, though few of them were practising Hindus. Only his indigo eyes marked him out as anything other than a straight Srinagar genotype.

He never knew of his calamitous inheritance until his teens, although even from his infancy he knew in his heart he was different; he was better, superior to all the other children in his day club. And when they laughed at him, or teased him, or sent him to Coventry, he laid into them with a fury that none of them could match. He didn’t know where it came from himself, only that it lay within, like some slumbering lake-bottom monster. At first he felt shame at the beatings he inflicted, blood for a five-year-old is a shocking sight; but even as he ran home crying a different aspect of the alien ego would appear and soothe him, calming his pounding heart. There was nothing wrong, he was assured, no crime committed, only rightness. They shouldn’t have said what they did, catcalled and sneered. You were right to assert yourself, you are strong, be proud of that.

After a while the feelings of guilt ebbed away. When he needed to hit someone he did it without remorse or regret. His leadership of the day club was undisputed, out of fear rather than respect.

He lived with his mother in a starscraper apartment; his father had left her the year he was born. He knew his father was important, that he helped to manage Magellanic Itg; but whenever he paid mother and son one of his dutiful visits he was subject to moody silences or bursts of frantic activity. Dariat didn’t like him, the grown-up was weird. I can do without him, the boy thought, he’s weak. The conviction was as strong as one of his didactic imprints. His father stopped visiting after he was twelve years old.

Dariat concentrated on science and finance subjects when he began receiving didactic courses at ten years old, although right at the back of his mind was the faintest notion that the arts might just have been equally appealing. But they were despicable moments of weakness, soon swallowed by the pride he felt whenever he passed another course assessment. He was headed for great things.

At fourteen the crux came. At fourteen he fell in love.

Valisk’s interior did not follow the usual bitek habitat convenience of a tropical or sub-tropical environment. Rubra had decided on a scrub desert extending out from the base of the northern endcap, then blending slowly into hilly savannah plain of terrestrial and xenoc grasses before the standard circumfluous salt-water reservoir at the base of the southern endcap.

Dariat was fond of hiking round the broad grasslands with their subtle blend of species and colours. The children’s day club which he used to dominate had long since broken up. Adolescents were supposed to join sports groups, or general interest clubs. He had trouble integrating, too many peers remembered his temper and violence long after he had stopped resorting to such crude methods. They shunned him, and he told himself he didn’t care. Somebody told him. In dreams he would find himself walking through the habitat talking to a white-haired old man. The old man was a big comfort, the things he said, the encouragement he gave. And the habitat was slightly different, richer, with trees and flowers and happy crowds, families picnicking.

“It’s going to be like this once you’re in charge,” the old man told him numerous times. “You’re the best there’s been for decades. Almost as good as me. You’ll bring it all back to me, the power and the wealth.”

“This is the future?” Dariat asked. They were standing on a tall altar of polyp-rock, looking down on a circular starscraper entrance. People were rushing about with a vigour and purpose not usually found in Valisk. Every one of them was wearing a Magellanic Itg uniform. When he lifted his gaze it was as though the northern endcap was transparent; blackhawks flocked around their docking rings, loaded with expensive goods and rare artefacts from a hundred planets. Further out, so far away it was only a hazy ginger blob, Magellanic Itg’s failed Von Neumann machine spun slowly against the gas giant’s yellow-brown ring array.

“It could be the future,” the old man sighed regretfully. “If you will only listen how.”

“I will,” Dariat said. “I’ll listen.”

The old man’s schemes seemed to coincide with the pressure of conviction and certainty which was building in his own mind. Some days he seemed so full of ideas and goals he thought his skull must surely burst apart, whilst on other occasions the dream man’s long rambling speeches seemed to have developed a tangible echo, lasting all day long.

That was why he enjoyed the long bouts of solitude provided by the unadventurous interior. Walking and exploring obscure areas was the only time the raging thoughts in his brain slowed and calmed.

Five days after his fourteenth birthday he saw Anastasia Rigel. She was washing in a river that ran along the floor of a deep valley. Dariat heard her singing before he saw her. The voice led him round some genuine rock boulders onto a shelf of naked polyp which the water had scoured of soil. He squatted down in the lee of the boulders, and watched her kneeling at the side of the river.

The girl was tall and much much blacker than anyone he’d seen in Valisk before. She appeared to be in her late teens (seventeen, he learned later), with legs that seemed to be all bands of muscle, and long jet-black hair that was arranged in ringlets and woven with red and yellow beads. Her face was narrow and delicate with a petite nose. There were dozens of slim silver and bronze bracelets on each arm.

She was only wearing a blue skirt of some thin cotton. A brown top of some kind lay on the polyp beside her. Dariat caught some fleeting glimpses of high pointed breasts as she rubbed water across her chest and arms. It was even better than accessing bluesense AV fleks and tossing off. For once he felt beautifully calm.

I’m going to have her, he thought, I really am. The certainty burned him.

She stood up, and pulled her brown top on. It was a sleeveless waistcoat made from thin supple leather, laced up the front. “You can come out now,” she said in a clear voice.

Just for a moment he felt wholly inferior. Then he trotted towards her with a casualness that denied she had just caught him spying. “I was trying not to alarm you,” he said.

She was twenty centimetres taller than him; she looked down and grinned openly. “You couldn’t.”

“Did you hear me? I thought I was being quiet.”

“I could feel you.”

“Feel me?”

“Yes. You have a very anguished spirit. It cries out.”

“And you can hear that?”

“Lin Yi was a distant ancestress.”

“Oh.”

“You have not heard of her?”

“No, sorry.”

“She was a famous spiritualist. She predicted the Big One2 quake in California back on Earth in 2058 and led her followers to safety in Oregon. A perilous pilgrimage for those times.”

“I’d like to hear that story.”

“I will tell it if you like. But I don’t think you will listen. Your spirit is closed against the realm of Chi-ri.”

“You judge people very fast. We don’t stand much of a chance, do we?”

“Do you know what the realm of Chi-ri is?”

“No.”

“Shall I tell you?”

“If you like.”

“Come then.”

She led him up the river, bracelets tinkling musically at every motion. They followed the tight curve of the valley; after three hundred metres the floor broadened out, and a Starbridge village was camped along the side of the river.

Starbridge was the remnants of the cults and tribes and spiritualists who had moved into Valisk during its formative years. They had slowly amalgamated down the decades, bonding together against the scorn and hostility of the other inhabitants. Now they were one big community, united spiritually with an outré fusion of beliefs that was often incomprehensible to any outsider. They embraced the primitive existence, living as tribes of migrants, walking round and round the interior of the habitat, tending their cattle, practising their handicraft, cultivating their opium poppies, and waiting for their nirvana.

Dariat looked out on the collection of ramshackle tepees, stringy animals with noses foraging the grass, children in rags running barefoot. He experienced a contempt so strong it verged on physical sickness. He was curious at that, he had no reason to hate the Starbridge freakos, he’d never had anything to do with them before. Even as he thought that, the loathing increased. Of course he did, slimy parasites, vermin on two legs.

Anastasia Rigel stroked his forehead in concern. “You suffer yet you are strong,” she said. “You spend so much time in the realm of Anstid.”

She brought him into her tepee, a cone of heavy handwoven cloth. Wicker baskets ringed the walls. The light was dim, and the air dusty. The valley’s pinkish grass was matted, dry and dying underfoot. He saw her sleeping roll bundled up against one basket, a bright orange blanket with pillows that had some kind of green and white tree motif embroidered across them, haloed by a ring of stars. He wondered if that was what he’d do it on, where he’d finally become a real man.

They sat crosslegged on a threadbare rug and drank tea, which was like coloured water, and didn’t taste of much. Jasmine, she told him.

“What do you think of us?” she asked.

“Us?”

“The Starbridge tribes.”

“Never really thought about you much,” Dariat said. He was getting itchy sitting on the rug, and it was pretty obvious there weren’t going to be any biscuits with the tea.

“You should. Starbridge is both our name and our dream, that which we seek to build. A bridge between stars, between all peoples. We are the final religion. They will all come to us eventually; the Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists, even the Satanists and followers of Wicca; every sect, every cult. Each and every one of them.”

“That’s a pretty bold claim.”

“Not really. Just inevitable. There were so many of us, you see, when Rubra the Lost invited us here. So many beliefs, all different, yet really all the same. Then he turned on us, and confined us, and isolated us. He thought he would punish us, force us to conform to his materialistic atheism. But faith and dignity is always stronger than mortal oppression. We turned inwards for comfort, and found we had so much that we shared. We became one.”

“Starbridge being the one?”

“Yes. We burned the old scriptures and prayer books on a bonfire so high the flames reached right across the habitat. With them went all the ancient prejudices and the myths. It left us pure, in silence and darkness. Then we rebirthed ourselves, and renamed what we knew was real. There is so much that old Earth’s religions have in common; so many identical beliefs and tenets and wisdoms. But their followers are forced apart by names, by priests who have grown decadent and greedy for physical reward. Whole peoples, whole planets who denounce one another so that a few evil men can wear robes of golden cloth.”

“That seems fairly logical,” Dariat said enthusiastically. “Good idea.” He smiled. From where he was sitting he could see the whole side of her left breast through the waistcoat’s lace-up front.

“I don’t think you have come to faith that quickly,” she said with a trace of suspicion.

“I haven’t. Because you haven’t told me anything about it. But if you were telling the truth about hearing my spirit, then you’ve got my full attention. None of the other religions can offer tangible proof of God’s existence.”

She shifted round on the rug, bracelets clinking softly. “Neither do we offer proof. What we say is that life in this universe is only one segment of the great journey a spirit undertakes through time. We believe the journey will finish when a spirit reaches heaven, however you choose to define that existence. But don’t ask how close this universe is to heaven. That depends on the individual.”

“What happens when your spirit reaches heaven?”

“Transcendence.”

“What sort?”

“That is for God to proclaim.”

“God. Not a goddess, then?” he asked teasingly.

She grinned at him. “The word defines a concept, not an entity, not a white man with a white beard, nor even an earth mother. Physical bodies require gender. I don’t think the instigator and sovereign of the multiverse is going to have physical and biological aspects, do you?”

“No.” He finished the tea, relieved the cup was empty. “So what are these realms?”

“While the spirit is riding a body it also moves through the spiritual realms of the Lords and Ladies who govern nature. There are six realms, and five Lords and Ladies.”

“I thought you said there was only one heaven?”

“I did. The realms are not heaven, they are aspects of ourselves. The Lords and Ladies are not God, but they are of a higher order than ourselves. They affect events through the wisdoms and deceits they reveal to us. But they have no influence on the physical reality of the cosmos. They are not the instigators of miracles.”

“Like angels and demons?” he asked brightly.

“If you like. If that makes it easier to accept.”

“So they’re in charge of us?”

“You are in charge of yourself. You and you alone chose where your spirit roams.”

“Then why the Lords and Ladies?”

“They grant gifts of knowledge and insight, they tempt. They test us.”

“Silly thing to do. Why don’t they leave us alone?”

“Without experience there can be no growth. Existence is evolution, both on a spiritual and a personal level.”

“I see. So which is this Chi-ri I’m closed against?”

Anastasia Rigel climbed to her feet and went over to one of the wicker baskets. She pulled out a small goatskin bag. If she was aware of his hungry look following her every move she never showed it. “These represent the Lords and Ladies,” she said as she sat back down. The bag’s contents were tipped out. Six coloured pebble-sized crystals bounced on the rug. They had all been carved, he saw; cubes with their faces marked by small runes. She picked up the red one. “This is for Thoale, Lord of destiny.” The blue crystal was held up, and she told him it was for Chi-ri, Lady of hope. Green was for Anstid, Lord of hatred. Yellow for Tarrug, Lord of mischief. Venus, Lady of love, was as clear as glass.

“You said there were six realms,” he said.

“The sixth is the emptiness.” She proffered a jet-black cube, devoid of runes. “It has no Lord or Lady, it is where lost spirits flee.” She crossed her arms in front of herself, fingers touching her shoulders, bracelets falling to the crook of her elbows. She reminded Dariat of a statue of Shiva he’d seen in one of Valisk’s four temples; Shiva as Nataraja, king of dancers. “A terrible place,” Anastasia Rigel murmured coolly.

“You don’t think I have any hope?” he asked, suddenly annoyed at this primitive paganish nonsense again.

“You resist it.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve got lots of hope. I’m going to run this habitat one day,” he added. She ought to be impressed by that.

Her head was shaken gently, hair partly obscuring her face. “That is Anstid deceiving you, Dariat. You spend so much time in his realm, he has an unholy grip upon your spirit.”

“How do you know?” he said scornfully.

“These are called Thoale stones. He is the Lord I am beholden to. He shows me what is to unfold.” A slight, droll smile flickered over her lips. “Sometimes Tarrug intervenes. He shows me things I should not see, or events I cannot understand.”

“How do the stones work?”

“Each face is carved with the rune of a realm. I read the combinations, how they fall, or in the case of the emptiness where it falls in relation to the others. Would you like to know what your future contains?”

“Yeah. Go on.”

“Pick up each crystal, hold it in your hands for a moment, try to impress it with your essence, then put it in the bag.”

He picked up the clear one, naturally. Love Lady. “How do I impress it?”

She just shrugged.

He squeezed the crystals one at a time, feeling increasingly stupid, and dropped them in the goatskin bag. Anastasia Rigel shook the bag, then tipped the crystals out.

“What does it say?” Dariat asked, a shade too eagerly for someone who was supposed to be sceptical.

She stared at them a while, eyes flicking anxiously between the runes. “Greatness,” she said eventually. “You will come to greatness.”

“Hey, yeah!”

Her hand came up, silencing him. “It will not last. You shine so bright, Dariat, but for such a short time, and it is a dark flame which ignites you.”

“Then what?” he asked, disgruntled.

“Pain, death.”

“Death?”

“Not yours. Many people, but not yours.”

Anastasia Rigel didn’t offer to sleep with him that time. Nor any of his visits during the month which followed. They walked round the savannah together, talking inanities, almost as brother and sister. She would tell him about the Starbridge philosophy, the idiosyncrasies of the realms. He listened, but became lost and impatient with a worldview which seemed to have little internal logic. In return he told her of his father, the resentment and the confusion of loss; mainly in the hope she’d feel sorry for him. He took her down into a starscraper; she said she’d never been in one before. She didn’t like it, the confining walls of the apartments, although she was fascinated by the slowly spinning starfield outside.

The sexual tension died down from its initial high-voltage peak, though it was never laid to rest. It became a sort of game, jibes and smirks, played for points that neither knew how to win. Dariat enjoyed her company a lot. Someone who treated him fairly, who took time to hear what he said. Because she wanted to. He could never quite understand what she got out of the arrangement. She read his future several times, though none of the readings ever proved quite as dire as the first.

Dariat spent more and more time with her, almost divorcing himself from the culture lived out in the starscrapers and industrial stations (except for keeping up on his didactic courses). The portentous aspirations in his mind lost their grip when he was in her presence.

He learnt how to milk a goat, not that he particularly wanted to. They were smelly, bad-tempered creatures. She cooked him fish which she caught in the streams, and showed him which plants had edible roots. He found out about the tribe’s way of life, how they sold a lot of their handicrafts to starship crews, chiefly the rugs and pottery, how they shunned technology. “Except for nanonic medical packages,” she said wryly. “Amazing how many women become technocrats around childbirth time.” He went to some of their ceremonies, which seemed little more than open air parties where everyone drank a strong distilled spirit, and sang gospel hymns late into the night.

One evening, when she was wearing just a simple white cotton poncho, she invited him into her tepee. He felt all the sexual heat return as the outline of her body was revealed through the fabric by the light of the tepee’s meagre oil lamp. There was some kind of clay pot in the centre with a snakelike hose coming from the side. It was smoking docilely, filling the air with a funny sweet and sour scent.

Anastasia took a puff on the pipe, and shivered as if she’d swallowed a triple whisky. “Try some,” she said, her voice rich with challenge.

“What is it?”

“A wide gate into Tarrug’s realm. You’ll like it. Anstid won’t. He’ll lose all control over you.”

He looked at the crimped end of the tube, still wet from her mouth. He wanted to try it. He was frightened. Her eyes were very wide.

She tipped her head back, expelling two long plumes of smoke from her nostrils. “Don’t you want to explore the realm of mischief with me?”

Dariat put the tube in his mouth and sucked. The next minute he was coughing violently.

“Not so hard,” she said. Her voice sounded all furred. “Take it down slow. Feel it float through your bones.”

He did as he was told.

“They’re hollow, you know, your bones.” Her smile was wide, shining like the light-tube against her black face.

The world spun round. He could feel the habitat moving, stars whipping round faster and faster, smearing across space. Smeared like cream. He giggled. Anastasia Rigel gave him a long, knowing grin, and took another drag on the tube.

Space was pink. Stars were black. Water smelt of cheese. “I love you,” he told her. “I love you, I love you.” The tepee walls were palpitating in and out. He was in the belly of some huge beast, just like Jonah.

Bloody hell.

“What did you say?”

Shit, I can’t filter . . . What’s green? What are you—

“My hands are green,” he explained patiently.

“Are they?” Anastasia Rigel asked. “That’s interesting.”

What has she given you?

“Tarrug?” Dariat asked. Anastasia had said that was who they were going to visit. “Hello, Tarrug. I can hear him. He’s talking to me.”

Anastasia Rigel was at right angles to him. She pulled the poncho off over her head, sitting crosslegged and naked on the rug. Now she was totally upside-down. Her nipples were black eyes following him.

“That’s not Tarrug you hear,” she said. “That’s Anstid.”

“Anstid. Hi!”

What is it? What is in that bloody pipe? Wait, I’m reviewing the local memory . . . Oh, fuck, it’s salfrond. I can’t hold onto your thoughts when you’re tripping on that, you little prick.

“I don’t want you to.”

Yes, you do. Oh, believe me you do, boy. I’ve got the keys to every dark door in this kingdom, and you’re the golden protégé. Now stop smoking that mind-rotting crap.

Dariat very deliberately stuck the tube in his mouth, and inhaled until his lungs were about to burst. His cheeks puffed out. Anastasia Rigel leant forwards and took the tube from between his lips. “Enough.”

The tepee was spinning in the opposite direction to the habitat, and outside it was raining shoes. Black leather shoes with scarlet buckles.

Shit! I’m going to kill that little black junkie bitch for this. It’s high bloody time I shoved the Starbridge tribes out of the airlock. Dariat, stand up, boy. Walk outside, get some fresh air. There’s some medical nanonic packages in the village, the headman’s got some. They can straighten out your blood chemistry.

Dariat’s giggles returned. “Piss off.”

GET UP!

“No.”

Weakling! Always bloody weaklings. You’re no better than your bastard father.

Dariat squeezed his eyes shut. The colours were behind his eyelids too. “I am not like him.”

Yes, you are. Weak, feeble, pathetic. All of you are. I should have cloned myself when I had the chance. Parthenogenetics would have solved all this bullshit. Two fucking centuries of weaklings I’ve had to endure. Two centuries, fuck it.

“Go away!” Even stoned, he could tell this wasn’t part of the trip. This was more. This was much much worse.

“Is he hurting you, baby?” Anastasia Rigel asked.

“Yes.”

I’ll fucking cripple you if you don’t get up. Smash your legs, shred your hands to ribbons. Do you like the sound of that, boy? A life spent grubbing round like a snail. Can’t walk, can’t feed yourself, can’t wipe your arse.

“Stop it,” Dariat screamed.

Get up!

“Don’t listen to him, baby. Close your mind.”

Tell that bitch from me, she’s dead.

“Please, both of you, stop it. Leave me alone.”

Get up.

Dariat tried to rise. He got up to his knees, then fell into Anastasia’s lap.

“You’re mine now,” she said gladly.

No, you’re not. You’re mine. Always mine. You can never leave. I won’t allow you to.

Her hands ran over his clothes, opening seals. Kisses with the sharp cold impact of hailstones fell on his face. “This is what you wanted, what you always wanted,” she breathed in his ear. “Me.”

The nauseating colour stripes blitzing his sight swirled into blackness. Her hot skin sliding up and down against him. Weight pressing against every part of him. He was doing it! He was fucking! Tears poured out of his eyes.

“That’s right, baby. Up inside me. Purge him. Purge him with me. Fly, fly into Venus and Chi-ri. Leave him behind. Free yourself.”

Always mine.

Dariat woke feeling awful. He was lying on the stiff tousled grass of the tepee without a stitch of clothing. The entrance flap was open, a slice of bright morning light sliding through. A heavy dew mottled his legs. Something had died and decomposed in his mouth, his tongue by the feel of it. Anastasia Rigel was lying beside him. Naked and beautiful. Arms tucked up against her chest.

Last night. I fucked her. I did it!

He tried to smother an ecstatic laugh.

Feeling better?

Dariat screamed. It was inside his head. Anstid. The realm demigod.

He jerked around, hugging himself, biting his lower lip so hard he drew blood.

Don’t be an idiot. I’m not a bloody spirit bogeyman. There’s no such thing. Religion is a psychological crutch for mental inadequates. Spiritualism is for mental paraplegics. Think what that makes your girlie friend.

“What are you?”

Anastasia Rigel woke up, blinking against the light. She ran her hand through her wild hair and sat up, looking at him with a curious expression.

I’m your ancestor.

“A lost spirit from the emptiness?” he asked, wide eyed with fright.

Give me one more word of mythology and I really will have your legs broken. Now think logically. I’m your ancestor. Who can I be?

Information from his didactic history courses tumbled into his thoughts. “Rubra?” The idea didn’t make him feel any better at all.

Well done. Now stop panicking, and stop shivering. I don’t normally talk direct to someone your age, I like to let you have sixteen years to yourself. But I’m not going to allow you to become a dopehead. Do not ever smoke that stuff again. Understand?

“Yes, sir.”

Stop vocalizing. Concentrate your thoughts.

“What are you saying, baby?” Anastasia Rigel asked. “Are you still tripping?”

“No. It’s Rubra, he’s . . . We’re talking.”

She pulled the white poncho round herself, giving him an alarmed look.

I’ve got plans for you, boy,rubra said. Big plans. You’re destined for Magellanic Itg’s executive committee.

I am?

Yes. If you play your cards right. If you do as you’re told.

I will.

Good. Now I’ve been lenient letting you sow your oats with dinky little Anastasia. I can understand that, she’s got a nice body, good tits, pretty face. I had a sex drive myself, once. But you’ve had your fun now; so put your clothes on and say goodbye. We’ll find someone a bit more suitable.

I can’t leave her. Not after . . . last night.

Take a real good look at yourself, boy. Rutting with a bubblehead primitive on a filthy mat in a tepee. Some friend, she filled your brain with two kinds of shit. That’s not how Valisk’s future ruler is going to behave. Is it?

No, sir.

Good boy.

He started to pick up his clothes.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Home.”

“He told you to.”

“I . . . What is there here?”

She gave him a forlorn look over the white poncho which was still clasped to her body. “Me. Your friend. Your lover.”

He shook his head.

“I’m human. That’s more than he is.”

Come on. Leave.

Dariat pulled on his shoes. He paused by the entrance flap.

“It’s Anstid,” she said in a mournful tone. “That’s who you really talk to.”

Pseudobabble. Ignore her.

Dariat walked slowly out of the village. Some of the elders gave him strange looks as he passed their steaming cooking pits. They couldn’t understand. Why would anyone leave Anastasia’s bed?

That’s their trouble, boy. They’re too backward. The real world is beyond them. I really must get round to cleaning them out one day.

Now Dariat knew what he was, what he was destined for, the didactic courses took on a whole new level of importance. He listened to Rubra’s advice on the specializations he needed, the grades he had to achieve. He became obedient, and a shade resentful at his own compliance. But what else was there? Starbridge?

In return for acquiescence Rubra taught him how to use the affinity bond with the habitat. How to access the sensitive cells to see what was going on, how he could call on vast amounts of processing power, the tremendous amount of stored data that was available.

One of the first things Rubra did was to guide him through a list of possible replacement girls, eager to bury the lingering traces of yearning for Anastasia Rigel. Dariat felt like a voyeuristic ghost, watching the prospective candidates through the sensitive cells; seeing them at home, talking to their friends. Some of them he watched having sex with their boyfriends, two with other girls, which was exciting. Rubra didn’t seem to object to these prolonged observations. At least it meant he didn’t have to pay for bluesense fleks any more.

One girl he chanced on was nice, Chilone, nine months older than him. As black as Anastasia (which was what first caught his attention), but with dark auburn hair. Shy and pretty, who talked a lot about sex and boys with her girl friends.

Still he hesitated from meeting her, even though he knew her daily routine, knew her interests, what to say, which day clubs she belonged to. He could contrive a dozen encounters.

Get on with it,rubra told him after a week of cautious scrutiny. Screw her brains out. You don’t think Anastasia’s still pining over you, do you?

What?

Try using the sensitive cells around the tepee.

That was something he’d never done, not using the habitat’s perception faculty to spy on her. But the tone Rubra used had a hint of cruel amusement in it.

Anastasia had a lover, Mersin Columba, another Starbridge. A man in his forties; overweight, balding, with white pallid skin. They looked horrible locked together. Anastasia flinched silently as she lay underneath his pumping body.

The old white-hot infantile fury rose into Dariat’s mind. He wanted to save her from the repellent humiliation; his beautiful girl who had loved him.

Take my advice. Go find young Chilone.

Like juvenile Edenists, it hadn’t taken Dariat long to discover how to fox the habitat’s sensitive cells. Unless Rubra’s principal personality pattern was concentrating on him in particular, the autonomous monitoring of the subroutines could be circumvented.

Dariat used the sensitive cells to follow Mersin Columba out of the tepee. The podgy oaf had a smug smile on his face as he made his way down to the stream. Anastasia Rigel was curled up on her rug, staring at nothing.

Mersin Columba made his way down the valley before stripping off his shirt and trousers. He splashed into a wide pool, and began to wash off the smell and stains of sex.

The first blow from Dariat’s wooden cudgel caught him on the side of his head, tearing his ear. He grunted and dropped to his knees. The second blow smashed across the crown of his skull.

Stop it!

Dariat aimed another blow; laughing at the surprise on the man’s face. Nobody does that to my girl. Nobody does that to me! A cascade of blows rained down on Mersin Columba’s unprotected head. Rubra’s furious demands were reduced to a wasp’s buzz at the back of Dariat’s raging mind. He was vengeance. He was omnipotent, more than any realm Lord. He struck and struck, and it felt good.

The water pushed at Mersin Columba’s inert body. Long ribbons of blood wept from the battered head, turned to tattered curlicues by the current. Dariat stood over him. The bloody length of wood dropped from his fingers.

I didn’t realize what I’d created with you,rubra said. The silent voice lacked its usual conviction.

Dariat shivered suddenly. His heart was pumping hard. Anastasia is mine. Well, she certainly doesn’t belong to poor old Mersin Columba any more, and that’s a fact.

The body had drifted five metres downstream. Dariat thought it looked repugnant, sickly white, bloated.

Now what?he asked sullenly.

I’d better get some housechimps to tidy up. And you’d better make tracks.

Is that it?

I’m not going to punish you for killing a Starbridge. But we’re going to have to work on that temper of yours. It can be useful, but only if it’s applied properly.

For the company.

Yes. And don’t you forget it. Don’t worry, you’ll improve with age.

Dariat turned and walked away from the river. He hiked up out of the valley and spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly around the savannah.

His thoughts were glacial. He had killed a man, but there was no remorse, no sense of guilt. No sense of satisfaction, either. He felt nothing, as if the whole incident was an act he’d seen on an AV recording.

When the light-tube began to dim into brassy twilight he turned and made his way towards the Starbridge village.

Where do you think you’re going?rubra asked.

She’s mine. I love her. I’m going to have her. Tonight, always.

No. Only I am for always.

You can’t stop me. I don’t care about the company. Keep it. I never wanted it. I want Anastasia.

Don’t be a fool.

Dariat detected something then, a strand of emotion wound up with the mental voice: anxiety. Rubra was worried.

What’s happened?

Nothing’s happened. Go home. It’s been a hellish day.

No.he tried to use the sensitive cells to show him the village. Nothing, Rubra was blocking his affinity.

Go home.

Dariat started running.

Don’t, boy!

It was over a kilometre back to the valley. The pink and yellow grass came up to his waist in places, blades whipping his legs. He reached the brow of the slope and looked down in dismay. The village was packing up, moving on. Half of the tepees were already down, folded into bundles and put on the carts. Animals were being rounded up. All the fire pits were out. It was a crazy time to be moving. Night was almost here. His sense of calamity redoubled.

Dariat sprinted down the steep slope, falling twice, grazing his knees and shins. He didn’t care. Faces turned to watch as he dashed towards Anastasia’s tepee.

He was shouting her name as he shoved the entrance flap aside.

The rope had been tied to the apex of the tepee. She must have used a stack of her wicker baskets to stand on. They were scattered all over the floor.

Her head was tilted to one side, the rope pressing into her left cheek, just behind the ear. She swayed slightly from side to side, the tepee’s poles letting out quiet creaks.

Dariat stared at her for some immeasurable time. He didn’t understand why. Not any of it.

Come on, boy. Come on home.

No. You did this. You made me leave her. She was mine. This would never have happened if you’d stayed out of my life.tears were pouring down his cheeks.

I am your life.

You’re not. Not not not.he closed out the voice. Refusing to hear the pleas and threats.

One of the wicker baskets had a piece of paper lying on top. It was weighted down by Anastasia’s goatskin bag. Dariat picked it up, and read the message she’d written.

Dariat, I know it was you. I know you thought you did it for me. You didn’t. You did it because it’s what Anstid wanted, he will never allow you an alliance with Thoale. I thought I could help you. But I see I can’t; I’m not strong enough to defy a realm Lord. I’m sorry.

I can’t see any purpose in staying in this universe any more. I’m going to free my spirit and continue my flight towards God. The Thoale stones are my gift to you; use them please. You have so many battles to fight. Seeing the future may help you win some.

I want you to know I loved you for all the time we were together.

Anastasia Rigel

He loosened the thong at the top of the bag and spilled the six crystals onto the dusty rug. The five which were carved with runes landed with the blank face uppermost. He slowly picked them up, and threw them again. They came up blank. The empty realm, where lost spirits go.

Dariat fled the Starbridge village. He never went back. He stopped taking didactic courses, refused to acknowledge Rubra’s affinity bond, argued a lot with his mother, and moved into a starscraper apartment of his own at fifteen.

There was nothing Rubra could do. His most promising protégé for decades was lost to him. The affinity window into Dariat’s mind remained closed; it was the most secure block the habitat personality pattern had ever known, remaining in place even while the boy slept. After a month of steady pressure Rubra gave up, even Dariat’s subconscious was sealed against subliminal suggestions. The block was more than conscious determination, it was a profound psychological inhibition. Probably trauma based.

Rubra cursed yet another failure descendant, and switched his priority to a new fledgeling. Monitoring of Dariat was assigned to an autonomic sub-routine. Occasional checks by the personality’s principal consciousness revealed a total drop-out, a part-time drunk, part-time hustler picking up beer money by knowing people and where to find them, getting involved with deals which were dubious even for Valisk. Dariat never got a regular job, living off the starscraper food pap, accessing MF albums, sometimes for days on end. He never approached a girl again.

It was a stand-off which lasted for thirty years. Rubra had even stopped his intermittent checks on the wrecked man. Then the Yaku arrived at Valisk.

The Yaku ’s emergence above Opuntia six days after it left Lalonde never raised a query. None of Graeme Nicholson’s fleks had yet reached their destination when the cargo starship asked for and was granted docking permission. As far as both the habitat personality and the Avon Embassy’s small Intelligence team (the only Confederation observers Rubra would allow inside) were concerned it was just another cargo starship visiting a spaceport which handled nearly thirty thousand similar visits a year.

Yaku had emerged a little further away from Valisk than was normal, and its flight vector required a more than average number of corrections—the fusion drive was fluctuating in an erratic fashion. But then a lot of the Adamist starships using Valisk operated on the borderline of CAB spaceworthiness requirements.

It docked at a resupply bay on the edge of the three-kilometre-wide disk which was the habitat’s non-rotational spaceport. The captain requested a quantity of He3 and deuterium, as well as oxygen, water, and some food. Spaceport service companies were contracted within ten minutes of its arrival.

Three people disembarked. Their passport fleks named them as Marie Skibbow, Alicia Cochrane, and Manza Balyuzi; the last two were members of Yaku ’s crew. All three cleared Valisk’s token immigration and customs carrying small bags with a single change of clothing.

The Yaku undocked four hours later, its cryogenic tanks full, and flew down towards Opuntia. Whatever its jump coordinate was, the gas giant was between it and Valisk when it activated its energy patterning nodes. No record of its intended destination existed.

Dariat was sitting up at the bar in the Tabitha Oasis when the girl caught his eye. Thirty years of little exercise, too much cheap beer, and a diet of starscraper gland synthesized pastes had brought about a detrimental effect on his once slim physique. He was fat verging on obese, his skin was flaky, his hair was dulled by a week’s accumulation of oil. Appearance wasn’t something he paid a lot of attention to. A togalike robe covered a multitude of laxities.

That girl, though: teenaged, long limbed, large breasted, exquisite face, bronzed, strong. Wearing a tight white T-shirt and short black skirt. He wasn’t alone in watching her. The Tabitha Oasis attracted a tough crew. Girl like that was a walking gang-bang invitation. It had happened before. But she hadn’t got a care in the world, there was an élan to her which was mesmerizing. All the more surprising, then, was her table companion.

Anders Bospoort: physically her counterpart; late twenties, slab muscles, the best swarthy face money could buy. But he didn’t have her youthful exuberance, his mouth and eyes smiled (for that money they ought to) but there was no emotion powering the expression. Anders Bospoort was in almost equal proportions gigolo, pimp, pusher, and blue-sense star.

Strange she couldn’t see that. But he could pile on the charm when necessary, and the expensive wine bottle sitting on the table between them was nearly empty.

Dariat beckoned the barkeeper over. “What’s her name?”

“Marie. Arrived on a ship this afternoon.”

That explained a lot. Nobody had warned her. Now the wolves of the Tabitha Oasis were circling the camp-fire, enjoying her elaborate seduction. Later they would be able to share the corruption of youth, sensevising Anders Bospoort’s boosted penis sliding up between her legs. Have her surprise and pleading in their ears. Feel the ripe body molested by powerful skilled hands.

Maybe Anders wasn’t so stupid, Dariat thought, bringing her here was a good advert. He could ask an easy ten per cent over the odds for her flek.

The barkeeper shook his head sadly. He was three times Dariat’s age, and he’d spent his every year in Valisk. He’d seen it all, so he claimed, every human foible. “Pity, nice girl like that. Someone should tell her.”

“Yeah. Anywhere else, and someone might.” Dariat looked at her again. Surely a girl with her beauty couldn’t be that naïve about men?

Anders Bospoort extended a gracious arm as they rose from the table. Marie smiled and accepted it. He thought she looked glad at the opportunity to stay close. The gazes she drew from the men of the Tabitha Oasis weren’t exactly coy. His size and measured presence was a reassurance. She was safe with him.

They walked across the vestibule outside the bar, and Anders datavised the starscraper’s mechanical systems control processor for a lift.

“Thank you for taking me there,” Marie said.

He saw the excitement in her eyes at the little taste of the illicit. “I don’t always go there. It can get a little rough. Half of the regulars have Confederation warrants hanging over them. If the navy ever comes visiting Valisk the population on penal planets would just about double overnight.”

The lift arrived. He gestured her through the open doors. Halfway there, and it was going so smoothly. He’d been a perfect gentleman from the moment they met outside the Apartment Allocation Office (always the best place to pick up clean meat), every word clicking flawlessly into place. And she’d been drawn closer and closer, hypnotized by the old Bospoort magic.

She glanced uncertainly at the floor as the doors closed, as if she’d only just realized how far from her home and family she was. All alone with her only friend in the whole star system. No going back for her now.

He felt a tightening in his stomach as the anticipation heightened. This would all go on the flek; the prelude, the slow-burning conquest. People appreciated the build in tension. And he was an artiste supreme.

The doors opened to the eighty-third floor.

“It’s a walk down two floors,” Anders told her apologetically. “The lifts don’t work below here. And the maintenance crews won’t come down to fix them. Sorry.”

The vestibule hadn’t been cleaned for a long time and rubbish was accumulating in the corners. There was graffiti on the walls, a smell of urine in the air. Marie looked round nervously, and stayed close to Anders’ side.

He guided her to the stairwell. The light was dim, a strip of electrophorescent cells on the wall whose output had faded to an insipid yellow. Dozens of big pale moths whirred incessantly against it. Water leaked down the walls from cracks in the polyp. A cream-coloured moss grew along the edge of every step.

“It’s very kind of you to let me stay with you,” Marie ventured.

“Just until you get your own apartment sorted out. There are hundreds of unused ones. It’s one of life’s greater mysteries why it always takes so long for the Allocation Office to assign one.”

Nobody else was using the stairs. Anders very rarely got to meet any of his neighbours. The bottom of the starscraper was perfect for him. No quick access, everyone stayed behind closed doors to conduct their chosen business in life, and no questions were ever asked. The cops Magellanic Itg contracted to maintain a kind of order in the rest of Valisk didn’t come down here.

They left the stairwell on his floor, and he datavised a code at his apartment door. Nothing happened. He flashed her a strained smile, and datavised the code again. This time it opened, juddering once or twice as it slid along its rails. Marie went in first. Anders deliberately kept the inside lights low, and codelocked the door behind him—at least the processor acknowledged that. He put his arm round her shoulder and steered her into the biggest of the three bedrooms. That door was codelocked too.

Marie walked into the middle of the room, eyes straying to the double bed. There were long velvet straps fixed to each corner.

“Take your clothes off,” Anders told her. An uncompromising sternness appeared in his voice. He datavised an order to the overhead light panel, but it remained at its lowest level. Shit! And she was obediently stripping off. Nothing for it, he’d have to stay with the deep shadows and hope everyone found it erotic.

“Now take mine off,” he ordered. “Slowly.”

He could feel her hands trembling as she pushed the shirt off his broad shoulders, which made a nice touch. Nervous ones were always more responsive.

His eyes ran over her with expert tracking as she walked ahead of him to the bed, capturing every square centimetre of flesh on display. When she was lying on the water mattress his hands traced the same route. Then his boosted cock was swelling to its full length, and he focused on her face to make sure he captured her fear. That was always a big turn on for the punters.

Marie was smiling.

The lights sprang up to full intensity.

Anders twisted round in confusion. “Hey—”

At first he thought someone had crept up and snapped handcuffs round his wrists, but when he looked he saw it was Marie’s elegant feminine hands gripping him.

“Let go.” The pain as she squeezed harder was frightening. “Bitch! Let go. Christ—”

She laughed.

He looked back down at her, and gasped. She was sprouting hair right across her chest and stomach, thick black bristles that scratched and pricked his skin where he lay on top of her. Individual strands began to harden. It was like lying on a hedgehog hide. The long tips were puncturing his own skin, needling in through the subcutaneous layers of fat.

“Fuck me, then,” she said.

He tried to struggle, but all that did was push more needle spines into his abdomen. Marie let go of one wrist. He hit her then, on the side of her ribs, and her flesh gave way below his fist. When he brought his hand away it was covered in yellow and red slime. The spines piercing him turned to worms, slick and greasy, licking round inside the swath of puncture holes down his torso. Blood trickled out.

Anders let out an insane howl. She was rotting below him, skin melting away into a putrescent crimson film of mucus. It was acting like glue, sticking him to her. The stench was vile, stinging his eyes. He puked, the wine from the Tabitha Oasis splattering down on her deliquescing face.

“Kiss me.”

He bucked and floundered against her, weeping helplessly, praying to a God he hadn’t addressed in over a decade. The worms were wriggling between his abdominal muscles, twining round tendon fibres. Blood and pus squelched and intermingled, forming a sticky glue which wedded them belly to belly like Siamese twins.

“Kiss me, Anders.”

Her free hand clamped onto the back of his skull. It felt like there was nothing left on it but bone. Sludge dripped into his coiffured hair.

“No!” he whimpered.

Her lips had dribbled away like candle wax, leaving a wide gash in the bubbling corruption that was her face. The teeth were a permanent grin. His head was being forced down towards her. He saw her teeth parting, then they were rammed against his own face.

The kiss. And hot, black, gritty liquid surged up out of her throat. Anders couldn’t scream any more. It was in his own mouth, kneading its way down his air passage like a fat, eager serpent.

A voice from nowhere said: “We can stop it.”

The liquid detonated into his lungs. He could feel it, hot and rancid inside his chest, swelling out to invade every delicate cavity. His ribcage heaved at the alien pressure from within. He had stopped struggling.

“She’ll kill you unless you let us help. She’s drowning you.”

He wanted to breathe. He wanted air. He would do anything to breathe. Anything.

“Then let us in.”

He did.

Using the sensitive cells in the polyp above Anders Bospoort’s bed, Dariat watched as the injuries and manifestations reversed themselves. Marie’s glutinous skin hardened, bristles retracting. The wounds down Anders Bospoort’s abdomen closed up. They became what they were before: satyr and seraph.

Anders began to stroke himself, hands tracing lines of muscle across his chest. He looked down on his body with a childlike expression of awe which swiftly became a broad grin. “I’m magnificent,” he whispered. “Utterly magnificent.” The accent was different to Anders’ usual. Dariat couldn’t quite place it.

“Yes, you look pretty good,” she replied indifferently. She sat up. The sheets were stained a faint pink below her back.

“Let me have you.”

Her mouth wrinkled up with indecision.

“Please. You know I need to. Hell, it’s been seven hundred years. Show a little compassion here.”

“All right then.” She lay back down. Anders started to lick her body, reminding Dariat of a feeding dog. They fucked for twenty minutes, Anders rutting with a fervour he’d never shown in any of his fleks. Electric lights and household equipment went berserk as they thrashed about. Dariat quickly checked the neighbouring apartments; a stimulant-program writer was yelling in frustration as his processors crashed at tremendous speed; a clone merchant’s vats seethed and boiled as regulators fried the fragile cell clusters which they were wired up to. Doors all around the vestibule opened and shut like guillotines. He had to launch a flurry of subversive affinity orders into the floor’s neural cells to prevent the local personality subroutines from alerting Rubra’s principal consciousness.

When he arrived, puffing heavily, outside the apartment, Marie and Anders Bospoort were getting dressed. He used a black-market customized processor block to break the door’s codelock, and walked straight in.

Marie and Anders looked up in alarm. They ran out of the bedroom. The processor block died in Dariat’s hand and the apartment was plunged into pitch darkness.

“The dark doesn’t bother me,” he said loudly. The sensitive cells showed him the two of them were walking towards him menacingly.

“Nothing will bother you from now on,” Marie replied.

The belt of his toga robe began to tighten round his belly. “Wrong. Firstly you won’t be able to tyrannize me like you did poor old Anders, I’m not that weak. Secondly, if I die Rubra will see exactly what’s been going on, and what you are. He might be crazy, but he’ll fight like a lion to defend his precious habitat and corporation. Once he knows you exist you’ve lost ninety per cent of your advantage. You’ll never take over Valisk without my help.”

The lights came back on. His belt loosened. Marie and Anders regarded him with expressionless faces.

“It’s only thanks to me he doesn’t know already. You obviously don’t understand much about bitek. I can help there as well.”

“Perhaps we don’t care if he knows,” Anders said.

“OK, fine. You want me to lift the limiter orders I put on this floor’s sensitive cells?”

“What do you want?” Marie asked.

“Revenge. I’ve waited thirty years for you. It’s been so long, so very tiring; I nearly broke on more than one occasion. But I knew you would come in the end.”

“You expected me?” she asked derisively.

“What you are, yes.”

“And what am I?”

“The dead.”