Scanned by Highroller.

Proofed more or less by Highroller.

Made prettier by MollyKate's/Cinnamon's style sheet.

Warp Angel by Stuart Hopen

Chapter One

THE FALL

A beautiful woman wandered into a graveyard of angels.

Collapsed cruisers and destroyed freight vessels littered the canyon in a panorama of rusting fuselages, struts, and frames. Once these great ships could race faster than light, could dart into folds in the universe, shrug off substance and spread measureless wings—but then mankind discovered an unexpected, insidious danger: warp travel was gradually eroding the structure of time and space itself.

For the past two hundred years, warp travel had been banned.

A huge cracked support beam threw shadows shaped like broken wings across the woman's almost bare back. Once a great pilot, Amelia Strados didn't fly anymore either.

A wild streak of white ran through her hair. She chose neither to dye nor rejuvenate it. Her nose was slightly too long—just slightly—but she left it as it was and never lacked for admirers. Her cerulean blue eyes obviously had been genetically engineered, but that was done without her consent, two generations before.

She followed the sound of distant music, casually crossing a trail of glittering shattered windshields and silicon chips. Oxidized dust, the last iron from Earth, blew on the wind and stung Amelia's cheeks.

Nearby, at a clearing in the rubble, a crowd paraded ceremoniously toward the largest of the old ships. The party was just beginning. Bright, freshly painted nihilistic designs decorated the great ship's flanks. Nostalgic melodies leaked from rust holes across the ten-mile hull.

As Amelia crossed the gangplank to the old ship, she surveyed the scene below. The most prominent citizens of the Draconian system milled about at ground level: prancing fish who farmed the deep sea; chrome-skinned machine builders; and compound-eyed bodyguards who saw the world through 360-degree kaleidoscopes. Each wore a costume reflecting his craft, a kind of free advertising. A trapper wore elegant furs with the heads of animals still attached. He spoke to a Health Care worker, who wore a necklace of sharpened scalpels above her bare breasts. Weapons flashed occasionally, trade squabbles lighting up the crowd. Everyone was celebrating liberty.

The Earthlings who originally colonized the Draconian system came here seeking freedom. No one is quite certain what they were seeking freedom from—but to this day, there are no laws and no governments. The system had been named with fierce irony.

Generally, in the absence of law and currency, goods could only be obtained by pledging fealty to powerful commercial organizations, called "bodies" or "bods" in the local vernacular. The bods provided protection, shelter, clothing, food, amusements… everything. Those who did not belong to the bods had to depend on force of arms to sustain themselves. They had to barter at outrageously inflated values. That was the price of independence.

Amelia was the only unincorp invited, and she wore an outfit of scanty diaphanous scarves that were polarized, so they changed color and opacity as she moved. She would have preferred dressing more modestly for the evening. Forty years old, she didn't like displaying the way age had taken some of the firmness from her flesh. Yet the current fashions of the Draconian system tended to be revealing. Better to show how well she had preserved herself than invite conjecture by covering up.

Inside the antique warpship, smoke stained the air with stimulants. Amelia caught the ice-and-clove scent of cadmadine and the honey smell of cannabis. Thick bundles of wire hung like wreaths, decorated by printed circuit chips and fragments of machinery. Stars shone through man-sized rust holes in the ceiling.

A reptilian humanoid greeted Amelia with a hiss, and he thrust forward a scaled, web-fingered hand. He was Olagy, the prime director of the Slavers Bod. Like many of the guests, he was a flamboyant product of microsurgery and chromosome splicing, trying to break with tradition, even on the genetic level. His gait betrayed years in ankle irons. He had once been a slave.

"Welcome to our party," Olagy said. "Enjoy your freedom. Use it to excess. Do what you will." Then he proffered a glass of foaming amber liquid. "Try some champagne?"

"You're joking?"

"Not at all. This is real champagne. We found some crates in an old cargo hold."

Amelia accepted a handblown glass crafted from old photographs especially for the occasion. The drink was a legendary symbol to a long decadent culture. Real champagne hadn't been tasted in the Draconian system in two hundred years—ever since the gutting of the warpships permanently severed ties to Earth. With a dramatic flourish, she took a sip.

It tasted bitter; vinegary and vile. Amelia put on a false, polite smile, pretending to like it for a moment. Then she set the glass down and walked away. She could not hide her disappointment.

"Everyone else is drinking it!" shouted Olagy.

Amelia glanced around at the other guests. They seemed giddy, playing with the refuse on the floor— ancient ballistic pistols or flanges from self-repairing mechanisms, curious remnants of a non-slave culture. Some were running their fingers through mounds of discarded coins. The jingling amused them.

Amelia found it hard to believe that the tiny bits of round metal at her feet once symbolized value. What did their mass-produced designs have to offer? Why did these miniature portraits of old Draconian pioneers provoke such melancholy? Was there some hidden meaning to the cryptic geometries and bas-relief frills? Monetary systems had been abolished long ago. The coins had no value now, not even as curiosities. Neither did the old guns, nor the self-repairing mechanisms that occasionally jerked with postmortem spasms. The concept of antique value, like all antiques, had become a thing of the past.

Amelia felt the vast, uncrossable distance between her world and the world of her ancestors.

A young, fair-haired mercenary, his weapons on display, swaggered boldly up to Amelia. He said, "Place like this—cramped, smoky, pistols all over the place, everyone trying to get into your pockets… place like this a rich woman shouldn't come alone." He was barely more than a boy. Too young, too pretty, and too dangerous.

Amelia tried to turn away, but the boy caught her shoulder.

"I'm Chev Carson. You may have heard of me. I'm the fastest-rising member in the Merc Bod. I'll be your bodyguard tonight. I'll stick real close. No charge."

"No thanks," said Amelia.

He looked like an angel, with soft curly blond hair, but his eyes were full of blue cruelly. He wore a low-slung belt decorated with holographic icons of immeasurable depth. It was obvious that the religious imagery meant nothing to him, for the belt had been hung in a position that drew attention to the boy's loins.

"You know, there's people here getting drunk for the first time ever. They get real unpredictable. They're like cocked guns. You should be afraid!"

"I'm afraid you're an idiot!"

Chev reached for a conveniently handy gun. He toyed with the trigger, deciding what to do. In a momentary lapse, Amelia had forgotten how to deal with boys. She had forgotten how impulsive and violent they could be. Trying to look calm, she now regretted leaving her armed escorts back at her flier.

"Do you think you can always get what you want by frightening people?" Amelia asked.

"Yeah," said Chev Carson. "There was only one girl in my life who ever paid attention to me. She always said I terrified her. She was a hit." His hand lingered on the gun.

A member of the Morticians Bod approached the couple with slow, even steps. He was the only one in the room unbothered by the aura of imminent disaster. He seemed drawn to it.

"Carson is not to blame for this rude behavior," said the mortician. "Mercs can't handle liquor."

"I'm not. I can't," said Chev. He turned his attention to ancient statuettes of cherubim that adorned the trimmings on the corridor. He began shooting off the wings.

"Chev's profession allows little opportunity to drink," continued the mortician, his face showing no emotion.

Pale, grey, waxy makeup covered his complexion. "And Chev has fallen victim to the uneasiness of this place. We all feel it. Because of the rust. Rust is a symbol of death."

"Everything is a symbol of death to you," said Amelia, and Chev laughed.

"This place also reminds us that beautiful things fall into ruin," said the mortician, casting a measured glance at Amelia.

Chev belched up a bolus of air that stank of liquor and vinegar. He leveled his gun at Amelia's head. A red targeting dot appeared on her brow.

She opened her mouth, about to protest, when the sky burst into fire.

The night was glittering brightly through the rust holes; suddenly it had become a dazzling canopy of opal.

Chev now stared drunkenly upward. It looked as if a fireworks display had started. Amelia sucked in the smoky air, gasping, amazed she hadn't been shot.

She took the opportunity to bolt. She started a stampede. All the other guests followed, rushing to see the fireworks. Wild, uninhibited laughter, like children's laughter, echoed through faded velvet hallways.

Amelia put the crowd between her and Chev. Once outside, she whistled for her slaves. A contingent of armed, muscular bodyguards hustled from Amelia's cruiser. She waited until they surrounded her, then started to walk back with them, toward the cruiser.

The crowd was roaring. Amelia caught the faint smell of fried air. The rumble of battle cruisers breaking the sound barrier made her pause. Lasers were hissing high over her head.

It was not a fireworks display erupting across the sky, but rather a dogfight. Four small ships weaved beautiful colors in all directions, light filtered through precious jewels. Light from the killing end of the spectrum.

The dogfight held Amelia's attention. She recognized the make of three of the warships: Ruinators. They flew in formation, bearing the logos of the Slavers Bod. Their funneled engine housings cut entropy with a variation of pyramid power. Very effective fighting machines.

The fourth ship, the Ruinator's quarry, looked strange; some kind of highly customized variation of a very old model—Wanderers, they were called, one of the earliest one-seat fighters.

Useless ornaments adorned the Wanderer's frame. Though the ornaments had been brightly polished, they still looked like junk. Heavy chrome lions crossed paws on the prow, just above a set of brass ram's horns. Crystal globes dangled freely on chains underneath the wing struts. Shocking red fins placed haphazardly across the fuselage contributed nothing to aerodynamics. It should have been a rattletrap, yet somehow it managed to evade the Ruinators.

The Wanderer jerked across the sky at irregular speeds that would vary suddenly, anywhere from 1,100 to 4,000 knots. Amelia couldn't tell if the engines were malfunctioning, or if the haphazard pace was deliberate, to make the ship a difficult target.

One of the Ruinators scored a hit, though not a serious one. Sparks flew from the Wanderer's hull. The Ruinators jetted in closer.

"Great, huh?" said Olagy, addressing the crowd. "The Ruinators, they cost plenty. I bet that guy they're chasing won't get away! I bet one thousand slaves!"

Amelia studied the sky battle. Despite the clear advantage the Ruinators held, both in number and in firepower, they had not scored any crippling blows.

"I'll take that bet, Olagy," she said.

Suddenly the Wanderer bled airspeed, dropping straight down, trapping the Ruinators in a treacherous overshoot. They zoomed past. When it bobbed back up, the Wanderer faced three sets of afterburners, in a perfect kill position. It could pick off any of the Ruinators at will. A strategically placed series of light stabs from the Wanderer amputated a pair of geometrically variable wings from the rearmost Ruinator. Crippled, the Ruinator dropped, pure dead weight. It hit the ground spinning, raising giant fans of oxidized dust among the ruins. The amputated wings sailed gracefully on their own, past the horizon.

Amelia couldn't repress a grin. "Well done, well done," she commented, shading her eyes from the glare. She sensed that the Wanderer's pilot was a woman, luring her opponents into recklessness by feigning vulnerability. A woman's tactics. Almost as good as I used to do, she thought.

The remaining two Ruinators snap-rolled and peeled in opposite directions, maneuvering to catch the Wanderer within a prong formation.

The Wanderer snapped into an eight-g bat turn, lofting to a face-to-face kill position with one of the Ruinators. It was a nervy and dangerous move: a gamble on having faster reflexes than the Ruinator. It was a gamble that paid off, as the Wanderer unleashed a quick burst of fractured rainbows. Despite its age, the Wanderer had very modern guns. The Ruinator's nose erupted like a volcano.

Dead, the Ruinator turned ninety degrees, then tumbled from the sky with a sudden rush of shrieking air. Globes of melted metal rained into its wake.

The other Ruinator was forced to swerve and barely avoided impact.

The Wanderer was not such a bad ship after all. That old model had spawned countless imitations. Even the Ruinators followed the same basic design.

The second Ruinator pulled back, sobered and cautious. Its pilot planned to strike from a distance, taking advantage of his ship's advanced weaponry.

The Wanderer looped, rolled, and weaved among the rusting hulks, no longer making any pretense about its capacity for speed or its maneuvering abilities. The brass ram's horns bellowed as the ship accelerated. The chains whipped around and rattled.

With manual aiming nearly impossible, the Ruinator engaged its computerized targeting system. Fine beams of red light established a grid across the sky. A great flaming net spread in all directions, with the Ruinator in the center.

The Wanderer's ornamentation, that elaborate, shining, absurd-looking mess, took hit after hit. A flash of force sheared off one of the ram's horns. Fins flew loose. The chains went whistling free. And yet the Wanderer's flight pattern showed no signs of injury. Amelia began to understand. The ship's decorations were a disguise suggesting foolish and easy prey. And more. The absurd facade decoyed fire away from vital areas.

The Wanderer ejected clumps of tinsel through its ballast tubes. The tinsel drifted, deflecting the ruby grid vectors. The fire net tore open, causing the Ruinator's shots to go wild. The onlookers scrambled.

While the Ruinator's targeting system choked on tinsel, the Wanderer climbed to pure vertical, then looped around at ten g's, a maneuver called a St. Angelo Immelmann. It carried nasty risks for c-spine fractures, but it proved to be another astute combat decision. After scoring two severe hits on the underbelly of the Ruinator, the Wanderer swerved out of the way. Plumes of smoke flowed from both impact sites.

The Ruinator swung into hard pursuit. With a burst of power, it gained on the Wanderer. The smoke plumes thinned into translucent threads as the Ruinator's speed increased. The distance between the two ships narrowed.

The Ruinator hung dangerously close now. The Wanderer weaved and dodged, trying to lead its pursuer to wreckage against jutting frames and useless cannons in a rusting maze.

The Ruinator's pilot steered a course that showed no regard for caution.

"He must be severely wounded. He flies like he has nothing to lose," Amelia commented.

Olagy grunted.

The Ruinator let loose a volley of bright flashes. Half of the Wanderer's left tail fin split into fragments. The Ruinator was too close to avoid flying into the tail debris, which immediately skittered harmlessly over his windshield.

Wobbling, but holding the air, the Wanderer left a wide trail of smoke. Seriously crippled, it careened toward the party ship. Then the Wanderer escaped into one of the biggest rust holes, disappearing inside the ancient hulk.

The Ruinator followed into ruin.

The great hulk shook. The crowd heard sounds of internal battle: the small ships crashing through decayed decks and firing at one another. Trapped echoes rumbled. Smoke poured out of the rust holes in streams that blotted out the stars. The stink of various carbon compounds spread with the smoke.

A loud growl began to shake the hulk. Suddenly, a fireball blew out the hulk's two-mile posterior. Not far from the point of the explosion, the Wanderer shot out through the vistaview—a huge window built along the observation decks for warp tourists. The window fell apart on impact, with a high-pitched whine and a treble shower of sound. Transparent metal musically ricocheted off the surrounding junkyard ships.

The Wanderer skidded to a halt at the fringe of the crowd.

"Is anyone hurt?" asked the woman wearing the scalpels.

"No," shouted Olagy, not bothering to check.

A few party guests crept forward to inspect the wreckage. Heat was radiating from the scab-textured sides of the

Wanderer. Cracked engines hissed and sprayed scalding oil, anointing the hood of the fallen spacecraft.

The pilot—a woman, as Amelia had surmised— crawled out through a jagged opening.

Foreign-looking, almond-shaped eyes smoldered beneath the shadows of the pilot's helmet. Amber star bursts on the green irises surrounded her adrenaline-bloated pupils. The stiff collar of her flight suit had been zipped all the way up to her jawline. A rough-hewn cloth covered every part of her body except her face and the lower part of her right leg. The sharp white point of a snapped tibia had torn the fabric when it pierced her shin. At her side, the leg lay twisted awkwardly. The exposed bone shined bright as polished metal. Blood dripped from the girl's leg wound and fuel bled from her ship. Both gathered in puddles, not quite mixing; red globes bobbing in amber depths.

The pilot's features contorted with pain. She might have been pretty under other circumstances, possibly. It was too hard to tell.

"Three thousand slaves to anyone who kills her!" shouted Olagy.

Chev Carson lunged forward, his gun already upholstered.

"Don't shoot!" shouted Amelia.

"Why not?" asked Chev. "What do I care if you win your bet?"

"Don't shoot! You'll ignite the spilled fuel and kill us all!"

Amelia was right. He couldn't use the gun. Whipping around, searching for a knife, he moved swiftly, but the booze upset his equilibrium. His body wasn't equal to the demands he was making on it. Fumbling for a blade, he sliced his thumb. Then he sucked on the cut, hoping he hadn't accidentally poisoned himself, lethally or otherwise. The crowd started laughing. Chev turned, his third rotation in less than a minute, trying to see what was so funny. Thumb still in his mouth, he lost his balance and tumbled forward. As he fell into the puddle, blood and fuel splashed.

The fallen pilot reached through her shattered windshield, groping for something. Finally a pistol had come to hand.

A number of mercs and bodyguards pushed their way through the crowd, their blades glinting.

The fallen pilot fired her gun. Not at any particular target, but straight up into the air. She held the pistol high, its light beam stabbing up to heaven. As she waved her hand, the beam swayed from side to side with an almost hypnotic rhythm, like a magic wand of infinite size.

The mercs resheathed their blades. They dared not kill her. If she died, her gun would fall. The beam would ignite the fuel, and the ensuing fireball would incinerate everything within a half-mile radius.

The crowd began to creep backward, slowly.

Only Amelia stepped forward. "Trust me," she said. "I bet heavily on you tonight. I saved your life a moment ago. You can trust me."

"You saved your own life, too," said the pilot. She seemed totally self-contained. Her face was a mask, a shell.

"You'll never get out of here alone," said Amelia. "You'll bleed to death… soon… if you just sit there."

The pilot thrust her arm forward to show how rigidly she could hold it. "Look at the light, reaching all the way up to God. I don't waver. I can slow my heart and hold my blood in my veins, and I can still keep alert. I can go on like this for days if I must. And if I die, I won't die alone!"

"You don't want to die."

"I'm not afraid."

"You are a survivor. I knew that about you just watching the way you fly. If you want to live, you are going to have to have faith in me. Faith is a gamble, girl, but gambling has its own rewards. Faith is better than certain death."

The pilot scanned the crowd. Despite her bravado, small tremors afflicted her arm. "All right," she said.

"I swear you can trust me." Amelia snapped her fingers, and her slaves came forward. "Carry her to the ship," Amelia commanded.

"I don't have any choice," said the pilot. "I must go with you. But I won't be carried by slaves." She snapped off the light beam, but the gun muzzle still glowed white hot. "You! You give me your hand!"

Amelia approached the wreckage. She hoisted the girl to her feet. Amelia's slaves, weapons out, parted the crowd.

Leaning on Amelia for support, the girl hobbled slowly past the vinegar-scented revelers.

Amelia had never seen anyone dressed as modestly as this girl, in opaque, formless clothing. She felt nearly naked holding the girl at her side. They were both out in the open, painfully displayed and exposed.

Assassins scurried for good positions, jostling the onlookers. The girl watched the spaces in the crowd, the openings between onlookers' limbs. Suddenly she fired her still-hot pistol at a mercenary who had taken cover behind a row of bare knees. A shower of sizzling brains erupted from inside the crowd and the merc slumped forward.

Two more mercs jumped into the clearing, only to be cut down by Amelia's bodyguard slaves.

As Amelia and the girl drew closer to Amelia's craft, the crowd rolled in closer, like an onrushing tide, covering the cleared path behind them. Would-be assassins shoved against reckless onlookers, each competing for the best views. The air stunk of musk and barbecue smoke.

As Amelia and the pilot mounted the steps to the escape craft, gunlight flashed on all sides. Without hesitation, Amelia's slaves threw themselves around her as a living—though not for long—shield. Amelia hurried the girl through the doorway.

"Some of your slaves are wounded out there, still alive," said the girl as the cabin door closed down behind her. "We can't leave them."

"Someone with an eye for value will pick them up," said Amelia. "They were good slaves, and well worth more than the cost of a little medical care." She snapped her fingers, and the slave in the cockpit revved the engines.

"Let me handle liftoff," said the girl. "We're under fire. Slaves' reflexes are worthless. So is their judgment. I can get us out of here."

"You're in no condition."

"With God's help .

The girl passed out. She was right, though.

Amelia pushed her slave pilot aside and took the controls herself.

She sailed through a volley of pistol fire that erupted from the crowd. Fortunately, the handguns weren't strong enough to pierce the shielding on her cruiser.

It was good to fly again. Ultrasonic vapor trailed from her wingtips as she pushed the ragged envelope of the Summer World. The ineffectual light of the handguns chased her all the way into space.

The headquarters of the Slavers Bod dominated the skyline of the Summer World, the Draconian system's center of commerce. Shaped like a giant statue of Bacchus, the edifice boasted of the awesome amount of manpower that had gone into its construction. A reddish brown patina, the color of dried blood, darkened in the folds of the robe and the ringlets of the beard, where the work had been more hazardous.

Dissa Banach viewed the towers of bods great and small through a round window in the wine god's dilated pupil. He loved the blistering city. He loved its heat and its status, even though he lived in perpetual air-conditioning. Velvet robes kept him warm and hid his scars.

Dissa tried to affect an air of nobility, but his posture was hunched and his manner crude. Beneath those perfumed velvets, his massively muscled body rippled with steroid and surgical enhancements.

He left the giant stone eye, a bubble-shaped solarium, and crossed an odorless corridor.

Dissa found Olagy basking in a marble tub permanently installed in the center of his office. Slaves poured oils and liquors into the bathwater. A pretty girl slave manicured Olagy's talons, while a pretty boy slave massaged his scales.

Olagy cradled his head and moaned, "The Ruinators ruined my party. They were part of a campaign nobody told me about. I'm supposed to be conducting all the offensive actions around here! Who runs this outfit anyway?"

Olagy looked up and saw Dissa filling the doorway.

Dissa said, "Here is the story, Olagy. Your party crasher committed repeated acts of sabotage against the bod over the last few months. Totally unprovoked acts, I might add." Dissa fanned away the pungent steam from Olagy's bath. "We spotted her. We gave chase. Our actions were appropriate under the circumstances." Dissa chose his words carefully now—he didn't want to minimize the urgency in stopping the girl. At the same time, Dissa didn't want to reveal the full extent of the girl's raids, which had been an embarrassment to the enforcement arm of the bod. "She has caused certain isolated losses that could be considered significant."

"Uh-huh…" muttered Olagy, thinking of the one thousand slaves he had lost to Amelia Strados.

"I have a plan to terminate this girl, who has been a pest to both of us."

"It better be good," shouted Olagy. "She's holed up with the wealthiest unincorp in the system. Amelia Strados lives on an asteroid. Her place is a fortress."

"A lone assassin could get through," said Dissa. "I suggest Chev Carson."

"Carson! That's the dumbest idea I ever heard. She made a fool out of him at the party. Everyone saw it."

"So much the better. Carson has truly outstanding skills. A superb specimen who partied just a little too hard. He'll do anything to recapture his reputation, to avenge the insult to his pride."

"The guy's incompetent. It's the dumbest idea I ever heard. I swear, lately I get blue in the face repeating myself."

Suddenly Olagy made a sound like a hiccup cracking in his throat. His eyes bulged, and he slid into the bathwater. His head floated, slightly bobbing on the surface of the water, as if held buoyant by his bugged-out dead eyes.

A twin of Olagy peeked out from behind a curtain, holding a still glowing handgun. Years before, Olagy had decided he couldn't keep up with himself, so he had had a clone made. No more inclined to servitude than the original, the clone cloned himself. It seemed as if he had been born with the idea. As new clones were made, each proved equally lazy—slaves, so to speak, to their genes. Clones made clones, and after a while, Olagy had lost track of how many times he had been replicated. The duplicates began to battle among themselves for identity, like parents and children.

"I agree completely with your plan," hissed the new Olagy. "I grant you full authority to carry it out." Implicit in the grant was a plea for alliance.

"Thank you, Olagy." Dissa bowed ceremoniously.

The new Olagy watched the slaves pull his dead reflection from the bathwater; then undressed and mounted the bathtub like a throne, luxuriating in the liquors and oils, and in the blood that might as well be his own.

As Dissa departed, he wondered if the original Olagy still survived somewhere. Not that he cared.

The Strados asteroid drifted through space in and out of the shadows of worlds.

Pure cast zirconia formed the outer walls and columns of the mansion, as well as the perimeter battlements. Dense collections of diamond mirrors reflected the wild and silver crags of the surrounding mass. The estate itself was all but invisible from a distance. Up close, the crystal architecture would seem to unfold from the agitated vistas of rock and stars. Its jeweled vectors, a melange of palatial styles, surmounted the island in space.

Amelia's greatgrandfather had built this diamond castle He built it to last forever. He wanted walls that would withstand enemy cannon fire. He wanted a monument for selected eyes only, a perfect blend of security and spectacle. The same penchant for paranoia and ostentation motivated the family in all of their dealings over succeeding generations.

Because of the asteroid's irregular shape and elliptical orbit, the estate sometimes fell out of the path of sunlight. Night would fall without warning.

In the largest guest room on the starboard side of the mansion, the rescued girl lay sweat-soaked and feverish under silken sheets. Her wandering was finished for a time

A complex aluminum traction held her broken leg suspended above the bed. Magnetic field generators hummed around the cast to enhance the healing of the bone.

Amelia peeled back the sheets. She could not help but take note of the astonishing tone of the girl's muscles. Touching the left deltoid ever so lightly, Amelia tested its firmness. A warrior's sinews.

Suddenly the girl's eyes blinked open. They glared, full of questions, devoid of trust. Suspicion burned for an instant, hotter than the girl's fever. Then weakness got the better of her, and heat resealed her eyelids.

Amelia ran a cool wet sponge over the rescued girl's forehead and thought, She must suppose I want a warrior slave—or an amusement. Why am I doing this? If she had the strength, she'd throttle me and head for the stars.

Amelia continued the sponge bath. She had risked far more for this undeserving stranger than she had ever risked for any friend, or lover, or family. Perhaps some late-blooming inbred predisposition toward altruism was manifesting itself, despite Amelia's Draconian upbringing. Or perhaps simple curiosity had led Amelia to discover a unique form of self-satisfaction—helping others. She would try anything once. The element of risk added sport to the matter.

Amelia felt heat radiating from the girl's hard muscles—muscles shaped by life-and-death struggles. The fever would not stop rising. The rescued girl was in terrible danger. And so was Amelia.

Heavy cloud banks shrouded the Autumn World. From space, the misted planet glowed at the outermost periphery with a thin, multicolored aura.

Down below, on the planet's surface, in vast forests, leaves perpetually changed color, a never-ending fall. Only one city rose above the rainbow wilderness. It was built by a cult of fortune-tellers, priests, self-styled witches, and other mystics, who conducted their affairs as an enormous commune. They called their city Dante, and had designed it around a series of ascending and descending circles. All of the system knew that Autumners were crazy, mist-mad, or high on God.

As Chev brought his craft in for a landing, he gripped the controls so hard the muscles in his forearms burned. He scouted the mists. He hated landing in fog, guided only by a distant red glare.

His knuckles whitened, his veins bulged as he maneuvered his flier down to a dangerous landing on a narrow cobblestone street. The locals distrusted technology and made no accommodations for aircraft.

Chev hated the Autumn World. He hated the mind readers, who were almost impossible to hit. He hated losing the privacy of his own skull every time he turned a corner. And he hated the mists, which were rumored to contain small quantities of free-floating hallucinogens.

To make things worse, he had been assigned to hunt a fellow mercenary here, someone he had once considered a friend. Hunting his own kind was a dangerous and distasteful business, the lowest kind of scut work. Doing it on the Autumn World was even worse. Chev never thought he'd be the one to take the fall.

As Chev opened his ship's hatchway, tendrils of thick fog rolled in. Outside, visibility was so poor, he nearly stumbled while descending the landing plank.

Chev was forced to navigate the street by groping for tactile landmarks on sculpted buildings. He made a left turn when he felt a monkey straddling a skull. The intricacy of the facades surprised him. It rivaled bod craftsmanship.

The cultists in their black uniforms passed by, interrupting their usual blank stares to shoot disapproving glances at Chev. These people did not welcome outsiders—except new recruits. Chev, decked out in weapons, clearly had not come to Dante for religious reasons.

* * *

Chev's quarry was hiding out in a fortune-teller's shop in the city's psychic district. Chev followed a tip that brought him to a pink cloud of pastel light suspended in the fog. As he got closer, he saw an organically illuminated sign at the center of the pink cloud. Glass letters filled with live glowing insects boasted:

SOLUTIONS TO EVERY PROBLEM

Chev groped for the doorway to the fortune-teller's shop. Finding it, he stepped inside.

The shop smelled like an old bible. Low-burning lamps, faintly smelling of whale oil, lit the foyer. An old crone softly singing to herself laid tarot cards atop an iron table. The metallic snapping of cards kept rhythm with her quiet song. She wore a heavy, formless cape that hinted of grossly misshapen contours. Chev looked at her and grunted. He held a low opinion of people who tamper with their genes for shock value.

Then Chev began to search the shop. First he opened a spider-filled closet. Peering behind a tattered curtain, he found only a pile of nonhuman bones.

"What do you want?" asked the crone.

"I'm looking for a friend," answered Chev. "A mercenary named Alex Fable."

A noise startled Chev. He fired a ray blast, scorching a row of crumbling books on a shelf. Crablike creatures scut-tied to safety amid a shower of burning paper motes.

"You lie," hissed the crone. "You seek a man but you are not his friend."

"How'd you guess? Are you psychic or something?" Chev kicked open the lid of a coffin-sized box. He steadied his gun. A beast with long claws looked up pathetically at him, its fur dotted with small festering sores. It shivered inside the box.

Chev turned away, disgusted, still on guard. There was danger nearby.

"Well, I sure used to be Fable's friend." This much was true. Chev remembered feeling depressed one night after a particularly unpleasant kill. Since most mercs consider conscience a sign of weakness and efforts at consolation to be in poor taste, all his bod brothers were avoiding him. All except Fable, who took him aside and talked to him for hours. Fable rambled on and on about stupid, meaningless topics. For some reason it made Chev feel better. That was really the only social contact they had ever had. They were friends, sort of.

"It's not my fault Fable tried to beat the Gunsmiths Bod," said Chev.

"Most mercenaries avoid the Autumn World," said the crone. "They're afraid of meeting their former victims. Ghosts walk the streets, or so it is said."

Chev kicked over a wicker basket. A severed head, eyes and lips sewn shut, tumbled out.

The danger was closer now.

Chev tried to spread his gaze as close to 180 degrees as possible, shoving his peripheral vision into near clarity. He snorted to get the smell of burning paper out of his nose.

"Tell me," he asked, "is there really a solution to every problem?"

"Oh yes," replied the crone, "whether we like it or not."

A large hairy hand snapped forward from inside the crone's cloaks. The hairy hand held a gun, the nozzle pointing at Chev's forehead. The crone looked absurd with a muscular third arm extending from her chest.

"Fable? Hiding under skirts? You've really changed," said Chev.

"Your coming here was foreseen," said the crone, smiling toothlessly.

A muffled voice inside the crone's cloaks said, "I don't want to kill you. I always liked you."

Chev said, "I always liked you, too. So I'll be straight up with you. The gun won't work. It's in range of my jammer. Maybe I could have bought some extra time or gained some advantage by acting scared or something. But I'm letting you know up front—your gun won't work."

Fable squeezed the trigger. The gun threw green sparks and screeched, but it would not fire. For some reason, Fable kept pulling the trigger, as if he could get it to work by wishing.

Chev shook his head condescendingly. He'd warned Fable, but Fable wasted a full fifteen seconds fiddling with the gun anyway.

Then Fable lunged out through the flaps of the crone's cloaks. He'd lost weight, which made his nose look larger and his eyes smaller. Looking more rat-faced than ever, he held two long polished knives, one in each hand.

Instinctively, Chev peeled off a shot from his pistol on the off chance that Fable might not be wearing a jammer. No such luck. A quick sideways knife slash drew a weeping red line across Chev's arm.

Chev wasn't usually that slow. Something had dulled his battle responses. Conscience? Supposedly, conscience had largely been bred out of the warrior castes. However, his tutors had warned him that momentary relapses might occur from time to time. "If this happens, let yourself revert to reflex," they cautioned. "Let your muscles think for you." Chev shifted into reflex mode, action without thought.

Chev stomped hard on his left heel, cracking the plastic cover, releasing an olive-colored corrosive gas. Fable's knives pitted and withered away. The gas was poisonous as hell, but Chev could breathe it because of self-adjusting antitoxins in his bloodstream. Chev hoped that Fable had not taken a dose of antitoxin within the last twenty-four hours, so this grim business would be over with minimal physical contact. Fable retreated, clearly well dosed with active antitoxin, alive and angling for escape. The crone keeled over, though. Her disgusting little pets tumbled off the shelves and dropped from the rafters as poisonous wisps fanned over the foyer.

Chev pulled an empty leather-bound sword handle from his belt of rainbows. With a twist, he shook loose a liter of potent, frothing acid. Then he flicked on a stasis field and froze the splatter in midair.

Fable responded by producing his own acid blade, wincing at the stink as the acid sprayed out. He tested the weightless weapon, slicing the air. The blade hissed. Ripples shivered across its length. Fable wiped the sweat from his brow. "Acid sword's a nasty piece of work."

Both men assumed formal postures. They held their weapons as if in midcut, rigid as photographs for nearly a minute in silence. Each dared the other to make the first move.

The thin blades wafted slightly with the hesitant opening feints. Each stroke left a wake of warmed air. Effervescent currents bubbled along the cutting edges.

Chev and Fable cautiously inched toward each other. If their blades should touch, the stasis fields would breach and the acid would splatter. The weapon suited Chev well. It took nerve and skill. It took stupidity, too—considering the odds that both combatants would end up dead or maimed.

Fable went on the offensive, swinging his frothing sword like a battle-ax. It effortlessly cut through all solid matter in its path. Bookshelves tumbled as the swordsmen stabbed at each other. Chunks of severed animal limbs flew with charred pages and bits of old bone.

Chev jumped on top of the iron table, which rang like a bell. He danced around, clowning, shaking his hips at Fable, spinning his blade like a baton, scattering the crone's tarot cards with his footwork, flaunting his superior skills.

He took a slice from Fable's shoulder.

Fable screamed. Desperate, bleeding, enraged, Fable swung at Chev and missed. Then he aimed at the table instead and lopped off an iron leg. Chev fell on his ass as the table tumbled. Vibrations hummed up Chev's spine and made his teeth buzz.

Fable blew his temporary advantage by chickening on a stab. Knowing he'd stalled just a little too long, he tried to keep Chev from getting to his feet by telegraphing a vertical cut. Chev grinned at the crude attack—all bluster and bluff. Chev jumped up and parried with the mere threat of touching blades. The swords cackled with every hint of closeness.

They fanned acid-warmed air at each other. The action of the duel was interrupted occasionally by a series of formal halts.

This ain't a fair fight!" shouted Fable as he froze his slash. "You really need work this bad? I tell you we should head out to Winter and go pirate. With what we know, we could live like prime directors among the unincorps. What do you say? Who needs this shit anyway?"

Fable was talking to a reflex. Chev stroked the fringes of Fable's sword, and a small globe of acid tore loose. It landed on Fable's knuckles, turning three of them to bubbling broth. Fable howled, switched hands, and grazed Chev's stasis field with his weapon. A fine acid mist sprayed over Chev's thigh. The fabric evaporated. A rash of blisters and blood beads spread where the acid had fallen.

"That's the way it is with an acid duel," said Chev, seemingly unbothered by the wound. He was mentally turning down the volume on the pain and savoring the rush of adrenaline and endorphins. "You got to take your burns. If you try to walk away unmarked, you lose."

The bottomless rainbows of Chev's holographic belt shined through the poison-misted air, its scenes of the afterlife full of morbid implications.

Slowly, Fable was maneuvering his way over to a blue porcelain vase where a single rose drooped. Water will make an acid sword explode. He had no other chance for survival.

Chev's blade rhythmically slashed the air, spreading its sulfurous bouquet. He took a sudden stab, and an inch of ear flew from Fable's head, fringed in sizzling blood. Incited by the pain, Fable grabbed the blue vase and pitched the contents—rancid water and a dying flower—in Chev's direction. Chev dodged.

The blades tore the air in wild succession, narrowly avoiding one another, like the whirling of meshed fans. Stroke, counterstroke, feint. Sweat fogged the room.

Chev executed a series of rapid gestures, as if he were signing his name in warm currents. He hummed a popular tune softly. Fable gave up ground, intimidated by the formality of Chev's assault.

Chev repeated the series stroke for stroke. Fable inched involuntarily toward a corner.

As Chev began the third repetition, Fable slashed into Chev's combat space, anticipating the trajectory of Chev's next cut. But this time, Chev reversed the pattern of his gestures, grazing Fable's sword on the inside edge.

The blades touched with an electrical blast. The fields breached, blowing off a bolus of smoke. The acid sprayed. All sizzle and hiss; a sudden searing rain.

Chev twisted violently and curled like a fetus to protect his face as he hit the ground. A sprinkle of acid splashed his back, fried its way through his shirt. He braced for the flare of pain. In fast-forming black-rimmed holes across the wooden floor, droplets gurgled.

Chev turned to face his opponent—but Fable no longer had a face. The dying renegade lay on the ground, hyperventilating in agonized moans. He cursed through corroding teeth on a lipless smile.

With a single stroke, Chev hacked off Fable's head and his hands. He took off the hands only because they got in the way at the last moment, raised to ward off the blow.

Chev stumbled through the door. Blood rolled down his spine in warm, slow streams. Blisters swelled on his hand, his thighs, his back. His brain burned. His stomach knotted. He had acid indigestion. He tried, but he could not rechannel his misery. Weirdly, it was the way he felt the night Fable had comforted him long ago. Chev wished he could talk to Fable one more time. He wanted to apologize. But what would he say? "I didn't mean to kill you. I lose my head sometimes. You know what that's like."

Chev started to laugh. He laughed until he realized he was lost in the fog.

He groped, trying to find the rows of architecture that could guide him back to his ship. He couldn't find contact with anything tactile. He shouted and listened for echoes, but either the fog muffled them or he had wandered too far astray from the buildings. Though he stomped his feet in frustration, his footsteps made no sound. The street was smooth, soft. Where were the cobblestones?

He broke into a run through absolute silence, choking on white, tasteless mists. He started to panic. All of his senses had been heightened through a lifetime of discipline. He was programmed to constantly monitor his surroundings for signs of danger. But now the fog, like a suffocating blanket, had separated him from the tangible world. Sensory deprivation was unbearable to Chev.

"Help me!" he shouted. "If anyone can hear me— help me!"

The mists in front of Chev began to curdle. Chev caught Fable's death scent: the freshly emptied bladder, the beginning of decay. Fable's headless form began to take shape. It waved handless arms that spurted smoke at the wrists. With wild arm gestures, Fable seemed to be signaling a warning. Did the apparition care about revenge? Could it harm Chev? Did it even want to harm him? The ghost seemed preoccupied with its frustrated attempts at communication.

Yet Chev felt a cold flush of terror. He wasn't so much afraid of what the ghost might do. He worried about what it might tell. He had no desire to hear advice from a stiff. Death should end life. This was one of his most cherished beliefs, death without end, life without consequence.

Chev fired off a volley of lights, trying to drive the vision away. Distantly he heard the breaking of glass, the patter of falling stone chips hidden by the fog. It sounded as if he had hit one of the storefronts, nothing else. The ghost continued its dance, unaffected by the laser. The stub of its neck muscles twisted from side to side, as if shaking its absent head. It seemed to be signaling a no.

No to what?

The ghostly arms swept the ether, a charade conveying nothing. Perhaps some malice remained in Fable, perhaps that's all the apparition was—Fable's disembodied malice come to bring a message Chev did not want to hear. The secrets of hell, the secrets of paradise, the secrets of whatever. But no message came forth, for want of a head and hands. Fable's image drifted like a virus, a snippet of data, unable to connect to a greater source that would give it meaning.

Chev took a deep breath. Relaxed, he said, "Forget about it, Fable. Just get on going to wherever you're going."

A strange noise emanated from the ghost. It sounded like a word, almost. A bubble of gastric air squeezed through the lips of the severed esophagus. It sounded like the word love, but it was such a rude report, it could have been a burp or a fart.

"What am I supposed to do?" asked Chev.

The ghost retreated, its smoke beginning to unweave.

Chev pursued, thinking, When he was dead, I wished he would come back. When he comes back, I want him gone. When he goes, I follow. I must be getting psycho.

A series of smoke ruptures began to tear the ghost apart, as though the effort of producing the single word had been too much for it. The contours of the vision bled like watercolors into sheets of mist. Chev dove into the last traces of Fable's smoke, chasing the riddle of the belch. But Fable had vanished, smoke lost in smoke.

Chev's eyes were burning. He comprehended nothing of what had just occurred, but the ghost's strange word had provoked feelings he couldn't rechannel. He had killed Fable with a reflex action. Why should he blame himself for actions he couldn't control? His whole life had been a reflex. The burning of his eyes was a reflex, as was the single tear produced by the burning. Tears were a reflex he wasn't supposed to have.

Then Chev heard the sound of the communicator in his flier. The soft ringing began to restore Chev's sense of reality. He followed the muffled sound that seeped through the fog, for he had nothing else to follow.

He was able to make contact with his craft. The solidity of its frame, the creak of its hinges as he opened the door, made him feel awake again. He decided he'd been hallucinating. The ghost's word meant nothing anymore, just dream gibberish, but the word lingered on in his thoughts.

Chev had arrived at his craft just in time to take a call from Dissa Banach.

"I have need of your services," Dissa's voice crackled. The fog disturbed the transmission.

"Yes?" Chev couldn't concentrate. Love. People didn't talk about love anymore.

"The girl from the parry… I want her…"

Love was a mistrusted word. Ambiguous. Archaic.

"… terminated. Defunct. Discontinued. Dead. I want her dead!"

Chev wanted a drink. But drink is suicide for a merc who can't hold his liquor.

Chapter Two

THE CLOUD GARDEN

From a round kitchen window, Amelia watched the sunrise edge over her asteroid. No daylight had shined for over a week, yet Amelia did not miss it. Despite the fact that it wasn't really "morning," Amelia associated the light with routine beginnings and missed opportunities, a response conditioned by planetside living. The artificial atmosphere colored the days a dull beige. She preferred the purple of night and the silver of stars.

After changing her clothes more than a dozen times, Amelia finally decided to wear a cotton robe embroidered with birds. The girl she had rescued was finally awake and would be here soon. Amelia hoped images of flight would put the girl at ease. The robe was the only modest attire in the house, something that had belonged to Amelia's mother.

While waiting in the kitchen, Amelia stirred a pot of cloned herbs, ginseng, cinnamon, and a potent cocoa descendant called verbilamide. Amelia's chief security officer, Dawson, appeared, escorting the girl. A cyborg, he held her tightly in a brass, robotic grip. A group of armed slaves followed, keeping close guard. Wearing simple khakis and a fringed kerchief over her head, the rescued girl hobbled along. Her leg was still casted. Guns surrounded her.

The girl glowered at Amelia.

"Leave us alone for a moment," said Amelia to Dawson.

"No way! She's much too dangerous."

"She is not a prisoner."

"You are wrong, Amelia. Dead wrong. But I am only a slave, and I'll do what you say, as always." Dawson managed a grimace through what Amelia called his "iron mustache"—the wire and grillwork that replaced the upper lip he had lost in an acid duel.

Amelia dismissed him and his entourage of slaves with a wave of her hand.

"What do you want of me?" asked the girl.

Amelia poured herself a cup of the broth. "I don't want anything. I am trying to help you."

"Why?"

"I like the way you fly. I guess I built up sympathies betting on you. That's all." Amelia took a sip. "Really."

The combination of stimulants cleared her head.

Suddenly a mugdub scampered over the kitchen counter. It looked like a little ball of mud or shit with five legs and splay toes. A disgusting evolutionary quirk had taken the mugdub out of the food chain. Unfit to eat, unfit to even touch, mugdubs thrived, unthreatened by predators. Survival of the unfittest.

Amelia screamed. "Oh, kill it quickly!"

The girl hurled a fork at the mugdub. Just barely missing, the fork buried itself, quivering, in the wall. The mug-dub scurried away, leaving a small trail of brown splay-toed footprints.

"Why did you let it get away? They breed like mad and are a source of infection."

The girl shrugged, making almost no effort to conceal a smirk.

Amelia felt her temper rising, but she kept herself under control. Gaining the girl's confidence had become a challenge.

"Come out to my cloud garden," said Amelia. "We both need to calm down."

Amelia loosened the bolt on an enormous frosted-glass door.

Miniature clouds effloresced across the terrace, a fallen fragment of summer sky beneath the drab artificial atmosphere. Amelia gathered a handful of powder. As she spread the powder over the tiny clouds, seeding them, they plumped up, floating three to seven feet above the ground.

The girl smiled as the clouds grew fluffy, and she seemed a little less tired, a little less pained. The clouds were lovely.

Amelia said, "You take pity on mugdubs, but you don't hesitate to shoot down slavers. I don't understand your values, girl."

"The slavers took my husband."

"That is terrible," said Amelia, trying to be agreeable. The loss of a particular man, though, seemed not so great a tragedy.

"I tried to get him back. I wrote letters. I talked to all the bureaucrats. The bod ignored me. Then I tried war. I know a lot about how to make war. Too much."

"I see," said Amelia. The girl was scanning the garden for escape routes.

"It was not right they should ignore me like that. I

made them pay. I have a special hatred for slavery. I am descended from a race of freed slaves."

"I wouldn't have guessed. Your skin is so pale. I don't see any trace of African ancestry."

"Because I am a Jew."

Amelia fell quiet. The answer embarrassed her and she didn't know why. A moment earlier, she had felt a kinship with the girl, a camaraderie of flight. Abruptly, the kinship was gone, the differences between them insurmountable. A long silence afterward made Amelia feel even more embarrassed. She lifted new handfuls of seeding powder and casually scattered them over the clouds to keep her hands occupied while she rummaged for the smallest bit of polite conversation. The rescued girl just stared.

At last Amelia said, "By the way, what is your name?"

"I have been known by many names, but once I was mostly called Magen. You can call me Magen. It means 'star' or 'shield' in my language."

Amelia continued to seed the clouds absentmindedly while the girl talked. The garden slowly bruised and began to rumble because she had added too much seed.

"Let's go inside," said Amelia. "I am getting cold."

Night fell like a hatchet.

In a vineyard not far from the mansion, Dawson watched the skies for stars that moved and stars that flared. He rubbed the mosaic of circuitry along his chin, and the gears in his wrist whirred softly. Another attack was coming. He could feel it in the few natural bones he had left. Computer enhancements of his cerebral cortex confirmed the probability.

He caught sight of Amelia strolling across the compound toward him. He shouted at her, signaling for her to go back to the house. With her usual stubbornness, she kept on coming. What the hell was she doing? His organic parts were getting too old to put up with Amelia's whims. Even his machine parts were getting too old. As she approached, the antenna attached to Dawson's auditory canal began to quiver. The perimeter observation towers were reporting three new ships with slaver markings, which had managed to get past the first line of defenses.

Dawson rushed toward Amelia, grabbed her, and pulled her behind the shelter of a vine-covered wall. He knocked her to the ground.

"Stay down," Dawson insisted.

"What is going on?"

"For once, do what I tell you. We have been attacked several times over the last few days. Slavers Bod vessels, mostly. Some Merc Bod. Even some unincorp hirelings."

A squadron of attack craft roared overhead, flying in perfect fingertip formation. Jeweled light strafed a flower bed. Small fires broke out. Long-petaled orchid hybrids curled and danced and crisped.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't like to see you worried. It gives you wrinkles," said Dawson.

"Who is in charge here?"

"How do you want me to behave, like a slave or like a friend?"

"A friend. Always a friend. I trust no one else in the universe. Friends shouldn't keep secrets from one another. Agreed?" She always consulted Dawson. Sometimes it seemed his wisdom was infinite.

"What is it you require?"

"I have a question for you. Why have I never met a jew before?"

Dawson grinned through his iron mustache. "You got some Jew blood in you. Not much. Dates back to Earth days. Your father told me one night when he was drunk."

Amelia's eyes widened. Her lips parted slightly and she touched her neck defensively. "You should have told me!"

"It was better kept a secret. Most Jews in the Draconian system were wiped out years ago. The Health Care Bod identified them as the source of a plague on the Summer World. The bods claimed that the unique genetic structure of Jews bred the virus."

"You were afraid I would catch it from that girl?"

"Hell, no! It wasn't true. The funny thing, it was a Jew who first hit on the idea—a doctor named Abraham Sidney. He recanted very quickly, but the bods shut him up. But you know, to this day, they still try to hide behind Sidney's initial findings whenever the subject arises. They had lots of evidence refuting the theory, but they suppressed it. Justifying themselves, they said action had to be taken quickly without doubt or conscience. The Jewish extermination initiative drew attention away from the Health Care Bod's failure to contain the plague in the first place.

"What's more, the Jewish community had more or less operated independently of the bods. Not really like unincorps. They worked more together. Most of the prime directors were really glad to have an excuse to have their economic model 'vanish' from the system."

As Dawson finished speaking, a terrible beauty filled the sky, spacecraft rolling and weaving beneath multicolored electric arcs.

"No wonder the girl is so untrusting," said Amelia.

"More than just 'untrusting.' She's served time in the Merc Bod and gathered quite a reputation. She's been a foot soldier. She's even fought in the arenas. I've known lots of people like her. Killing becomes instinctive, a solution for every problem. You look at them the wrong way, and you're dead."

"You should have warned me."

"I did."

Amelia looked over at the mansion. She saw Magen lingering by the window, a shadow of tension. No doubt the girl was watching the aerial battle. No doubt she wanted to be part of it.

"You know, six years ago someone assassinated the corporate heads who ordered the Jewish extermination. I'll bet it was your friend up there."

"Impossible. Six years ago she would have been about twelve years old."

Dawson grinned as he looked up. A series of blasts was tearing up the sky. The precision flight patterns of the invading vessels made them easy targets. It almost seemed they were flying into the mansion's defense fire.

Smoking fragments of falling metal fell in a steady rain.

The security force began to clean up fallen pieces from the battle: shattered shatterproof glass, broken pistons, ropes of intestines. Even Amelia was appalled at the waste of life and machinery.

"Double the guard," shouted Dawson to a nearby soldier. "We don't want to get caught with our pants down again!"

"No need, sir," replied the young man. "We've drifted into a dense asteroid belt. No kind of warcraft could possibly get through. Should hold us secure for ten, possibly twelve hours."

Dawson unbuckled a strap around his metal biceps. He flipped open a hinged compartment in his robot arm and pulled out a flask. "One good belt deserves another," he said, and took a swig. The hard, hot kick of fermentation made him wince, and the skin on his forehead tugged at islands of corrugated wiring scattered over his bald pate. Then Dawson waved the flask in front of the young soldier. "You want a hit?"

"No thanks. I never drink on the job."

As the soldier walked away, the rainbows of his holographic belt glittered amid the scattered, dying flames of the burning flowers.

* * *

A ghost had admonished Chev to love. So Chev pondered the advice and considered the things he loved. He loved food and consumed large quantities without getting fat because of his rapid metabolism and constant exercise. He loved thinking about women. Not being with them—but thinking about them. Most of all, he loved his work. He loved the challenge of mastering new and exotic weaponry. He loved the artistry and terror of dueling. And he loved outwitting tradition-bound strategists like Dawson.

Chev had slipped through the asteroid's defense systems by pretending to crash, a raindrop in a storm of flaming and smoking warships. His craft had appeared to be totaled when it landed, though most of the external damage had been done before he took off. After he crawled from the wreckage, he had no trouble losing himself amid Amelia's security force.

Crossing the manicured lawn in front of the mansion, falling into the routine of troop movement as if he belonged, Chev felt grateful to the pilots who had died to give him cover for his landing. He smelled them cooking in their cockpits. He had never flown with braver men. You can't top slaves for courage.

A pale glow began to crackle up around the mansion. Sealed up for bedtime. Chev smirked. An energy shield around the house provided some level of protection for the occupants, but it also kept the home troops at a distance.

He walked around to the rear of the estate where a young girl stood guard. Blond hair spilled out from her silver helmet. She would not have been pretty, even if her face hadn't been mangled in too many bare-knuckle brawls. She wore a pissed-off expression. She must have lost the weekly lottery, pulling the worst watch duty of all, right in front of the exhaust ports of the sanitation and energy exchange system. Not even the lowliest of sewer slaves could stand the nauseating stink. Chev could hear the tough-looking girl cursing to herself.

A black river of fuel flowed through the mansion's bowels. The processors of the sanitation and energy-exchange system stripped down to basic carbons all organic garbage: silks that had fallen out of fashion, uneaten bits of pastry, stained cotton bedsheets, vinyl high heels, vomit, shit, and blood. The treated sludge reeked of the basest parts of living matter. It reeked of entropy and rot. The main exchange unit had to be located outside of the energy shield, otherwise the stink would quickly build up inside the house when the containment web was activated for the night. Pipes from the processor led into the mansion to disposal units located at convenient points.

The compressors were grinding. They sloshed and rumbled.

Chev strolled up to the girl; he murmured a greeting. She looked hard at him. He could tell by the way she studied him that she thought he was handsome. She smiled, but her smile dropped abruptly. He was too handsome, and she would have recognized his face if she had ever seen it before. She started to shout a warning to the night watch, but Chev's hand shot forward and caught the warning in the middle of her throat.

She tried to squeeze the warning out anyway. As the muscles in her lungs constricted, Chev could feel an urgent bubble of sound trying to push past his fingers. Only a pathetic hiss escaped. Her trachea crunched. Chev relaxed his grip.

He shook out his acid sword and hacked through a four-foot-diameter pipe. Thick black oil sprayed in all directions. Ocher clouds of vile gas rose up from the muck.

Chev had conditioned himself to enjoy the stink. He thought of fecund ground and orifices and sex. Slowly he hoisted a ninety-three-pound severed section of pipe and shoved it aside. Then he climbed into the system. With brass knuckles he punched through the blades of a guillotine door, which opened into a large sludge tunnel under the fire tubes. As he crawled past, he felt as if he were being baked. Fortunately, the temperatures in the conversion chambers were not quite hot enough to ignite his clothes. He was soaked in combustible sludge.

He slipped into the yawning, dripping main conduit. A gust of warm air felt cool to him. Degraded sludge flowed in slow but strong currents. He lifted tiny pools of black oil in his hands and let them dribble through his fingers like coins.

Occasionally, yellow toxic diamonds bubbled up in the effervescent tar, a by-product of malfunctioning pressure valves. Chev wallowed in wasted wealth. He sloshed like an otter along the wet walls of this private place, amid the rudest parts of silks, flowers, wines, and blood.

It made him feel rich.

Filthy rich.

Amelia stirred uneasily in a light sleep when the pipes rumbled.

The door opened just a crack. A shaft of light fell across her left hand and breast. The muffled thumping of Magen's cast beat across the carpet. Amelia tossed briefly beneath her sheets, but it wasn't the sounds that woke her—it was the palpable presence of fear.

"Wake up," rasped a voice.

Amelia's eyes fluttered. Dimly, she could make out Magen's form, a silhouette, umber on black in the darkness.

"What are you doing in my room?" Amelia asked. Instantly she regretted her sharp tone. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw wildness tugging against restraint in the girl's features: brow furrowed, eyes wide, lips tight. Magen leaned on her cane and wore an ill-fitting, unflattering jumpsuit made of cotton.

"The time has come I go on my way," said Magen.

"Impossible. The house is sealed for the night."

Magen said nothing at first. She began to pace, leaning on her cane for support. Then she tossed the cane aside, though she was still unsteady, and continued pacing. "I am in danger here," Magen said at last.

"No. Really, no. I wouldn't harm you. My men wouldn't harm you. You see how we've been fighting off the slavers' forces."

"I don't like you should be in danger for me."

"There's no real danger."

"And I don't like I should be in your debt."

Amelia felt suddenly desperate to have this strange girl out of her room. She tried to will her away, but the girl kept pacing. The more Amelia willed, the more the rescued girl seemed determined to stay, entrenched, like a tick under the skin. Amelia thought, Perhaps she suspects a plot, or wants a hostage in case there's trouble. Who could tell what this girl's motives were? She was mystery itself.

"You need to sleep. We both need sleep. You can leave whenever we both wake up, when the shields come down. There is nothing to fear."

"I am used to fear. I don't mind it so much."

"OK. Wrong word. Why don't you just go back to sleep?"

Amelia couldn't think straight. She started to panic. She had gambled too much on this girl, this much too strange rescued girl. She wanted to dive for the panic button that would instantly summon Dawson—but she sensed that any sudden movement might prove fatal.

"I need something to calm me down," said Amelia, turning toward a bedside table on which rested a statue of an angel. She opened a drawer in the bedside table very, very slowly. She held the drawer open for a moment so the girl could see clearly that no weapons lay inside. Then Amelia produced an elaborately decorated bottle half-filled with blue fluid. Cadmadine. "You should drink some. It is very relaxing."

"What do you care if I relax?"

"You're starting to frighten me." Amelia uncorked the bottle and took a belt of the blue fluid. Immediately her tensions unbundled, her thoughts crystallized, her fear vanished.

Magen eyed Amelia with suspicion. "You don't need to be afraid of me as long as you are telling the truth and don't try to attack me. Why are you so afraid so suddenly…"

"Dawson said you killed the corporate heads who were responsible for the Health Care Bod's Jewish extermination campaign."

"They deserved to die."

"You killed all of them—by yourself?"

"Not all of them. There was one I didn't kill."

The girl leaned forward, almost losing her balance. "Maybe you are afraid because you feel what I feel. A sense of dread. A warning, I think. God has ways to warn without using words, I think."

"I don't feel anything." A blue pleasantness rolled down Amelia's spine.

"How can you not feel it?" Magen retrieved her cane and increased the tempo of her pacing.

"You know, I am not without contacts in the Slavers Bod. Perhaps I can arrange a meeting between you and Olagy."

The pacing stopped.

Amelia continued. "I still wield considerable influence in the system. Perhaps I can even pressure the bod into releasing your husband."

"You can do this?"

"I am quite certain I can."

Magen believed her, Amelia could tell. She wasn't lying, either, but cadmadine was notorious for filling one with an overinflated sense of self-importance. Anyway, for the time being Amelia had made herself valuable to Magen, at least until the house shields were turned off.

"I can call due some old favors," said Amelia. The seductive calming smell of cadmadine spices seeped from the uncorked bottle. "At least it is worth a try." Then she proffered the bottle to Magen. "This will help you sleep. It will make the time go faster. After all I have done for you, haven't you learned to trust me?"

Amelia rose and stepped away from her bed. She wore an airy translucent gown that seemed to glow with its own light, romanticizing Amelia's nakedness underneath with a silky haze. The drug made her bold, and she waved the bottle, spreading its bouquet.

"Thank you but no." Magen pushed the bottle away.

"Trust me. This is what you need more than anything right now. It has no residual effects. You are completely safe in my house behind an impenetrable shield. I will be insulted if you don't join me in a drink."

Amelia thrust the bottle forward.

Magen took it from her hands, then paused. She understood the protocols and courtesies of the streets, and of the bods. But she didn't understand people like Amelia— upper-echelon unincorps. Holding the bottle of cadmadine, Magen tried to measure the cultural differences between the two of them, and the potential gravity of the alleged insult. She sniffed the rim of the bottle

The cadmadine smelled of sky and freedom and light. It smelled of nutmeg and clove and ice. It smelled of dreams. Magen took a hesitant sip. The wondrous taste surprised her. She took a more solid swig. Then another.

"I trust you, I do," said Magen, smiling crookedly. "There is a parable among my people about God sending angels in human disguise, and about the fools who refuse to recognize them."

"I'm no angel."

"Shalom."

"What?"

"Shalom. It means peace. It also means hello, goodbye. Good night."

Magen hobbled into the darkened hallway alone. She had only felt relaxed once or twice since childhood, and never to this degree. Her cast banged and dragged over the carpet, her anchor in a sea of ether. Everything she saw or heard or touched delighted her: the casual pink wallpaper, the vaulted ceilings, the beat of her heart, the hum and gurgle of the sanitation energy-exchange system, the smell of cadmadine lingering in her nostrils. All things in creation bore the imprint of God's handiwork.

A random black smudge in the corridor caught her attention. At first she didn't know why it fascinated her. Tiny whorls stirred in a black cloud of vagueness. Ebony drops seeped down, leaving black degraded trails. She stared for time out of time. The image metamorphosed, a Rorschach kaleidoscope; it became a bird, a face, a running dog, a dead octopus. Finally, she realized it was a handprint and it smelled like shit.

She tried to turn on the hall lights, but they would not work. In the semi-light, she saw a trail of oily footprints headed up the corridor.

Slowly, through her drug-induced haze, she came to the conclusion that someone had crawled up through the sludge pipes.

Magen headed back to Amelia's bedroom. The initial euphoria of the cadmadine had faded quickly, leaving an aching numbness, like many limbic-system relaxants.

After a vigorous shaking, Amelia awoke muttering curses.

"There is an assassin in the house."

"Impossible."

"Trust me."

Amelia reached for the panic button by her bed. She pounded on it, waited.

No response.

She pounded again.

Nothing.

"I need a weapon," said Magen. "A gun, a knife, a vase I can break to put a blade on the cane. Anything." Her hands knotted nervously.

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. Just fine. Too fine."

Magen started swiftly across the room, almost losing her balance. The sound of the cast banging on the carpet penetrated the blue haze drawn across her cerebral cortex. Finding she couldn't walk without making noise, she got on her hands and knees and crawled. Amelia followed, also crawling, believing it was a prudent thing to do, not really appreciating the reason.

Magen crawled through the half-light, out of the room. She felt numb in her eyes, her groin, her soul—as devoid of feeling as hair or fingernails. She felt totally calm, except that she felt a little twinge of guilt for taking the drug. The act of crawling made things worse. Her mind floated in a blue puddle. Never before had she felt so vulnerable. A lifetime of training undone with a single, foolish act of trust.

Amelia screamed. In the darkness, in the hallway, she had crawled over Dawson's unconscious, bleeding body. His severed robotic limbs lay scattered nearby, sparking.

Her scream drew an immediate volley of laser fire from the foyer below. The blue flashes illuminated Amelia's profile, her hair floating like smoke from accumulated static electricity. The white streak, lighter than the other strands, rose slightly higher. Her nightgown glowed over her trembling breasts. Then the gunlight stopped.

Magen realized the assassin was deliberately trying to avoid hitting Amelia. Why? Was he in her employ? Magen didn't think so—she thought herself a better judge of people—but the blue haze muddled her thoughts and reminded her of recent folly.

Progressively larger fragments of Dawson littered the ascending steps on the spiral staircase. Apparently he had fought all the way up, losing more and more of himself as his defense capacities diminished.

Frantically, Magen searched Dawson's still-breathing torso for a weapon. The assassin had stripped the gun belts. The utility chambers were broken and empty.

Amelia crossed into a shaft of clear starlight, grabbing for a smoldering metal arm. She lingered too long, a clean and obvious target, but no shooting ensued. Magen's suspicions flared again, but she hesitantly dismissed them again. Complicity with the assassin seemed unlikely. Perhaps he was saving her for hostage value.

Amelia achieved a tenuous hold on the severed limb and pulled it toward her by loose wires. She unstrapped a panel over the dented wrist. Out tumbled a deactivated acid sword.

"You were right about angels coming sometimes," whispered Amelia.

"Shit," said Magen. She could not hide her disappointment. "This is a bad weapon. I don't like it. I never liked it. Too much skill is needed. My hands are dead."

"At least you have something. Back there you were asking for a vase or something. Well, here is something. You can do it. Yes. Yes. You can do it. Go do it, girl. Do it. Do it." Amelia's eyes started to glaze, a weird psychotropic response induced by a mixture of panic and cadmadine. Magen took a deep breath. "Peace, Amelia."

Chev lurked below the staircase. He didn't want to betray his position. He had no way of knowing whether or not Magen had a gun. She clearly had the advantageous position, with altitude.

He was getting nervous. He had waited too long for her to make her play. Soon the house shields would shut down. The security force would storm the mansion at the first hint of a break in routine. He tried to jockey for a clear shot through the spaces in the spiral banister.

Then he caught a glimpse of Amelia's softly glowing gown fluttering at the top of the stairs. It floated over firm thighs, stepping slowly. A pair of bare feet, lit by the gown's glow, descended with spectral grace.

He heard Magen's cast banging out a quick tattoo across the corridor above.

"Strados! Get out of the way!" yelled Chev. "I always liked you. I don't want to hurt you—but one way or another, I'm going to nail that bitch!"

The glowing gown continued its downward course, undaunted, as relaxed as death. Another ghost suggesting love, this time with soft breasts and hair like smoke. Chev watched, almost hypnotized, but he didn't lose track of the pounding cast upstairs. The ghostly feet, lit by the glow of the gown, continued ever so slowly, bravely, in the line of fire—a sharp contrast to the frantic pounding of the cast.

The moment the glowing gown reached the bottom of the staircase, Chev lurched forward to shove Amelia out of the way. The smell of the woman's perfume startled him. It was too strong, too plebeian. Catching the vaguest sniff of sulfur, he pulled backward immediately, just as an acid sword splattered open. A sideways fan slash cut through his gun and sliced off the tip of his right forefinger. Had the blow fallen just a little faster, a little surer, it would have split open his chest.

Magen was wearing the glowing gown. She had used the acid sword to cut the cast off her leg. Unsteady, she was squinting to see in the half-light, trying to mask her grogginess.

Chev sidestepped the next two clumsy slashes. He sucked on the ragged end of his wounded finger and spat out a dollop of blood. No time to slap an adhesive on the wound, though he would have welcomed the painkillers. He pulled out his own acid sword and splashed out its blade. Acid and blood froze together in the stasis field.

With a quick thrust into her combat space, Chev tested her responses, reading her disorientation with a glance. Her dulled senses made him wary. So much of a traditional acid duel depended on bluff and reaction to bluff. So much depended on the opponent's level of fear. A drugged opponent, pumped full of artificial courage, could be more dangerous than a cautious opponent, no matter how skilled. An acid duel was mostly a matter of nerve.

He danced a semicircle around her with short steps, toes classically pointed forward. He tried to play for an advantage with subtle moves. He toyed with her, gently brushing his blade against hers with mock tenderness. A fine burning mist of acid sprayed onto her forearms. Her skin fried away, leaving nerves exposed.

She stopped cursing the blue fog in her mind. It provided a small hedge against the pain.

She fought on automatic. Muscles and nerves performed according to years of programming. She feinted to the left, forcing a retreating counterswing of Chev's torso; then she caught him with a snap kick to the kidney. The kick should have been devastating, but it lacked power.

Chev grunted at the stab of organ pain, but he kept on slashing, seemingly unfazed.

Though almost healed, her recently broken leg still gave her difficulty. The kick had left her unstable. She fell back against delicately latticed glass doors, shifting her weight just in time to keep from crashing through. Chev attacked, his weightless saber aimed at her neck. She did a full-body retreat, arching her spine with a swift motion that snapped her through the glass and lattices she had just avoided. Soprano thunder filled her bleeding ears. Raining glass trilled.

She hit the hard terrace of the cloud garden. Her glowing gown was now in tatters and full of bloating red stains.

Chev stepped through the demolished doors. He stalked her. His weapon swung back and forth as steadily as a pendulum. She was on her knees. Dead meat in an acid duel.

To gain a second, Magen pitched her sword at Chev. The splatter blade twisted wildly as it flew, like a kite without a tail. Chev sidestepped into a cumulus hedge to avoid the sword.

Magen ripped open a bag of cloud seed and cast the powder in a floating haze toward Chev. He sneezed. The tiny clouds around him instantly darkened. Chev frantically tossed his sword aside as a miniature storm broke out around him. On contact with rain, the burning blade exploded.

Acid splashed on Chev's leg, hot beads eating instantly through fabric, skin, and muscle. The air smelled of ozone and sulfur. Chev paused for a minute to shake the acid from a black spot sizzling on his hand. Then, enraged, he grabbed a bag full of seeding powder and flung it around with such force that the bag ripped open. Clouds spilled onto clouds. The floating thunderheads molded and rolled out in all directions.

Filaments of miniature lightning flashed down on

Magen. Everywhere she turned, sprigs of numbness shocked her. Chev leaped furrows of storm clouds in his path. He kneed her in the belly, and when she bent forward, he drummed hammer blows on her back.

He gloried in the sound of her pained grunts, and the smell of her blood overcrowding the smell of her weird perfume. Never before had he taken such joy at a victim's expense. He always enjoyed winning—true enough, but sadism was unprofessional.

Chev found himself caught up in emotions he had never experienced before in battle. A wild delirium shook him. This was payback for humiliating him, for tarnishing his reputation, and for making him lose over a month's worth of job time.

He laughed when she fell. On the terrace, below cloud level, the toy lightning struck her highest places, her forehead, her hips, her knees.

With a flick of his wrist, Chev activated a pulley mechanism that slid a dagger into his palm. Preparing to cut her throat, he stooped to embrace his fallen adversary. She lay beneath a blanket of storm, aglow with filaments of bolts.

"Stop!" shouted Amelia. Wearing Magen's simple oversized cottons, she crossed onto the terrace scattering handfuls of counterreactive to the cloud seeds. "I'll double in value the fee from Olagy if you spare her life. You should check with your superiors before you turn me down." The storm subsided in Amelia's wake.

Chev froze. "No!" he shouted. But the blade dallied at Magen's carotid.

"Triple."

"I have my professional pride to think of. My bosses would be pissed if I blew a chance like this." The blade moved but drew only a small bead of blood as Magen sighed unconsciously. Amelia knew he was bargaining.

"What do you want?"

"You," said Chev.

The proposition stunned Amelia, and it flattered her. She looked him up and down. Despite his hair being soaked in sanitation sludge, and despite the stink that made her gag, he seemed much more attractive than he did the night of the party. Maybe because his muscles were: pumped up from the fight. Maybe because he was sober-now. Maybe it was the way his eyes burned, fiercely alert.

The house shield would hold for at least another two hours, and she knew he could take her if he really wanted her so badly. Lower-caste liaisons had been rare in Amelia's past, but not totally unpleasant. This one would not be so bad, if he took a bath first.

"I agree," Amelia said. A fine wet mist rained out off the garden.

"For marriage," said Chev.

His new proposition stunned her even more, but flattered her less. Now she understood. The young upstart was a fortune hunter.

"No."

Chev waved the knife. Unconscious, Magen moaned.

"One night," said Amelia. "But it will be a grand night, I promise."

"At least a year," he demanded.

"One night!" But now she smiled on the verge of giddy laughter. The cadmadine she had taken earlier numbed her to the seriousness of the situation.

The two of them bargained, and began to enjoy the; contest in the wet mist, their clothes soaked and sticking to their skin.

Chapter Three

THE STALKING WIND

Daylight woke Magen and filled the cloud garden with glorious rainbows. Her eyes ached. She still wore Amelia's gown, which no longer glowed. Designed for darkness, it seemed tawdry and lurid in the light, especially in the way it revealed her cuts and bruises.

She grunted herself upright. Being alive amazed her, and she uttered a grateful prayer, making certain that her lips moved even though she produced no sound.

Then Magen crossed through the demolished doors and entered the mansion. The light of the blazing rainbows revealed the beheaded corpses of a dozen of Amelia's elite guardsmen.

The fighting had roused a nest of mugdubs. Tiny splay-toed footprints covered the fine upholstery. The little shit balls ran amok, occasionally colliding and splattering against one another.

Magen found the clothes she had exchanged with Amelia. They were littered in progression up the stairs and across the inside corridor, mingled with Chev's clothes and Dawson's limbs. The discarded clothes described a path to Amelia's bedroom.

Magen pressed her ear to the locked door and heard sighs and moans, and the rhythmic creaking of the wooden bed frame. She debated forcing open the door— but the sounds were obvious expressions of intense consensual sex and a rapidly approaching shared orgasm.

Magen dressed and covered her head with a towel, wrapping it like a turban. A short way up the corridor, she found Dawson. He propelled himself across the carpet by using his chin for leverage. The image was so pathetic, and made such a mockery of human will, Magen understood why Chev had spared Dawson; not as an act of mercy, but as a contemptuous prank.

"Would you like some help?" Magen asked.

"Now, what the hell makes you think that?" replied Dawson.

When Amelia heard the buzz of the house shields shutting down, she looked out the window of the bedroom and saw the rainbows glittering below. Soon the morning patrol would march into the house, and she would be forced to make a decision about how to deal with the intruder. She rose naked from beneath silken sheets. Warm clots of the intruder's seed rolled in surprising quantities down the inside of her thigh. The sensation made her ovaries tingle.

She walked across the room with a lightness in her step that had not been there in years. She had never been one to overreact to, or romanticize, a good fuck, but her liaison with Chev had resulted in a startling communion, and it had stirred her in unexpected ways. Even though his technique lacked sophistication, he was amazingly adept at interpreting her body signals, maybe because of his combat training. The moment they joined, it became obvious they shared a common sense of adventure and hedonism, a common longing and loneliness, a common void.

His youth had been an unexpected treat. Undeniably, youth was an aphrodisiac.

She looked at herself in the mirror. The wild streak of white hair suddenly lost its exotic appeal. A badge of age. Crow's feet, sags, wrinkles, the effects of gravity on her breasts and buttocks, the slight bulging of her belly, the increase in distance between her iliac crests; all of these things had not existed the day before.

Chev emerged from an adjoining bathroom. She could tell he was thinking about her, about the way he had reduced her to a helpless blob of pleasure. His smile bloated with ego. He sported an enormous, flushed erection.

"This room smells like a whorehouse in summer," he said.

Amelia felt her cheeks heating with sudden shame and anger. She had not been seduced, she reminded herself. She had been blackmailed into bed. No matter how fine a fuck he was, this stranger had invaded her house, slain her guards, and threatened her friends.

Amelia, raging, lifted the winged angel statuette. She started to hurl it at Chev, but changed her mind mid-arm-swing, and sent it flying in the direction of the mirror instead. The wings struck first, crashing loudly and breaking. Cobwebs fanned out from the point of impact, spreading across the reflective surface, multiplying images of Amelia's nudity. As the mirror fell apart, the images collapsed into cubism.

"Get out!" Amelia shouted. "Get the hell out of my room!"

"Why? What did I do wrong?"

She pushed him out into the corridor and slammed the door behind him.

Chev found himself surrounded by Amelia's morning patrol. The elite troops instantly snapped into battle stance in unison with military precision. Their brass buttons sparkled, their faces were emotionless masks. The nozzles of their light guns leveled at Chev.

Chev smiled his usual arrogant smirk. It looked stupid, and he knew it. He stood there naked, smelling of scented moisturizing soap, his erection rapidly wilting.

Inside her room, Amelia combed her perfumed hair. She looked at her face in a fragment of mirror and applied makeup a little more heavily than usual, then calmly dressed herself in a stylish outfit made with fur and golden lame. She listened to the sound of boots marching down the stairs. Some heavy dragged object bumped on every step. She waited until these sounds reached the bottom of the spiral staircase.

Now, looking radiant and fully in control, wary of showing any sign of weakness to the slaves, Amelia descended the stairs with the regal slowness and elegant airs Magen had imitated so well the night before.

Amelia even maintained her composure when she found an uncountable number of mugdubs scampering wildly and fornicating over her costly furniture. She stepped over the headless guards,, whose bodies were still multicolored with bruises even after the rainbows outside had faded. She found a modest chair that had been spared brown stains, sat down, took a breath, and began to calculate the amount of resources it would take to effect repairs.

"What should I do with him?" asked the captain of the first watch.

"I don't know," said Amelia.

"Do you want us to kill him?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want us to torture him a little while you make up your mind?"

She stared at the soldier's impassive face, trying to decide if he was being serious or impertinent.

"Bring the intruder to me," she said.

Chev was still naked when they brought him before Amelia, and she enjoyed the psychological advantage that clothing, particularly costly clothing, gave her. The presence of rampaging mugdubs slightly diminished the pomp of Amelia's court. Her armed guards brandished their weapons threateningly at Chev. They were nervous, and itching to kill him. Too many of their peers lay in blood and excrement on the floor. And they were afraid of him, even naked.

"Get rid of the corpses," said Amelia. She was buying time, trying to make up her mind.

The soldiers began hauling away the dead, without ceremony.

"You know," said Chev, "I could have taken anything I wanted. You. Your friend. Any number of trinkets worth more than I make in a year. I could have taken them and been gone out the tubes, and no one would have stopped me." His hand snapped forward and he caught a leaping mugdub in midair. He squeezed it, letting shit and small greasy organs dribble between his fingers to the ground. Amelia averted her eyes.

"I stuck around for you. I did nothing to hurt you. The opposite, I thought."

"Surely you don't really think I will marry you. Why did you stay? Most women in my position would have had you shot by now. Why did you take the chance?"

Looking bitter, he said, "Ever since I met you, things have gone wrong for me. I felt bad about myself like I never felt before. I thought croaking that bitch who crashed Olagy's party would set things right. That's what I thought right up to the point where I beat her and I had her down at knifepoint. Then I saw you, and I remembered, it wasn't really the bitch who messed me up that night—you messed me up, right from the start. It was you. I tried to be friendly. I tried to give you a friendly warning, and you wanted to show off how fucking clever you could be. The bitch was fighting for her life—but you insulted me just to draw blood. I was drunk and defenseless and trying to be friendly, and you got off on putting me down."

"I am used to saying whatever I like to whomever I like, or don't like. Your behavior was atrocious that night."

"You liked me better when I was going to croak your friend?"

"So you revenged my insult in bed?"

He thought maybe he shouldn't have mouthed off to her. The verbal jab had wounded an unguarded area.

"I wanted you to like me." Though he was full of feints and bluster, he was probably telling the truth. He wasn't taking revenge, he was rewriting his own personal history. He was fleshing it out.

She folded her arms across her chest. A flush reddened underneath her makeup. She dug the dps of her toes into the bloody, stained carpet. She was mulling over his response. She would feel sorry, very sorry for killing him, but it would probably be cathartic for her.

"You're right about one thing," she announced. "You spared my life. I feel obligated to return the favor."

"I know that everything I did before was wrong." This did not sound like an apology anymore. He was being self-righteous. "I should have thought things through—but I am not that kind of person. I never know what I'm going to do until after it is done."

"I'm the same way," said Amelia. Without thinking things through, she kissed him.

* * *

"I don't understand Amelia at all, why she does what she does," said Magen. She carried Dawson, only a head and torso, cradling him like a child made of iron, sweating with the effort. There was bile on his breath, and strong odors of polychlorides and hormones seeping from his open sockets.

"Did you know Amelia had sex with the man who almost killed both of us?"

Dawson let out a slow exasperated sigh. A distant look obscured his expression. "Well, I am not surprised. No. Not at all." He thought about it. "Nope, no surprise." Despite his denials, his voice betrayed at least some failure of expectation, if not true surprise.

Inside his modest room, decorated with hanging weaponry, she laid him down beside his collected limbs on a patchwork quilt spread over a polished bronze bed. A lukewarm bowl of soup waited, full of vegetables and dismembered parts of a native animal crossbred and gene-spliced for centuries until it vaguely tasted like Earth chicken. Magen propped up Dawson's head with one hand and brought a spoonful of the tepid broth to his dried lips with the other. He sucked at it, dribbling a little on his rug-burned chin.

"I know Amelia too well after all these years," he said at last. "She likes to make problems for herself. It's a disease of the wealthy, keeps them from getting bored. That's mostly why she rescued you. Sure as hell wasn't out of the goodness of her heart."

"I see." She raised an eyebrow. The explanation satisfied her. She dipped for another spoonful of broth.

"Amelia pushes her luck to its limits, then escapes by using her assets, her sexuality, or her charm. She is damn charming. She thinks she can get away with anything because she has a special gift for making people like her."

"I know. I like her."

"I do too." He said it almost reluctantly. He had lived with liking her for too long.

"Where can I find someone to put you back together?"

"Don't bother. I'll summon him after awhile. I need to sleep first."

She drew up another spoonful of soup. It was getting cooler. Flakes of fat were crystallizing on the surface. She brought the spoon to his lips, and he sucked in the soup.

Dawson surmised that Magen was only helping him because he was visibly incapable of harming her, and he was profoundly pathetic—yet her present kindness made him regret his earlier lack of courtesy. He felt too ashamed of it to bring up the subject, even to make an apology. Dawson was only a slave—despite his long relationship with Amelia and the enormous amount of trust she placed in him. As a slave, he owned nothing he could give to Magen as a token of friendship. He could not even offer a handshake. The only thing he had to share was a secret.

He said, "I am going to give you some very good advice about Amelia. Don't trust her. I mean, she won't double-cross you or anything, but she is completely unreliable. Don't depend on her for anything."

Unnerved by this counsel, Magen accidentally plunged her elbow into the bowl of soup, tilting it, splashing broth in Dawson's face. He sputtered, spraying broth and saliva.

She wiped his face, then dabbed his copper chest plate. He blinked his eyes clear, and saw her teeth set on edge. The advice he had offered as a gift upset her terribly.

"What did Amelia promise you?"

"She said she could get my husband free. She said she had power and people owed her favors. You see, this is my best hope, the only hope I have had in a very long time.

Amelia made a promise to me. Do you think she will not keep it?"

"I don't know," said Dawson bitterly. "She might end up keeping her word. You never can tell. She will lavish fortunes on complete strangers. She will risk life, limb, and honor for complete strangers. That's what she's like. She'll go to bed with a complete stranger while she leaves an old friend helpless and in pieces. Yeah, she might keep her promise."

The arrangements for a meeting with Olagy proved more difficult than Amelia anticipated. She had a major connection in the upper echelons of the bod, a former lover named Chadwick Hubbel; however, reaching him was not easy. After their stormy breakup years before, she had lost contact with him. She knew only that he held prime managerial responsibility for the public-relations division. He was always very good at "relating." She wasn't even sure of his exact title, except that it had "vice" in it.

To contact him, she had to slowly work her way through several layers of complicated bureaucracy. The bod staffed the lower-level positions in its organization with slaves. Each could perform only a limited number of routine tasks—usually tasks associated with collecting receivables and harassing debtors. The system confounded creditors, and insured that only the most persistent and clever callers could get through to the bod's directors. The slaves handled their limited duties with surprising efficiency.

For external purposes, all mistakes made by the bod were blamed on the people occupying the lower-level positions. When occasional important messages were lost, the lower-level bureaucrats received the usual disciplinary measures—torture, or death, or both, depending on the severity of the mistake. These measures usually appeased anyone offended by a lower-level bureaucrat.

Because the lower-level bureaucrats were trained to respond with memorized statements, which would be triggered by key buzzwords, an unusual request could not be processed. Amelia's request for the freedom of a single slave was unusual in the extreme, and it wrought utter confusion. After several attempts at communication, Amelia got fed up with listening to gelding voices speaking with flat affect. She threatened war. The lower-level bureaucrats in the public-relations division switched her over to the lower-level bureaucrats in the military division. She found herself talking to a slave who had been trained to recite threats of retaliation in a very convincing psychotic voice.

"Do you realize to whom you are speaking?" shouted Amelia.

The line went dead, but within an hour, she received a call from a higher-ranking bod official, a young man who spoke in pleasant tones and who sounded sincere in his desire to help. Amelia had uttered one of the key password phrases that allowed her access to the next level of the bureaucracy.

Amelia discussed her problem in great detail. The official put her in touch with several other bod officials who sounded equally sincere. After a while, getting nothing but sincerity, Amelia noticed that a number of sentences were being repeated with no change in intonation. Although the middle level of management had been trained to perform a wider variety of tasks, and, although they believed themselves to be in control, they were just mere slaves who had little or no comprehension of the words they were repeating. Amelia tested a number of key phrases on them, and found, eventually, that cleverly worded insults gained her access to the next echelon.

After that, she progressed rapidly through the remaining levels. She learned how to trigger responses. She learned how to cut corners through this intricate verbal maze.

Eventually she reached Hubbel. The phone call from Amelia genuinely surprised him, until he realized she had called to ask for a favor. He surprised her in return by being cordial.

"The matter interests me," he said, "mainly for personal reasons. It presents a splendid opportunity to embarrass Dissa Banach. I don't know if I can help you, but I will certainly try." He spoke to her as he might a business associate. His voice revealed no hint of resentment, and no hint of warmth, as if whatever had occurred between them had been trivial. His friendly manner actually piqued her, as he knew it would.

The meeting between Olagy, Amelia, and Magen took place one week later. Requiring neutral territory, the parties selected the ruins of a pre-Draconian failed colony located in the forests of the Autumn World.

The dead city had been designed around towers of mirror, some of which remained standing with randomly placed windows reflecting the patchwork colors of the surrounding trees. Other towers had toppled in the unrelenting forest, like broken prisms spilling patchwork views of a tattered landscape.

Under the shade of a ruptured ten-story church, Olagy's personal slaves worked busily to prepare an elaborate feast. A wide assortment of rare delicacies lay shining upon silver or jeweled trays. The aroma of seared sugars, citrus, meats, and recombinant spices filled the air. Hubbel, who had spent years apprenticing in psychophysiology, selected an array of foods that would subtly influence the negotiation process—hard-to-digest items that clogged the digestive system and dulled the mind.

Hummingbirds gene-spliced with oranges. Fish wrapped in candied orchids. Embryo soup.

The meal boasted of the bod's wealth and resources. Such dishes were also the staple of the pampered few. Amelia would appreciate them and put down anyone who didn't. The meal would accentuate the caste differences between Amelia and her new companions. After this dinner, the opposition would be divided, intimidated, sated, and dulled.

Olagy snatched bits and pieces of food from the table. He came mostly for show, and sat quietly daydreaming reptilian fantasies while a slave rubbed his scales.

Amelia's craft was arriving. As it descended vertically, autumn leaves blew in all directions. Finally, the ship came to a lopsided rest upon a cushion of treetops. Amelia gracefully disembarked, strolling down a spiral ramp that wound to catch each step. A temperate autumn wind seemed to follow her, the wind of a perpetually lost summer and a never-to-be winter. She was the closest thing to royalty in the Draconian system, directly descended from Hadley Strados, the eccentric genius who developed faster-than-light travel. One of the most awe-inspiring men who had ever lived, Hadley Strados freed mankind from the confines of the Milky Way and nearly destroyed the universe in the process.

The extraordinary genes of Hadley Strados had been tempered over the centuries until they took the form of Amelia. The eyes, the mouth, the breasts, the rump. Nothing could compare to them.

Hubbel sighed to himself.

Chev Carson and Dawson emerged from the topmost exit hatch. Armed troops dressed in purple and brass clamored out of the other exit hatches, then shimmied down rope ladders to the leaf-covered ground. The troops split into twin phalanxes, one led by Chev, the other by

Dawson. In unison, they formed a prong around the negotiation table.

Both Amelia and Olagy had invested heavily in a peace bond to insure that the proceedings would be conducted amicably. The surety sent from the Insurance Bod relayed his annoyance at Amelia's troops by bowing and posturing obsequiously, exaggerating his manners as a show of insolence. In contrast to Amelia's troops, the Slavers Bod officials carried no visible weapons, brought no soldiers. Although peace bonds were frequently broken on the pretense of technical violations, and although there were no formal mechanisms for enforcing the bonds in the absence of law, a show of arms when a peace bond had been placed was considered to be in poor taste.

"How unlike Amelia," observed Hubbel, "to breach etiquette. Chev Carson's influence, no doubt."

Wearing flexible armor, and decked out with guns, knives, and grenades, Magen took her place at the negotiation table. She refused to sit until Amelia's troops fell into tactical positions.

Amelia approached the table. She traded cryptic, nostalgic smiles with Hubbel, and she murmured greetings to Olagy. She thought Hubbel had aged well. Wrinkles and sags around his eyes gave his face a kindly, wise expression, though the parenthetical creases around his smile were too deep now, and he looked as if he had gotten them in a knife fight. His spine had stayed straight. He had kept most of his hair.

Amelia greeted Olagy courteously. He returned the greeting with a dull stare.

"How do you know you are dealing with the real Olagy?" Dawson called to Amelia, from behind a stand of oaks.

Olagy responded, "Everyone asks that question these days. I am bored with having to prove myself." He clapped his webbed hands.

A porter rolled out a silver cart on which rested twenty-four severed heads, each with identical reptilian features. Olagy shooed flies away from the riper display mountings.

"Here you have it," said Olagy. "All of my clones are dead."

"I'm convinced," said Amelia, averting her eyes and gesturing dismissal toward the cart.

A drumroll sounded. Out of the forest marched a procession of unarmed, slack-faced, naked slaves. They prostrated themselves at the sound of a trumpet blast, forming a carpet of flesh.

Dissa Banach made his entrance, striding over the backs of the flattened slaves. He wore shoes fitted with six-inch spikes, sharp enough to pierce bone. The slaves beneath him did not even flinch, not at the crunching sounds of punctured skulls, not at the warmth of blood flowing downhill, not at the sucking hiss of chest wounds. Glassy-eyed, they submitted to death and worse beneath Dissa's piercing tread. They showed no sign of objection, other than an occasional grunt.

"It is a horrible spectacle," muttered Hubbel, "but awesome." Amelia smiled halfheartedly, trying to be polite, trying not to show how much the display upset her.

Blood had glued leaves to Dissa's legs all the way up to his thighs. He said, as he came stomping toward Magen, "I always insist on the red-carpet treatment!" The spikes on his shoes scraped across ancient sidewalk beneath the leaves.

"You're not eating. I hope I haven't spoiled your appetite."

"The laws of my religion forbid all this food," said Magen, glaring.

Hubbel slapped himself on the forehead. "I'm so sorry," he said. "This is my fault. Tell us what you want to eat, and I shall send for it at once."

"I didn't come to eat. I want my husband returned to me."

"Perhaps we can arrange for a substitute," suggested Dissa.

"I want only my husband. No one else will do."

"A very quaint notion," said Hubbel, "but consider your position. Although your attacks have proved irksome, you cannot hope to prevail against the full armed might of the most powerful bod in the system. You must realize that, I'm sure. Your anachronistic ideas about sex were born of an age when beauty was rare and bestowed by chance. Fidelity carried epidemiological imperatives. Some vestiges of ancient feelings may surface from time to time…" Hubbel stole a glance at Amelia. "… but if you cling to them, they will kill you. We are trying to reach a compromise."

"No compromise," said Magen. "I am not like you. Maybe once I was, but I am not anymore. You are taught never to hold one mate. You share many partners, find beauty in anyone and take pleasure with everyone. My husband and I found the old ways were better. The old Earth ways. When I pledged myself to him, and to him alone, I found… such beauty. Two souls turned only to each other, trying to be one. It is worse than death to be away from him. You cannot know what I feel."

Hubbel leaned forward, resting his chin on a bridge of fingers, suddenly fascinated by the opportunity to observe firsthand a phenomenon he had only read about in old texts. He said, "Conventional wisdom holds that limiting your mating options leads to unhappiness. Even when romance was in vogue, people were fickle. Even the most ardent of loves were fragile, death taking the best of them.

Love is unwise—as best illustrated by your present circumstances."

"Give him back or I fight you forever!" Blood rushed to her face.

"She is ridiculous," said Dissa. "You can't deal with her."

"My husband is dead. Why do you not admit it? Why do you prolong this? Let us just get on with our fighting."

Dawson tensed, clearly afraid the girl was about to open fire. She was losing control.

"We aren't certain where he is. That's the truth," said Hubbel. "Tracking a single slave through our channels is far more difficult than you imagine. Every minute, all over the Draconian system, millions of slaves are bought, stolen, bartered, born, or buried. Nonetheless, we have devoted the bod's extensive resources to the problem. You must provide us with a full description of him and his background. I am curious as to what kind of man inspires such devotion in a woman."

"He is an ordinary man," said Magen, settling back in her chair. Just thinking about her husband seemed to calm her. "His name is Adam Greene. He is a bible scholar who brought me back to my people and the God of my ancestors."

Hubbel scanned her body language, her eye movements. He had been trained to spot symptoms of lying. He deduced that most of what she said was true, but not all of it.

"Women turn to God when the devil is done with them," said Dissa Banach.

"You are disrupting this conference," said Hubbel, trembling slightly as he turned to face Dissa. "I think you should leave!"

"I haven't eaten yet, and I'm hungry," said Dissa.

Hubbel turned to Olagy, and said, "I think you should order him to leave. We won't make any progress as long as he's here."

"Yes, yes," muttered Olagy, who was preoccupied with trying to lick loose a bit of syrupy fruit glued to one of his molars. "Dissa, go away, leave us alone."

Dissa glared. "We don't need public relations! All we need is fear!" He rose up from the table. Magen rose up as well. She seized Dissa by the shoulders suddenly, and before he had time to respond, she planted a kiss on his cheek and said, "God watch over you and grant you wisdom."

He wiped aside the wet spot with the back of his hand, disgust twisting his features. He stormed away into the shadows of the forest, his spikes clanking.

Hubbel turned his attentions to Magen. "You are a rather extraordinary woman. Alone and with limited resources, you've done noticeable damage to our operations. I cannot believe that an extraordinary woman can be satisfied with an ordinary man."

Magen looked down the table. She rubbed her forehead and took a deep breath of humid air. She looked Hubbel in the eye. "When I was a child, a horrible creature came into my room and told me to run for my life. I didn't even recognize that it was my mother—splashed with acid. From the sewers of the Summer World, I watched my entire village dissolve. My parents, my big sister, my uncles, my cousins, my friends. For one year I did not leave the sewers. I had no company but mugdubs. I swore no one would ever take me like my village was taken. So I pledge myself to the Mercenary Bod. My whole life I have done nothing for anyone but take lives. In the battlefields, in the shadows, doing assassin work. You think I am so special because I can do so much killing, so much smashing. But this is not special to me. Adam took me away from killing. I love him because he is ordinary." Her eyes burned. Love and desperation welled up in her. She gripped her hands together and they shook as if she were wresting with herself. Voice cracking, she said, "I love him because he is nothing like me!"

A single tear rolled down Hubbel's cheek. He said, "Your story moved me. I'm sorry." He wiped away the tear. "That was very unprofessional of me."

"Very professional, if you ask me," said Dawson, folding his arms across his chest. "And I bet that entire scene with Dissa was prearranged, too."

Amelia nodded. She knew Hubbel well. He kept his passions under tight rein, and only showed emotion when it suited his purposes.

Hubbel ignored Dawson's remarks. He said, "I will do everything in my power to find and free your husband. I promise this, but my promise is not unconditional. You must suspend all hostile actions against our bod during the interim period."

"If I stop fighting, you will stop looking. When you give me my husband back, I will stop fighting. Not until," said Magen coyly, settling back in her chair.

"But you are asking us to do a difficult, expensive task for you. How can we accomplish our mutual goal if the bod's resources are tied up with defending against your attacks?"

"If I stop fighting, you will think I've lost resolve. You will try to think up ambushes and tricks. No. Some beasts you can trust. Some you must give them sugar. And some beasts must be whipped to make them do the right thing."

"You are making a big mistake."

"Maybe yes. Maybe no."

Their business finished, the parties strategically withdrew from the table. The surety sat nibbling nervously at his mustache, patiently watching his clock as the slavers vanished into the patchwork wilderness. Chattering squirrels immediately fell upon the cold uneaten dinner, while crows and other carrion eaters attended to the corpses of the slaves who had laid down their lives beneath Dissa's spikes.

Amelia turned to Magen and asked, "Why did you kiss Dissa Banach? It was a beautiful gesture in some ways, foolish and disgusting in others. Don't get me wrong. I found it quaint. This religion thing of yours—does it tell you to love your enemies, too?"

"I picked his pocket," said Magen. She produced a handful of small items culled from Dissa's coat: an appointment book full of scrawled notations, a fingerblade, a key ring, a pornographic hologram. "I learned how to pick pockets from the street unincorps. That was before I joined the Merc Bod. I used to be good at picking pockets."

"It looks like you still are."

"Not so good as I used to be. He picked my pocket, too."

Leading Amelia's entourage, Dawson glanced cautiously around and cocked his hand blaster.

The surety remained in his chair. The sun began to set.

Magen tensed, she heard something. A faint hum. A click.

Amelia lay a reassuring hand on Magen's shoulder. "It's only the wind," she said smiling, as a gentle autumn breeze played across her hair.

Magen shoved Amelia violently to the ground, then dove for cover herself. A powerful blast of wind roared over the two women, sucking breath from their lips. The leaves scattered into swirling smears of color.

The twilight sky above boiled and darkened. Tattered clouds whipped around like epileptic spirits. The wind roared in bass. Tornado tendrils stabbed into various parts of the forest, sucking up leaves, animals, troopers— anything that got in their way.

Chev found the strength to hold his ground momentarily. The storm's suction grabbed at him. Flying leaves slapped his cheeks. He stripped off his shirt, twisted it into a cord, and tied himself tightly to the trunk of a sycamore. Secure, he fired off a round into the accelerating wind, aiming at blurred forms: leaves, limbs, and other objects gathered into the folds of the building storm. The sudden storm had not arisen naturally, he was sure. He stole a glance in the direction of the surety, ready to register a protest. The chair was empty, and the stand of trees behind the chair showed an increased percentage of red leaves.

Chev hurled a volley of concussion bombs into the roaring air, with the hope that the blasts would disrupt the weather patterns. The wind caught the bombs and threw them back. When the bombs detonated overhead, huge branches exploded loose and the debris disappeared into leaf cluttered slip streams.

Stripped of its branches, the tree that held Chev quivered violently in the wind. It rattled.

Flying objects carried by a banner of storm turned 180 degrees and shot back toward Chev. He cut himself loose from his tree and dove for the ground. His fingers scrambled for a handhold. The wind yanked his hair and pressured his face into a fish-lipped frown. His popping ears threatened to burst.

Inching his way across the root-choked ground, Chev found the spot where Amelia had fallen. She sobbed uncontrollably, her chest heaving, her hands covering her face, as if she were trying to keep the wind from vacuuming out her breath. Chev tried to calm her down, but she couldn't hear him over the roaring storm. He stopped trying to communicate with words and covered her with his weight while grabbing hold of the sturdiest roots he could find. Amelia kept crying.

Dawson was searching for Amelia in the mad haze of leaves, dust, and flying objects, when he spotted some-thing else—a shadow dancing in the eye of the storm. He looked harder, enhancing the image on his retina with computer overlays. It amazed him.

The entire storm poured from a cylindrical flying mechanism not much larger than ten feet in circumference and fifteen feet in height. Superheated rotating ratchets at the core of the mechanism spun wet warm air in a steady sweep into the chilled, foggy atmosphere of the Autumn World. Mist swirled in to fill the resulting vacuum, encircling the tower of warm updraft. As hot and cold air clashed, the upper levels of fog organized themselves into storm cells.

Dawson guessed that the device was self-sustaining, powered by the storm it had created. He coughed. It was getting impossible to breathe without filling his throat with dirt.

A dome of scattered leaves rode over the storm's eye, sucked upward by low pressure. Satellite probes, guided by laser and microwaves, were orbiting the main mechanism. They shifted position to aim jets of wind current. Thin red vectors swept across the vista.

Dawson fired several shots at the device, illuminating it with startling laser clarity. Some of the shots narrowly missed. The storm retaliated, blowing branches in Dawson's direction. The branches targeted him, then dropped in a heap. He vanished from sight, lost under the woodpile.

Magen stepped away from a sheltering stand of trees and took a shot at the device. A sudden blast of wind sent her skidding across the concrete street, which had been covered by leaves but was now stripped bare. She rolled with the wind, getting scraped and bruised. All around her, miles of drenched branches swayed back and forth, undulating like ocean waves.

Great tree trunks cracked and split open.

The forest reeked of sap and ozone.

Using her hand blaster, Magen punched footholds three feet deep in the concrete. She anchored herself, standing upright, then took aim. Animal parts, stones, branches, and clumps of dirt hurtled toward her. She shot most of the flying debris in midair and managed to dodge most of what slipped past her gunfire—but more objects flew at her. The winds blew so hard she could barely breathe. Her eyes were only half-open. Weird g-forces tugged at her, making her heart skip beats.

The storm's black chaos, its shrieks and howls, made it seem like something alive. Membranes of wind rose and fell. The clouds and mists and drafts shared an interactive relationship that fed each other's fury. Storm cells reproduced in undulating erotic rhythms, then coalesced. The beast not only hungered, it grew, it evolved.

On their bed of roots, Chev and Amelia trembled against the powerful suction. Chev's fingers were raw; his muscles were their only anchor. Amelia clung desperately to him, trying to contribute whatever gravity she could, but she felt insignificant. She felt unbound in space, weightless. It seemed she would fly away, but for the man who lay on top of her shaking and moaning with effort while the wind lacerated him.

The storm was everywhere: all-powerful, self-sustaining, and terrifying in its random treatment of the creatures trapped within its cloaks. The winds lifted some of the animals gently into the air and set them down safely miles away, sometimes in branches, or on beds of leaves. Other animals were grabbed violently, their limbs torn off or their eyes sucked out. A mile above the ground, a pitifully small human form gyrated frantically. Amelia couldn't tell if the soldier was still alive, if his form was animated by wind or by terror.

The sky churned, swirled, erupting with thunderbolts. Funnel clouds rose in curious intertwining helix formations.

Wind burned Magen's skin and chilled her bones. She said a prayer into the storm. The wind seemed to suck the words from her lips. Then the tail end of the jet stream passed. There was another moment's calm while the storm held its breath to change direction. This time as the wind current turned, it blew out the mirrored windows of the ruins and gathered the shattered glass. Roaring clouds of shrapnel flew directly at Magen. Abandoning her footholds, she charged back to the stand of trees. As she ran, bits of flying glass sheared through her clothing.

She dove for cover behind the stand of trees. The wind slammed into the trunks and branches, ripping away layers of bark. Glass, splinters, and wood chips sprayed like confetti. Magen hugged the wet ground as the vibrating air, full of fragments, flew over her, millions of tiny crystal blades.

In the space of a breath, Magen stood and fired at the mechanical heart of the storm. It was only a shadow surrounded by swirling veils, a ghost of an image. She aimed more by instinct than by sight, reaching for a center in the chaos. In a moment of calm, she knew exactly where to shoot. Her gun flared.

She nicked the machine. It spun wildly and crashed into an ancient tower of glass; then it wobbled around, trying to right itself. As the winds began to disperse, and as friction weakened the percolating storm cells, Magen fired again, sure of herself. This time she scored a direct hit, shearing the rotaries in midair. The mechanism broke into three parts and scattered.

The dark dervish clouds began to unwind, visibly turning to mist as the wind slowed. Heavy ancient relics began to rain out of the sky, along with leaves, branches, and bits of mirror.

The helix whirlwinds surrendered, falling apart. The multiple membranes of the eye wall dissolved and the remnants collapsed into one another. Squall lines became un-bruised and billowed upward. The sky began to fill with soft pastel colors against the night, diffuse refractions of starlight shining in dull rainbows as the mist gathered. The endless cover of knitting fog, lit by occasional flashes of light, made it seem as if the atmosphere were trying to mend the terrible rifts wrought by the storm. It was glorious to watch the storm end and the sky fix itself.

Magen found herself standing in the center of an enormous star-burst shape on the ground etched by a wind shear. Wringing chilled water from her hair, she shivered. The howl and whistle of dying winds sounded almost like silence compared to the roar that had preceded them. Her ears were clearing. After a while, she could even hear the soft rustle of leaves in the dissipating gusts.

Covered by mud and sap, Amelia and Chev untangled their embrace and rose up from their bed of roots.

Dawson slowly tore himself from the pile of fallen branches that had covered him. He began to search the perimeter for their craft, or whatever was left of it.

Chapter Four

THE BUTCHER

Amelia sat alone in the cloud garden, watching the cumulus fulminate with half-glazed eyes. Small rainbows encircled the stars shining through the mist. She absently toyed with her multilayered diaphanous robe.

Magen wore a jacket of leather and silver, and a matching kerchief on her head. A small goatskin bag dangled from her shoulder. Magen had dressed for travel.

"I have come to say good-bye and to ask a favor," said Magen.

"How can I help you?"

"I need a ship."

"Of course. And you're so certain I'll grant the favor, you're saying good-bye in advance?"

"Yes, and thank you for everything."

Amelia stood and paced. She resented being taken for granted, but more than that, she resented being found so predictable. "Where are you going?"

"It is best if you do not know."

Amelia caught her hand. "Perhaps I will grant one last favor for you. There is something I want in return, though. I don't know how to say this. I think… I think I am in love."

"Chev?"

"I think so. But I am not sure. I don't know anyone else to ask about this. Usually I take my questions to Dawson, but what would a slave know about love? What is love? How do you identify love? The old books say you can tell at a glance, at the moment you meet. But when I first met Chev, I felt nothing—absolutely nothing. He was beneath contempt."

"I did not like Chev either, not very much, when we first met."

"But what about your husband? Did you love him the first time you saw him?"

Magen shifted her gaze from Amelia to rows of billowing cumulus miniatures. Her tone grew distant and her eyes narrowed. She muttered, "I thought I was going to kill him."

Amelia shivered. "Take a ship. Leave."

The first time Magen saw the man she would later marry, she was looking through the crosshairs on the sniper scope of a high-power rifle.

Although Magen's husband had been sold into slavery under the name Adam Greene, his real name was Adam Hirsch. At the time of his capture, he had been traveling incognito. The pseudonym had been necessary, for a tremendous bounty had been placed on his head by a coalition of bods.

Magen herself had once tried to collect that bounty.

She crouched on a carpet more lush with fungus than fabric, on the third floor of a derelict hotel. The poorly lit room stank of yeasty piss. Mugdubs rolled in a corner, their footprint motifs played over the interior like an ugly wallpaper pattern.

The room overlooked a vast, open-air unincorp marketplace. Magen primed her laser rifle. Peering through the gun's sniper scope, she scanned the crowd around the trade stalls below. She passed over a fat man with a ring in his nose coupling with a courtesan under her gene-spliced peacock feathers. She shifted her focus, saw a child, a street unincorp, torturing a mange-riddled dog. Then a pumped-up steroid mutant came into view—he was smashing a food vendor's cart.

A commanding voice began to boom out from some point she could not immediately identify. The bystanders slowly turned away from their various transactions and listened. The babble of voices began to hush.

That was when she spotted him.

Adam Hirsch stood almost seven feet tall. Even under the cover of loose-fitted dark clothing, the solid bulk of his muscle was unmistakable. A dark beard bubbled down his chest. His curly hair winged out around his ears. Magen found him uniquely handsome, despite the odd black hat he wore and the wire-rim glasses. He had the intense, blue-eyed gaze and high forehead of an intellectual. Men who were handsome on the raw force of their personality, without any genetic engineering, were extremely rare. This man's genuineness, and his undeniable power, stirred something primitive in Magen. She felt as if she were confronting a mountain. She regretted having to kill him.

She assessed her murderous options. With a fine, nearly invisible beam, she could gun down Hirsch undetected—however, the scope's optic overlays confirmed that Hirsch was wearing heavy shielding that would deflect any finely honed beam. She could punch through the shielding at this distance with a heavier beam setting, but that would cut a red vector straight to her location. The market below offered no escape routes. A strange crowd had gathered to hear Hirsch speak—unwashed unincorp artisans, prostitutes, pirates, and a surprising number of bod middle-level managers who had come to trade pilfered goods for items they could not obtain owing to fiscal cutbacks.

The crowd was ten times larger than she had expected. They were enthusiastically cheering Hirsch. Hookers, pirates, middle managers. They all loved him.

Adam Hirsch's heavily armed bodyguards mingled with the crowd outside the hotel, patrolling the perimeters around the trade stalls. Magen spotted them easily. Then she searched for the group of mercenaries who had allegedly been hired to maintain order for the gathering, and to lay down cover fire for Magen's escape. But she couldn't find them. She wondered if they were even there.

Magen rummaged through a chamois backpack and pulled up a tarnished Luger. The gun had been pressed into her hands by her dying mother. Having no time to pass on teachings, morals, or values, her mother passed on a legacy of death. Ammunition for the unspeakably rare and ancient weapon had been hard to come by. The bullets had to be custom crafted on the Winter World. Ballistic weaponry had become a largely overlooked technology in the system. It was sort of a lingering taboo, too earthly, too simple. And yet the old gun suggested many possible solutions for her present problem. If she could get close enough, she could fire from inside the crowd. Hirsch's diffusion shield would not stop a metal projectile. The bullet's trajectory would be invisible. She could fire and lose herself in the ensuing melee.

The weapon felt old and dusty in her grip.

She headed down to crowd level, descending a vomit-stained staircase that creaked and wobbled under her weight. Magen had to force the front door open, for the crowd had swollen and surrounded the hotel.

All exits from the market were choked off.

She tried to squeeze through the multitude, then gave up. Her gun remained holstered inside her leather jacket. She looked for the disguised mercs who were supposed to have kept people away. Either they had never showed up, or they had become intimidated by the size and eagerness of the throng. Or perhaps the mercs, too, had been caught up in the speaker's spell.

For an hour, Hirsch spoke through a bullhorn, advocating the establishment of government to control the bods. Magen understood very little of what he said. She had trouble hearing over the murmurs and cheers. But Hirsch impressed her with his command of the crowd.

He said, "Using sophisticated psychological manipulations, the bods have created two categories of slaves. There are slaves who know they are slaves, and there is everyone else—the slaves who don't know what they are. It is time to stop hating yourselves." He repeated the last simple phrase over and over. "It is time to stop hating yourselves."

That phrase struck a common chord in the disparate crowd. Almost all of them had been raised in bods that promoted self-contempt as part of the corporate culture. Individual egos were subverted to further company goals. For a moment, everyone assembled threw off self-hatred and cheered. Even Magen was cheering.

She knew that it would be difficult, very difficult, to kill this man. She stopped listening to his voice, and turned her attention to scheming.

For the next two weeks, Magen followed Adam Hirsch, taking note of his habits, listening to his speeches. During all that time, not one opportunity for a clean hit presented itself—at least, no opportunity she couldn't rationalize away.

Then she discovered one gaping breach in his security system. He placed an inordinate amount of faith in an aged hermit named Papa Russia, a butcher and a cook. The old man prepared all of Hirsch's meals.

One morning Magen followed Papa Russia from Hirsch's hotel room. The trail led through unincorporated dark alleys to the outskirts of the city, to the wet, mushroom-infested jungle that sprawled under the shadow of Summer City's towers.

She landed her aircraft, pulping the ground with blasts from her retro rockets. The landing raised clouds of spores.

She planned to survey the old man's operations and to put poison on his cookware or in his spices. She had just the right kind of poison—something very slow-acting, so slow that even if the old man sampled his preparations while he was cooking, he would still live long enough to deliver the meal to Hirsch.

The air hung wet, scented with mildew. Magen climbed from her craft, then hacked away some spongy undergrowth. She heard something heavy stumbling through the brush.

Suddenly a large, primitive-looking bull ambled in front of her. It was looking for grass, or whatever it ate. Its slippery hooves beat a skittish tattoo on the slime-covered remnants of an old tile floor that lay beneath the fungus. Magen instinctively reached for a weapon; there were so many to choose from—lining her pockets, strapped to her limbs and body hollows. She opted for something sharp and noiseless, something that wouldn't flash. Though the bull presented no danger, and no sport, she killed it anyway. Something about this place made her nervous, very nervous.

As she explored further, she found the collapsing ruins of a long-abandoned development community. Despite the decay, despite the blue-green patina of moss covering what was left of apartment facades, there was no mistaking the distinctive patterns of acid damage.

Magen had stumbled onto the ruins of the old Jewish Quarter of the Summer World. She could dimly make out the shapes of mezuzahs on the doorframes.

The place had never shed its reputation for plague, and the city had realigned its borders to exclude the imagined contagion. An electric tingle shivered through Magen's spine.

She ran down the streets of the ghost town, occasionally seeing vaguely recognizable buildings that set off a chain of overwhelming, mixed emotions. Before the pogrom, she had been very happy as a child. This was the only place she had ever known happiness, but she could not access any happy memories without conjuring memories of terror.

Old skulls peered at her from beneath layers of moist fungus along the street.

Suddenly two flashes of blue light stabbed her. One blast seared her shoulder; the other cut her left thigh, throwing her to the moss-wet ground. A red targeting dot fluttered over her heart. She had foolishly let her guard down in a moment of emotional weakness. She had let the old man get the drop on her.

He surprised her again, this time by not firing. He let her know how accurately his handgun was aimed, as a warning, but he did not pull the trigger. It made no sense to her, letting an armed stranger linger in your sights.

"Throw aside all of your weapons," said Papa Russia.

Magen tossed aside a token handgun and a dagger to appease him.

"Why did you come here?" he demanded.

Magen said nothing. She was in too much pain to come up with a credible lie.

"I could have killed you easy, you know it."

"Thank you for letting me live."

"Maybe I am crazy to do that. You must tell me the truth. What are you after here? I warn you, I am not afraid to kill. I let you live because I have too much blood on my hands already. I do not like to kill, but if I have to…"

She blurted out the truth. "This was my home when I was a child." She said it reluctantly, particularly with the red dot dancing over her heart. She rarely revealed her background. She had intentionally forgotten most of what she knew about her heritage. She knew this much—it placed her in constant jeopardy. It made people distrust her, fear her, and sometimes, hate her.

"You are a Jew?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes."

She told her story, saying nothing of her present assignment. Papa Russia interrogated her at great length. The red dot fluttered over her heart as the old man's hand shook with slight parkinsonian tremors. He pressed her on a number of details about her childhood. He spoke strange words and gauged her reactions. He asked her about the atrocities.

She answered all of his questions honestly—but she had trouble looking him in the eye. She'd never seen such drastic, undoctored effects of old age, except in photographs. The wrinkles, the odors, the random loss of hair and teeth revolted her. She knew she was risking her life by avoiding his gaze, but she couldn't help herself.

He lowered the gun and shut off the targeting mechanism. At this close range, she could kill him instantly in a dozen different ways—but he seemed to have settled down. He wasn't threatening her anymore, and if she killed him, her plan for poisoning Hirsch would be blown.

He said, "I have some wine with me. It will help your pain."

"I have these," said Magen, pulling out two anesthetic adhesives.

Papa Russia shook his head. "Those only increase the chance of infection in this heat, and they are highly carcinogenic. They are made to get you through a fight, and to hell with you after that. I know. I used to be a doctor with the bods."

She took the wine.

"Can you walk?"

She nodded. "It is only pain."

They walked a short distance to a farmhouse, little more than portions of prefab houses shoved together and hammered loosely in place. Chickens clucked. Their claws clattered atop the tin-gabled roof. The windows had been taken from the synagogue, stained-glass murals depicting scenes from Exodus.

"You want something to eat?" asked the old man.

"It is not necessary."

"You want a sandwich? I got good sandwiches. And I got a pickle."

"Well, I am getting hungry."

Inside, the farmhouse was dark except for muted points of color shining through the story of Moses. Papa Russia began to light candles on a row of antique menorahs, some partially dissolved with blue-green acid scars. He found a roll of gauze.

He crossed over to her side and held out his hands. She offered her wounded thigh to him. He disinfected it with some primitive, stinking liquid, and began to wrap the gauze.

"I think I knew your parents. If they are who I think, they used to live downstairs from my cousin Yoshe. God rest his soul. I am glad I did not kill you. There are not many Jews in the Draconian system, and very, very few young pretty girls. You got a boy?"

"From time to time."

He shot her a disapproving look. "You should marry."

He went over to his icebox, and pulled out some meat wrapped in rumpled plastic. "I have lived here all alone twelve years," he said. "You are my first guest."

"Were there no other survivors?"

"Yes. A fair number. There are hidden ghettos in the unincorp sections of this world. The braver souls fled to the Spring World, where they live with no technology."

"Why do you live all alone?"

A look of great sadness misted the old man's eyes. For a moment, he seemed withdrawn, deep in thought. She thought he was getting ready to confide something to her. He was lonely, not truly a hermit by nature.

"This is my home," he said, at last. But it didn't ring true. They didn't want him, she thought.

He cut two slices of yellow bread, and threw them together with a leaf of lettuce, a pickle, some tomato slices, and a coat of mustard. He handed the sandwich to her as if it were an heirloom.

She smiled and took a large bite, but immediately spat it out. She couldn't help herself. The meat was stringy and it had a primitive, greasy taste, thickly bovine and gamy. It was undisguised heavy animal muscle—the most horrible thing she had ever tasted.

"You're not used to eating kosher food," he said. "You like better bioengineered meat. I grant you—it is more tender, and more… gentle… in taste. But it is unclean. The great summer plague they blamed on us, it came from gene-spliced cattle. Did you know that?"

"No," said Magen. She felt sick to her stomach.

"When I was younger, I was like you. I ate the meat of the bods, and I must confess, I liked it. I liked it too much. But it is an abomination before God the way they crossbreed species."

His reference to God was the first she'd heard since the massacre. She had vivid recollections of an all-powerful fairy-tale father figure who watched everything in the universe all at once. She had imagined him sitting in a great hall of video screens. Her parents told her to trust in God with his infinite wisdom and his supernatural powers. They told her God would protect her and watch over her. After the great pogrom, she stopped trusting God. It came as no surprise to her when she discovered that religion had fallen out of vogue all over the system.

Papa Russia continued, "Let me explain something very difficult to understand. I did not understand it when I was your age, and I have suffered greatly for not understanding. Suffered very greatly.

"Listen to me. However you grew up—whatever you believe—you are a Jew, and God demands you live like a Jew. That means you must give up certain things. You must behave a certain way. You must follow certain laws."

Magen said, "I don't understand 'laws."

"Laws are like what you call protocols. Prescribed actions. These laws are not easy to follow. Our ancestors called themselves the 'Chosen People.' Not because they thought they were better than anyone else. The legends say they did not want to be chosen—at first. They stood under a mountain to receive the laws, Mount Sinai, it was called, on Earth. The great books tell us to read the passage literally—that God lifted the mountain into the air, held it above the heads of our ancestors, and told them that if they did not accept the laws, the mountain would be dropped."

"You expect me to believe this?"

"It doesn't matter what you believe. Only what you do. If you obey the laws, belief will follow. Sometimes our people have not obeyed the laws, over the course of our fifteen-thousand-year history. When they forget the laws, then comes the troubles. Like here. There were many Jews violating the laws here. Not keeping the sabbath. Eating the unclean meat. That's what confused me."

Suddenly he grew silent.

"What do you mean?"

"I was very confused when I was young." He seemed eager to stop talking, for a change, embarrassed at having been caught babbling like an old man.

They walked through a wing of the house decorated with plaster death masks. The old man had taken as many as he could from the corpses littering the streets. He had no other way to keep a record of the dead. Magen scanned the walls. All of the plaster faces seemed both familiar and strange.

Papa Russia poured her a glass of sweet cherry wine. They sat on the veranda for an hour. The wine on an empty stomach went straight to her head. She forgot completely about her mission until the old man said that it was time for the slaughter.

He had a dinner to prepare and a cow to kill.

He busily set to work sharpening a long metal knife, screwing up his eyes to check for nicks along the blade. "The knife must be perfectly sharp according to the laws of God," he said. "An imperfect blade makes an imperfect cut, which might pain the animal. The slaughter must be painless—it is a sign of respect for God's creation that you wish to eat. The laws of kashruth are the most blessed and merciful laws of killing in the universe."

Magen let out a sarcastic grunt. Now he was talking about killing—something she understood almost perfectly. "If you want a flawless cut, and a perfect blade, why not use a laser? If you really want to be fast, painless…"

"Because that is too easy. If you respect the animal, you must take the extra time to sharpen the blade yourself, to check it for flaws. You must not take the easy way. Does this make sense to you? Nicely honed steel can cut as fast— maybe faster—than a laser. Believe me."

She nodded, and picked up the knife, testing its weight, eyeing the rainbows dancing along its edge. She found his arguments for steel compelling in their own way, and felt a kinship with the old man. But she wondered— did the kinship stem from her distant and largely unknown heritage? Or did they have only one thing in common—killing?

She watched, not even flinching, as he cut the cow's throat. He used a single swift slash that severed the trachea, the esophagus, the vagus nerves, the carotid artery, and the jugular vein. The cow died instantly, spouting a geyser of blood. Digestive juices, gore, and knots of chewed grass spewed out of the neck wound. The old man muttered prayers. He checked the organs for purity and examined tissue samples under a microscope to insure the absence of chromosomal engineering.

When he was done preparing the meat, he walked back to the kitchen in the farmhouse and set to work chopping vegetables with the same care and respect he had shown the cow.

Magen wandered across the veranda while Papa Russia was fixing the meal. She pulled yellowed books down off a shelf. Though they were written in a language she couldn't understand, the dry smell of the aged paper and the odd shapes of a melted, mirror-image alphabet made her shiver.

Her assignment grew distant, even repugnant to her. She considered going unincorp and staying in this green and private place forever—or at least until she could work through all the feelings that were tearing her apart.

She strayed into another room. More death masks covered the walls. Each face in this room differed only slightly from the one beside it, chronicling a gradual deterioration. Magen realized it was the face of Papa Russia, a self-portrait of the aging process. There was a great deal of emotional pain visibly struggling across the replicated features. It seemed as if pain had wrought as much damage as the passage of time. She traced the old man's history across the wall, from youth to obsolescence and back again. This time the earliest mask struck a chord of recognition. She knew that face from somewhere. The memory nagged at her through the wine. Then she shrugged off the feeling as some irrelevant childhood association, or an artificial recollection manufactured by studying the multiple variations of his sad face.

She went back on the veranda, headed for the kitchen. The sun beat hard on her hair. Her wounds ached. Dizziness gathered in her throat.

Strapped behind her thigh, she kept a small vial of nerve toxin. She pulled it loose and held it to the light like a purple gem. The slow, painful death it would produce seemed somehow grossly inappropriate for Adam Hirsch. She thought about killing him up close, with steel, as a sign of respect. But that would not be possible. Poison. There was no other way.

She stood in the kitchen door, waiting for the old man to finish his preparations, holding the purple vial in the hollow of her hand.

When the dinner was ready, the old man gathered it into pots and boxes. Papa Russia turned his back for a moment, and Magen emptied her vial into the soup.

She helped him carry the meal out to his flier. The two of them kept staring at each other as they walked past acid-burned buildings and bone-filled streets under the sun. Being out in the open seemed to have suddenly changed the way they regarded one another.

At the edge of the ruins, Papa Russia found his bull where Magen had killed it. He knelt by the animal's corpse, and retrieved Magen's blade extending from the base of its neck. His eyes accused her.

"Why did you do this?"

"He frightened me."

"Do not lie to me, girl. You do not frighten so easy."

He studied her face. "Why did you come here?" Suddenly he saw her in a different light—not as a lost kinsman returned to the fold. He saw the coldness in her eyes, and he saw the hardened muscles of a warrior straining against her clothing. "Why did you come here?"

"I told you."

"You came looking for me."

"No. I just came looking. What is so special about you that I should come looking for you?" Her stance shifted.

The old man began to shake, suddenly realizing the danger he had been in all along. He mopped his brow with a cotton kerchief. "You are going to kill me?"

She studied him. "I do not kill for no reason. I do not like it."

"What about the bull?"

"I had my reasons. It was this place. It upset me."

Papa Russia closed his eyes and held them closed as if expecting an explosion. A full minute later, he opened them.

Magen hadn't moved. His shoulders quivered as he sucked air. "You are not going to kill me?"

"No."

"Thank God. I am just being a foolish old man. I have been rude to you, I think. Can you forgive me?"

"Yes. I do not think you are so foolish. I expect people to be afraid of me. I worry when they are not."

"That is no way for a young girl to be. Would you like to come with me to dinner? There is someone I would like you to meet. You will like him. And there is much you can learn from him."

She paused, afraid to refuse—half-certain she had botched her scheme over this stupid business with the bull.

"I do not like your cooking very much," she said.

"Oh. Oh yes." The old man glanced at the pots and boxes they were both carrying. "You don't have to eat it. But come with me and meet my friend. You will like him. And you don't have to eat my cooking."

She accepted the offer, figuring she had nothing to lose. The old man was too full of God and ideals to have any guile. He had set no traps, she felt certain. Having established a satisfactory excuse for not eating, she could sit back and be a spectator at dinner. She could make small talk and flirt with Adam Hirsch. The poison would not take effect for two weeks.

Magen steered Papa Russia's lightweight craft through the city. Her daredevil approach to flying unnerved him no end, particularly when she insisted on fooling with her makeup in the rearview mirror while traveling at high speeds.

"You are pretty enough already!" shouted Papa Russia.

Her sudden concern for appearances had nothing to do with vanity. She applied touches of highlights and color to deemphasize the severity of her features, and to defrost her uncaring gaze. She pulled off the elastics that kept her hair bound in a tight assassin's knot. Her sun-tinted mane fell loosely around her shoulders. It was beautiful hair.

"You should keep your head covered when you go to meet Adam," said Papa Russia. He found a faded, rumpled old hat jammed underneath the backseat of the flier. He handed it to her. "Wear this."

To humor him, she put on the hat. At every opportunity, when the old man looked away, or covered his eyes to avoid dealing with the way Magen drove, she discretely shed her remaining weapons.

The old man shouted directions to Adam's Summer headquarters. She knew the way well, but pretended she didn't.

The flier jetted into the unincorp section of town. The buildings lacked the flourishes, advertising, arches, and statuary that adorned bod-built structures. Instead, the architecture was unrelentingly functional, all rectangles and prefab, painted only by accumulations of graffiti.

Magen swooped down to a landing and bounced on impact with the road. Rubber wheels screeched.

Hirsch's followers were patrolling the perimeters. They eyed Magen suspiciously.

The guard at the front door would not let her in.

"That's fine," said Magen. She turned to Papa Russia. "I will meet your friend some other time."

Papa Russia said to the guard, "She is all right. She is a friend. And she is a Jew, believe it or not. I want to introduce her to Adam. She is a Jew."

The guard, who wore a cross around his neck, seemed unpersuaded.

They searched her electronically and manually. Even divested of her weapons, she was not trusted. She felt hopelessly out of her element, and regretted coming along. She hoped she could bluff her way through the rest of the evening, but already she had her doubts. Playacting was not one of her strong points, nor was dealing with people outside of a combat or bod social context. She felt naked without her weapons, and ridiculous with Papa Russia's smashed hat on her head. At least it made her look less threatening.

"She is all right," insisted Papa Russia, just as the magnetic frisk device stopped buzzing.

The guard let her pass. Magen carried in Papa Russia's heavy iron pots piled one on top of another, with the highest pot just under her chin. She found the smell almost unbearable. Her arms began to ache, particularly around her wounded shoulder.

Papa Russia led her down a papyrus-colored corridor. A malfunctioning air-conditioner hissed. The air hung wet and artificially cold, smelling of chilled mildew.

She heard a baritone voice at the far end of the hall making strange sounds. As she drew closer, she recognized the sounds as a kind of singing. Note clusters repeated without regard to any coherent structure, driven only by the meter of a foreign prose. The music was as basic and potent as the taste of Papa Russia's kosher meat.

She started walking faster, struggling with the fragments of a memory. Abruptly, the music stopped. As Hirsch prepared to leave his room, his shadow fell through the doorway and spilled out into the corridor. It looked like the shadow of a ghost, with a tombstone-shaped head and massive shoulders.

Hirsch stepped out into the yellow light wearing a prayer shawl wrapped over his head like a hood. Dark leather straps bound one small black box to the center of his forehead, and a second black box to the inside of his left arm. A rush of memories took Magen completely by surprise. Standing in the corridor, Adam Hirsch brought to mind the image of her father at prayer just before sunset.

The pots slipped out from her grasp. The poisoned dinner spilled out over a well-worn, deeply stained rug.

The guards rushed inside at the sound of clattering metal. They berated Magen, their anger fueled by hunger. A wall of shouting men surrounded her. They gestured with weapons in their hands, punctuating their curses with unspoken threats. Unarmed, she felt helpless.

"Leave her alone!" shouted Adam. "It was an accident. It is nothing to get so upset about. It was only a meal!" His voice boomed over the din.

Magen burst into tears. An effigy of her father had rescued her. She found herself on the cusp of emotions long repressed and subverted to the business of survival.

After a few moments of conversation with Adam Hirsch, Magen felt as if she had known him for years. His voice was hypnotic, perhaps purposefully so.

She told him about her fights in the sewers under the besieged ghetto. She told him about picking the pockets of Summer tourists, and about her life in the bods. They talked all night.

Magen fell asleep on the couch. When she awoke, she decided she would not—could not—kill Adam Hirsch.

She failed to report to her bod that afternoon. Within a week, she had gone unincorp.

Adam made arrangements for Magen's housing. She moved into the refurbished dormitory where most of Adam's followers lived. The building had been vacated by a defunct toymaker's bod following a long and ruinous bankruptcy war. Commercial slogans and odd pictures of baby-faced animals appeared through tattered wallpaper, sharply contrasting with the icons and religious figurines that formed the new decor. All the tenants followed one religion or another. They had all gone unincorp to promote Adam's political movement, yet most of them seemed more interested in prayer than politics.

The amount of time her neighbors spent reading their sacred texts astounded Magen. The writings were unbelievably ancient. Generally, due to the intense proliferation of data in the system, most Draconians treated anything older than thirteen weeks as obsolete. Nonetheless, around the complex, the old Earth religions seemed most favored. There were many Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, but the greatest number were Universalists. Adam had recruited heavily among the theistic minority in the system, and he promoted new theologies to forge his disparate followers into a kind of unity.

Adam visited the compound frequently and held inter-faith discussions. In one of the larger basements, he lectured to a group of newcomers, which included Magen.

He began by discussing changes in the laws of physics during recent recorded history—particularly the astounding changes brought about by warp travel.

"These changes," he argued, "should force men to new conclusions about the nature of God. To build on a biblical metaphor, if man has been made in God's image, then God is a living entity made of both spirit and sub-stance. As with all living things, God's spirit is inextricably and interchangeably bound to his physical manifestation, which is the universe. Changes in the order of physical reality force me to the conclusion that God is changing as well. I believe that God is evolving. I believe that God has always been evolving. Perhaps the creation of the universe is one of the prime achievements of his evolutionary process.

"Identifying God as an evolving entity seems to be the only solution to the many questions that troubled me all my life. Questions such as: Why are there so many different religions? Why is it important for people to have free will? Why does God bother with the upkeep of the universe? What is in it for him?

"But if you consider that God is evolving, the format of creation makes sense. God created a universe in which all living things have free will so that the natural order would be in a constant state of flux, unprogrammed, wild, sometimes chaotic, alternatively hideous and beautiful—a universe shaping itself of its own accord—to catalogue possibilities. This senseless universe seems to have been designed by a perfect being for one purpose. So that God can explore his potential over eternity. So that the all-knowing can learn."

Adam further postulated that part of God's evolutionary process was dependent on prayer—the prayers of a vast complement of competing, perhaps even contradictory religions. He argued that no single set of beliefs, no matter how comprehensive or cogent, could explain all the endless mysteries of God. Acceptance of mystery for its own sake was not good enough anymore. God was trying to understand himself. Adam suggested that prayer was part of an ongoing feedback and negative feedback system. He urged that prayer was meant to be far more than a simple act of adoration.

Using Adam's rationale, rabbis began to reinterpret the ancient Hebrew maxim that man was not meant to learn from nature, but rather to rise above it.

Adam's Christian followers espoused new theories about God's motives for becoming flesh.

Adam's Hindu followers found a new rationale for their belief that a soul cannot join Brahman until it has advanced through trial, setback, and growth.

There were still many quarrels with the concept, though, in all quarters. The notion flew in the face of the concept that God is immutable, sacred to many religions. Adam pointed out that in a changing universe, even perfection is relative, and God must change in order to remain the same. The paradox appealed to many of the younger generation, but the elders found it glib, and dissatisfying.

In another era, Adam might have been burned at the stake for suggesting that perfection had room for improvement, but he argued that anything is possible for an omnipotent being. Draconian theologians became fascinated by the proposition. Atheism was still the dominant belief mode in Draconian society, and a framework for interfaith cooperation was desirable for political reasons. In this context, the differences between faiths began to appear less and less significant.

There had been a much earlier attempt to join all religions together through the Universalist Church back on Earth. It had failed miserably, creating new dogmas rather than reconciling old, and setting off decades of holy war. Adam's movement was the first opportunity in centuries to reverse the trend of moral entropy that had gripped the system since the banning of warp travel.

Adam's followers shared a common goal in addition to their somewhat similar values, but the popular acceptance of Adam Hirsch's ideas—be they heresy or revelation— owed more to his personal charisma than anything else.

Magen shared a room with a woman named Elsa, who sang litanies off-key and hung the walls with holographic depictions of Golgotha. After a few days of listening to Elsa's preaching, Magen confronted Adam. She asked, "Do you really believe this business about God evolving and needing all kinds of prayers? Or is it just an excuse to bring people together?" The question had been the subject of much debate and conjecture on the compound.

"Who can say what God is, or what he is doing? With God, anything is possible."

"Then why don't you pray like a Christian sometimes, or like a Muslim?"

"Because I am a Jew. All faiths play a part in God's plan, but I am a Jew. The heart cannot do the work of the liver, not even on a part-time basis."

"You have me very confused about where you want me to live, Adam. When I was a child, the Jews lived with Jews and the non-Jews lived with the non-Jews. My father said that was the way things should be. Was he wrong?"

"You can learn from the other religions around you. We are short of housing right now. Perhaps things will change when the movement gathers more followers. Where you live is fine—it is better than most unincorp facilities, don't you think? Would you rather go back to your bod?"

"They took better care of me."

"Did they really?"

"In some ways. Adam, why can't I live with you?"

He took her hand. "If you stay with me, it will always be less comfortable than life with the bods. Always."

"I don't mind if we are together."

He suddenly seemed to notice her hand in his and lifted it to his lips. She fascinated him. He admired her will, her courage, and her strength. Though not beautiful in the classic sense, her face was interesting; he admired her chutzpah in not having it doctored. Magen had become a challenge to Adam. She represented the Draconian tragedy, the loss of roots, the absence of values. If he could find a way to change her, then perhaps he could change the entire system.

He wanted her to change and he knew there were many ways to bring about rapid and long-lasting fundamental changes in the behavior patterns of individuals. One way was through religion. Adam did his best to reintroduce Magen to Jewish life. It was slow, difficult work. She hated kosher food, and she hated going to temple because she had to sit away from Adam. Another way to change people was through love. They spent more and more time together. The interactions of these two extremely dissimilar spirits began to produce strange and intense romantic harmonies.

One night, Adam asked Magen to dine alone with him at his apartment in the unincorp sector. Sensing something auspicious in the invitation, Magen dressed herself in the most seductive fashions she could find: a sheer, tight-fitting outfit trimmed with frills and leather.

His eyes widened when he opened the door to greet her. At first she felt flattered, but as the evening wore on, there was no mistaking his shock and dismay. He avoided looking at her and kept unusually quiet.

She finally asked, "Did I do something wrong?"

"Your clothes. It is not right to bare so much of your body. A woman should be more modest."

"You don't like to see my body?"

He looked into her eyes, showing he wasn't intimidated. "You are an attractive woman. That isn't the point."

She edged closer. "Adam, I want to lie with you tonight. I have wanted you so much for so very long. I can't wait any longer. You want me, too. I know it."

He nodded, smiling. "But we are not married. It goes against the laws."

She laughed. "The laws. That's all you ever talk about,

Adam. That's all you ever think about. Why should God, the great, all-knowing, evolving spirit of the universe, care at all if I lie with you with no marriage? Why should he care?"

"The special commandments—mitzvahs—are constant reminders of the holiness of life, so that every moment you exercise some kind of self-control. Free will is God's greatest gift. God wants you to celebrate your ability to make choices every moment, so that you never forget your own worth. You would be surprised at how easily people forget the value of life."

"No, I wouldn't," she said bitterly.

Adam stared at the city's spires shining in the distance, reminding him of how the bods offered technological solutions to every problem. He saw the central headquarters of the Slavers Bod, literally painted in the blood of its workers. "You know what runs the system, don't you? Death worship. Slavery. Terror. I can't understand how so much evil is embraced."

"With so much wrong in the universe, why should God prohibit small pleasures?" She put her arms around him.

"Perhaps because God knows how weak people are," he answered. "He wants to keep them busy with little things, trivial prohibitions, so they will be too busy for major mischief."

"But why should he care about things so unimportant?"

"All throughout the system, you can see that people will do whatever they can get away with—and they always test to see just how much that is. If you draw the line at marriage and the mikvah, you will have a lot less adultery."

He still had not answered her question, at least not to her satisfaction—but Adam had taken the discussion outside of her range, and veered off on one of his philosophical discussions. She couldn't outword him, so she shifted the conversation.

"I think I could limit myself to just one man, if he were very special, like you."

"Are you saying you would marry me?"

"I think it is something I would like to try."

"Marriage is not something you try. You make a decision, and you live with it."

"All right, then."

"All right what?"

"I will marry you." She nestled closer to him.

He paused, more than a little embarrassed. He wanted to escape from the moment without making her lose face. "I don't know, Magen. When you show up dressed like this, I think you are not ready to accept my ways. You will not fit in with the Jewish community. Your soul, I fear, still belongs to the bods."

She shook her head, exasperated. "Why do you go on and on about this? I said I would marry you."

"I haven't asked you yet."

"So what do I have to do to get you to ask?"

"I don't know. I was going to ask you to marry me. Not tonight, but soon. Then you show up dressed like this and I fear there will be problems between us."

She laughed. "I think it is silly to change your mind because you don't like my clothes. You're just making excuses because you are nervous. If you don't like what I wear, I'll take it off." She began to undress, laughing harder.

"No… No…" he said.

He mulled over the situation. He had hoped to gradually reintroduce her to Jewish customs and traditions, buying time to assess how she would acclimate. But she had forced the issue. She seemed jubilant and cocky. How could she understand that marriage is not approached as casually as a bod liaison?

If he refused her awkward proposal, he risked losing her. She would retreat strategically. He wanted to hand her a list of requirements about keeping the Sabbath, washing in the mikvah, observing the kosher laws—a thousand things that wouldn't have to be discussed at all if Magen had been raised as a Jew. But if he sought assurances for marriage, she would read the gesture in military terms. She would eventually view their marriage as capitulation.

He had to make a choice. Now.

"Magen, will you marry me?" he asked.

Over the weeks that followed, Magen surprised Adam. She forced herself to eat only kosher food, and she covered her head with a kerchief, and she said prayers to a God she doubted. Sometimes she told him she thought his customs were stupid, but she performed them anyway. Observance gave her a rhythm to her life. She did what Adam told her to do, and the more she did, the less she questioned.

The wedding was to be held on the Summer World. Magen was anxious to marry and be done with it. The long tedious business of preparation, of invitations, of endless parties and meetings with Adam's family wore on her. This was strictly Adam's show. She had no desire to share the moment with any of the people she had grown up with, which meant that during the most significant moment of her life, she would be surrounded entirely by strangers.

Papa Russia sent his best wishes, but also his regrets. He said that he could not attend the wedding. He gave no reason.

Though she had only spoken to Papa Russia three or four times since their initial meeting, Magen felt a small, independent claim to friendship with the old man. His refusal to attend her wedding disappointed her. Then it depressed her. Then it began to irritate her.

A week before the wedding, Magen had a vivid, terrible nightmare. Time became displaced. Commandos wearing stiff, acid-resistant canvas suits lumbered across her sight. The stink of dissolving mortar and humanity filled the air. She found herself in the middle of the Summer Pogrom— but she wasn't a child this time. Full-grown and armed, she fought back. All of the weapons she had mastered during her days with the Merc Bod came magically to hand. Clumsy in their stiff suits, the genocidal army fell before her assault. Laser shuriken burned through the glass visors over their eyes. With steel vibraswords, she hacked off limbs. But no matter how many she killed, the walls of the ghetto continued to dissolve. Rivers of melted flesh hissed through the gutters. She couldn't stop the slaughter, not even in her dreams. Even with all she had become, she couldn't stop the slaughter. She could only match it.

Knee-deep in gore, Magen saw Papa Russia wandering through the streets. A dazed look clouded his eyes.

"Come over here," she shouted, "I'll protect you."

But he wouldn't come. She beckoned and pleaded, afraid that any minute he'd melt away. He wouldn't listen, yet somehow, miraculously, none of the flying jets of acid touched him.

"Why won't you come over to me?" she demanded.

"I am very confused," he said. Not far from where he was standing, a bull broke loose from its pen and charged into the streets. Papa Russia began to follow the bull. A knife appeared in the old man's left hand. "I was very confused. When I was young, I was very confused."

He slit the bull's throat. He pulled out a seemingly endless chain of knotted entrails, which he then examined under a microscope. He kept pulling on the entrails, and after a while, they ceased to be bovine. There were human entrails roped around his arms.

She awoke full of anger, enraged that Papa Russia would not come to her wedding. Her fingers clenched in tight fists. A splash of cold water and deep breathing calmed her down a little. When she thought more about it, she understood the reasons for his refusal. They had nothing to do with her.

And she remembered where she had seen his face before, the face of Papa Russia as a young man, hung on the wall, preserved in the plaster of a death mask.

Magen snuck away without waking Elsa. She flew past the borders of the city with the windshield of her cruiser wide open. Warm air blew in her face.

She brought the cruiser to a jerky landing, and ran out across the acid-stained ruins of her childhood. At night, she could feel the surreal tingle of haunted ground. Ghosts seemed to be gathering around, making the place feel more like Autumn than Summer. She wished the bones littering the streets would reassemble themselves and walk beside her and give her some assurance that what she planned to do was right. She needed greater counsel than the tingling in the air. With only a few weeks of rudimentary moral teaching to guide her, Magen found herself confronting a dense and imponderable ethical dilemma.

The bones lay still, blue-green with acid and mold. Perhaps that was their counsel, the sadness of their silence.

She did not make a sound as she entered Papa Russia's house. Quiet as an assassin, she paused at the foot of his bed, studying his face. He tossed from side to side in his sleep, moaning, his forehead beaded with sweat. His sleep was light and troubled, but he did not rouse until she seized him by the drool-stained collar of his pajamas. She dragged him to the ground.

"What do you want from me?" he sputtered.

"I know you, Doctor. Abraham Sidney. It was you who gave the bods the excuse to begin the slaughter. You pig! You stupid pig!"

Papa Russia coughed and cleared his throat of phlegm.

"Abraham Sidney died a long time ago. He died in the massacre. Take my word for it. He is dead."

"You don't fool me."

"I hate Abraham Sidney more than any man. But even if he were not dead, and if he were here now, I would spare his life so that he could have even more time to repent." He said it with a twinkle in his eye, as if it were a joke, as if he could charm her out of killing him.

She was not amused.

"I have been hunting you for so long, I cannot believe I didn't know you at once. But I know you now, and I am certain. There is no point in trying to lie your way out of this. You are about to die."

He turned pale and a loose cluster of wrinkles on his jowls began to quiver. "I knew Abraham Sidney. He did not mean to cause death and destruction. When he came up with his theory about Jews causing the plague, he thought he had made a remarkable discovery. He was a scientist who got caught up in a single problem. He never really thought about what would come from his theories. When he said that the Jews were the source of the plague virus, he believed it. He was trying to help all humanity, I think. Perhaps his judgment was a little tainted by self-hatred—but he didn't know that. All bod workers are made to hate themselves and what they are. Abraham Sidney hated himself a lot then. If he were still alive, he'd hate himself even more now. He was not a very good Jew, not a very good person, and most of all—he was not a very good scientist."

Magen felt a sudden stab of pity for the old man, one of the only friends she had ever known. He was the man who had started her personal transformation, and he was the man who had brought her to Adam. The softness of age made him seem helpless. Looking at the flesh gathering in folds and pouches under his chin, she thought of acid victims.

She unsheathed a long silver blade. "If you wish, I will kill you as you kill your cows. Out of mercy. Out of respect. You must die, but I don't want you should feel any pain." She tightened her grip on his collar.

Papa Russia shuddered. What she said was horrible, blasphemous in ways she couldn't know. And he suddenly realized that the ancient laws of slaughter had as much to do with easing the conscience of the butcher as easing the passing of the slaughtered. The sight of the knife gleaming before him snapped him to attention. He read indecision in her eyes. He knew her weaknesses.

"Listen to me," he said. "However you were raised, whatever you believe, you are still a Jew. You must behave in a certain way, you must obey certain laws. Under our laws, it takes a court of twenty-three men to pass a judgment of death. It must be proven that the crime was deliberate and done with malice, and this can only be proven by having at least two witnesses who actually heard the accused say he was going to commit the crime. The two witnesses must have warned him not to commit the crime, and they must have quoted specific portions of the Scripture to him. If you are so sure I am Abraham Sidney, take me to a rabbinic court to stand trial."

"You think you should escape punishment just because of some old protocols that make no sense! No! I have heard enough!"

She seized a shock of his white hair and pulled back his head so that his Adam's apple protruded. He gasped in her face, and his breath smelled like old blood.

"Wait!" he shouted. "Turning away from the law was Abraham Sidney's mistake. Kill me, and you are the same as he. And you are not the same. You want to turn away from killing. You want to embrace the laws. This is a test for you. A test from God. Do you want to be a killer? Or do you want to be a Jew? You cannot be both. God has been testing you a long time to see what you really want. He even used me to test you once before. It is true. I knew you put poison in Adam's food. I am not so much of an old blind fool as you think. I knew you were going to show mercy at the last minute. I knew it!"

The warrior in her took it as an insult, a suggestion of weakness. She knew he was trying to manipulate her. "You are wrong. When I dropped the poisoned meal, it was an accident! I would have killed him. He startled me, is what happened. He was saved by a coincidence." She tugged at Papa Russia's hair, raised the knife.

"Then don't marry him!"

The knife slashed downward, flashing blue glints of reflected starlight. Just as the razored point touched the old man's jugular vein, the knife came to an abrupt halt—a very flashy show of skill. Then Magen tossed the knife aside.

"You see," said Papa Russia, "it was not coincidence. Go ahead and marry the boy. You just proved to me that you would not have killed him no matter what." He smiled as if it were a game. "You have been tested, Magen. I am not Abraham Sidney."

Anxious to leave Amelia's asteroid, Magen hurriedly packed. She had little to take with her, except some new clothes and some toiletries that Amelia had given as gifts, and a small charm she had been wearing around her neck when she crashed. In golden letters, it spelled "life" in Hebrew. Papa Russia had given it to her the day he died. He said that it was a good-luck charm, but it hadn't brought him much luck. Perhaps he gave it to her out of spite for turning him in.

Papa Russia's trial took place in the ruins of the old Jewish ghetto. Citing ancient precedents that held that the

Talmudic prohibitions against capital punishment do not apply to perpetrators of genocide, the court sentenced Papa Russia to face a firing squad of wide-beam laser rifles. In the course of the execution, four months after Magen's wedding, a square mile of the surrounding forest vanished under the heavy blue light barrage. Not a trace of Papa Russia remained. It was as if they had dropped a mountain on him.

Adam Hirsch was later captured by low-level slavers. Not realizing his true identity, or the enormous bounty on his head, they bartered him away for a month's worth of provisions on one of the moons of Autumn.

Magen dressed for travel, slipping on a flexible flak jacket, tying knives to her ankles, strapping holsters under her arms. As she hung the necklace with the golden charm, she wondered if her saving Papa Russia had indeed been a test, as the old butcher claimed. She felt that somehow it had been a test—but for what purpose? Even though she had spared him, Papa Russia died anyway. His death both saddened and relieved her.

And despite her having passed that test without killing him, she was forced to return to war anyway. For Adam's sake, she had to regenerate the parts of her personality he fought so hard to subdue.

So why did God submit her struggling spirit to such a cruel test of will when the end results were the same? Perhaps Adam was right when he said that God is unknowable, even to God.

Even if these separate events, the sparing of Papa Russia and the selling of Adam Hirsch, were not linked by Divine strategy, they were linked in Magen's mind by trick of human perception.

Chapter Five

FREE SLAVES

Representatives from all the bods gathered in the ruins of the Halls of Justice to negotiate their trade accords. The building had once been a courthouse. No one bothered to remove the marble statues of blinded women who held scales in dimly lit corners. The symbols caused no offense, for law had not been abolished through violence or revolution. It had simply complicated itself out of existence.

For centuries before the law collapsed, jurists had struggled to accommodate multiple subcultures that sprang up as a result of severing the ties to Earth. The process was accelerated by the increasing mental and physical specialization required to maintain the burgeoning technology of Draconian society. Judges soon found that a warrior's notion of fairness differed drastically from an accountant's. To achieve an illusion of equity, the law became increasingly academic, abstract, and at times, surreal.

The bod prime directors came to the conclusion that they didn't need laws for stability in their dealings. Production of even the simplest of commodities had become enormously sophisticated. Competition between bods wasn't feasible. Only dedicated resources could muster the required economies of scale. In order to be cost-effective, goods had to be produced in huge quantities Accordingly, they had to be: sold in huge quantities to guaranteed markets. Absolute economic dependence on one another forged much greater bonds between the bods than the law ever had with its contracts and treaties. Given that absolute dependence, trade negotiations were mostly a matter of formality, like the seduction rituals of long-married couples.

In the absence of currency, the Draconian tradesmen measured value in creative ways. Frequently, they based their assessments on units of common needed goods. For comparative values, sometimes they used narcotics. Sometimes they used tons of grain. Mostly, though, they bought, sold, haggled, wagered, and bartered using slaves as the coin of the realm. Ironically, they called this place and this process "the Free Market."

There were slaves on display everywhere in the Free Market. Long, naked parades followed young executives who pulled on chains like purse strings. Some slaves stayed frozen in poses for use as furniture. Some scared curiosities, with their pain centers surgically removed, offered their faces as ashtrays.

The slaves of Earth antiquity owed their status to the artifice of law. Their owners held property rights. In the totally free Draconian society, ownership welled from a much deeper source—the breaking of the will.

Magen circulated through the crowd, pausing occasionally to eavesdrop, catching only fragments of transactions. She had changed her hair color, her eye color, the shape of her nose. She had padded her breasts with plastic explosives. Dressed like a captain of the Mercenary Bod, she was hardly in disguise at all.

There were people she knew from her days in the bod mingling among the traders. Former acquaintances, friends, rivals, even a former lover failed to recognize her. She wondered if she had really changed so very much. Familiar sensations all around her tugged at her with familiar temptations, like the smell of sweet narcotic smoke and aphrodisiac colognes. Clouds of steam from roasting shellfish hawked by vendors in the crowds made her hungry. She found beauty in the glitter of gun cartridges worn as jewelry and in the subsonic murmur of relaxation subliminals piped in over the sound system under the familiar beat of a bod anthem. Had she really changed?

Armed guards patrolled the premises, their holo-badges flashing authority with prismatic colors. Hawkers worked the crowd. During live demonstrations, slaves mutilated themselves on command. The onlookers were encouraged to shout out their own suggestions—did they want to see an eye gouged out? A limb hacked off? A tongue bitten through?

A bloodied chorus line was carving Olagy's motto with razors across their chests in large weeping letters: "Where there is no will, there is a way."

To insure that no slave would ever break conditioning again, the way Olagy had, through years of slow burning hatred and rage, Olagy promoted new methods for inducing subservience. He used combinations of psychosurgery, behavioral modification, and potent neurotropics, as well as old-fashioned torture. The bod had produced a new subclass that would do anything, even the unspeakable, on command.

In desperation, Magen had conceived a mad plan, one with little chance of bringing about reunion with her husband—but one that brought her a measure of hope. She found a goal to occupy her time, which otherwise would be empty as death. Her private war continued, but the objective shifted from harassing the Slavers Bod to freeing as many slaves as possible. She held, as an article of faith, the belief that Adam would someday be among the slaves she freed, and that he would somehow find his way back to her.

Adam would probably disapprove of her present course. He hated violence. But what else could she do? She felt lonelier than she had ever felt before. She was used to being alone, but in the past, she never had anything to compare solitude against.

Even if she could find a bod to recorporate her, she could not slip back into the bod lifestyle. Neither could she find contentment living in one of the hidden Jewish ghettos of the Summer World without Adam by her side.

She returned to war, picking it up again, like a bad habit.

Magen glided toward the main slave pen, which served as a kind of gigantic purse for loose human change, frequently drawn upon during the course of active trading. She expected a dungeon with bars—something she could blast away. And she expected to find obedient slaves that could be herded like cattle. Instead she found a brightly lit showroom, where catatonic slaves posed like mannequins in diorama scenes depicting Draconian life. Stiffened ship workers stood locked in the act of hauling up nets full of plastic fish from a resin sea. A sculptor at work seemed as much a statue as his creation. Younglings sat in a mock kid-care classroom, trapped under the tutelage of a slave nanny. Diamond miners aimed their picks at a rhinestone-studded wall, while across from them, doll-like courtesans held open their paralyzed loins—smiles frozen on their faces. High fashion armbands graced each motionless wrist with decorative inventory bar codes. Deep trances had slowed their metabolic rates to a near halt, so they could be maintained with only a sparse amount of food, until the time for delivery.

Magen searched for Adam among the models. As she moved from scene to scene, dead eyes stared back at her, a gallery of extinguished lamps.

Some of the displays showed signs of neglect: slaves sinking into contractures, eyelashes and fingernails growing in long fluted patterns, unabraded due to total lack of activity. Exceptionally plump, blood-bloated mosquitoes stalked the showroom, emboldened by feasting without interference for countless bug generations.

How could she move these human timbers? What would she do with them afterward?

Magen hung close to a diorama display that depicted a battle scene. By the light of animated explosions glowing on the cloth backdrop, she carefully inspected the living mannequins. When no one was looking, she stepped up on to the platform. Quickly, she unholstered one of her guns, and rested a foot on a prostrate comatose slave who was supposed to be a dead soldier. She took aim at the head of an opposing mannequin. There Magen froze. How easily she had stepped back into her former life.

Magen's respiratory rate decreased and her heart rate kept pace. She felt confident she could keep rigid for hours, if need be. From this vantage point, she hoped to discover the code or method for reviving the slaves.

As the first hour passed, commerce in the Free Market began to accelerate. Slaves were being awakened constantly Each would climb down from his or her frozen moment, returning to true Draconian life under the charge of a new master. But Magen couldn't figure out how it was being done. She listened carefully. The guards invoked no special words. Although it was hard to get a good view of each transaction without frank eye movements, she concluded that no secret hand gestures had been used to rouse the slaves. What was the signal? Could it be some pungent scent? Or a dermal patch full of stimulants? Did the inventory bracelet hold the key?

Frustration was making Magen tense. The bright lights began to bother her eyes, but she held them open, wide and glassy. The gun weighed down her hand. She regretted stepping out into the open this way. Tactically, it had been stupid. She had expected quick, easy answers. Instead, she got nothing. She could still handle the discomfort of being motionless, but she wasn't as confident about how long she could endure. The tendons in her wrist were torturing her. She hadn't let herself get soft—not at all. But she'd fallen out of strict bod discipline routines. She hoped her hands wouldn't start to tremble.

By now, a great crowd had gathered around the war diorama. Magen couldn't step down. She couldn't even move. Posed as she was, with a live weapon in her hand, she'd be shot immediately if she gave anyone cause to be suspicious.

She wondered what had prompted her to begin her campaign in the Free Market. This was the least likely place to find Adam. If Adam were still in the Free Market, Hubbel would have been able to find him quickly. And this was the hardest place to steal slaves. All exits were closely guarded, all departures carefully inventoried. Magen realized she had chosen the Free Market for the worst of reasons: for revenge—or suicide.

She quieted her thoughts. She assured herself that the crowds would soon thin and she could slip away. Or perhaps someone would trade for her. She would have an easier time hijacking an order of slaves once she got past the exits.

As her mind relaxed, her respiratory rhythms subconsciously synchronized with the slow and steady breathing of thousands of slaves in the showroom. She stared fixedly at the glassy-eyed toy soldiers around her, noticing, for the first time, slow gestures of speech without sound, glacial winks, and hand signals. Hints of communication seemed to be passing among the frozen slaves.

Did symptoms of will persist like the itch of an amputated leg?

Magen wondered if there was some way to join in this chorus—perhaps to learn the revival code directly from the slaves themselves. But she was too afraid to make any sound—even the softest whisper. Too many speculators crowded the diorama now, pinching her thighs, blowing spicy cadmadine smoke in her face. Guards were weaving regular patrols through the displays.

After three motionless hours, studying the situation, Magen finally figured out the key to waking the slaves. The guards flashed their holo-badges before giving commands. The prismatic glare signaled obedience. The insight came too late. Frozen in place, Magen could not snare a badge. The crowd did not thin as the hours passed, but rather, it swelled.

A contingent from the Mercenary Bod—Magen's former bod—encircled the war diorama. She panicked inside, but kept her pose. Gaudy purple cowls, bound in place by silver headbands, marked the two mercenaries in front as elite assassins, a man and a woman. Both wore matching ribbon blades, both held the rank of vice-general director.

The woman had been an undeclared rival to Magen within the bod. Verna Cruise. She possessed a surgically overwrought beauty, which Magen had always found repulsive, though her bod brothers disagreed. How quickly she had risen in rank since Magen's absence, aided, no doubt, by her formidable skills, her brutal wit, her aggressive passions.

The male, Marcus Darien, didn't know Magen as well as Verna—but he was just as likely to penetrate the disguise. He carefully studied reports of bod members who went unincorp, and held responsibility for allocating the resources to hunt them down.

The other five mercenaries were combat jocks, scantily clad to show off their sinewy bulk. Leather thongs strapped their weapons in place.

The two vice-general directors took an instant interest in Magen. Verna gripped her by the deltoid muscles and squeezed hard. She tested the abdominals with a push, then ran a discriminating hand up the back of Magen's leg, all the way to the gluteus muscles. No doubt Magen's muscle tone had attracted their attention, and held their interest. It was rare to see a broad range of exercised muscle groups on a slave. Were they suspicious? Perhaps they were only bargain hunting. AWOL bod-trained experts frequently turned up in the slave market as merchandise.

"I want this one," said Verna, pointing to Magen.

"We'll take the entire display," Marcus shouted to the guards.

The rainbow light of a holo-badge flashed in Magen's face. She resurrected on cue, shaking off her pose. Slavers Bod officials stripped the weapons and costumes from the slaves before they left the display. The props were not part of the package. They dressed Magen in a simple white robe, which marked her as departing goods.

Magen felt relieved to be moving again, as she followed the twenty-five other slaves down to the trading floor. Together they marched toward the exit scanners. Magen wasn't wearing the proper inventory bar codes—but she doubted that an overcharge to the Mercenary Bod would set off any alarms.

She passed through the scanning portals without incident.

Slavers Bod personnel kept the flow of human commerce in motion. Long lines of slaves marched out, most with a stiff-limbed gait from prolonged comatose posturing. The guards let nothing break the precision of crowd movement. That was their art, a necessary and practical art, what with armies of newly acquired slaves to move out. They performed their art with unshakable, mime-like smiles.

Guards conducted the merc contingent and their new slaves outside. From there, they boarded a tram, which carried them to the loading platforms. During the short, bumpy, open-air ride, Magen angled herself to jump from the tram. Escape was imperative. If she let herself be taken back to the Merc Bod dormitories, someone was bound to recognize her, once her makeup and hair dye washed off.

The opportunity to jump from the tram never came. The five combat jocks kept her hemmed in. They casually bared sensitive nerve clusters to the other newly purchased slaves, as if daring them to act—but showed greater modesty toward Magen. They seemed nonchalant around her, on the surface—but kept her surrounded.

The tram carrying the Merc Bod contingent converged with other trams; then all queued up in neat rows. They screeched to choreographed halts, one after another. The tram occupants disembarked in timed waves.

Thirty-foot neon archways lit the entrance to the loading platforms. These led to a honeycomb of long tunnels, a kind of drive-through spaceport, strictly for pickup and delivery.

A rumbling, densely packed mob squeezed into the terminal. Even if the opportunity for a clean, quick strike presented itself, Magen would never be able to force her way through the crush of people.

Hydraulic cattle elevators, built to hold hundreds at a time, hissed upward to the topmost loading deck. Magen found herself delivered into a huge tunnel. Recycled broken spaceships buttressed the interior ceiling, an inverted reef strewn with half-melted or crumbled wings of Ruinators, Obliterators, Herpes Hellcats, Jonah Transports, Wanderers, and even an occasional warpship. The wreck-age hung as a warning to the incoming pilots: keep moving.

Slavers Bod guards hustled the arriving slaves onto timed conveyor belts. When they reached the departure gates, the slaves were carefully divided into segregated queues, sorted by owner.

The transport ships were loading and leaving in precise ten-minute intervals. Some with exceptionally large slave orders were given as long as twenty minutes, a concession to buying power—provided they adhered to strict loading protocols.

Across from Magen's group, separated by a ten-foot space, a cluster of slaves prepared to leave. Plump masters, wearing shawls and crowns of blue flowers, stood patiently, waiting for their ship. The sweet scent of flowers made Magen wish she had been bought by them—the Horticulture Bod, or the Perfumers Bod, or whoever they were. Escape would have been no problem.

As the groups broke into lines for departure, the aisles required for segregation afforded plenty of room for a hasty dash. But now the combat jocks had fallen to the rear of the procession. The two vice-general directors flanked Magen. The shift in position seemed deliberate.

With only a few minutes before the arrival of the transport ship, Magen pondered her best course of action. Verna, to her right, carried a wide assortment of weapons. She let the guns dangle close to Magen, tempting her. Was it a trick to make Magen abandon her ruse?

A transport ship bearing Merc Bod logos gently coasted into the station, retros hissing. As soon as it aligned its course into the channel gate, its engines shut off to keep the tunnels free of exhaust. Slaves pushed the ship the rest of the way down the neon-accented loading aisles.

The hatchway to the ship snapped open. Verna Cruise ordered the slaves to embark.

Pretending to stumble, Magen fell against Verna. With a quick, darting motion, Magen snaked a laser derringer out of a shoulder harness and brought it to a halt under Verna's chin.

Verna had moved just as quickly, in reciprocal coordination, pulling a second pistol from a holster on her thigh. The two women finished their maneuvers facing each other, in mirror-image poses—each with a gun nozzle pressed to the chin.

Marcus and the combat jocks strutted around them, guns drawn, but Verna motioned them to stand aside.

"Magen," shouted Verna. "This is a surprise. I would have never recognized you under all that gunk—but your style is unmistakable."

"I have you hostage," said Magen.

"You wouldn't dare shoot. I can pull the trigger with my last nerve synapse."

"I can do the same. We have each other hostage."

"Don't be silly. How will you ever escape?"

The two women stared at each other. Verna's skin shined like plastic under the neon lights, seamless, with no visible pores. But she was starting to sweat with the gun pressed to her chin.

"Go ahead and shoot," said Magen. "I am not afraid of death."

"Nor I. It is dying that bothers me."

"I don't want I should hurt you. Why don't you just let me go?" This wasn't an appeal to friendship. The two women had always been too closely matched in skills, and too intent on similar goals to be real friends. It came across as a plea for mercy. Bad mistake.

"All right, Magen. Just drop the gun and I'll deliver you."

"What do you mean? Deliver me where?"

"Nowhere. Just slice out your liver." Verna began to laugh.

Verna's free hand wriggled down toward a sheathed "blade. Magen caught her. While the two women wrestled for the knife, pulling closer, pistols still in place, Verna danced a graceful vertical kick to the side of Magen's face. The pepsin smell of bootwax spiced the heavy blow. It was an impressive move, but Magen held her gun in place. Behind her, the combat jocks huddled into a blockade. They intended to keep Magen from escaping while giving Verna a chance to perform.

Blood began to fill Magen's eyes and roll down her cheeks like scarlet tears. Pain stabbed her neck every time she moved. She couldn't tell if she had injured muscle or bone or spinal cord.

"You've gotten better since I've left," said Magen at last.

"No, you've gotten worse."

"I think some part of me is afraid to strike an officer. Maybe that's why I don't want to hurt you. Funny how old habits don't die."

Absorbed in watching the two women, the merc contingent had stalled the loading procedures for the entire terminal. The ship behind the merc transport was blowing horns and flashing lights. The skies were beginning to crowd with approaching ships flying in holding patterns. New groups of departing slaves continued to unload, and the platform mob grew denser around the small arena flanked by combat jocks.

A potbellied Slavers Bod guard strode onto the loading deck, shouting demands.

Marcus called to Verna, "This has gone on long enough. We have higher priorities."

Verna said, "Marcus will shoot us both if we keep him stalled."

The time for bluff and threat was quickly passing. The two women regarded each other warily, their lives tied together by mutual threat. Magen did not want to shoot, and she read a reflection of her own hesitancy in Verna's eyes. They had caught each other in a game neither could win. Each would have to share the other's fate—if their skills were truly equal.

Magen pulled the trigger. It felt like opening fire on herself.

Both women had fired at the same time, necks twisting at the same time; faces jerking out of the path of laser light. An oozing burn bubbled across Verna's cheek. She had been a little slow.

As the beams shot upward, guns responded to guns automatically, a stampede of trigger fingers around the platform. Random flashes of light erupted within the crowd.

Verna and Magen hit the ground together, then coiled into a wrestling knot.

Verna launched her hands. Magen executed a series of blocks, deflecting a symphony of hand thrusts and finger stabs. Then she threw her forehead into Verna's smile.

Intent on her combat, lost in her art, Magen found that she had missed this. She had dedicated her life to fighting, and it came to her more easily than prayer, more easily than love. The smell of bootwax brought back memories of cadet chores and combat practice. This fight seemed like the games she and Verna had played while growing up, as if it were simple combat for its own sake, without consequence. And then she remembered what was at stake. "We've never fought to the death, before," said Magen, not realizing how obvious her observation had been until the words were out of her mouth.

"Too bad. Then we wouldn't have to do it now."

Marcus began to try to kick Magen loose. Three combat jocks joined in, forming a kicking gauntlet, but their thrusts lacked Marcus's precision. They hit Verna as often as they hit Magen.

Magen peeled herself loose from Verna and lunged toward the slave guard. One of the combat jocks swiveled for-ward to block her, but she hit his eyes with the heels of her palms and his groin with her knee.

In two quick paces, she caught up to the Slavers Bod guard, latched on to his wrist, and spun him. Her elbow crooked around his neck. He shielded her from the entire Merc Bod contingent.

As Magen retreated, the guard started to hyperventilate, his feet shuffling as if doing a hanged man's dance. "Don't worry," she said to her hostage. "The mercs won't risk harming you on your own bod's turf." She angled to lose herself in the crowd of waiting slaves.

Marcus started to squint, even before he raised his pistol. Magen took that as a cue to drop the guard and roll for cover. A bright red beam split the guard diagonally across his pot belly. As arteries opened, it looked as if the beam were splattering into liquid on impact.

Dodging ray blasts, Magen rolled toward the body of the guard, scooping up his holo-badge from the spilled abdominal stew in which it had fallen.

She waved the holo-badge at the crowd of slaves in the adjacent aisle. She called, "Over here, over here. Come at once."

En masse, the slaves abandoned their flowered masters and marched to Magen's command.

The captains of the flowery bod paced after their slaves patiently, more like concerned parents than Draconian masters. They shouted unheeded commands with eerie calm; but the two groups of slaves meshed like an evenly shuffled deck of cards. Densely packed bodies pressed everyone into captivity—mercs, flowery captains, and both parcels of slaves.

A cadre of Slavers Bod guards stormed onto the loading deck, flashing jeweled rifles with acid bayonets, prepared to clear the source of traffic congestion, no matter what it took.

The flowery captains calmly stated their requirements to the Merc Bod officers, who shouted back insults. But neither party could move.

Swiftly, using inventory scanners, the Slavers Bod guards re-sorted the slaves into their appropriate groups. Verna screamed threats of high-level retaliation, but the Slavers Bod guards ignored her, secure behind a ring of primed lasers. Loading of the flower ship and the merc ship proceeded swiftly

Magen left with the flower slaves, having swiped one of their armbands while caught in the crush. With the sweet smell of perfume in her nostrils, she resisted the urge to look back at Verna while crossing the loading gate. Gloating would accomplish nothing.

Magen did not learn that she had cast her fate with the Cadmadine Bod until she surprised the flowery captains in deep space. They offered little resistance. Throughout the entire hijacking, they stayed calm, very calm.

Magen drifted from world to world, camping in the wilds, and sleeping in the blackness between stars. Her activities had grown more ambitious. Yet the more successful her raids became, the more pathetic they seemed. She catalogued her failures. A great number of slaves had been led out of bondage, but for what?

In the cockpit of a fighter ship, Magen pulled down a star chart and surveyed multicolored pins that marked off her most recent raids. A cargo of newly liberated slaves filled the storage compartments behind her. Muscle-bound steroid brutes were shuffling back and forth, disrupting the gyroscopic balance of the small craft. She could feel the flight pattern waffling under her. Some scholarly slaves were reciting physics texts they did not understand to one another. She knew from past experience that the scholars were especially vulnerable when set free. They usually starved to death while spouting esoteric information to uninterested passersby. At least the steroid brutes had the good sense to seek new masters.

Magen wondered about where she would take this latest group of slaves. She searched the star charts. The Autumn World caught her attention. She had heard the rumors about hallucinogens in the atmosphere, and ghosts haunting the rainbow forests. Such legends would help her by keeping away the merc and bod patrols.

She took the shipment of slaves to Autumn.

On approach to the planet, Magen spotted a stretch of forest ablaze with wild fire. Dense black smoke blanketed the area for miles around. The area appealed to her. She welcomed the smog cover for as long as it would last, and landed a short distance away. To her surprise, the air smelled sweet and primeval, despite the carbon billows spreading over the sky.

Following her commands, the freed slaves set to work, digging deep trenches so that the nearby fire would not spread to their new home. In the days that followed, they built roughhewn log cabins, and planted crops with excellent results.

Magen brought new slaves in greater numbers. The community flourished.

There was no discord of any description. The life led by the rescued slaves seemed idyllic, apart from the fact that they took no independent actions at all. Their entire daily routines had been preordained by Magen. Many of the newer slaves, the products of more intense conditioning, would not even eat, except on command. She even had to tell them when to be tired, so they would not work themselves to death.

Magen found, to her dismay, that even the most functional of the slaves, even the warriors, the encyclopedias, the cunning conversationalists, all of them, had something broken deep inside. With glassy eyes and blunt affects, they gathered to recite the prayers Magen had taught them. She had expected prayer to set them free, but prayer had no effect on them at all. Their Seder had an odd pathos.

No one quarreled, no one killed, no one coveted. Not even the coming of the Messiah could bring such absolute peace. Magen would have done anything for a show of insubordination.

One night, Magen returned from an overlong sojourn in space. Lumps of molten metal sprouted like tumors on her damaged cruiser. The bods had upped the security on their slave shipments, and she had met with unexpected, heavy resistance. Her past raids had been too successful.

She flew in low, skimming the treetops; then she crashed. Magen stumbled from her ship, burns on her arms. Hair dye ran down her cheeks and tasted inky in her mouth. Her kidneys throbbed with the pain of organ bruises.

She found her slave community in a state of virtual standstill. Some slaves had frozen into comatose statuary with the completion of the most recently appointed tasks, while others were caught in loops of behavior patterns.

Magen stumbled past a woman doing laundry. The clothes in her tub had long been scrubbed into thready fragments. Her hands had swollen close to bursting.

"Stop! Stop right now!" commanded Magen.

The slave woman looked up from the work that had occupied her for the past thirty-six hours.

"How beautiful you look tonight, Magen," said the slave, with a smile that almost looked genuine.

"Thank you," said Magen; then she burst out in edgy laughter. For just a moment, she had been genuinely flattered by the compliment she had programmed the week before.

Magen felt suddenly dizzy, weak from exhaustion and loss of blood. Once she had refused the assistance of slaves, but her pride had been eroded along with her illusions. Surrounded by servants, she felt more and more like a master.

After six months of ruling as an absolute monarch, Magen began to doubt that her slaves could ever be rehabilitated. How can you force someone to be free? Perhaps it was not will that distinguished man from the beasts, but rather plasticity—a near infinite ability to absorb programming. Perhaps choice was not the foundation of the universe, but rather, slavery.

Her fingers snapped. Commands barked out. A group of slaves shook themselves out of immobility and carried Magen to her simple bed.

Magen awoke the next morning, feeling menstrual and mean-spirited. Walking with a cane for support, she inspected her frozen village. The population stood among the fallen leaves, their faces lit by the distant flickering of the great forest fire. Flesh without spirit, the opposite of ghosts.

Magen's failures overwhelmed her, made her feel disgusted and spiteful. She lashed out with her cane at a slave lying on the ground, scattering leaves and dust with the stroke.

"Get up," Magen demanded.

Sluggishly, the steroid-inflated male, three times her size, rose to his feet.

"Don't do what I say," she said. "Don't ever obey my commands."

The slave stared curiously, uncertain whether or not to remain standing.

"Now dance," said Magen.

The slave shuffled his feet and swayed his hands absurdly.

Magen rapped him across the knees with her cane. "I told you not to do what I say."

The slave's eyes widened in confusion and protest. Magen laughed. The huge brute could waste her with a single blow if he had the will. Instead he simply stood there, paralyzed.

"Why aren't you dancing?" she asked.

"You told me not to obey you."

"And you obeyed?"

The slave began to dance again. The cane struck his knees again. This continued for almost an hour.

Burning with fever, too sick for slave raiding, and too disheartened, Magen lingered in the Autumn village inventing cruel pranks to play on her worshipers. She riddled her commands with contradictions, paradoxes, and ambiguities:

"Clean the windows until they are dirty."

"Remember to forget your duties."

"Don't do what you are supposed to do."

"Make nothingness."

She made them wear foolish-looking hats and capes. She made them sing nonsense songs, off-key.

Sometimes she punished them for obeying her, other times she rewarded them. It was arbitrary. If they were going to treat her like God, then by God, she would treat them the way God treats man.

As she sat sipping a warm, pungent tea brewed with Autumn leaves, her slaves moaned around her, groping with new confusion over her latest commands. The foolishness of the slaves made all of Magen's obsessions seem foolish. Why had she started this crusade? For a man, a slave at that. A lost, hopelessly irredeemable slave. Adam's face abstracted in her mind. Her quest no longer seemed to be connected to any individual, and yet it was no less important to her.

The slaves became increasingly neurotic. All along the rows of crude log houses, slaves spun in circles, repeating unobeyable commands like mantras. Some developed facial tics. Others became incontinent. One had a seizure. As long as they would allow themselves to be preoccupied with undoable commands, as long as they would allow Magen to tie comical hats to their heads and purple streamers to their asses, as long as they would be content to obey, Magen would be content to take revenge upon them. Since she was as willful as the slaves were will-less, it seemed they would eventually destroy each other.

The forest fires continued to rage in the distance, far longer than Magen had ever expected. The village had grown too large to evacuate. What would she do if a stray spark set off an inferno? Still, she chose not to move. The dark folds of smoke provided security, even though they made the days drab and grey. And she found the natural force less threatening than her enemies, for no particular reason.

Beneath the odorless, smoke-filled skies, the crops lay stillborn in their furrows. The wells began to run dry. Thirst and hunger aggravated Magen's health problems, which kept her out of battle. She devoted her energies solely to planning new challenges for her subjects. She gave her slaves no peace, neither the luxury to loaf, nor the dignity of labor.

The fire seemed more and more dangerous, though it had not spread in all this time. The dryness of the village increased its flammability. The smoke cloud had become a constant warning.

Then the wind shifted.

Expecting a storm of sparks, Magen ordered all of the slaves to stay outdoors. They cleared a wide area, so that they would have a safe haven, even if all the buildings burned. For hours they watched smoke drift across the sky.

But the fire never came. It kept to its own territory like a caged beast.

This miracle bewildered Magen. She wondered what she had done to deserve it, but she thanked God anyway. Then she began to wonder if it was truly a miracle, or if some dark purpose lay behind the fire.

Magen overheard some slaves jabbering about a stand of trees in the Autumn forest that were ablaze without being consumed. At first Magen shrugged it off. But the reports continued, and the fire in the distance never dimmed, though the fuel in that stretch of wood should have been exhausted long ago. Now she wondered if the legends of Autumn were true. Hallucinogens in the mist? Ghosts? Perhaps this fire was a phantom echo of some remote event, a ghost with no more substance or power than the other ghosts reputed to roam the Autumn World.

Magen took her cane and a gun and stumbled into the wilderness, determined to inspect for the first time the strange fire that had been a neighbor for so long. The slaves could not lie. The symbol was too specific to be coincidental. The prospect of being a new Moses to a new nation of slaves made her laugh. She laughed as she followed the distant lights, laughed a ragged laughter interrupted by frequent coughing.

The light grew brighter as Magen wandered farther away from the village.

Glaring shafts of light, full of sparkling motes, stabbed suddenly through the spaces between the trees and lit the forest like a crown. Magen had never seen such light before—light that seemed to seep directly into the brain without interruption by the eyes. The trees seemed to burn, but only with light. Magen pressed forward, overcome with curiosity, still laughing at delusions of grandeur she knew had no merit.

She stopped laughing when she passed the next line of trees. A wall of heat crisped her hair. She closed her eyes to avoid the vision. Smoke stung her nostrils and set off another bout of coughing that produced gobs of foul-tasting phlegm. She coughed until she nearly vomited. She stepped back and opened her eyes again.

Sheets of flame enveloped a ring of towering elms. Though Magen could feel the heat from twenty paces away, the trees defied consumption. Against the brilliance, the leaves faded to transparency, showing their veins. Un-singed, they rustled softly under the crackling of fire.

Magen fell to her knees, about to burst into prayer, but she saw people in the fire—forms scattered amid the dark network of branches. Some seemed to dangle in the air like meat hung up for smoking. Others seemed like souls floating in rapture.

An old woman curled in a backbreaking posture, in the shimmering blue core of the fire. Her fingernails and eyelashes rolled out in long fluting patterns, like those of the Free Market slaves who never moved. A turbaned black man lay peaceful as a mummy, his features flaccid.

Leaning upon her cane, Magen strained her eyes to decipher the shapes in the glare. She could not understand why this holy image was riddled with aspects of slavery. Autumn ghosts? Hallucinations? The vision had drawn her this far by appealing to her illusions. Now it mocked her with them.

The sound of rustling silk made Magen turn. The most beautiful woman she had ever seen approached, wearing white scarves that seemed to float in the air. Magen felt ugly and crude wearing cutoff fatigues, and ammo for jewelry. The beautiful woman had the kind of facial symmetry and angularity that the bone cutters of Summer emulated, but she also had a startling uniqueness to her face and a subtle lack of perfection that only occurs with the random linkage of chromosomes. Fragile. So feminine. Her hair hung like a white cape across her back. Her eyes, fringed by transparent lashes, were as blue as the core of the fire. Everything about the woman fit Magen's conceptions of an angel, everything except the trident symbol she wore around her neck. The talisman identified her as a Universalist, a member of a missionary sect that attempted to embrace all religions by focusing on the power of raw belief.

"This is the Council of Autumn," said the beautiful woman. "My name is Veil."

Magen tossed her gun aside, to show she had no hostile intent, and as a gesture of surrender to superior forces. Language, symbolic or otherwise, was not needed at this point. She knew what she was dealing with.

"You are psychics," Magen said.

"The most powerful in the system." No pride showed in the response.

"I did not mean to disturb you."

"You have disturbed us, terribly. We are most sensitive. Have you any idea how deeply you torment your slaves?"

"They don't seem to mind."

"We know you are bitter, but you must stop these atrocities. Slaves cannot help being slaves. You cannot restore their will any more than you can restore breath to a corpse. God has reclaimed some part of their souls. Leave the slaves in peace."

Magen studied the flames and the figures within the flames who looked so much like slaves themselves. "They are in a trance?"

"We share the trance."

"You have so much power. Perhaps you could find a way to make the slaves well again."

"Don't you understand? Slaves cannot be freed. They can only be given to different masters."

Magen threw up her hands. "I am so tired. I know this is stupid, what I do, but I don't know what else I should do. If I give up on Adam, he is lost."

"He is lost anyway."

"Even lost, he is all I have."

"Find a better cause. God has greater purposes in mind for you."

Magen nodded. She was spent, and she could not stand being open to inspection like this—nearly blinded by the light, unable to plot attack or escape, her thoughts as transparent as a butterfly under a bulb.

"We knew of your husband's works, his teachings. Adam Hirsch was a great man with a great dream."

Magen stiffened at the invocation of her husband's true name. It seemed she would be allowed no secrets here.

"If you wish to honor him, you will turn your talents toward his goals."

"I never understood them."

"I studied your husband's writings extensively. I believe I understand them. I can tell you this—he would never condone your present course of action."

Magen said nothing, but shot a sudden blast of resentment toward the young psychic.

"I am sorry you hate me," said Veil. "I am only trying to help those pathetic creatures you so sorely abuse. I am not your enemy, Magen Hirsch."

"Only because I don't know how to fight you!"

Magen turned her back on the vision of the burning forest. She hobbled home slowly, kicking leaves in frustration. She was still in denial about losing Adam, but she resigned herself to change. Or at least to try to change. Really, she had no choice in the matter.

When she returned to the village, she was astounded to find a group of slaves at work in a field. A young girl weeded the soil. A red-haired male guided a plow pulled by a harnessed slave, who was naked except for his cone and streamers. Other slaves were planting seeds. Puffy lids squeezed on their glazed eyes. Their muscles were loose and stringy. God knows when they last saw sleep.

"What are you doing?" Magen asked.

"Tending the land. You need food. You're wasting away," said the red-haired man. His neck cocked to one side, as if he had trouble supporting his head.

Magen leaned forward, curious. "Who told you to do this? The Council of Autumn?"

"I'm doing what you want." He gripped the leather handles of the plow and guided the blade through the soil.

"This is not what I told you to do."

"Mistress, you weren't saying what you wanted. I thought about what you told me to do for a very long time. I was very confused. When you left, I did what you wanted. I will always do what you want."

Magen rubbed her chin. In her absence, the slaves had figured a way out of her riddles, an excuse to return to their zombielike chores. They looked ridiculous. The girl kept tugging at weeds in the ground, though the weeds were the stronger of the two.

"Yes, yes, of course," said Magen. "I have wronged you and I am so very sorry. Soon I will give you a new mistress. She has great wealth and power, and she knows how to care for slaves. She can rule you better. I don't know that you can be happy, but you will be better off with Amelia than with me."

"I had to think for a very long time, a very long time about what you wanted," said the slave.

"I know, I know. I did evil to you and I am sorry, but it is over now. You can stop what you are doing and get some sleep."

"I had to think."

"I said you should get some rest!" shouted Magen.

The red-haired man let go of the plow. He tramped a short way over the furrows he had dug, then he stopped short in the dirt. He looked confused.

"Get some rest," said Magen, taking a gender tone. "You have earned it. That is an order."

"No," said the slave.

Magen smiled.

* * *

When Hubbel requested a meeting with Amelia, she invited him to dine on the asteroid.

She prepared his favorite dish.

As they sat by the cloud garden, with the meal steaming in front of them, Amelia thought that it seemed a shame to cut the brittle shell of the aquatic crustacean she had boiled for the occasion. It shined with a metallic blue luster derived from a remote housefly ancestor. She cut the pretty shell anyway and scooped out a generous helping of abdominal jelly, which she offered to Hubbel.

"Do you want some guts?" she asked.

Hubbel shook his head. "Just a few of the eyes, please."

Amelia scraped bunches of compound-eye segments loose from the central orb. They bounced onto Hubbel's plate like olives.

"I have a problem. A very serious problem. Your friend, Magen Hirsch." He paused, waiting for a response. Amelia looked at him, impassive and perplexed by the pause. He continued, "Yes, I know her real name. I know who her husband is, too. Dissa Banach doesn't know, but I do."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Hmmm. Maybe you don't. Adam Hirsch is a notorious renegade with an enormous bounty placed on his head by a coalition of bods. Apparently, he was captured and traded into slavery while traveling under a false name. All in all, I think the unincorps who caught him got a month's worth of provisions—only a fraction of his true worth."

"So he wasn't really a gentle bible scholar."

"From what I hear, he was a heretic. Many of his former followers consider his disappearance to be a kind of divine retribution. Do you know about the Council of Autumn?"

Amelia shook her head.

"Hmmm. I'll tell you about them. The Council of Autumn is a group of aberrants who have some outstanding mental abilities. Some of them read thoughts. Occasionally, they can predict the future. I suspect they have developed a sensitivity to Draconian time distortions. We've known about them for a long time, even approached them about the possibilities of working together. The bod owns a few of its own psychics—all males. We tried to interest the council in a breeding joint venture. We could have made a fortune in the genetic futures market. They refused us. Religious fanatics, most of them, absolutely no business sense. They could be the bringers of a new age, the next step in the evolution of humanity—if they had the right kind of promoters."

"I don't think I would like knowing the future."

"Well, we wish we had known the future when we first met the council members. We let them live, even though they refused us. Big mistake. We didn't think they would be a problem. They never used to have any interest in Draconian affairs. Most of their time was spent zoned out in a communal trance, oblivious."

"Sounds nice."

"Contemplating God."

"God." She couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Most of them are Universalists. Maybe there's merit to what they say about trying to follow every known faith. Certainly covers all the bases for the hereafter. I'd be interested in joining their church if they weren't all celibate. Utter fanatics. We should have destroyed them when we had the chance.

"Your friend Magen did something that impressed them. She found a way to undo slave conditioning in certain of our most popular product lines."

"That is impressive."

"Yes. I trust you will keep this information to yourself. You understand that damage that would result if people lost faith in their slaves."

"Of course."

"We don't know how she does it. Not yet. We're working on it. We'll find out eventually, and find a way to program around it. But in the meantime, Magen has stepped up her activities against us. With the support of the Council of Autumn, the effects have been devastating. Substantial decreases in our productivity margins. Actually, all of the bods have been hurt, our economies are so interdependent."

Amelia smiled. "You want me to betray Magen."

"Actually, I want you to help her. To be more specific, I want you to help me to help her. In return for a small amount of assistance, I am willing to supply you with ten thousand new slaves at no cost."

"Free slaves? That's a laugh. Why do you think you have to throw in so many incentives to get me to help my friend?" She let the question hang.

He said nothing, knowing the question was meant to be rhetorical.

"You're trying to set Magen up for some kind of trap." She said it as if she had some sly insight.

Hubbel grasped Amelia firmly by the shoulders. He looked her in the eye, a penetrating gaze full of old intimate knowledge.

"I know you so well, Amelia. It makes me ache in my heart and in my balls when I think of how well I know you. No matter what I said, you would suspect me of plotting to trap your friend. I've thrown in the added 'incentives,' as you call them, so that you will hear me out, so that you will not dismiss my plan as a trap—which is exactly what would happen if there was nothing in this for you."

"So why do you want to help Magen?"

"She is only interested in one thing, right? Her husband. If she gets her husband back, she will leave our bod alone. Am I right?"

"I think so—depending on what shape he is in. I can't claim to know Magen very well."

"I am fairly certain that Magen's husband is still alive and not terribly molested. Perhaps those rehabilitation techniques might work on him."

"So why doesn't the bod turn him over?"

"Well, that's what I would do if I ran the bod. But I don't. For all intents and purposes, Dissa Banach runs the bod these days and Dissa Banach is the only one who knows where to find Magen's husband."

"I don't understand."

"Under ordinary circumstances, the major bod divisions are more or less autonomous, reporting to Olagy, which is the same as reporting to no one. By creating a state of war, your friend has aided her greatest enemy. Military imperatives control, and all division heads must now report to Dissa, who is in charge of armed forces. Because of my early involvement in this affair, Dissa has characterized the entire problem as a public-relations failure. My credibility in the bod has been greatly damaged."

"I'm beginning to see what you want."

"As long as Magen poses a substantial threat, Dissa Banach remains in control of the most powerful bod in the system. Covertly, he located and secured Magen's husband. I don't know where he is being held. Most likely, I won't be able to find out."

"So what do I need to do, to get the sanctions lifted and all those slaves?"

"Tell Magen you learned that Dissa is keeping her husband captive. Let her know that her husband is not with the other slaves. Tell her that if she wants her husband, she will have to deal with Dissa directly. I will be working on a way to make the confrontation possible. Only don't tell her that I am your source. Dissa has spies among her followers. If he finds out that I am plotting against him, he'll have me excorporated—in one manner or another."

"How should I say I came by this information?"

"I'm sure you can come up with something credible. You have great gifts for fabrication."

"There is just one problem… one very basic problem…"

"You still don't trust me. Amelia, I offer Magen the one chance that exists to find her husband. I am her only hope, but I can do nothing if you have no faith in me."

"Chadwick, I have no idea where Magen is."

Chapter Six

THE TRAP

At dawn, Magen hit the envelope of the Autumn World with a bump and felt friction warming the ship's hull. The stubby trapezoid wings of her craft cut ribbons of clarity in the haze. Flecks of paint peeled loose along the edges of newly acquired laser scars. The port cannons, already warm, began to blush from the friction. She was coming in too fast.

Suddenly the slave village spread before her. Magen skimmed the rooftops, avoiding wooden tridents mounted high on wooden poles; then she brought the ship down gently for a vertical landing.

As the ship settled on a bed of leaves, Magen climbed out, then walked around to the rear of the ship and flipped open the back hatchway. The cargo of hijacked slaves stumbled out to their new lives, blinking at the brightness of the rising sun. When their eyes readjusted, they gaped at the humble cottages, and at the mounted tridents.

A Universalist church had been built during Magen's absence. The elaborate arches of the building made it seem very old, though it was very new. On the eastern wall of the church, a stained-glass portrayal of Zeus arm in arm with Krishna and Buddha glowed with inner light. The figures were huge, visible even from a great distance. The boundless dedication of the slaves never ceased to amaze Magen. Some of the facades showed the beginnings of elaborate friezes depicting a variety of scenes from various religions. The intricate detail showed the handiwork of newly liberated artisans conditioned to work almost constantly. A life-sized portrait of Christ, carved in bas-relief on newly cut wood, wept tears of sap. From his right hand sprouted thin branches hung with miniature autumnal leaves.

Soon the new slaves would be baptized and consecrated to all of the known Gods—if they had no objections. That was part of the bargain Magen struck with the Council of Autumn. Magen did not care which face of God the freed slaves worshiped, or if they worshiped them all, as the Universalists preached. Judaism discouraged, rather than sought, converts, or so Adam had told her. Magen had other priorities for her harvest of souls.

She slipped off her infrared goggles and took in the new day. Engine oil dripped in gobs from her hair. Trident-shaped shadows rolled over her as she walked toward the cottages.

This particular raid had been uncommonly bloody. Deviating from her usual routines, she pursued a military target. She wanted to update her arsenal and reap some well-trained battle techs for assistants. She didn't need pre-cognition to anticipate a reprimand from the council over the body count. Fine. Next raid she would go back to scavenging the Accountants Bod or the Artists Bod, or some other easy pickings.

Magen came upon two shadows, standing at the edge of the village. One of the shadows moved like a warrior, but with a slow and easy pace. The other looked ominously familiar.

Magen slid a pistol into each hand.

Amelia stepped into the light, smiling and throwing wide her arms. "Magen! How good to see you."

"What the hell are you doing here?" Fresh from battle, the smell of fuel explosions and vaporized fat still clinging to her skin, she was on edge.

"Isn't it obvious?" Amelia put her hands on her hips in an exaggerated show of indignation. "We came to see you. I was expecting a warmer welcome."

Magen stood her ground. "I did not expect to ever see you again, Amelia. You surprised me. I did not think I was so easy to find."

"Chev got the location of your camp from your arms dealers on the Winter World. Don't worry. I don't think they'll be so quick to share the information with the bods."

"How did they find out?"

"When will you stop being so suspicious? We came here at great risk to bring you news of your husband."

"News? What is this news?"

"I would have told you right away if you had been friendlier."

Magen lowered the guns.

"I'm too tired to tell you now. Much too tired. Perhaps after I rest and get a good meal in me I'll be in the mood to talk."

"Amelia, you can't do this to me. It is not right."

"No, I'm much too tired and you will have to wait."

Magen shook her head slowly and let out an exasperated sigh. Chev looked away, embarrassed.

Amelia refused to sleep in the dormitories, where newly freed slaves shared an immense open space. Flaunting the still undisclosed secret information, Amelia blackmailed Magen into surrendering her single-room bungalow.

Before settling into their new quarters, Amelia and Chev washed together under a small waterfall in the forest.

"You looked awful this afternoon," said Amelia. "That's what hurt our credibility. You looked like dishonest scum. I have a lot staked on this venture. I can't afford to have you ruin my chances."

"It wasn't my fault!" said Chev. In fact, Chev had not looked awful. He seemed to have grown taller over the past two years. Taller, stronger, and more mature.

"You don't know anything, Chev," said Amelia, scrubbing her hair vigorously, particularly around the widening white streak—as if she could clean it away with shampoo.

That night, they ate a native Autumn fish fried with berries. Chev wore a cream-colored suit and a wire tie. Amelia wore silk, her hair elaborately braided. She looked like an empress.

Sitting in neat rows, thousands of greasy-lipped villagers sucked threads of meat from comb-shaped fish vertebrae. Despite their numbers, the villagers were eerily quiet and well behaved.

Magen glanced around nervously, obviously expecting another person.

Chev stiffened abruptly, his eyes focused on a floating white sheet across the hall. Amelia squinted, trying to make out the approaching form. Seeing that it was a woman, she slapped Chev's arm with the back of her hand, but it didn't break his gaze. His eyes stayed fixed on the strangely dressed woman. He looked alert and wary, the same expression he wore when dueling with acid.

Inappropriate behavior from Chev came as no surprise, but Veil returned his looks with equal intensity. By the time Veil reached the table, Magen was squirming with embarrassment. Veil slowly crossed over to Chev and placed her hand on his cheek. There was a kind of recognition showing in both their eyes.

"You two know each other?" asked Amelia sharply.

Veil remembered herself and pulled her hand away as if it had been burned. "I'm sorry," said Veil. "I have seen this man before in visions. I needed to check to see if he was real. Sometimes I have trouble telling the visions from reality. I am sorry."

"Veil is psychic," said Magen.

"What are you so angry about?" Chev said to Amelia, anticipating her mood.

Amelia shook her head. She didn't know. She had sampled old Earth love on a whim, and now she had to deal with old Earth jealousy. She just glared, her lips gathered.

Veil took her seat.

Magen said to Amelia, "Tell me about my husband now." She was eager for an answer, but she also wanted to break the awkwardness of the moment.

"Not a moment before I finish eating," snapped Amelia.

"Aw, lay off it," urged Chev.

"No."

"Amelia, I have been patient," said Magen. "This afternoon, I let you play your games on me. It is not right you should keep me in suspense so long."

"I will do as I please, and on my own terms," said Amelia. "I owe you nothing, Magen Hirsch, while you, on the other hand, owe me a great deal."

The rest of the meal proceeded in silence. Amelia looked lovely as she ate slowly. Chev didn't seem to notice. He kept stealing glances at Veil, trying not to be obvious in a way that was painfully obvious.

Veil made a show of ignoring Chev, too much of a show.

Magen waited patiently for Amelia to finish. When the last sliver of fish was washed down by the last drop of ale, Magen asked, "What do you know about my husband?"

Amelia replied nonchalantly, "He is alive and unharmed. Dissa Banach is holding a prisoner within the Slavers Bod."

"Who told you this?"

"A very close friend of mine—Dissa's current paramour."

Magen turned to Veil for confirmation. Veil shifted a quick look at Amelia, then back to Magen, and hesitantly shook her head.

Magen sank into herself, she hung her face into her arms. Her shoulders heaved with deep breaths that could be laughter or sobbing.

"Go away, Amelia, just go away," said Magen.

Amelia rose, keeping her composure. "We'll talk again in the morning." With a cock of her head, she beckoned Chev. Thousands of eyes followed them as they slowly trekked to the exit.

Outside Chev leaned close to Amelia and whispered, "Go back in and tell her the truth."

"I can't."

Amelia's fingers trembled. She fumbled through her pockets and found a tattered cadmadine reefer and a jeweled lighter. She broke off the unsmokable portion of the reefer, jammed the good part between her lips, and lit up. The smoke was blue in the moonlight. It smelled like clove and ice.

"I would have pulled it off if it hadn't been for that girl. I will get her for this. I will."

* * *

From the moment Chev first spotted Veil in the dining hall, he became fixated on her. At first it was an amusement, a diversion from the dreariness of the awful village on the awful planet. He persisted in his obsessions even after he learned that she had taken an oath of celibacy. Even the most pathetic and odious forms of entertainment were preferable to boredom. Raw egotism provoked fantasies about Veil returning his affections.

Using sophisticated bod surveillance techniques, he followed Veil through the Autumn forests all day. She didn't seem to notice him. Apparently, she failed to read his thoughts, though they were often loud and crude. Why didn't she sense him?

He watched her pick flowers and tend to the village children. He watched her eating and praying.

He read frustrated romantic urging into her every gesture; when she looked in his direction, when she looked away, when she seemed happy, when she seemed sad, and when she seemed impassive.

Two years had passed since Fable's ghost gave Chev its cryptic advice. Like most of the inhabitants of the Draconian system, Chev knew very little of matters outside his specialty, which was combat. And so he knew nothing of love, but the more he learned about it, through life with Amelia, the more love seemed like combat.

In this form of combat called love, Chev found himself hopelessly disadvantaged. Youth and firm flesh had given him a strategic advantage over Amelia in the beginning of their relationship. He used to be able to subdue Amelia with ecstasy whenever they disagreed. But now Amelia had built up defenses to his best moves. An old master of a wide array of romantic weapons, she outclassed him now. With deadly skill, she used teasing, ego manipulation, guilt, and other armaments Chev did not know how to handle.

Yet Chev could not leave Amelia. He had nowhere else to go. He no longer fit into Draconian society. He maintained all his skills, but the bods would have nothing to do with him. That left unincorp life or pirate gangs—two alternatives well below his accustomed standard of living. Circumstances bound him to Amelia. His fantasies about Veil provided him an escape of sorts.

In many ways, Veil was a good choice for a fantasy. Not just because of her beauty, and power, and grace. She was untouchable. Unobtainable. Absolutely safe.

In late afternoon, Veil walked to the sector of woods occupied by the Council of Autumn. She parted the walls of mental illusion, and disappeared inside the fire. There she stayed until twilight.

When Veil walked back into the forest, Chev stalked her through shadows, his passions growing. She seemed apprehensive. Had he finally grown too bold in his pursuit? If she knew she was being followed, why did she not call out for help? Why didn't she head for the village rather than the most secluded part of the woods? She seemed so vulnerable, her robes fluttering in the dying light, like a moth who had learned to avoid the flame, but who now had no sense of direction. The fluttering robes made a whispering music distinct from the rustling of the leaves.

Chev caught the scent of something honeyed and exotic lingering in her trail. Possibly perfume. She must know he was there. She must. What did she expect him to do, alone in the dark, in the far, distant part of the forest? He didn't even know what he would do.

His heart began to race. The smell of her trail grew stronger. Was it perfume? He thought of peeling off her robes. He tried to imagine the shape and texture of her breasts, the softness of her skin. The smell grew stronger still. He was closer than he should be.

He visualized the smoothness of her belly, the pinkness of her nipples. Surely she heard his thoughts now. In the far distant part of the woods. He didn't care if she heard. This was an invitation, wasn't it? He didn't know what he would do. He just didn't know. But she might know.

She stopped suddenly and turned, a white shadow in the rainbow forest.

Alone, she stepped into a wreath of twilight illumination. Fresh tears dribbled out of her eyes. Gutters of dry salt lined her cheeks. She had been crying for some time. Maybe all day.

Chev expected to see acquiescence in her eyes, or at least doubt and shame. He would not have been surprised to see terror. But the expression on her face was unreadable.

She breathed slowly and deeply, from the abdomen. Standing rigidly straight, she was pulling herself under control, reining her emotions, her doubts. No desire shone in her eyes. No invitation.

She stabbed Chev telepathically. He felt mental energy bands combing his thoughts until she found something ugly and buried deep in his subconscious. She let him catch the smallest glimpse of it. Then, with perfect control, she let it drop back into the sewers of his mind before he could fix it in memory.

While she was in his mind, he shared a tiny fragment of her thoughts, pure and abstract as music. Unbound by desire. She shared this secret with him for less time than a drop of dream—just to show him how wrong he had been about her.

Her gaze was a weapon that could shrivel his soul, if she wished. She looked through and beyond Chev, beyond the woods, beyond the moment.

The power. The absolute self-control. The blazing eyes. Chev almost fell to his knees in reverence, but power and purity seemed somehow incongruent with her tears.

"I won't hurt you," he said.

"That is not true. You are about to hurt me very much. You are about to destroy me."

"I won't lay a hand on you."

"Count on it."

"I won't even come near you."

"It isn't that. You are about to tell me something that will ruin any chance of happiness that I might ever have. But if you don't tell me, the consequences will be far worse, affecting the fate of the entire Draconian system. I have been trying to decide what to do all day. I knew you were coming, but I didn't know when. I didn't think it would be so soon. I don't think I'm ready."

"I'll go."

"No." She trembled. The decision was made. A reflex. Veil was pathologically unselfish. She should have foreseen it. Chev made the hard moment even harder with his angelic face and his ugly thoughts. "Go ahead," said Veil. "Tell me."

Chev scratched his head. He couldn't imagine what he could say that would be so important. He thought a moment longer, then blurted out, "I love you."

She laughed, suddenly relieved. "You don't even know what the word means."

"I suppose you are right," he sighed, resigned and disappointed at her indifference. "I don't know what else to say."

The two of them stared at each other as the forest grew darker. They said nothing for a time. A lone animal howled in the distance, breaking the silence.

"Maybe you were wrong," said Chev.

"Maybe."

"Maybe I do love you."

"I'm very sorry if you do."

Another long and awkward silence followed. Veil and Chev stood ghastly still, waiting for something momentous to happen. Leaves swirled around them. Nothing more.

"All right," said Veil at last, "I can go. I was wrong. You have nothing for me. It is over. We both can leave this place." She took in a deep suck of air. She seemed enormously relieved.

"I'm sorry," said Chev, alarmed at suddenly becoming insignificant. "Maybe if you gave me a few more minutes…"

"No. I have had enough."

"Let me go with you. Maybe I will think of it later."

She turned her back and began to walk away.

Chev opened his mouth to shout at her, but he changed his mind. He settled into the leaves and sat like a man in a bathtub. He was flattered when this near perfect woman elevated him to a position of importance, and he took it hard when she dismissed him. He took it as an insult. Defensively, he began to find fault with her. She was wrong about the moment. She was wrong to warn Magen about listening to Amelia. He reckoned Veil couldn't read minds or see the future near so well as she pretended. She was wrong, wrong as hell about him.

"I am not wrong," said Veil. She had come back without making a sound. "Amelia lied."

Chev took a moment to recover from this intrusion into his thoughts. He rose up from the leaves.

"So you care about what I think?"

"I care about what happens to Magen."

"Well, some of what Amelia said was a lie, but not all of it. She was tricked into lying. Amelia doesn't always use her head. She was tricked. But Amelia has a solid lead on Magen's husband. For real. I'll tell you why you didn't know that Amelia had this solid good lead. You thought that because she said one wrong thing, then everything she says is false. But that is not the way it is. No matter what, Amelia would never do anything to hurt Magen."

"I don't believe that. But I see you believe it."

"It wasn't Amelia's idea to lie. It was Chadwick Hubbel's. That's who fed her the lies and the information. I know Hubbel is a slime, but he's wired to the right sources. He told us where to find your camp. He promised Amelia all kinds of rewards for being a messenger. And that is all Amelia had to do, spill the data and not mention Hubbel. She was going to keep her word—but she was also going to volunteer me for backup. That wasn't part of her deal with Hubbel. It was an extra—for Magen's protection. Amelia was going to volunteer her own. You didn't give her the chance."

"She should have told us the truth."

"Hubbel told her to keep his name out of it. I don't really see how it makes a difference one way or the other. I think Hubbel just miscalculated."

"I am quite certain that there was no miscalculation. The information from Hubbel leads into a trap."

"I don't think so. I really don't. You should hear me out on this score. Maybe I don't see into the future, and maybe I can't read minds, but I know a lot about fighting and a lot about traps. I have thought this one through, all the way through. Have faith in me."

She smiled cryptically. "I don't have to rely on faith when I deal with people. I know what is true and what isn't."

"If it is a trap, then I am going down, too. Amelia asked me to cover Magen, and I said I would. That's no small protection. I'm one of the best in the merc business. Maybe the very best. I was getting really big in the bod. Getting it up there, you know what I mean."

"I believe you. Why do you take such chances for Magen?"

"Magen's all right. She's a good fighter. A damn good fighter. I have to respect that."

"But why do you risk your life for her?"

He paused. He thought he had answered her question. "Magen's all right and Amelia asked me to. She would have sent Dawson, too—her security chief—but someone had to keep watch over the mansion. You see. Amelia's not so bad."

"You love Amelia?"

That word again. Did he detect a note of jealousy? "You said yourself I don't know what the word means."

"She really meant no harm?"

"Really."

"You are telling the truth."

"Yeah. Hubbel had this inside information. He told us how we could snatch Dissa Banach. Now, maybe Hubbel figured Amelia's bluff would be spotted. Maybe it is a double bluff, but I don't think so. Amelia can be damn convincing when she lies, and Hubbel knows it. And he gave us a setup that looks risky as hell on the surface—not really the kind of setup anyone would use for a trap. No, it is the kind of setup you go into fully armed and wired. A place where there are all kinds of unpredictable factors. In non-bod territory. Not the kind of place you'd want to lay a trap. The Pickpockets' Ball."

Veil looked lost for a moment, out of her element, vulnerable, when trying to assess the strange milieu of traps and lies that Chev inhabited. She knew only that he was telling her the truth as he heard it. She couldn't tell if someone was lying to Chev, or why.

He put his hand on her shoulder, instinctively, to establish rapport. She pulled away and broke into a cold sweat. "What is the Pickpockets' Ball?"

"It is like a contest played by pirates and trade thieves and unincorps. Once a year on the Winter World, everyone dresses up with lots of jewelry and crowds into a big room. The point is, you steal whatever you can and you try to hold on to what you have. Sort of an excuse to squeeze up close to strangers and grab at them."

"Hubbel is lying. I don't believe Dissa Banach would ever go to this contest. Not on the Winter World, where they shoot bod officers on sight. I have looked into his mind. He is too cautious."

"Hubbel says Banach goes there to keep himself fit. It sharpens his edge, sort of. I dunno. I can see it. I'd do something like that if I got stuck running a bod bureaucracy. If I wanted to keep my edge, I would. It is probably something only a combat jock would understand. You learn to get off on fear. It makes you more dangerous. Yeah, I would do it if I was him."

"These things are so alien to my ways. I do not understand them. They are so… ugly… so…"

"Exciting?"

"Ugly… I don't know. Maybe I have misjudged you. There is so much I don't understand. I would have thought Banach would be more careful."

"He is plenty careful. He goes in disguise, of course. And he cheats. He brings a psychic named Ivor with him. Ivor not only acts as a bodyguard, he guides Dissa through the crowds. I hear Dissa exits with quite a nice haul every year. Makes the outing more than just a little cost-effective."

"Ivor Purse?"

"You know him? Hubbel says he is the most powerful psychic in the system."

"I am the most powerful psychic in the system."

"You know Purse?"

"I know of him. I will tell you that this affair sounds more and more like a trap. I believe you are quite sincere. 1 appreciate your candor and your courage. Still, I sense something ominous and untold in this intelligence delivered via Hubbel. I intend to warn Magen away from your expedition."

"You are wrong."

"My instincts seldom fail me."

"But we're not talking about you right now, I mean, your well-being. We're talking about what is important to Magen. Look at it this way—all year long Dissa Banach surrounds himself with troops. He secures himself behind the tightest security web in the system. All year long no one can lay a finger on him. This is our one shot at him with no troops around, no radar nets, no pursuit shooters, no chases through bod-controlled space. No warning systems to deal with but Ivor Purse—but the council can blindside him, right?"

"I don't know if the council will agree."

"What about you? I mean, we have me and Magen. And you, if you'll help. Between the three of us, it should not be impossible to take out Dissa Banach."

Chev could feel Veil's eyes tracing the ridges of defined muscle and protruding veins along his bare arms. She studied a scar on his neck. A mental probe flashed out, this one hitting deeper than the last. She took a sip of his spirit, tasted how dangerous it was. Then she retreated inside herself. She stood absolutely still, like a gorgeous statue, waiting for the future.

"Well?" said Chev.

Veil said nothing. She was gone. Her flesh stood in the forest, eyes wide open, but no one was home.

"Hey!" yelled Chev. "Don't do this to me."

He waited. A sullen wind lightly stirred Veil's platinum hair. She didn't seem to notice when a wayward wisp tangled on her eyelashes.

He shouted again and got no response, so he kissed her. The softness of her lips astounded him. Soft, almost insubstantial lips. Like kissing a flower. He found some wetness on those soft lips and a shock went through his spine. She still didn't notice him. He pulled away, afraid to touch her again. He waited for another ten minutes. She blinked, waking from her trance.

"Well, did you learn anything?" he asked.

Veil looked sad, distant as a dreamer. As if talking to herself, she said, "I have a decision to make after all." Then she tasted something strange and tart on her lips.

For the next few days, Veil seemed particularly aloof—lost in her own thoughts or in the thoughts of others. Dark circles formed under her eyes. She lost weight.

Amelia suspected something sinister behind Veil's strange behavior. Not a conscious malice—even Amelia knew Veil was incapable of harmful intent. But Amelia feared that Veil was wrestling with long-repressed and once-defeated demons.

Amelia feared that she and Chev would become the center of Veil's unresolved conflicts.

Over the course of the next week, Amelia had a series of nightmares. Horrible, vivid, frequently sexual nightmares in which all five senses were engaged, nightmares that could not be distinguished from waking reality.

A malignant presence began to manifest itself. Something invisible that hid behind curtains of dream, a shadow over her consciousness. She fled from the shadow, over dreamscapes the color of bone, over hills the texture of wet mushrooms. But the shadow, or malignancy, or presence—whatever it was—seemed imbued within the total surroundings. Hidden, but hidden everywhere: it haunted the ceilings of sleep, and glinted on blue razor-edged branches in dream forests. It followed her through dust roads to nowhere, down dream wells. It probed out morbid fantasies she could never confess to anyone. She felt its eyes—or whatever it used to watch—gazing upon her.

Amelia had rarely had nightmares before. When she was very young, she mastered her dreams, delighting in irrational defenses against irrational dangers. She hated losing control of any situation, ever, though the cost had been a lifetime of light, fragile sleep.

But now her dreams had drifted beyond her control. It was as if she had fallen into someone else's dreams, as if she were enveloped in a dominant, incomprehensible consciousness. The intruder seemed omnipotent, capable of limitless manipulations of this intangible medium.

Amelia could no longer conjure defenses at will or block out unpleasantries. When she resisted the entity's probing, it punished her. She would dream of her flesh decaying in the grave, her throat melting to slime, the smell of putrefaction strong and real in her nose. Or she would dream of cancers erupting through the walls of her abdomen. All efforts at resistance were met with unassailable force.

For Amelia, wakefulness became an unbearable trial of exhaustion. One rough morning, Amelia awoke feeling as if her insides had turned to slate. Chev was talking to her, but his words did not register. She mumbled a reply that Chev couldn't understand, but he feigned communication, grunting sympathetically. He started talking again— but stopped when he realized she wasn't listening. He strode over to the bed and whipped aside the covers. Grasping Amelia's shoulders firmly, he jerked her upright in the bed and thrust his face in front of hers. Their noses were touching. He shouted loudly enough to penetrate her daze. "Do you know what your problem is? It's that blue shit you take! It's the blue shit, Amelia!"

"No," she muttered. "It isn't the problem. It is the solution."

"If you keep this up, you're going to become addicted."

"I don't care."

She began to increase her intake, but not even massive doses of cadmadine could bring peace to Amelia's sleep.

Like Veil, Amelia lost weight, and she became jittery. It seemed as if the two women shared a common affliction, possibly each other.

Perhaps Amelia would have been more frightened by this plague of nightmares if she were not certain of their etiology. She concluded that Veil had subconsciously invaded her dreams. Amelia believed that in sleep, some tortured portion of Veil's psyche roamed free to share its woe. Veil meant no harm, but Amelia was quite certain that the young psychic harbored poisons.

Weak, delirious, and sleep-deprived, there was not much left to Amelia's spirit but her contrariness. Low as she was, Amelia refused to succumb to the likes of Veil.

Amelia resolved that no one was going to drive her insane or to the grave—no one except maybe Amelia herself. She was determined to somehow get the better of Veil, her undeclared rival.

On a Sunday night, Amelia settled down for sleep laughing to herself. She pulled the covers over her face like the walls of a womb, and she folded her forearms over her eyes. The position was uncomfortable, but she lay still. She had no power left for anything, no more reserves. She drifted into unconsciousness, ready to face her oppressor. Tonight she set a trap with the one mental weapon left at her disposal.

Sleep rolled over her, a sea of numbness, a foaming broth mixing the real with the imagined and the transmuted. Old conversations replayed with unresolved conflicts, silent rooms, sighs, breaths, heartbeats. Undulating geometries roamed her mind, impossible harmonies of sound and color swirled into dream stuff. She lay in wait in the miasma. After a time unknown in the twilight, she found herself in a familiar but long-lost room, a place from her childhood, a memory long untouched. Her mother's bedroom. Her father had let that portion of the mansion fall into ruin after her mother's death.

She could not recall directly the details of the room, not consciously, but as she explored the elegant geometries of this recaptured, re-remembered dream space, everything seemed correct—the blue weave of the carpet, the echoes amplified by marble walls, the sunken triangular foyer, the embroidered armchairs, the closets hung with perfumed silks, furs, and sashes, the glass double doors leading to…

No. Amelia did not want to leave the room. This was a place of strength for her. Her mother still lingered here. The smell of her bath oils. Strands of her black hair. The outline of her form pressed into wrinkled bedsheets. A ghost inside a room inside a dream. Amelia sat down in her mother's chair, waiting for her adversary. She stared at the ceiling. She felt comfortable on this echo of a time-lost chair, and yet the sensations of her bones weighing into long-destroyed velveteen cushions seemed unreal and otherworldly, unlike anything experienced in dreams or in drugs. It was as if she had tumbled into a consciousness deeper than sleep, deeper than dreams, deeper than life. The consciousness of nonconsciousness. Perhaps the consciousness of death. Was that the reason she felt the palpable nearness of her mother? The thought of death provoked no special dread. If this was death, it wasn't so bad. Certainly not what she had expected, but still not so bad. The re-creation of things vanished, the nearness of dead loved ones. Soon she would walk out the door, probe the necroscape, and discover what eternity had to offer. Soon. But for the time being the unreal chair felt comfortable.

Then a sudden panic squeezed her abdomen and a cold sweat poured down her back. It was a sort of dream worry that gives seed to night terrors.

The presence of her mother, which had hung in the air so warm and reassuring, was gone—suddenly replaced by the breath of corruption, the smell of worm fodder and grave shit. An unbearable agony gripped Amelia as though her bones were being ground to powder with living nerves still connected. She screamed. First she screamed for her mother. Receiving no answer, she screamed for Jesus. She had never put any kind of credence in deity legends before. But the sudden agony was too much for her. Much too horrible to be anything but Hell. And her long days of suffering, surrounded by Universalist churches and hymns and the council and Veil and Veil and Veil—all these things made Amelia scream for Jesus as loudly as she could. The pain continued. She babbled phrases she picked up from the ex-slaves in the village, as if the words were infused with magic.

She pleaded for Jesus and Zeus and God, and all the other figures on the windows of the Universalist church. She felt that she was alone, but her agony did not abate. Nerves roasting, sheets of pain. Pain like rain. She tried magical words she didn't understand. Nothing. Nothingness.

Dead. Too late. Death without oblivion. Death without release.

No loved ones to embrace.

But she was not alone.

She shared the room with someone or something. Not her mother, but something that had disguised itself as her mother, draping itself insidiously in shawls, perfumes, and other snippets of sensation culled from Amelia's memory. Amelia called out for God and the disguises dropped away—just for an instant. The room began dissolving, shards of a fading wall hung against infinite darkness. Amelia caught just the briefest glimpse of a sickly, androgynous thing. The dream invader was fleeing the room fragments, fleeing the dream. The creature's face was sexless, betraying the worst traits of both genders, cold, yet weak, cruel, aggressive, frightened and corrupted by self-denial, and preoccupied with death. High cheekbones, blond and pale like Veil and just as fragile-looking. Vaulting eyebrows, sunken cheeks, like Veil with a change of hormones and three weeks in the grave. Just the briefest glimpse of a thing that wasn't a whole creature in any event—it was an escaped thought, a virus of ectoplasm, a ragged bit of soul, as insubstantial as a guess.

Then it was gone, fleeing the cadmadine withdrawal pains that it shared as deeply as it had shared Amelia's dreams. Her trap. Her weakness and her weapon. Cadmadine withdrawal.

Free at last from her dream intruder, free of all dreams and thoughts, Amelia lapsed into a fathomless sleep. Exhaustion being the best and truest anesthesia, Amelia slept through the tail end of withdrawal. She slept through the night and beyond.

Amelia put on a dress appropriate for going to church, a high-collared, loosely flowing silk weave trimmed with snippets of lace and velvet, tied at the waist with a studded sash. She put her hair up. Too much makeup made her complexion look chalky and unreal. Still, it was better than the greyish natural pallor she had developed. She looked weird, but intimidating.

The time had come to confront Veil.

Amelia charged out into the dazzling sunlight. Storming through the village lanes, she demanded an audience with Veil. She barked out orders to the ex-slaves she encountered, and they ran, on reflex, to summon their priestess.

Amelia found Veil seated on a hillside reading to a group of children. As Amelia approached, Veil looked up from her worn copy of the Bhagavad Gita.

"Keep out of my dreams!" Amelia demanded.

Veil regarded her for a moment, a quick scan from head to toe. A chill wind blew. Then Veil rose reluctantly from her seat on the ground, seeming as light and fragile as the dry leaves around her. Veil looked weary; the circles under her eyes had puffed into prominent crescent moons. Bitterly, and with some hint of disgust that she tried to disguise, she said, "I wish I could keep out of your dreams."

"You admit it?"

"Admit what?"

"You have been prying into my dreams."

"I cannot help but hear what you choose to broadcast. I can ease your pain, if you wish."

"Fuck that idea."

"You don't need to be rude. You are the one tormenting me with your horrible, loud, blaring dreams." She shuddered as if a swift, harsh torment had touched her. A tear rolled down her cheek. Perhaps she cried for Amelia or perhaps she cried for herself. Amelia couldn't tell, but she softened, overwhelmed by an instant of pity for Veil, so powerful and yet so frail.

"Listen, I apologize. You don't really mean harm, I can tell. But this business has to stop before it destroys both of us." She paused to let the need for cooperation sink in. "I will tell you what is happening. There is a side to you that you cannot control. That is human nature, Veil. Believe it or not, you are human. You may not consciously mean to hurt me, but…"

Veil brushed aside her tears, cheeks flushing. "I don't want this psychology business discussed in front of the children."

The children, who hadn't been paying attention up to this point, suddenly pricked up their ears to catch every word of what they weren't supposed to hear.

Gently, but insistently, Veil continued, "You may take whatever comfort you wish from not being in control of your actions, but don't project your own lack of control onto me."

"What is this? Are you saying you don't have a subconscious mind?"

"It is just an excuse to sin. If you give yourself excuses, then you will sin. It is that simple."

"I don't need excuses."

"There is the will to do good or the will to do evil. Nothing else. These fabrications of conscious and unconscious mind are only metaphors to explain away God. They are ancient heresies that blinded man to his own soul— much to blame for the way sin has spread like a disease all over the system. I won't have you spouting such dangerous ideas in front of the children."

Amelia folded her arms across her breasts. She had encountered a wall. So much for the gentle approach. She had greatly underestimated Veil's capacity for rationalization. Pacing circles around Veil and the children, Amelia decided that subtlety wouldn't work and neither would rhetoric. Amelia had to attack directly.

"You can't shut me out that easily, girl!" said Amelia. "No more than I can shut you out. Do you understand? You are going to have to deal with me in one form or another. Maybe you can fool other people with your lofty cant about God and his bullshit—but you cannot fool me."

"You don't even understand what I am trying to tell you," said Veil. "You don't even understand the word sin, at least not in the ancient sense."

Amelia shrugged. "I have seen your other side, girl. I have seen the sick, withered, vicious thing that drives you, the castrated, diseased…"

"Enough!" A threat lurked in the tone.

"Go ahead! Hit me with everything you have. Hit me with all the castrated, diseased power you have. I know you, girl. I have seen what you carry inside. You carry something that hates life and everything that goes with life. A dark, demented, sexless…"

"That was not me!"

"It was a part of you. Oh, you try to hide it. You hide it so well from everyone but me. You busy yourself drawing pus from the boils of half-wits. You give food to the lazy and the maimed. You ram your fairy tales down the throats of unfortunates who lack the wit and will to resist. But I know you. A death worshiper, that's what you are. You can't stand your own life, so you remake death into something attractive. Something more salable. You call death 'Heaven,' then you worship it. You are so overwhelmed by death, you call it God. You can dismiss psychology if you want, Veil, but there's a lot more going on in your head than you realize, more than you want to admit. You know what I mean." Then, casually, Amelia added, "I suspect that you always have to wonder if the so-called shameful thoughts you are hearing are yours or someone else's."

Veil's eyes widened. Amelia had drawn blood.

The children giggled, for no apparent reason.

Now tears flowed freely down Veil's cheeks. "I'm sorry, so sorry…" She stared at the ground.

Amelia straightened, willing to accept Veil's surrender. "I accept your apology." Taking a step forward, Amelia couldn't resist a subtle gloat. "I regret that I was forced to use such drastic means to make you confront the problem. There was no other way, girl. Look to yourself and keep out of my dreams."

Veil kept on crying. The children stirred restlessly. Amelia almost felt ashamed of gloating. When Veil could finally speak, she said, "I wasn't apologizing. I am sorry you are so lost, Amelia. I wish I were able to help you, but I am powerless, and you are in grave danger for your soul and your life. I have witnessed your nightmares, though I did not cause them. I know who did."

"You. Yourself."

"You won't believe me, but I know."

"All right, tell me."

"It was someone not human. A great and fearful force. All-powerful—almost. A sick, withered, vicious thing—to use your words. This force opposes God in all his works. It hides in plain sight, like the way it hid in your dream, wrapping itself in familiar things. It tempts mankind away from the light. Recognition of this force was universal on Earth. Nearly every religion has its own name for it—the lying mind, the serpent, the Christians called it Lucifer, the Jews Satan, the Muslims called it Iblis, the Buddhists Mara. The Devil was in your dreams. He has you by the throat."

Amelia laughed, nervously.

Veil continued, "I think the Devil knows you are close to death, and you are ripe for either salvation or damnation. You are teetering on the edge of the void. For some reason I cannot guess, you are special to God, Amelia. He made an extra effort for you last night, to drive out the Devil. That is a miracle I know you don't appreciate."

Amelia pursed her lips. Veil's strange, unexpected compliment made her pause. "Special to God? Me?"

"I think so. And that makes you even more prone to attack from Satan. You have a choice to make, the clearest choice in the world. God or Satan."

Determined not to be manipulated by flattery, Amelia rejected the whole notion. Absurd. One all-powerful, all-seeing entity was hard enough to accept. Two was out of the question.

"No, Veil, it was not the Devil. It could feel what I felt. I chased whoever it was away by subjecting it to my cadmadine withdrawal. It ran from pain, a very animal, a very flesh-linked response. Whatever it was, it felt pain. Couldn't have been an ethereal being. I may not know much about your God and his menagerie, but I can recognize human suffering."

"You called out for God. That's why it ran. You don't realize how lucky you are, Amelia, how much God loves you. You were in Hell, trapped by the Devil. You called out to God and he chased the Devil away. He gave you a second chance. A warning. A taste of Hell and a taste of salvation. That doesn't happen very often. It is beautiful, Amelia. You have been blessed and you don't even know it. Your aura is so dark, tainted by your sins, by your contempt of God. You accuse me of being diseased—but you are the one who is dying. Killing yourself with sin and poison and hatred and lust and envy. Yet rotten as you are, God heard you calling him and he pulled you out of Hell. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard, and you don't even appreciate it. You don't even believe it."

Amelia stiffened.

Veil continued, "You are ready to march back into Hell, on a moment's notice. And blame me. You always blame other people for the things you do to yourself."

Amelia smiled, a strange, uncontrolled, lopsided smile, full of flash insight and hostility. It was an ambushed smile. "Why… you clever little bitch… you…"

"Come along children, come along…"Veil gathered her flock with outstretched arms. Her sleeves flapped in the wind as she hustled the children away from Amelia.

"You clever little bitch…" Amelia said to the air, knowing she would be heard.

Amelia kept repeating the phrase "you clever little bitch" as she strolled back to her bungalow. She found Veil's characterization of the universe unnerving. Was it possible? A duel between two all-powerful entities, each vying for a harvest of souls. Amelia liked the idea that her own soul was a jewel of great worth. She found evidence of cosmic struggle in her renewed craving for cadmadine, and in her slowly emerging desires to resist. She found evidence in her mixed feelings toward Veil. She found evidence in the misbehaving children of slaves defying their parents in the streets of the village. She found evidence in her own despair.

"You clever little bitch…" Amelia muttered, her perspectives on reality altered for a time.

Chapter Seven

THE PICKPOCKETS BALL

While Amelia rested in bed, still sick and chronically weak, Veil flew across space in a midsized craft with Chev and Magen aboard.

Amelia feared the bitter cold of the Winter World. She feared leaving Chev and Veil alone with one another, but she feared the cold even more.

As Veil surmised, Amelia was ripe for either damnation or conversion, and Amelia might have further pondered the possibility of being caught in a tug-of-war between God and the Devil, if Veil had stayed around and provoked further discussion. But Veil was bound for the Pickpockets' Ball, nominated by the council to be their sole representative.

The night that Veil departed, the nightmares departed.

* * *

The craft was spacious, fitted with luxury options. The gorgeous interior was marred by only a slight amount of damage when Magen liberated it from the Accountants Bod. A few indelible blood spots stained the pilot's cabin. Blobs of metal, patinaed in flame licks, hung like bulbous fruit on bare portions of the inner frame.

Chloroform rebreathers freshened the air. Small fountains, cooled by the vacuum of space, added a pleasant smell and a hint of spring to the contained atmosphere.

Despite the ample room aboard, Magen felt claustrophobic, trapped between Chev and Veil and their unresolved conflicts. She retired to her room and began to prepare herself for the ball. She wove three flexible blow darts and a thin, transparent tube into her hair; then she covered her head with a fringed cap beaded with baby emeralds. To better blend with the expected crowd, she applied makeup in the gaudy, provocative fashion of pirate and unincorp women. Orange lips. Gold-leaf eye shadow.

It took almost twenty minutes to squeeze into an impossibly tight mother-of-pearl lame costume. The fabric was thin, but tough as leather. She had not worn the outfit in years. Once on, it was comfortable enough, and did not restrict her movements. Although shamefully immodest, it wouldn't desensitize her to contact, as heavier clothing would.

Then Magen popped open the lock of a small carrying case, heavy with her past. Piece by piece, she unwrapped the jewelry she had accumulated during her days with the bod. Valuable necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, sashes, scarabs, broaches, all delicately packed in clumps of scented tissue. Next, she opened a cask of gems volunteered by Amelia. The difference between the two collections was immediately obvious. Magen's jewels tended to be larger, and the fashions seemed dated, garish. Amelia's pieces were beautiful in timeless ways, with fluted or filigreed settings that perfectly matched the stones. Magen couldn't believe that Amelia considered these "throw-away" items.

Magen and Chev would have to put both collections at risk to gain admittance to the ball. She didn't care about losing any of her own jewelry, though once the trinkets had seemed very important to her. Gems seemed trivial compared to her greater loss.

She began to adorn herself with baubles, setting aside certain gender-neutral ornaments for Chev.

When all of the jewelry had been hung, snapped, pinned, and placed, Magen adorned herself with weapons. A spring derringer under each armpit, a belt of shuriken, all placed as carefully as she had placed the gems. She filed her nails to razor points and blew away the dust. Then she walked out to the antechamber where Veil and Chev sat.

"You almost died," said Chev.

"What?" Magen tensed.

"I mean, I did not recognize you. I thought we had a stowaway or something. You almost died."

"This is who I used to be."

"You look like a killer whore."

Veil said, "That is not a very nice thing to say." But she was obviously just as disconcerted by Magen's transformation.

Magen stood in the passageway, studying Chev.

"So what is your problem, killer whore?"

"You almost died," said Magen.

"Seems like more has changed than just your clothes," said Chev.

When they reached the Winter World, Chev snapped mirrored goggles over his eyes. The wind carried sharp bits of crystalline grit, which tapped constantly on his lenses from the moment he stepped outside. Snow crunched under his footsteps.

He circled an ancient building the locals called the Temple of Ice, where pickpockets from all over the system were beginning to gather. Ice obscured most of the original architecture, flowing in sheets across the walls, hanging from ramparts and cornices in menacing patterns. Claws of ice, daggers of ice, gargoyles of ice.

Only the vast dome on top and the front entrance had been spared the onslaught of ice. Polished by the abrasive wind for centuries, the dome reflected the clear night sky full of stars and arcing lights of arriving spacecraft. The building looked like a cage, topped by a ball of displaced cosmos.

Periodically, Chev could hear Veil check in on him telepathically. She had been scanning the new arrivals. Not a single thought among them about Magen or her small party. Still, Chev felt more and more uneasy as he conducted his routine surveillance of the icebound building.

Only one way in. Only one way out. This was a trap. Obviously it was a trap. And yet Chev had sorted through all the angles. He doubted seriously that Hubbel and Banach could reach any concord or form any alliance. Bod brothers or not, those two hated each other. But one thing kept troubling Chev. Why had Hubbel insisted that Amelia keep his name out of the information conveyed to Magen? Perhaps he figured that Magen would discredit any data coming from Hubbel. That explanation made some sense, but wasn't completely satisfying. Did Hubbel really think Amelia would fool Veil? Or the council? Was it a lie meant to be spotted as a lie, a double bluff? Why did Hubbel want his involvement kept a secret? Or not kept a secret? Or whatever?

As Chev completed his circle around the cage of ice, he heard an old shale-oil generator puffing as it strained to work in the bitter cold. It powered a jammer field, which was needed to neutralize all energy-based weapons. With transceivers nestled in evenly spaced niches chiseled into the ice, the jammer field buzzed. It was absolutely essential. Tempers tended to run hot at the ball. The jammers disarmed most of the heavier forms of weaponry—lasers, even acid swords. Energy-based weapons would cause a bloodbath in these tight quarters.

Chev continued on around. The wind whipped his face. His lips began to crack and bleed. Pink saliva crackled around his mouth. Now the sounds of the generator were barely audible. He had a fine view of the pathway leading up to the front entrance.

The incoming pickpockets strolled leisurely, clouds of breath streaming from their mouths, opulent furs wrapped around their bodies, concealing the bounty underneath. They kept a safe distance from one another until they were forced to squeeze through the doors.

Veil's voice whispered directly into Chev's cerebral cortex. The intense intimacy of her voice in his mind made him ache. He remembered the stolen kiss.

She informed him that Dissa Banach and Ivor Purse had broken the Winter envelope and were about to make landfall.

Chev jerked his head skyward. The night was now thick with arriving spacecraft; yet among the descending armor, he could pick out Banach's craft almost immediately, despite the absence of bod markings. Ornamental chains ran the length of the fuselage, leading up to a metal masthead cast in the image of an abused woman. Iron hooks pierced the cheeks of the masthead, anchoring undulating chains. The woman's mouth was forced open in the shape of an O.

When the ship landed, the gangplank slid out of the open mouth, like a rigid tongue.

Magen, who had been circling counterclockwise from

Chev's beat, now emerged around the other side of the building.

Telepathing to both of them, Veil confirmed the target.

Chev unzipped a furred pocket and extracted a spring pistol—a small handgun powered by a compressed metal coil that spat dermal darts. If he got close enough to Banach, he could anesthetize him with a shot to the cheek and drag him away while Magen dealt with Ivor. Veil assured them that she would keep Ivor blocked and ignorant.

Dissa Banach and Ivor Purse descended the gangplank. Dissa's heavy furs bristled on his enormous frame, making it appear as if he had doubled his bulk. Ivor wore tight-fitting, glittery thermal plastics. He was thin and graceful. Feline, he moved like a dancer.

Both men wore masks of solid gold. Clever. Valuable enough to meet at least a third of the minimum stakes to get them through the door, but hard to filch. Right under their noses—damned hard to filch.

The spring pistol would be of no use. Chev bolstered it. He extracted a long-nosed customized syringe that could penetrate the furs. He weighed it in his hand. He thought-signaled to Veil, who relayed the message to Magen.

Chev and Magen began to close in. They walked in tandem swiftly, but not betraying any urgency. Dissa and Ivor strode thirty paces ahead, following the pathway to the Temple of Ice.

The incoming revelers began to choke the icy path. Chev found himself blocked by some slow-moving new arrivals. He tried to weave around them, but they refused to get out of his way. As Chev pressed for ground, one of them bumped him hard—a butt bump from a saucily shaken hip. Chev nearly fell. His heels screeched as he caught himself. Dissa and Ivor shot a backward glance in his direction, but lost interest when they saw him stumbling on the ice. There was no hint of recognition. Furs and goggles covered Chev's face.

Chev tried making excuses to himself about being weighted down by furs and disadvantaged by the cold— but he knew he was seriously out of shape.

Dissa and Ivor moved closer to the entrance. If they got inside, the entire maneuver would become hopelessly complicated. Chev quickened his pace. He kept his balance. Gripping the syringe tightly, he eased through a press of revelers who blocked his path. He surged up six feet behind Dissa. Magen stepped slightly ahead, ready to pounce on Ivor.

At this close range, Chev could sense enormous energies radiating from Ivor, but Ivor seemed oblivious of the approaching threat. This simple show of Veil's abilities made Chev's mouth go dry.

Chev paced within striking distance of Dissa Banach. He prepared to drive the needle home. Magen waited. She jerked her head almost imperceptibly, signaling Chev to attack.

Chev just stood there with an absurd, confounded expression showing through the furs, a foolish frown on his lips. His hands were empty.

Back along the path, one of the pickpockets lay anesthetized on the ice.

Magen stared angrily at Chev.

Embarrassed, Chev held up his empty hands and shrugged sheepishly.

Ivor and Dissa proceeded leisurely through the door to the Pickpockets' Ball, vanishing inside the Temple of Ice.

Chev and Magen followed, falling into line with the other ingoing revelers. The crowd coagulated as they approached the entrance. En masse, they squeezed through.

Chev and Magen found themselves in a spacious area where the air was warm and thick with exhalations. A number of pendants and shuriken had already been plucked off them.

The assembled pickpockets were shucking off their furs and peeling off their gloves. Jewels and knives glittered on the undraped bodies.

Magen passed a girl of not more than fourteen who had covered her hands and lips with cephalopod suction cups. With sticky fingers, tonight was her night. Her escort, an even younger male, was naked except for sapphires embedded in his skin.

Some of the more defensive players wore venomous insects disguised as scarabs, their glittering green armor resembling semiprecious metals.

A grey-bearded pirate proudly tested new neural connections especially installed for the occasion—opening and closing a set of bird talons affixed to his abdominal wall.

Some wore bits of alarm webbing over or under their garments.

The unincorp crowd made lavish use of biotechnology, frequently to hideous effect, like stripes of reptile scales against stripes of fur against stripes of flesh. One steroid brute had plastered frog skin all over his cheeks. The bods had overused gene splicing for industrial purposes, and the unincorps overused it cosmetically. They scrambled their chromosomes to assert their individuality, indifferent to the risks of cancer and sterility. They prized their own uniqueness above all else. That was why they lived outside the bods in the first place. That was why they armored themselves like crustaceans and hung bird bills over their noses.

The din of conversation was sprinkled with leopard growls, barking, cawing, and the voices of turtles. The human race was splintering—every man was a species unto himself.

Guarding the row of doors that led to the main ballroom, a team of heavily armed locals scrutinized the entry stakes on the new arrivals. As Chev and Magen presented themselves for admission, the eyes of one of the team members bugged out with jeweler's glass implants. He looked like a fish as he examined the contestants.

Many of the contestants were turned away. Those who refused to leave were knifed or shot down with crossbows on the spot. The disenfranchised inhabitants of the Winter World regarded the Pickpockets' Ball with almost religious zeal. This was their one night of glory and release, and they would not tolerate any breach of their protocols.

Magen and Chev had managed to retain enough of their booty to gain entrance. They pushed through the swinging doors into the main ballroom.

Magen scanned the crowd for Dissa. A soft glow lit the room, something like candlelight. She couldn't find any sign of him amid the bangles, feathers, flesh, and knives. Partyers bumped into her. Some flashed lecherous smiles. Magen felt a series of tugs on her costume as she navigated the ballroom. Her necklaces were gone. The broaches vanished. If she didn't start paying attention to the sport of the moment, she would lose everything. Already, she had lost sight of Chev.

The roar of the crowd sounded more like a jungle than a gathering of humans. Magen doubted that the roar represented any kind of communication, or even attempts at communication. It was too loud, too animal. The only social interaction under the dome was pilferage. Bits and pieces of value rapidly changed hands and passed through the crowd, exchanges of material goods instead of information: the language of larceny.

Magen called out mentally to Veil. It felt good to reestablish the link between them; it broke the overwhelming sense of isolation Magen felt. She let Veil guide her.

Magen began to recoup her losses along the way, snatching chains of gold, strings of pearls, broaches, and pendants. And rings. She liked rings. Moving through a sea of hands, she continued to incur some losses. Rude tugs pulled at her. Someone ripped out an earring, splitting her earlobe in bleeding flaps. Some of the pickpockets showed more finesse, with gentle, almost intangible taps. Magen managed to pick up at least as much as she was losing, hitting a kind of equilibrium.

From atop a raised dais at the north end of the hall, a phalanx of winter locals trained crossbows on the crowd, a modest attempt to keep the chaos under control. Murders would be tolerated, even confined brawls, but any suggestion of rioting would be dealt with harshly.

As the room became more crowded, Magen detected subtle smells of death in the air, an undercurrent of blood and bile floating under the smells of sweat and perfume.

The Winter World ushers were tapping out the empty-pocketed losers and signaling them to leave. Every now and then, they would drag away a corpse.

Magen stumbled across the young boy she had seen earlier, the naked youth with the sapphires. He was alone now, and dead on the floor with all the gems plucked from his body.

Telepathing directions, Veil led Magen to Dissa. Simultaneously, she guided Chev to the same point. Magen sensed the beginnings of mental fatigue in Veil, a subtle drop in her energy level, a loss of volume in her cerebral voice.

Magen assessed the situation, plotting a new approach to seizing Dissa. His furs gone, he wore a net of tight, finely linked chain mail. If she could get close enough, there was a chance she could slide one of the smaller syringe needles through the mesh of links. She relayed plans to Chev via Veil, even though they stood not five feet apart. No chance of being heard in there. He maneuvered into position.

Magen sashayed past Dissa Banach, openly flashing her jewels and charms. The display held an implicit invitation. She played it that she was wide open, vulnerable.

Dissa seemed not to recognize her, but he saw through her pose. Nonetheless, he seemed intrigued. He shot a glance toward Ivor, who nodded him on. Dissa glided through the crowd, inclining in Magen's direction. Magen flashed a mental salute to Veil, thanking her and complimenting her on keeping Ivor blocked so well.

Dissa was so close now that Magen could smell his desire. He was aroused, she was certain, not by her body but by her jewelry. His strong hand brushed over Magen's breast, snatching a broach, unpinning it with a single motion. He swept prizes off her without tearing the fabric of her clothing.

He was good, but as he withdrew, she culled a handful of earrings he had stored in his hip pocket, his pickings from earlier in the evening, worth far more than the broach. He made another pass at her, groping for the earrings. She turned away from him, coyly, a half-turn. He pressed closer. He didn't like to lose.

They plucked small trinkets from one another's bodies in a tango of theft. His chain mail put him at a certain disadvantage; it stiffened his movements, and it desensitized him to her prying fingers. She let him stay close. She teased him by exposing one of Amelia's most alluring pendants—but she kept it just beyond his grasp. While he chased her offerings, she let a small syringe slide into her hand.

Chev pulled up behind Dissa.

Ivor watched Dissa and Magen dueling like pickpockets. He seemed unconcerned, standing limp-wristed and at ease.

She dangled the pendant again, a laser gem in an art-deco setting. It glittered with auburn points of angry light. As he grabbed for the bait, the golden cheek of his mask made cold contact with her face.

With a fluid motion, she thrust the syringe upward.

Dissa caught Magen by the wrist and held her fast. The needle tarried in the air, below Dissa's right pectoral muscle.

Now that she had made her move, he recognized her. He saw past the veneer of makeup and cosmetic surgery. He said something to her she couldn't make out over the roar of the revelers. With his free hand, he pulled a knife. She scrambled frantically with her free hand for a weapon, but all the weapons within her limited range of motion had been plucked off by the crowd.

Chev tackled Dissa. The two men exchanged a quick volley of forceful blows. Their fists fell with such visible power, Magen imagined the smack of bone and muscle colliding, even though the surrounding sea of noise absorbed the actual sounds.

Tangled together, a knot of limbs, Chev and Dissa rolled across the floor. They had knives out, sweeping at one another. Both men bled heavily. The onlookers dodged the blades and cleared a small arena on the ground.

Magen caught a soft message from Veil, who was fading fast. Veil was trying to persevere, but her thought signals were brittle. She relayed Chev's new plan. He would try to pull off Dissa's golden mask, or cut a hole in his chain mail. He wanted Magen to hit Dissa with a blow dart the moment skin was exposed.

She quickly unweaved a hollow tube from a lock of hair under her cap. She pulled free a dart and loaded the tube, placing it between her dry lips. She circled around the brawling men. Dissa had not forgotten about her. He tried to throw a kick in her direction, but she stayed just beyond his reach.

Chev's hands lunged for the mask. He planted his fingers firmly on the shining cheeks and pulled as hard as he could. Instead of resisting, Dissa threw his weight into the yank, propelling his head forward, riding Chev's own strength. The mask hit Chev's forehead with a terrible impact. Magen heard the mask ringing, even above the roar of the crowd, a single vibrating, golden note.

Dissa disentangled himself quickly and spun around to face Magen. Chev lay on the ground, limp, his forehead bruised and mottled, his perfect nose flattened. Magen heard a gasp, a tone of mental anguish inside her mind; then Veil disappeared. Magen was alone, facing Dissa.

To everyone's surprise, Chev struggled to sit upright. Teetering at the waist, he pulled back his arm, knife in hand. Dissa wheeled about, hit him with a snap kick under the chin. The blow shot Chev backward into the crowd. A cluster of onlookers collapsed on top of him, and he disappeared under a wave of falling bodies.

Magen used the split-second respite to blend into the crowd. She tried to reestablish contact with Veil, stretching her thoughts beyond the top of the dome, to the skies. She met silence. What had happened to Veil? Exhaustion? Or had she dropped her shields just low enough for Ivor to spot her? Had Ivor and Veil clashed on their ethereal plane? Or was there something else?

Magen broke into a cold sweat. Without Veil protecting her, Magen would be exposed, her thoughts open to Ivor, her strategies conveyed to Dissa the moment she formed them. Her throat dried. She couldn't bring her breathing under control, and her heart raced.

She shoved her way through the crowd, trying to veer toward the walls. Anything to limit the angles of attack. She felt tugs of nibbling fingertips as she lost various items of value. She was too preoccupied to play the game.

When she reached the wall, she paused for a moment. She leaned upon an ancient bronze plaque, supporting her weight on one hand. Metal upraised letters pressed into the softness of her wet palms. The hideous cold of the world outside bled through the concrete walls and the metal plaque. When she withdrew her hand, she saw Hebrew letters imprinted on her skin. Mirror-image Hebrew letters. Scanning the plaques, she found they covered the entire length of the wall. Row after row, Jewish names written in Hebrew letters, each accompanied by a date. The names of the dead. Memorial plaques.

Her eyes drifted upward from the plaques to the great dome and saw, for the first time, a gigantic engraving of a Star of David.

She realized that the Temple of Ice had once been a literal temple. Behind the bowmen on the dais, she could make out the ruins of an empty ark, its portals decorated by sculpted lions and dense layers of graffiti. On an upper balcony, where women once sat segregated from the men during services, scantily clad pickpockets now rubbed against one another, searching for something of value.

Finding herself in a temple, a once holy place so badly desecrated, filled her with despair. The ancient Jews who had settled here must have been brave and powerful and wealthy to raise such a sanctuary in so bleak a wilderness. How had their strength served them? Was it wasted in the impossible cold? What had happened to their community? Had they been wiped out, or assimilated into the pirates and unincorps? Were the bowmen on the dais their descendants?

She looked upward in prayer and saw again the huge star on the inside of the dome, undiminished in its grandeur, out of reach of the graffiti artisans. It comforted her a little. What a beautiful temple it must have been. Perhaps the Jews who had built it migrated to less hostile worlds. Perhaps they were her ancestors. Or Adam's. There on the killing ground, she had only the cold names of dead kindred spirits to stand beside her. She decided to head for the exit. Time to abort this insane, suicidal venture. She no longer held any hope for success. She had come ill prepared, vulnerable, open, and unable to breach Dissa's defenses. She resolved to head for the exit. She would try to capture Dissa another day.

"Don't give up."

Magen heard a voice in her mind. It sounded like Veil, but it didn't feel like Veil.

"Ivor?"

"No, it is me, Veil. Trust me. Dissa is circling the exits. He's waiting for you to bolt. It is an ambush."

Who was this whispering in her mind beside the names of the dead? Angel or devil?

"It is really me," said the mental voice. "I am really Veil. Ivor thinks such wicked thoughts. Violent. Hideous. I couldn't take it anymore, but I am rested now and I feel better. You must have faith, Magen." Then, impatiently, she added, "Do you really have a choice?"

Twenty feet away, Dissa's golden mask glittered in between spaces in the crowd. None of her weapons could harm him. The blades would catch on the chain mail. The spring guns didn't have enough force to penetrate his protection. Anyway, they had been lifted.

"I will guide you to a weapon," whispered the voice of Veil. "Seventy degrees to your right, see the boy with the red cape? Tap his right breast pocket."

"Veil, is it really you?"

"Have faith."

Magen took off after the boy. She pressed up beside him, felt a rigid tube in his top pocket, then lifted it.

She angled through the crowd, trying to keep as many people as possible between her and Dissa. She tried to figure out what kind of weapon she had acquired. It looked something like a pen, a single tube with a single cartridge inside with a crude trigger mechanism at the top. She suspected it was some kind of ballistic weapon, a one-shot, something primitive and ancient like her old Luger. With a weapon like this, something that could only kill or maim, there was no way she could take Dissa alive. Her one hope for survival would end all hope of ever finding Adam.

She cursed the weapon, cursed the choice it placed in her hands, cursed her foul luck. As she cursed, the weapon vanished from her fingertips, as if she had wished it away.

"The girl in the feather bodice," whispered Veil's voice, "she has it."

Magen gave chase. The crowd had begun to thin a little. With the losers tagged out, the level of activity increased to a frantic pace. Only the most skilled pickpockets remained.

The bounty picked from the losers sparkled abundantly as gems moved from pocket to pocket amid the players who were still left. Fortunes were made and fortunes were lost with the flick of a wrist. Goods were changing hands so quickly now that everyone left in the room was a winner—-just for a moment.

Magen brushed against the girl in the feathered bodice. It took three probes, but she recovered the weapon. Veil had been right.

Then Veil screamed a warning, a high-pitched cerebral note. Magen ducked just in time to avoid a knife ambush from Dissa. She ducked under the cover of the crowd again.

The warning reassured Magen that she was being watched over by Veil. She paused for a moment, scrutinizing the tubular mechanism. Another warning sounded in her brain.

Magen spied Dissa's golden face cruising toward her.

She steadied the weapon. One shot. One chance. Losing Adam forever. Losing her life. Dissa charged forward, transparent knife blades gripped in each hand. One chance, one shot.

Magen's fingers faltered on the trigger. She froze. The weapon was raised, poised to kill, but she couldn't bring herself to fire.

Veil's voice screamed in her mind, "Kill him, kill him, kill him…"

Magen wheeled around, just in time to avoid Dissa's attack slash. The blade cut deep into her left biceps.

Before he had time to cut her again, and before she had time to re-aim, an eddy of revelers flowed between them.

She took a moment to slit open her left sleeve and slap a dermal adhesive on the wound. She couldn't afford to lose blood. While she ministered to her injury, trinkets flew from her body. Someone managed to scarf up the weapon as well.

Veil's voice steered Magen toward the culprit again.

"Get the weapon, keep it, kill Dissa." She wasn't sure if it was Veil who was telling her these things, or her own instincts.

This time it was harder to get the weapon back. Magen's left hand went numb. In her rush, she had botched the dermal patching, and a dark hematoma spread under the cloned adhesive tissue. She could feel the opposite walls of the wound sucking on one another.

Magen finally managed to grab the tube away from a blond pirate, largely because she had been willing to sacrifice two bracelets and a dagger. She held the weapon.

"Keep it, kill Dissa," said the voice inside her head.

Roaming the ballroom, she lost the weapon again. She had clutched it too hard, made it look too valuable. Someone pulled it right out of her fingertips.

The voice helped her get it back.

She lost it again in an undertow of fingers.

Rummaging through velvet pockets, she got it back.

She lost it.

She got it back.

She fought the pulling tide.

The voice in her head screamed, "You're letting it slip away on purpose. Hold on to it, kill Dissa. Hold on to it. Kill. Forget Adam. Forget Adam. Don't even think about Adam. Don't even think his name. Don't even think about someone you can't name. Don't even think…"

Magen pulled out of a wave of bodies about twenty feet behind Dissa. He had his back to her. With one hand, he carried Ivor aloft, gripping the psychic's tunic. Ivor's feet frantically trod air. Clearly, Dissa was furious at Ivor for his ineffectual performance against Veil.

Magen closed in. For an instant, she could feel Veil's will clashing against Ivor, grating, whining in the air, like neurofeedback. She caught just the faintest trace of a warning squeal—Ivor to Dissa, or Veil to Magen, she couldn't tell. She closed in, uncertain of the range of her weapon. One shot. One chance.

Dissa spun around without breaking stride and without dropping Ivor. He let loose a dagger. Magen fired her one shot as the dagger slammed into her right shoulder.

A small round hole appeared in the forehead of Dissa's mask. He fell backward. His spine flopped around on the deck of the desecrated temple. Amazingly, he wasn't dead.

The seizure action of his spine eased up. Signaling frantically to Magen, Dissa pointed to his mouth. Teetering on the edge of life, a bullet in his brain, he wanted to tell Magen something. He had one secret to share before passing on. He was frantic about it, insistent. She raced to his side.

She knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her how to find Adam. What else could it be? Staring God in the face, he wanted to atone. He was saying something. She couldn't hear over the crowd noise, but she could feel his breath blowing through his mouth hole. She struggled to pry off the golden mask; perhaps she could read his lips.

As she worked on the straps, she praised God, awed that even Dissa Banach could repent. Tears filled her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, gathering silver flake. She pulled loose the tiny buckles as quickly as she could. Both hands were clumsy now from her wounds.

Before she could finish, one of the Winter ushers tapped her on her wounded shoulder. He motioned for her to leave. She held up a single finger, her eyes begging to stay just for a moment longer. The usher shook his head, motioning over to the dais where bowmen stood beside the ruined ark of the covenant.

"You will have to leave," she read on his lips, "you have lost everything."

A gust of tremors swept over Dissa Banach's body and a great relaxation emptied his bladder.

Chapter Eight

A CHAT WITH THE DEVIL

A great bell sounded. It was the only sound in the world— pealing over the outer reaches of Chev's awareness. It rang loud and clear. It rang like pain.

Then, in the center of the ringing, there was a scream. A woman was screaming in terror and despair. Veil was screaming inside his head, screaming for help.

Unsteadily, tentatively, he hauled himself upright and searched the crowded horizons for an escape route. He caught sight of Dissa Banach lying dead on the ballroom floor. This was no time to gloat—Veil was in trouble.

The mental scream sounded again, and Chev pushed through the crowd. He paused briefly in the outer lobby to retrieve his furs, then charged into the cold outside.

The snow was deep and dry. Veil was still calling to him. Not Magen. Not anybody else. She was calling to him. His mouth began to crook in a half-conscious, self-satisfied smirk, but his lips immediately retreated into a neutral expression as pain from his broken nose rebounded across his face.

Thinking of Veil spurred him on. Boots pounding, he trudged through the snow. The air burned his throat, and cracked open chapped fissures on his lips. He couldn't breathe through his nose, yet he found power and balance thinking of Veil in danger and coming to her rescue.

Even at this level of frenzy, it would take him ten to fifteen minutes to reach the ship.

Fine.

Chev was out of the way for the time being.

Magen.

Ivor Purse turned his attention to Magen.

In the outer lobby of the Temple of Ice, Magen was patching the knife wound on her shoulder, slapping on a thick dermal patch. Then she rummaged through stacks of furs, searching for her own coat. For a moment, she considered walking out with nothing but her slim garments and letting the wind numb her to all her pain.

She found her coat buried at the bottom of the stack. She felt eyes upon her and became suddenly self-conscious of being almost naked. Self-conscious and ashamed. Out of habit, out of instinct, she held the coat to the light and scanned the seams for signs of tampering. Five viper beetles scuttled out of the sleeves. For a dangerous moment, she paused to admire their shimmering beauty, their green metallic armor wrought in intricate designs. Their barbed legs combed gently through forests of fur. Jewelry for the world to come.

She dropped the coat, plucked a slender dart from under her cap, then carefully impaled the bugs with the sharp tip. One by one, they crunched and leaked venom.

Had someone targeted her for a hit? The bugs could have been coincidental; there were enough of them crawling around in the crowd. Or perhaps the danger had not ended with Dissa's death. Perhaps she had walked into a trap after all.

After completing a slow, careful inspection, she donned her furs and headed outside. The feeling of being watched stayed with her.

Outside, she had to face the snow plane, dry and white as her despair. The locals shuffled about. Guns strapped to their shoulders, most of them were smoking tobacco as they policed the grounds.

There were three hills around the Temple of Ice, describing a triangle. They could have been man-made hills. Clusters of spaceships sat parked at the base of the hills, on ground level, following the triangle like an ornamental picket fence.

The sun had risen an hour ago and glare on the snow made it difficult to approximate the distance to the three hills. They were well out of range of ballistic weaponry, but not out of range of lasers. Magen thought she could make out nests of assassins at the peak of each hill. Paranoia, perhaps. Or perhaps despair. She had nothing to go on—odd crooked shadows, glints of colored light that could be sun on snow or sun on jeweled muzzles.

Magen lingered close to the Temple of Ice, venturing to the point she imagined to be the outermost fringes of the jammer field. She felt eyes upon her, perhaps eyes that peered through sniper scopes. Standing absolutely still, on the rim of safety, she dared her unseen observers to open fire. Perhaps the jammer field would be strong enough to dissolve any light shots. Perhaps it wouldn't. She yelled taunts. She just wanted to know if someone was out there, watching her.

Nothing happened.

She could not tarry forever on the edge of the jammer field. The snow plane was the avenue of departure. To death. Or to deliverance. The snow plane shined white and expansive and inviting. It reminded her of heaven in some obscure way, heaven surrounded by snipers.

She had no weapons left, except for the blow gun and darts under her hood. Despite the eloquence of her despair, she was not prepared to march into the crosshairs of a sniper scope, real or imagined—at least not until she found a weapon that had some range to it.

She ducked back into the temple lobby.

A local girl about Magen's height ambled past, a bored, mean look on her face, a double holster strapped around her waist. Magen whistled the girl down and offered her luxuriant furs and the cap of baby emeralds in exchange for a hand laser and something modest to keep warm. It was a deal heavily weighted in favor of the local girl, apart from the fact that Magen was dressing her as a decoy.

"I dunno…" the girl muttered, her eyes sequined with transplanted fish scales, her fingertips and lips stained blue and amber from cadmadine and tobacco. The deal was too good to be true. "Gimme a minute…"

Magen's conscience nagged at her. The girl had never done Magen any harm. Why should she go to death in Magen's place?

Why? Because it was the only way out of this trap. The locals wouldn't pay any attention to a lone offworlder shot down on the snow plane—but one of their own was a different matter. They would storm the hills and Magen could escape in the confusion. If, by chance, there were no killers waiting on the hills, then the girl would be richer by one fine fur coat and a cap of baby emeralds. The girl might end up with the better end of the bargain, and Magen had no other way to escape.

Voices nagged at her inside her head. One voice told her to face her fate on the snow, even if it meant death. It told her to spare the girl. But the voice of her conscience sounded so much like the voice of the Devil, she chose to disregard it. She chose survival at any cost. Maybe the assassins weren't real anyway.

In the end, greed got the better of the girl. She donned Magen's cap and furs and headed outside. Magen followed at a stalker's distance. The voices in her head had grown silent. The local girl paused at the fringes of the jammer field, just for a moment, and shot a backward glance at Magen. The girl's sequined eyes shone listless, despite their glitter, indifferent, jaded.

Magen felt suddenly sorry for the girl dressed as a decoy. The voice of Magen's conscience had grown silent, and there was nothing left to rebel against. She felt a deep, impenetrable regret.

"Don't go!" shouted Magen.

"You want to back out of our deal?"

"Yes."

"Too late."

The girl spun around. Slowly, she ventured onto the snow plane, swaying her hips in mockery, stumbling occasionally from intoxication. She crossed the dazzling white from one end to the other.

No lights flashed. No one died.

The girl crossed under the hills and continued beyond.

By this time, Chev had reached the waiting spaceship.

Ivor Purse was about to turn his focus away from Magen and back to Chev when Chadwick Hubbel laid a hand gently on his shoulder. Hubbel said, "Tell the men on the hills to monitor Hirsch and Carson and to interrupt if there's a material change in their positions. Then take a five-minute break, so you don't burn yourself out."

Ivor's eyes rolled back for another half-minute; then he slackened his shoulders. He had been performing incredible mental feats all night long. He was tired. The cold ate at him despite the state-of-the-art heaters in Hubbel's ship. It had been a very long night. He would have dropped from exhaustion before now if it hadn't been for the stimulants and the naked thrill of synergistic artistry he and Hubbel shared when they toyed with lesser beings.

He took particular delight in fooling Veil, in keeping her blocked for most of the evening and feeding her contrived sense impressions. Ivor enjoyed masquerading as the voice of Magen's conscience, as the ghost of Amelia's mother when he invaded Amelia's dreams, and most of all, he loved masquerading as Veil.

Ivor had the power. Hubbel provided genius and subtlety to the game.

At last Ivor had ended his years of false loyalty to Dissa Banach. He felt relieved and free just to have Hubbel close by. The two of them had grown up together, friends ever since they shared the attentions of a common nanny in bod kid-care. They were bod kin in the profoundest sense. Ivor had been Hubbel's man all along. His woman, too. Not that Hubbel ever had any sexual interest in his own gender. Ever the transvestite, Ivor kept at hand a wardrobe of woman slaves, stunning creatures he could inhabit whenever the mood was right.

When reconnoitering in Amelia's dreams, Ivor couldn't resist the temptation to pick her subconscious for erotic tips on pleasing Hubbel. Amelia had been one of Hubbel's favorites—Ivor could tell by the way he went out of his way to keep her protected. Ivor grew jealous at the way Hubbel had insured that Amelia would be too sick to come to the Winter World. Amelia was to be spared any danger, while Ivor was thrust in the thick of it.

So far, Hubbel's scheme had been working well. With calculated false signals, Ivor and Hubbel had tricked Magen into killing Dissa Banach. That was step one. They had almost succeeded at step two, which was killing Magen. Ivor had almost convinced her to step out of the jammer field, into the gun sights of the snipers waiting atop the hills. But he and Hubbel had miscalculated the girl's instincts, her natural paranoia and contrariness.

Well, they both were tired and entitled to make a few mistakes.

"She was very close to suicidal ideation back there," said Ivor, sniffing the cologne rising from Hubbel's furs. "I think we should tell her the truth about her husband. I think that would push her over the edge. She'll do our work for us."

Hubbel shook his head. "It seems part of her pathology to find cause for hope where others would be inclined to give up. She is too volatile right now. The truth could drive her over the edge, as you say, or it could create a monster."

Hubbel handed Ivor three small pills that looked like teddy bear eyes. Ivor let them dissolve on his tongue, tasting the salt from Hubbel's palm with the bitter medicinal tang. Hubbel popped three pills into his own mouth and chewed them.

Chev.

Chev clambered up the side ladder of the spacecraft. He paused for a moment to check his weaponry before charging inside, but he caught the sight of his smeared nose reflected on the gleaming friction sheath. He couldn't stand the thought of looking less than handsome in front of Veil, even when rescuing her. Firmly gripping the cracked perpendicular plate of his nose, he tugged it back into a warped approximation of its prior position. Dried clots broke loose. Blood gushed from his nostrils. With no time left for vanity, he pulled open the airlock and slid through the narrow passage.

Slowly, he manipulated the last door separating him from Veil. Noiselessly, it opened.

Inside, it was absolutely quiet.

Chev stalked through the cramped corridors, through the oppressive silence. Wary of announcing his presence, he made no sound himself, even though there were no visible signs of violence within the craft. A shiver crept up

Chev's nerve endings. He could not shake the oppressive chill of winter.

Veil's cabin door stood ajar, opened just a crack. He cautiously approached. Veil's scents drifted down the hall, the smell of bleach on her linens, the unperfumed detergents she used to cleanse her skin, and more—the acid smell of female terror. He could hear her breathing rapidly. He could almost hear her heart pounding.

He kicked open the door and wheeled inside, gripping a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. Veil screamed.

Chev spun around, searching the room. They were alone. Veil stopped screaming.

She sat cross-legged on the ground, covered with tiny tridents. She had wrapped Universalist rosaries around her head until it looked as if she were wearing a veil of thorns. She trembled like a fever victim, and the beads clattered softly.

"The Devil," she said. 'Where?"

"There!" She pointed to a cluster of the darkness in the corner. Chev pitched his knife in that direction. It struck hard wood with a resonating note.

"No Devil in there," he said.

"There," she said, this time pointing to his forehead.

He grinned, hit the side of his head in burlesque, as if to knock the Devil out through his left ear. "No Devil in there either."

"Don't make fun of me," said Veil. "This is real. The devil is real, nearby. He is very close to Magen right now, very close to you. I don't know why I didn't see it before."

"Calm down. I am here now. I won't let anyone hurt you."

"I don't need your kind of shelter. Go away. Go find Magen. She is the one who needs your help. She is in terrible danger."

"No. Everything is all right. Dissa Banach is dead. I saw his corpse. Our mission here is a success."

"We weren't supposed to kill him."

He stopped and thought a moment. After two years of living free and unincorp, he still measured success in merc terms. The winner is the one who walks away, and the loser is the one left lying in a bed of piss. But Veil was right, and he remembered, with a touch of embarrassment, that their mission had nothing to do with assassination.

"Where's Magen? In what way is she in trouble?"

Veil closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. She strained herself, eyelids gathering in tight wrinkled bunches. Beads of sweat shined beneath the tangle of tridents obscuring her face. When she opened her eyes, they were full of astonishment. "I don't know."

"I'll see if I can find her."

"Don't go." The words came clearly, in beautiful seductive tones, not from her lips, but directly into Chev's brain. Confused, he turned and looked into her eyes.

"I'll stay if you want," said Chev.

"Magen needs you." Veil's beads continued to clatter from her trembling.

"All right, then."

"Magen needs you, but I want you." Again, not from her lips. "Listen to me—don't listen to me."

He smiled. He sat down beside her and took her hand into his. "You're confused, that's all."

She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it fast.

He continued, "You just don't want to admit how bad you're scared. That's OK. You need me more than Magen does. Magen can take care of herself."

Veil's hand was growing slippery with sweat. The more she wriggled, the wetter their contact. It sent waves of thrill through Chev's glands.

"The Devil," hissed Veil.

Ivor smiled. He liked this masquerade. He liked parading in horns and terrifying virgins. Just as he was starting to savor the seduction, Hubbel shook him. The snipers on the hill had lost sight of Magen Hirsch.

Ivor was irritated at having to drop, even for a moment, this wickedly delicious amusement—but he disengaged from Chev's consciousness and scanned the snow for Magen. He found her quickly, but he couldn't place her. The entire visual field was white. There were no definite tactile sensations; overwhelming cold and numbness. Cold stabbing through the cheap unincorp thermal coat. Nothing but cold and white.

Ivor said, "I think she's burrowing through the snow."

"What's she planning?" asked Hubbel.

"Shit! Her thoughts are all gibberish. No language I've ever heard. Either she's decompensating, or she's deliberately trying to block me out."

"She's probably thinking in Hebrew. Shit! She's on to you, Ivor. You laid it on too thick when she spotted the snipers."

"That was your fault."

"No. You weren't listening to my directions. I say we abort the rest of the operation. It hasn't been a total failure. At least Dissa is dead. Let's head home."

"Not yet. Please."

"We blew it. Too risky now."

"I'm having too much fun. Anyway, how is it risky? We're okay here, Chad. She can't find us, you know—how would she pick this ship out from all the others? Besides, the snipers will nail her. She's all alone out there, in the snow. Nothing but a handgun, probably local make without much punch. I can keep Chev and Veil 'occupied.' Where's the risk?"

Hubbel smiled indulgently. "You know me. I prefer the conservative approach."

"Just because Dissa is gone doesn't mean that you'll get promoted. Bringing back the girl's corpse will clinch it, though. That's what we came for in the first place. We're only half-done."

Hubbel grunted. He knew it was useless to argue with Ivor at this point. Ivor had become fixated. He didn't care about Magen Hirsch, or Hubbel's advancement in the bod. He was after Veil.

Hubbel retreated up to the viewscreens to keep visual contact with the snipers.

Ivor slipped back into Chev.

By this time Veil had managed to get her hand loose from Chev's grip. She crammed herself into a corner and hugged her legs to her chest. Chev sat on the floor, directly in front of her. He kept a safe distance away. She had stung him with a mental bolt to make him release her hand. He kept her cornered, though. No way around him.

They seemed so very alone. Chev was trying to make sense of all the mixed signals he had been getting from Veil. Her strange responses to him when they first met, her willingness to come to the Winter World with him, the way Amelia took ill beset by bad dreams, blaming Veil, and the whisperings in his mind, the soft seductive urging that might be subconscious pleas for attention.

The mental bolt she had used to slap him when he wouldn't let go—it hadn't been so bad. She was capable of much worse. It was as if she didn't really want to hurt him. As she sat huddled in her corner, shaking from head to toe, she seemed at war with unseen enemies. He guessed she was at war with herself, torn between the urging of flesh and the demands of her beliefs. He wanted to believe she was at war with herself over him.

"You really like me, don't you?" he asked.

"I don't believe in lying." A new wave of tremors shook her. "I do like you. I don't know why." Then she seemed to calm down. She felt trapped by Chev, and confession seemed to ease her struggles.

Ivor rejoiced. He couldn't have asked for a better answer for his purposes.

Amid Ivor's jubilation, he suddenly found himself shaken back into his actual surroundings, Hubbel pushing at his shoulders.

"What is your problem?" asked Ivor, his eyes slitting open.

"I have lost contact with the southeast hilltop. Can't raise anything on the video screens. Even reconnoitered outside and saw some blue flashes."

"The snipers are dead," said Ivor, matter-of-factly.

"Let's get the fuck out of here."

"I knew they were dead. Trust me, Chad. I will decide when we need to get the fuck out of here. I will let you know the minute any real danger threatens."

"Just don't get too distracted."

"I am in complete control." Ivor ate another teddy bear eye; then he returned to monitoring Chev.

"Maybe you think I'm handsome?" asked Chev.

Veil looked him right between his eyes. "Not so much with your nose broken."

"I'll have it fixed for you, any way you like it. I think you're beautiful. Even like this. I haven't changed what I said, you know, about loving you. Here's what I think, OK. I think you love me back. Your feelings are buried deep. I really think so. I guess you don't realize it, but you keep giving me these signals…" He inched closer.

She looked away from him, her eyes settling on the patch of darkness where the knife had been thrown. "Don't touch me again. I swear next time I will do serious damage to you. I don't want to… but…"

"I want you," whispered Ivor, softy, very softly, almost subliminally, more to himself than to Chev. "You won't hurt me. I won't hurt you. We won't hurt each other."

Chev moved closer, slowly.

"I want you," Ivor whispered in perfect imitation of Veil's cerebral voice. Then he worried he might be getting too bold, too obvious. The way things were going, he almost didn't have to say anything else to get his way.

She took a deep breath, prepared to strike. Chev braced. He knew she might hurt him, but at least she wouldn't kill him. He grabbed her hand again. Veil tensed, then tossed a spear of pure anguish at him.

His grip stayed firm. He smiled. No pain at all. "You don't know yourself. You don't know what you want," he said.

Ivor had deflected the mental bolt.

Veil knew at once that she hadn't hurt Chev, but she didn't know why. She tried to strike at him again. It didn't work; his smile lingered on his lips.

Amazed, disbelief spread over her features. Her blue eyes widened as she struck again and again with no results. She kept striking instinctively, with ineffectual blows, like a cornered, declawed cat.

Chev maintained his grip on her hand. Her bones were light and fragile, her flesh so soft.

"Why didn't you hurt me?" Chev asked.

"I tried," she said incredulously, "I really tried."

"You see, sometimes you just don't understand what you really want. I'm not going to hurt you. I want to make you feel good." Satisfied he could act with impunity, he crowded closer to her.

She trembled, moaned. He snaked his arm around her. He said, "Let me warm you. Let me hold you. Let me give you strength. You see, I just want you to feel good."

"Yes, yes," whispered Ivor. "Yes, yes, yes…"

Chev mistook Veil's trembling for passion, and unwound her layers of beads and tridents. Slowly, he exposed her face, wet with perspiration, then her neck, cords tensed, then one shoulder. He couldn't resist her any longer.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her fabulous neck and traced a bulging vein with the tip of his tongue. He followed the trail of pulsing life all the way to her ear-lobe. She did not resist. She only trembled the way she had been trembling all night long. He took that as consent to continue, peeling back her robes with brazen familiarity.

He fell into the pattern of disrobing that had become routine between him and Amelia, until the sight of Veil's breasts startled him out of the routine. The linens Veil wore were so loose and formless, they obscured the contours of her shape. Chev had always assumed Veil's breasts would be full and ample, like Amelia's. But Veil's breasts were small. At first he was disappointed, but he couldn't take his eyes off her breasts. And when he looked at her face, her hands, her hair, her nipples, he realized how beautifully she was made, how all of her parts fit together to form an ethereal image of light and feminine fragility. He became fiercely aroused staring at her small breasts that were nothing like Amelia's. He cupped his hand over her nipples and felt that they were stiff. And he felt her tremble.

He had gone past any semblance of self-control, an animal cooking in a hormone stew. He expected her to stop fighting her instincts, to surrender to him. He waited.

She only trembled. Instead of reaching out to him, she seemed more withdrawn. Her eyes misted, making him feel base and undeserving.

"Don't stop, don't stop," whispered Ivor, as if Chev had the power to stop.

"God has abandoned me," gasped Veil.

Chev breathed a long, despairing sigh. She was still going on and on about this God business of hers. God, he couldn't understand it.

Peeling off his shirt, he felt waves of dry, oppressive heat on his skin, the ship's climate controls straining against winter. Weighted by his hologrammed belt, Chev's pants hit the ground. Carefully, he unwrapped the tongs of his scrotal shield and flung it aside. It landed near the knife, clattering in the Devil-haunted shadows.

He told himself, There is no stopping now. If she can see the future, she knows what will happen next. He took her face into his hands. Surrounding her mouth with his own, he took a deep taste.

She choked as she pulled away, wiping crusts of dried blood from her lips.

"I'm sorry," he said. Her undergarments twisted in his fingers as he jerked them loose.

Ivor nestled closer, trying to sample Chev's desire.

Ivor felt a slap across his face. Hubbel had to hit him hard to bring him back to awareness.

Ivor responded with a hypnotic stab at Hubbel's genitals that brought excruciating pain. Hubbel fell to his knees, screaming.

"Don't disturb me again," hissed Ivor. "Do I make myself clear?"

"The north hill is under attack," gasped Hubbel. "I can see it clearly from the portholes."

"Was under attack. Don't worry, she didn't get any prisoners. The snipers are all dead. We are still safe. Let me be the judge of the proper time to panic."

"Ivor, you're becoming obsessed."

"If you interrupt again, Chad, you will be very sorry. On the other hand, if you don't interrupt anymore, I will find some suitable reward for your patience. Stay cool. Be brave. Have faith."

Ivor returned to Chev's thoughts just in time. Veil was saying, "If you love me, as you say, please… don't…"

Ivor whispered, "I need to be conquered. I need someone strong to reach the inner me. I need someone strong inside of me."

Chev pulled her naked body next to his. The sensations astounded him, skin on skin, silk on silk.

"If you love me…" she repeated.

"This is the only way I can reach you," Chev said. "There's a part of you calling out to me. It is like you keep it locked up and it wants to be set free. This is the only way you can be free, Veil. I wish you wouldn't make it so difficult. I wish you'd stop fighting yourself… and I wish you would reach out to me. Can't you feel how bad I need you?"

Veil closed her eyes. "The Devil," she said.

"No," Chev insisted. "Cut out this bullshit. It is not the Devil in you. It is your own self."

Veil grabbed at the trident rosaries on the floor. Holding bunches in each hand, she struck at Chev. Strings of beads whipped his face. Veil's eyes rolled back into her head. Babbling indistinct phrases about the Devil and salvation, she lashed out in terror at Chev's embrace. But he held tight. He was so very strong and she was so very weak, unexpectedly stripped of her defenses.

Seeing the hopelessness of her situation, she gave up. She knew she couldn't win this battle on the physical plane, so she sank deep into herself. Even if God would not grant her rescue, he would provide a balm. Absolute terror gave rise to a profoundly deep spiritual trance. Veil entered hidden realms of being, plunging all the way to the bottom of memories, to pre-life. Instead of finding the void she expected, she found God. An untainted shaft of light shone upon her. A golden glow entered her body. God had not abandoned her after all, and his rapture shook her nervous system. Light shot through her mind, her body, and her soul, thunderous light illuminating tunnels in the hidden realms of being. Sanctifying light. God made her his vessel and let loose his power. And she knew the ecstasy of being one with God. And she felt his power as streams of prayer spun from her lips. This glorious contact. And she knew that God was not a casual observer, not a benign ruler of a laissez-faire universe. He shared his power with his faithful, his vessels.

The power of God was inside Veil, moving inside her. God cared. God loved her after all. And there was a great blister of fire that burst and raptured. And a river of light. She saw the Devil screaming before her, screaming as he fled from Chev's body. The Devil was on fire. Through a mask of flame, Veil saw her own face, in agony. The Devil had stolen her face, to mock her. But he was leaving, now. He could not stand the power of the Lord, which had been sifted through Veil.

And then it was over.

She opened her eyes to find Chev moaning on the ground a few feet away from her. He shivered, from the cold or from shock. His eyes were dull and exhausted. One of the rosaries had caught on his ear and the trident tangled in his hair. He would recover momentarily. It seemed that all was well: she had not harmed him, and he had not harmed her. It wasn't his fault, not entirely. Chev had been possessed by the Devil, but he was free now. Saved, now. They had both been saved from the Devil.

Veil had exorcised him.

Chadwick Hubbel glanced nervously from the phosphorescent video screen on the console of the ship to the windows and the snow outside. He watched the last remaining hill, the final stronghold of his retained snipers. No obvious signs of battle appeared. No lasers flashed. He could only see the hill and the indistinct forms on top. The wind smeared the sky with snow.

Hubbel hadn't really expected to see gunfire on this last hill. Magen had failed to take a prisoner during the last two engagements, on the other hills. Without a prisoner, someone to interrogate, she wouldn't be able to pinpoint his location. She would be far more cautious in her approach to the last hill.

Hubbel knew he could not rely on his snipers to keep quiet, especially this far from the Summer World, with the option of going unincorp only a few feet away. Staring down the barrel of Magen's gun, they'd reveal all; perhaps they would even escort her to his doorstep.

So Hubbel watched the hill, even though he took no comfort in his vigil. Blue flashes would signal danger, but the absence of flashes did not guarantee safety. He was desperate to flee the Winter World. Direct confrontation was not Hubbel's style. Unfortunately, he feared retaliation from Ivor more than he feared Magen. Trapped between two fears, he tried to calm himself down. He rummaged through his catalogue of psychological tricks to clear his own head. He couldn't. He feared he would worry his ulcer to the point of perforation.

Faith. Ivor was capable of near omniscience at times, as long as he didn't let his odd obsessions get the better of him.

Hubbel listened to the drone of the heat controls. He watched the hill and saw nothing but the action of the wind and the blurring of the snow. The hill seemed quiet and empty. The white nothingness frightened him now. All of his faith in Ivor vanished in a single moment of watching wind sweep snow. A dull ache glowed slightly to the left of his navel.

Cold air suddenly cut through waves of artificially dry heat. The chilled current breathed over Hubbel's scalp and constricted his hair follicles. He shuddered.

What had chilled the air? Was it a momentary lapse in the climate controls? A power outage? A faulty circuit? Was it a prank played by Ivor to test his faith?

Hubbel knew what the current of cold air meant. A breach in the ship's security, a hatchway or porthole pried open long enough to let an intruder climb in.

He waited for a moment. He strained his ears, but heard no sounds. He decided he couldn't trust Ivor any longer. Ivor had been too intent on a matter that had nothing to do with their mission. He was too preoccupied with competing with Veil.

Scampering down the hatchway, Hubbel armed his handgun. He let go of his faith in Ivor and felt liberated.

Hubbel found Ivor sitting upright, his eyes closed. His face mirrored Veil's—the high cheekbones, the delicate nose, the pale skin, the silken, platinum hair. He could have been Veil's brother. Ivor breathed regularly, but with a harsh rasp on inspiration. At peace, his androgynous face seemed drained of masculinity. He looked almost exactly like Veil, now. Perhaps that was the reason for his sexual preoccupation with her. Perhaps that was why he despised her.

Hubbel sternly shook Ivor and got no response. He slapped Ivor hard. A thin stream of blood-tinged vomitus trickled out of Ivor's nostril. Hubbel pried open Ivor's eyelids. The pupils were blown.

Ivor was still breathing, but the rasp was probably aspiration pneumonia. Cerebral death was probable. Clearly, this wasn't Magen Hirsch's doing. She could never have gotten this close to Ivor without being detected. No, this was something Veil had done. He had warned Ivor about toying with Veil.

Hubbel couldn't tell how long Ivor had been brain-dead. He had no way of knowing how long the ship had been unguarded. He scrambled for the intercom, found the microphone, and calmly began to broadcast through the overhead speakers.

"Magen Hirsch, I know you are on board," Hubbel said. "You are angry, I know, but I have something to offer as an alternative to a showdown. I know where to find your husband. I will trade that information for my life."

"I don't believe you." Magen's voice echoed through the cabin.

Where was she? In the shadows? In the walls?

"I tried to find your husband, but Dissa kept him hid-den from me, from the entire bod. I didn't know where he was until last night, I swear to you. Dissa was trying to tell you with his dying breath. You couldn't hear what he was saying, but Ivor read his mind. Ivor told me. I will tell you in exchange for your promise to let me go free. Do we have a deal?"

"Maybe. It depends on what you say."

"Uh-uh. I have to have your word up front."

"You want I should trade you something when I don't know what I am getting?"

"You won't be happy with what I have to say. Your husband is alive, but I expect you will be angry about where Dissa put him. I have to have your promise. I have nothing else to offer."

"I give you two promises. One, I don't hurt you now if you tell. Two, if you lie, I hunt you down later."

"Fair enough. Dissa sent your husband to Abaddon."

"You are a lying bastard and I am going to kill you anyway."

"You gave your word."

"You think to send me someplace I can't ever come back from. I see through your tricks."

"You gave your word. I gave you the truth, ugly as it is."

A long silence followed. Then the echoes said, "This is what Dissa Banach tried to tell me?"

"Yes. For revenge." Try as he might, Hubbel could not hold back a chuckle. He shut his eyes, expecting her anger to explode, expecting the chuckle to cost him his life. He debated peeling off a shot in the direction of the echoes, but he decided against it. Better to take his chances with the bargain he had struck than to risk renegotiation.

He stood motionless, waiting, afraid to do anything that would startle Magen, or further provoke her. He did not even move after he felt a second blast of cold air in his face, a token of her going out. It could have been a trick, a ploy to make him give up an unsuspected advantage, to lure him into the open. He stood like a statue, listening to the rasp of Ivor's breathing until Ivor's windpipe finally occluded and no sounds followed.

Chapter Nine

THE DAY OF ATONEMENT

All the way back to the Autumn World, Veil sat in a well-lit corner, an enigmatic smile on her face. She felt closer to God and all of his manifestations than she had ever felt before. Traveling through a void, she was awash in God's love, embraced as part of his plan, no longer alone and groping in the darkness for clues to verify the tenets of her faith. She thanked God for emerging from his hiding place to save her, an actual rescue, not an opiate of faith. She found meaning in the simple wonders around her: the chromatics of reflected starlight playing across her linens, the reassurance of warmth in her fingertips, the music of three lives breathing, the darkness outside the ship's portholes, granulated with light for the benefit of man, to guide the way. Space travel seemed miraculous to her— floating in a bubble, wrapped in a fragile skin of steel. It would not take much to burst this bubble, a wayward meteorite, an undetected flaw in the friction sheath. And yet the ship endured. It crossed between points of gravity, defying the void. The ship was wondrously made.

Chev sulked in a corner. Veil wanted to take him aside, to preach the good words to him, to let him know he was loved and forgiven—but she couldn't tell if the time was right. She resisted the temptation to look into his thoughts, partially out of respect for his privacy, partially out of fear of what she might find lurking beneath his dark mood. If she waited, the time would come. Someday, he would be ready to talk to her about God. She was certain the right time would come.

She wondered about her earlier premonitions, the flash insights that warned her about Chev. Why had they not come to pass?

She came to the conclusion that God does not fix the destinies of men like a primitive computer program. God does not ordain the future, nor does he control it; rather, as the future unfolds, it unfolds into God. The Devil had brought her to the brink of disaster, trying to make her renounce the light. But instead of making her faith falter, it made her faith grow. Like Isaac under the knife, she was spared and given a new covenant.

The disasters she had foreseen for herself were merely landmarks, points along a dangerous road where she could steer her own course. She had the power to avert those disasters now; all it took was faith.

Then she felt Magen's despair. It drifted over her consciousness like a thunderhead. Veil felt Magen touch her shoulder.

Before Magen could speak, Veil asked, "How can I help you?"

"Chadwick Hubbel told me that Adam is on Abaddon. Can you tell me if it is true?"

Veil ventured a look in the future. It was all grey. The future had vanished. She looked harder and could see nothing, not even grey now, not even black. Not even emptiness. At first Veil panicked, a dead end in her future sight. Perhaps her death was near after all. But she calmed herself quickly, remembering her recent rapture. There were explanations other than death. Perhaps the future had been jolted by her change of destiny on the Winter World. Perhaps it was in a state of chaos and not yet congealed. Or perhaps she had lost her future sight all together. Perhaps that was the price of freedom— uncertainty.

Or perhaps this absence of vision was Abaddon. Little was known about Abaddon. It was said to be a planet or a moon, but no one was sure. No one had ever returned. And it yielded no data. They couldn't even measure it from afar. In the telescope, it appeared as a grey smear in space. Probes vanished within its depths. Even the council could not penetrate its mysteries. It wasn't a black hole. They didn't know what it was. Perhaps the nothingness Veil had seen was Abaddon. She couldn't say for certain, but it seemed credible.

Veil said, "I believe Hubbel was telling the truth."

Chev turned to Veil and asked, "Do you realize where you are sending Magen? She will go any place where you say she can find her husband. You know her."

Before Veil could respond, Magen interrupted, "What is so terrible if I go to Abaddon?"

"Do you know what you're in for?"

"No one does. There are stories. I heard them too. But no one really knows about Abaddon."

"That isn't so," Chev said. "There are some factions of the bods that come and go all the time. Dawson has been to Abaddon. That's where they rewired his brain. There used to be a slave-processing plant there, where they did the worst kinds of flesh and nerve manipulations. Dawson said that everyone on Abaddon is crazy. Everything there is unreal, like something out of a nightmare. He couldn't even process most of what he saw.

"Dawson told this one story about someone who got shot through the heart by one of the guards. The guy wouldn't die. His hair fell out, his skin blackened and shriveled, his teeth and eyes fell out, but he still didn't die. They cut off his head to put him out of his misery, but the head didn't die either. They set him on fire, and he kept on screaming. The fire wouldn't burn him up. The flames kept on crackling and the guy kept on screaming. Then they tried to put out the fire, but they couldn't."

"Yes, yes. I've heard things like that. This story is stupid. I don't believe it at all."

"I didn't either. But Dawson played a tape of it from his memory circuits. It is true. Ask Amelia. So if your husband is on Abaddon, you should forget him. Better dead— really dead—than on Abaddon. Dawson said Abaddon is Hell. Nothing there but misery and suffering."

Magen wore a deep, thoughtful expression. "If Adam is suffering, that is all the more reason I should go to him."

"I should have never spoken," said Veil. "I fear I have done something wrong."

"What else could you do? Lie? It is not your way," said Magen.

Veil blushed. She hadn't realized that she told an untruth until that moment. Not that it was entirely untrue. She said that she believed Hubbel, and that was true enough—except for the implications. Believing that Adam was alive on Abaddon was better than believing that her own death was near. She wanted to believe that Magen and her husband would somehow be reunited.

Something had happened to Veil on the Winter World. Something had changed her. The failure of her powers of future sight instilled a need for optimism, a need to believe that the future she could no longer divine would be better than the present. And this need had tricked her into a lie. A small lie. A grey lie, but one with potentially disastrous consequences.

Veil said slowly, "I told you I believed Hubbel. I did. That was my mistake. My belief was not based on anything special, Magen. I haven't any visions. I haven't read his mind. The truth is, I don't know anything about how to find your husband."

Magen raised an eyebrow. "Veil, you don't expect me to believe this now. Don't worry about putting me in danger. I can handle the danger."

"I was telling the truth."

"Which time?"

Veil burst into tears.

Chev pointed a rigid finger in Magen's face. "You're a rare bitch," he said.

Magen replied, "I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, Veil. I am just trying to decide what to do."

Chev started to put his arm around Veil for comfort, but he held himself back. He bowed his head.

"I am so sorry," said Veil. "I have so many feelings I never felt before. Good feelings, happy feelings. But I am confused. I don't even know why I am crying." Carefully, Veil collected herself and her thoughts. "I have made some mistakes, Magen. I am exhausted, though I may not seem it. My spirit buoys, and this gives the illusion of energy. Over the past days, I have spent my resources in your service—so do not blame me overmuch if I stumble and waver now. I don't seem to be able to see the future, right now. I can't even read minds, I am so tired."

Magen looked away, tense strands of muscle strumming along her jaw. "I am just so angry about this Abaddon business, I don't think about what I say. I am tired too."

"I don't know whether or not your husband was sent to Abaddon. The council doesn't know either, and can't find out. If I have put you on the course to Abaddon by carelessly speaking, I am sorry. I did not mean that result. On reflection, I think you should not go there. I wouldn't trust any intelligence delivered by Hubbel."

"He was too afraid to lie."

"It might have been an act. He lies well."

Magen folded her arms across her chest. "Maybe I cannot read minds—but I know my enemies, probably better than I know my friends. Hubbel wasn't lying."

Veil continued, "Your best destiny lies on the Autumn World, continuing the fight against slavery. Not on Abaddon. Slavery is the worst of all blasphemies. Even the council didn't realize that until you showed them. We must continue to oppose Olagy and his machinery. How can we if you go to Abaddon? Perhaps this fight will not bring your husband back—but it is the right thing to do. I say this without the benefit of future sight. In this counsel, I am groping as all people grope, guided only by moral sense and friendship."

"I grope too. I have to do this thing."

"Magen, don't you realize that this is exactly what Hubbel wants. The council will never be able to carry on the fight against slavery without you."

"I am not fighting for the council. I only do this for Adam."

"No one among our ranks has the skill to replace you. It comes to this, Magen—do you want to be part of something worthy and moral, or do you want to go to Hell?"

Magen shuddered, and that was her answer.

Chev pounded a fist into the interior hull, to attract attention. The walls buzzed. He said, "Magen's not so great as you're making out. Lots of people could do a better job. I'm just speaking as a professional. I could do a better job."

"You don't understand, Chev," said Veil, trying to dismiss him.

"I'm better than she is, you know."

"I don't want to argue about who is better. Stop being petty and full of pride, for once, Chev."

He cast her a wounded look. "I was saying I'd take her place, if it is really that important to you. I'm better than she is—why don't you want me?"

Veil looked startled.F

Magen started to laugh. "Don't you understand, Chev? Veil was saying these things mostly to talk me from going to Abaddon. She does this out of friendship, I think. She doesn't need someone like you around. Besides, Amelia would never agree."

"Fuck Amelia. I'm not her slave."

"It seems we will need someone, since Magen is determined to leave. I never expected you to volunteer. Why, Chev? Why would you want to do such a thing?"

Chev's lips tightened. "I just want you happy," he said. Veil stepped to one side, so that she could catch his gaze. He threw up his hands defensively, hiding his face. "Please, don't look into my mind. Please…"

"I couldn't, even if I wanted to." Now he stopped looking away from her and met her eyes. Veil looked at Chev carefully, truly seeing him for the first time since they had entered the ship. His face had changed profoundly; more than just the red-rimmed exhaustion in his eyes, more than the broken, blood-caked nose. He seemed almost a different person. No hint of the old lusts when he returned her gaze; they had been replaced by a look of sincere concern. What had wrought this amazing change? Was it the exorcism she had performed? Had she driven out all of this man's devils?

Veil wondered why she had not seen the change in him sooner. She cleared her throat, blinking. "I would be honored if you would fight for our cause."

Magen's eyes narrowed. "I'll tell you what he is really after, Veil."

Veil said, "It doesn't matter to me why a person chooses a moral course of action. I think he really means well."

"I do."

Amelia missed Chev far more than she expected. Something about his being in danger made him more precious. And jealousy over Veil worried her, too. What a bitter yet exciting sensation jealousy proved to be.

Over the passing days, Amelia had prepared for Chev's return. Their bags were packed, and waiting by the door. She applied less makeup than usual; she didn't need as much. She managed to shrug off the last vestiges of cadmadine addiction and exercised herself firm enough to slip into something very scanty, but she resisted the urge to be obvious. There was a chill in the air. And suppose Chev didn't survive the mission? She didn't want to be left standing half-naked in front of Veil and Magen and all of those slaves, a weeping spectacle of grief and unfulfilled desire. Instead, she tugged on one of her old black leather outfits, something suitable for either seduction, travel, or mourning—whatever the occasion would require when the ship returned from the Winter World.

When she heard the free slaves chattering excitedly, she went outside. Though her bags were heavy and cumbersome, she took them with her, so that there would be no reason to ever return to this dreary bungalow. The time had come to depart this primitive place and return to the comforts of technology.

In the distance, she heard the caterwaul of a rocket landing. The eager flow of free slaves rushing to meet their priestess swept Amelia through the alleys of the village.

By the time Amelia reached the runway, Chev was jumping from the bottom rung of the deplaning ladder. Magen and Veil lingered above him, hesitating to climb down, obviously keeping their distance from the imminent reunion, trying hard not to look like spectators. The gathered throng of free slaves was less polite.

Amelia broke into a large smile, relieved that she had not been widowed. She expected to see reciprocal joy in Chev, but he wore a fixed, blank expression. Not an expression of disinterest, or boredom, but rather a show of intense concentration masquerading as distraction. The kind of look men don to show off how well they can tolerate pain. He was hiding something, some wound or guilty secret.

"The mission didn't go well, I take it. Dissa escaped you?"

"He's dead. It didn't go well at all."

"Let's not spoil this moment," said Amelia. "You can tell me the details once we're in space. I am anxious to be gone from this planet."

"I'm not leaving."

"We've been here long enough. Our purpose has been served, regardless of the outcome for Magen. Let's go."

Chev cleared his throat. But even with his throat clear, he couldn't speak. Amelia waited. After several grunts, false starts, Chev said, "Magen is going to Abaddon. I am staying here, to take her place."

Amelia stood stunned and disbelieving. After a moment to digest the news, she said, "I don't know which of you is the greater fool."

"Don't ask me to explain. You wouldn't understand."

"I understand very well. Something happened between you and Veil." A tremor shook through Amelia's face. She was determined not to cry over Chev. There was too large an audience around: hundreds of wide-eyed slaves, and Magen. And Veil.

"It isn't what you think."

"What is it then? This God nonsense?"

"No. Not that. I just have to do this. I have to help Veil."

"Why?"

He stared at her, warily, for a full minute, as if the word had been an exposed dagger. Amelia gritted her teeth. "I know why." She glanced off in the distance, to where Veil stood, scarves, linens, and pale hair flapping around her young form. She couldn't believe that a perpetual challenge would interest Chev as much as perpetual gratification. Chev was a creature of appetite. But it seemed the sport of the matter appealed to him more, for the moment. How could Amelia hope to compete with this young, unreachable beauty?

"Not that. I don't even want to touch her. Not ever again. I don't want to touch anyone." There was a hint of disgust in his voice. He shivered.

What was wrong? She couldn't fathom the motivations for his sudden change, couldn't read past his lack of expression. This was not the man she knew.

"She's controlling you. Using her mind powers to bend you to her own purposes."

"I made this choice on my own."

"You wouldn't know if she was controlling you or not. She might not even know it."

Suddenly his hand was at her throat, so fast she hadn't seen it. He gently stroked the blood vessels pulsing there, a gesture of affection, or a threat. "I wish she were forcing me to this. Maybe that would make it easier. If she tried to force me, I'd let her force me. It doesn't matter why I'm doing this. So stop asking."

She had hit a tender spot. Up to this point, she'd felt helpless and disadvantaged before him, taken by surprise. For the first time in their relationship, she couldn't outmaneuver him. But she had hit upon a weakness here. A secret he was keeping. Something he didn't even want to think about. The reason behind the decision. That was what he was dodging. That was the reason he tried to cut the discussion short. The reason why. Why he would give up Amelia. Why he would take up Magen's fight. Why he would swear to never touch Veil again. Why.

Amelia looked him in the eye, even though his fingers were still at her throat. "You're not staying here because you prefer her to me, right?"

He nodded sullenly.

"This isn't a contest for your love. You really meant it when you said you never wanted to touch her again. Am I right?"

He nodded again.

"Where did you touch her the first time?"

His eyes widened. He looked trapped. His grip tightened on her neck.

"Go ahead. Kill me."

He released her throat.

"Do you want to tell me about it? This secret you're hiding."

"I can't talk about it. I can't even think it."

"If you don't tell me, she will. She never lies."

"Don't go to her. Please."

"Where did you touch her? How many times? I want details." Then cold, painful realization slid into her chest. She felt stabbed by the psychic resonance of his infidelity. "You fucked her."

"No."

"You did. I can see it in your eyes. I can feel it in my heart. I am too close to you, Chev. I know."

"No." His voice sounded weak, frightened, unconvincing.

"I'll kill her."

He grabbed her hands and squeezed. Then he drew her close, his arms trapping her body against his. His desperate muscles threatened her with their strength. He took a nervous glance in Veil's direction, hoping that she was still unable to read minds—whether from exhaustion, as she claimed… or perhaps because of what he had done. He wanted to keep it a secret, this terrible thing. But he couldn't. Amelia was forcing the issue. She had tricked him and caught him in his own lies. Confession would be the only way to protect Veil from Amelia's questions. He whispered into her imprisoned ear. "Don't tell anyone. Don't even think it. She doesn't know."

"What is this bullshit?"

"I thought it would be beautiful. I thought she wanted me. But she didn't. She really didn't. It was horrible. She went into some kind of trance when I did it." Ever so softly, he said, "I raped her. While she was tranced out. I raped her. She didn't want me after all. Blotted it all out… doesn't even know it happened."

Veil was now surrounded by adoring subjects. She was smiling and greeting them, apparently distracted from the turmoil playing out between Amelia and Chev.

Amelia struggled up through Chev's iron grip to put her hands to his face. "Let's just get out of here," she said. "Give me a chance to put my thoughts together. We need to talk, we need many long talks to sort this out. This is not the place—with all these people around."

"No more words, Amelia. I have to stay. It's like I belong to Veil, now. I have to make up for what I have done. If I don't stay here to make it up to her, I'll slit my throat, I swear." He meant it. Maybe not tonight, but sometime soon. He would kill himself if she found a way to hold on to him; and if the mood hit him under the wrong circumstances, he would kill her, too.

"You're going to be miserable here."

"And everywhere."

She looked at the ground. "I can't live on this planet any longer. But we can still see each other now and then. It doesn't matter that much to me about what you did. It hurts, but it doesn't matter. I forgive you—if you didn't enjoy it too much."

"I love you, Amelia. Strange word. It doesn't always mean sex. I love Veil, too." He looked off toward Veil again. The way he regarded her pained Amelia. No desire. Nothing but innocent adoration, like what the slaves showed. Lust would have been easier to take.

"Maybe we shouldn't see each other," said Chev.

"Maybe."

"I don't think we should."

"That's it, then."

"That's it."

Amelia tried to make a show of strength with an artificial, oddly twisted smile.

"It is a bitch," said Chev.

Amelia's eyes rolled back, her cheeks flushed. She screamed something at Chev, a long, drawn-out string of words. Incomprehensible. She was screaming so loudly the sounds were shredding in her throat. She whipped her white-streaked hair from side to side, as motes of spittle sprayed from her mouth. Her feet stomped in rapid succession. Her heels drummed. She threw wild kicks. Blood was dripping from her fists, where her long fingernails dug into the palms of her hands.

The crowd stared dumbly at Amelia.

Chev effortlessly blocked the kicks and punches she threw at him. A blood vessel burst in the white of her left eye, surrounding the unnatural blue iris with scarlet.

Flushed, breathing in heavy snorts, she clawed at Chev's face. She seemed to be in the throes of a seizure. Her face shriveled from crying, eyes squeezed tight, her jaw clenched, her teeth grinding.

Magen broke from her idle observance of this odd spectacle and snapped to attention. She sprang to Amelia's side, tried to talk to her for a moment, then gave up. She grabbed Amelia and dragged her across the carpet of leaves. All the way, Amelia screamed, spat, howled, bit, scratched, kicked, cried, and cursed.

As tremors of rage passed from Amelia, she found herself alone in Magen's bungalow. Sensory impressions reordered, clarified. It was like the passage of sleep into wakefulness, though Amelia had been conscious the entire time.

So she would have to let Chev pass out of her life. She would give him to Veil. An act of charity. She was so big-hearted, so magnanimous. She hoped Veil would appreciate her charity.

After a while, she stopped feeling pain—but a kind of misery clung to her spirit, a sadness that had the consistency of magnetic glue.

She sat in a wooden, cushionless chair by the window for three more hours. All along the arm of the chair, fresh green shoots grew from the dead wood. The trees of Autumn never seemed to die, even when chopped down. Tiny leaves on the new shoots had already begun their moribund recoloration. Amelia stroked the rows of unripe branches on the arm of the chair as if they were cat fur.

She watched stone-faced slaves outside, going about their chores, hauling timbers, cracking boulders, shoveling pathways through the leaves, distributing snacks, weaving intricate patterns of autumn colors on manual looms, transporting the sick, slaughtering animals, singing atonal hymns, forging tools, digging graves, and carving tombstones. They worked constantly, past the point of exhaustion, never laughing, never talking to each other, except about work or to exchange canned chatter about the greatness of God. Amelia felt like the freed slaves, broken in spirit and repaired the wrong way.

As Amelia stared out the window, her focus shifted from the wandering free slaves outside to her own translucent reflection on the glass. The white of one eye was still red from the burst blood vessel. She looked like a mournful demon.

The image of Magen's face became superimposed over the image of Amelia's. Magen tapped on the glass. Wearily, Amelia rose to let her in.

"I would have thought you'd be gone by now," said Amelia.

"I wanted to be sure you are all right."

Amelia said nothing. She let silence hang between them like acid suspended in a sword, a weapon and a shield. She could maintain the silence indefinitely. Magen waited patiently, politely, trying to decipher Amelia's silence. After a while, the meaning was plain enough, though Amelia's features expressed no emotions, conveyed no messages.

Magen turned to go, but she paused at the door. "This has turned out badly for you. I don't know what it is I have done that you should be so angry at me. Whatever it is, I am sorry. Shalom, Amelia."

"I am not angry at anyone in particular. I am just angry. I have lost the one thing I truly cared about. The one thing that gave me pleasure. I have lost him."

"I know what it means to lose everything."

"Don't compare yourself to me, girl. We have nothing in common. You are used to having nothing. I am not."

"I don't say we are alike. I am not like you at all. When I want something, I don't just complain. But because you are not like me does not mean you are so unique. Just because you lose everything, you are not unique. God gives us everything—and he always takes it away. Little by little, he strips away what we have. Our happiness, our loves, and in the end, our lives. He strips them all away, bit by bit. My husband used to say that God does this to us to make us stronger. If you don't find a way to get stronger when God takes something away from you, then God will do no more favors for you. If you don't help God grow, then God has no more use for you and no more gifts to give."

"I don't have much use for this advice. I don't care to hear preaching."

"I thought maybe I could help you. My husband was very smart. He used to have to comfort people who had terrible sorrows, real sorrows. Women with dead children, men who lost their sight. Things like that. When I lost my husband, I remembered his words."

Amelia asked, "What could this God of yours possibly give me that would be greater than love, my only love, my pretty boy? What could he possibly give me that would make up for such a loss?"

Magen thought a moment. "The chance to grow."

The answer was so easy. Amelia could see how it would appeal to simple minds and simple hearts. We get stripped of everything we value, we grow, and when we are done growing, we go back to the source of our sorrow. Amelia looked beyond the window, beyond the freed souls working outside, beyond the darkness. She stood up. "Oh God, Oh God." Amelia tapped her foot. "Oh God, Oh God." She broke into laughter, ugly, sarcastic laughter.

"What is so funny?"

"You trying to comfort me. You. It seems that all my misfortunes began with you. Just because I saved your life on a whim. On a bet."

On the airfield, Magen prepared for liftoff. The turbo fans mounted on the aft side of her craft beat up clouds of leaves. Amelia dived into the leaf storm and scampered up the ship's side ladder. She pounded on the Plexiglas hatch, screaming.

Magen popped open the hatch. Grabbing Amelia by the shoulders, she dragged her inside. Magen kicked the hatch window shut, her ears popping as it vacuum-sealed.

Liftoff slammed Amelia to the carpet. Magen busied herself with the guidance systems, setting trajectory and plotting a course. The ship's engines bellowed as long as there was air to convey sound. Inside the steering compartment, it wasn't quiet enough for conversation until they broke past the envelope and settled into inertial drift.

"Why did you want to come aboard?" asked Magen. "You know where I am headed. Do you want to go to Abaddon? I could use a good wing man."

"I want you to take me home. I would rather not have to ride with Chev."

Magen nodded.

"Chev raped Veil," said Amelia.

"No, he didn't." Magen seemed weary of everything but her own problem.

"He says he did. He says it happened while she was in a trance. He said she doesn't even know about it."

Magen rubbed her eyes. She looked pained, but she said, "Who knows what is true?"

"Why aren't you angry?"

"Who says I am not angry?" shouted Magen. She grabbed Amelia by the arm, suddenly. "You thought I would go back and kill Chev for raping Veil?"

"Something like that," said Amelia defensively, gently trying to free herself from Magen's grasp. "I need to do something extreme. Kill Chev. Kill myself. Go to Abaddon. I haven't decided yet. I haven't felt so bad in a very long time, not since the night I ran off to join the Air Force Bod. Desperate. In need of change."

"There are many reasons I don't kill Chev." Magen grabbed Amelia's other arm. "For one, I have more important things to do. For second, it will not be so easy. For next, he is taking my place when no one else would. For next, he is my friend. And for last, if he has done wrong, he is trying to atone, I think." She released Amelia as she finished her list.

"Atone? What's that?"

"Atonement. An old word. If you do something bad you can't fix, you do something bad to yourself."

"Chev is staying with Veil to hurt himself?"

"I think so."

"That's why you're not going to kill him?"

"At least I understand better why he is staying."

"I wish I did."

A dim amber light filled the cabin. The spacecraft had been designed as a one-man fighter. Amelia shifted her weight uneasily in the cramped space, then took a deep suck of the thick, wet air as if she were dragging on a cigarette.

"Love is shit, Magen. You think it is real one minute, and then it is gone, and maybe it was never real. Love is just shit."

"I'm going to Hell for love," said Magen.

"Perhaps I will go to Abaddon with you."

"I didn't mean it, earlier."

"You did. You were trying to exploit my depression."

"I said I could use a good wing man. You would not be good."

"Bod-trained."

"You're out of practice."

"I've kept up my skills over the years," said Amelia, lying.

Magen shrugged. "You can come with me if you like, if you think you can really handle it. I would be glad for the help."

"Well, maybe."

Amelia turned toward the hatch window and wiped away a haze of condensation. When she looked out, she saw, in the far distance, a grey cyanotic smear haunting the space between two stars. Abaddon was closer than she expected, maybe two days away straight travel time, not counting the detour to her asteroid.

Amelia floated up to the upper levels of the cabin and pulled down the view pipe. Under telescopics, the image of Abaddon was even stranger, like a tear in the vacuum. Neither reflective nor effulgent, it seemed devoid of light, and yet, somehow, its grey shroud contrasted against the grey of space. Its color was like a knife wound in the eye. Yet she found herself being drawn to Abaddon, the most forbidden sphere. Its frescoes of chaos offered comfort in their lack of meaning. As with every taboo, there lurked a seductive promise of a new kind of excitement.

She zoomed in on an area of indistinct movement, something like a flickering across the miasma. The suggestion of vague forms made her increase the telescopies and switch on computerized image enhancers. Even with the view pipe on full power, the images were hazy and translucent. Ships of ancient design were navigating the mist currents, churning the atmosphere into whirlpools in their wake.

Amelia caught glimpses of obsolete docking satellites and support craft running relays through a spiral-shaped hole in the mist.

Suddenly, two modern ships appeared in the view pipe. The two modern ships tried to sail past the museum pieces.

A dogfight erupted. She was afraid to watch. The old ships moved so much faster than their modernized opponents. It was too mysterious for Amelia. Old ships buzzing around like hummingbirds, yet spewing engine parts as they flew, littering space with bits of deteriorated machinery.

She pushed the optical systems as far as they would go, beyond their maximum limits, and jockeyed the computer for greater magnification.

Behind the windshields of the modern crafts she saw something terrifying. It was like everything she hated about the Autumn World—the auguries, the ghosts, the visions, the blurring of past and future. Only this was worse. Much worse.

She swore she would do everything she could to stay away from Abaddon, and she would try to talk Magen out of going there. But she knew that no matter how much she protested and girded her will, it wouldn't do any good. She would never be able to sway Magen from her mission. She knew for certain. She had seen Magen through the view pipe, flying and fighting over the mists of Abaddon. Unmistakably, despite the graininess of the image in the view pipe, it was Magen.

And she had seen herself, flying nearby.

She couldn't understand what force compelled her to do favors for Magen, again and again. Was it the tug of blood ties, though ancient and diluted? This strange Jewishness thing. Was the preordained flight to Abaddon another aspect of the contest for Amelia's soul between God and the Devil? Veil's invisible creatures. Which of them stood to profit most from a detour to Hell?

Amelia returned to the flight cabin. "I'll fly with you," she said, since she had no choice in the matter anyway.

"Why?"

"Out of despair, I don't know. On a whim. To prove to Chev that I can atone better than he can."

"Atone for what?"

"I don't know. I don't really understand the word, but if Chev can do it, so can I."

During the flight to Abaddon, the two women planned the assault together. They plotted an approach near the spiral of atmospheric darkness. Magen superimposed imaginary flight lines on Abaddon's mists by drawing on the window with a grease pencil. The only discernible shipping activity moved in and out of that spiral, indicating that it was some kind of clearing, or access point. The area was also heavily guarded by those ships, the old ships, the fast ships, the ghost ships. Amelia suggested trying to use the fog, or mist, or whatever it was, to some tactical advantage, to cover a sneak approach.

Magen and Amelia made several stops along the way to Abaddon: twice for rest; once for food; once to hijack a second one-seater fighting ship.

The craft they stole was respectable, but not outstanding. Most of its guts still carried warranties from various bods, but the ancillary systems were generics, probably custom-tooled at the whim of a middle manager caught in a cost-containment crunch.

Magen let Amelia take the better of the two ships. Amelia took the gift for granted, without trifling over polite expressions of gratitude. After all, she had saved Magen's life more than once, and lavished her with gifts worth far more than this simple fighter. Later, when Amelia saw the grey horizon of the hell world looming beneath her, she decided it didn't matter what she was flying. She was doomed.

The grey scud coating Abaddon wasn't really vapor. Amelia couldn't figure out what the hell it was. Up close, Abaddon's atmosphere showed as a visual blur, as if the world had been caught in the act of orbiting, contrary to its reputation. Abaddon was supposed to stay anchored to a fixed spot in the sky, never showing any signs of astral motion. The blur seemed to glow, but it didn't feel like light upon Amelia's retinas. It felt like some weary, disenfranchised imitation of light, sluggish and speed-retarded.

Computer analysis of the grey stuff turned out statistical gibberish, and the circuits began to steam. Amelia shut down the probes for fear they'd burn themselves out.

Magen's craft dipped a wing, rolled, angled its nose, and dropped. Amelia followed, flying in reciprocal formation.

The two women hit the grey stuff at reduced speeds, and slammed into resistance of an unidentifiable nature. It wasn't atmospheric or magnetic turbulence. It wasn't anything solid or electrical. Yet no matter how much fuel they pumped into their afterburners, no matter how they cocked their flaps, they could not descend past the blur.

A hard oscillation shimmied through Amelia's craft as she slammed into the grey. Her wings hummed in vibrato. G-forces whipped through the cabin. The buckles of her leg-restraint garters cut into her thighs. Her craft skipped across the unyielding surface tension, each bounce pealing cymbal crashes inside the cockpit. She retreated.

Magen assaulted the stuff with her usual stubborn determination, but she fared no better than Amelia. When she finally gave up, and her craft rose to vertical, there were cracks running through her undercarriage. Some of the racks had been torn loose, and the paint had been wiped away in swatches that looked like wire-brush work.

Magen chucked their original flight plan without even consulting Amelia. She shot toward the dark spiral, and Amelia followed.

They approached the spiral opening, the only hole in Abaddon's impenetrable shell.

Suddenly, ground artillery began picking off small, nonessential pieces of Amelia's craft. The shots hit with exacting precision. A radio antenna was slagged. A rack was sniped free, one support strut at a time. Two bulging bombs on the undercarriage were sliced loose by a single blue castrating stroke. Amelia broke into a cold sweat. The old hide casing on her joystick became slippery in her hand, coated by a viscous film of rehydrated leather. She felt the creep of each nanosecond. Searching the sky for Magen's craft, she saw only empty space. She tried to raise Magen on the ship's radio, but picked up on broadcast gibberish, eerie frequency shrieks.

She was little more than a toy in the air, a source of amusement for incomprehensible enemies. They could shoot her down at any time, now.

Suddenly a staccato flash of laser zips burned bubbling black letters onto the outside surface of her plastic windshield. The message was clear and simple:

TURN BACK.

She didn't understand how it could be done by anyone—writing on her windshield while she was flying at Mach two. Maybe it was Veil's all-powerful spook—God, or Zeus, or Jesus, whatever his name was. Maybe this was the word from on high. Turn back.

So that's what she did. She turned back. She took the writing on her windshield as a clear sign of permission. Somehow she had been shown mercy on Abaddon. Maybe this atonement thing worked after all.

For some reason, Magen had not been spared. Maybe she hadn't atoned enough. Her word. Her concept, but somehow it didn't seem to work for her. Maybe she had been too eager, too aggressive, too stubborn to see that she had taken on superior forces.

Amelia hit her speed brakes and barrel-rolled into retreat. Her ship passed through airspace occupied by a bogie, but it offered no resistance. Perhaps it had crumbled on contact, or perhaps it was only a hologram after all. Amelia accelerated as fast as she could. This time she was turning back. Going home.

Adam Hirsch was alive, or so he thought, but there were many on Abaddon who had died, but who were not at rest, who believed they were still alive. Like Syckle, who shared the dusty front office of the exploratory station with Adam.

Syckle had once been a master, but he died a slave. A retrovirus took him shorty after he arrived on Abaddon.

Syckle sat in a green plastic swivel chair. He propped his feet upon the table. His toes were so rotten that most had autoamputated, and the ones remaining hung by threads of gristle. A papery yellow light washed over the room, its source uncertain. Both of Syckle's eye sockets were empty, yet these holes of his behaved as if they could see, remembering the action of light, even though they no longer had the proper equipment to register vision. His empty nose sniffed the air, as if searching the dusty quarters for companionship. He still wore his favorite shirt, a red, collarless tangle of threads held together by the seams of many zippered pockets. A few blond hairs hovered over his sloughing scalp. He talked, waved his arms, got up and hunted for water now and then. Sometimes the master and sometimes the slave. Time was the problem. Syckle was animated by a network of nerves that did not know when they were: synapses displaced in time.

Time had long been the problem on Abaddon. Time had been a problem all over the Draconian system. Temporal ecological imbalances left worlds that rotated and orbited, yet the seasons never changed. Distances were often warped, making interplanetary travel within the system weirdly easy. These anomalies had all been caused by the traffic of the warpships bringing settlers from Earth centuries ago.

Of all the planets in the system, Abaddon showed the most damage. Time collected in eddies and pools on Abaddon. It could race, or creep. Taking a piss could consume a year. Distances had no meaning. A room could become as large as a continent. Mirages of yesterdays and tomorrows would flicker on the hillsides. The dead did not even know when to lie down. So hideous were the results of time anomalies here, the inhabitants of the Draconian system were able to agree for once on a single moral point—warp travel had to cease.

Abaddon had been the spaceport. The antique immigration turnstiles where Adam's ancestors once crossed were still standing in the shell of an old building not far from the exploratory station. Every now and then, Adam saw mirages of new arrivals haunting the check-in counters, dressed in odd costumes, colored by the soil of a distant home.

"Fetch me my…" shouted Syckle, the final words of his command slurring on a tongue turned to mush.

Adam had come to this—sharing a room with a rotting dead man, whose commands would have to be obeyed sooner or later. Even though Syckle was a slave, and a dead slave at that, commands were commands.

Adam remembered the ancient Jewish folktales about the nature of the afterlife. It was said that the present ceases to exist and the experiences of a lifetime merge into a single experience of simultaneity that lasts forever. Sins melded into mitzvahs, joys melded into pain. Abaddon was like that sometimes. Abaddon was like death.

Adam had committed terrible blasphemies, and God had condemned him to Hell.

Suddenly the yellow papery light turned gold and crimson. It flickered and strobed. Adam looked out of the window up to the sky, up to the spiral hole that was the only way in and out of Abaddon. Normally it looked like a whirling patch of night, black and dotted with stars, turning very slowly. But now it was red, colored by battle lights.

The reflected glow of lasers flickered over the ramparts of the four steel towers dial held the hole open. Millions of slaves had labored over the course of fifty years to build those towers. Bones littered the beacon coils. Temporal mirages of suffering slaves haunted the iron base. To those who lived on Abaddon, nothing was more important than those towers.

All along the seven-mile length of the spiral hole, strobing lights changed colors. Battling ships darted from one end of the rotating blades of serrated darkness to the other.

The spires of the four towers leaned toward the spiral. Each tower held a primal black hole, small enough to be surrounded by a stasis field. The spiral and the black holes balanced one another, singularities pressing against singularities. The result was an opening from Hell into the real universe.

Adam could almost see energy wave patterns swirling out of the towers. Who could be fighting out there? Adam prayed that the battling ships were only time mirages. But they weren't. Wayward laser shots were chipping bits off the huge ceramic disks covering the magnets on the yard-arms of the towers. It would take very little violence to disrupt their delicate balance.

The primal black holes nestled in their stasis fields behind an insulated mesh. A central syncshaft turned according to constantly changing, constantly recomputed logarithms. The gravitational tug ratios could shift dramatically at times, but these mechanisms were sensitive to such sporadic changes. The status quo was maintained by keeping the tug ratios in a constant state of flux. On an as-needed basis, determined by the central processing chips, the rotors would be dampened by a mathematical lullaby so that the towers wouldn't shake to wreckage at every change of signal frequency. The entire mechanism functioned on an assumption of uninterrupted peace. If any one of the towers became damaged, the spiral hole would close and there would be no way to reopen it.

Adam held his breath. The lights were getting brighter. The battle was getting closer.

Suddenly, a single fighter ship dashed through the hole.

The fool. The damned fool. Adam raced out of the offices, screaming, waving his arms. He tried to shout warnings to the ship, knowing he could not be heard. The damned fool. Didn't the pilot know how delicate the towers were—and the consequences if their complex mechanisms sustained even the least bit of damage?

The damned fool kept firing anyway at phantoms, images from the past. Adam kept shouting and waving.

The battle seemed to be taking place in the present. It was hard to tell. The battle centered around the towers, and the four towers were generally a constant on the landscape. Still, it might be some future event.

Adam's warnings were useless. The worst happened. The very worst.

The invader flew directly into the path of the signal beam, trying to avoid an arc of laser light a hundred years old. A wingtip tore loose.

The ship banged into the eastern tower, then skidded down the outer edge of a spire, raising a wake of sparks. Latticed wiring burned loose and wound into the main axles. The rotors groaned and slammed to a halt.

One by one, the spin boxes shut down, going blank in the same sequence as they once crunched numerical values.

The spiral hole in the sky closed, its circumference pulling in suddenly, like a pupil confronting the sun.

Abaddon was sealed again. Sealed so tightly, not even a prayer could escape.

The invading ship crashed somewhere in the unreal distance.

The damned fool.

This was it, the final punishment. No hope of reprieve ever. No escape from Hell.

Every word of Adam's old speeches rang in his memory. He recanted everything he had written. It humiliated him. How could he presume to question the nature of God?

Adam pondered his miseries. They were grotesque and absurd, and yet somehow a fitting punishment for the grotesque and absurd theories he had propagated about God. Adam recanted his blasphemies. God trying to evolve. Man influencing God. His mistake—he saw now—was in trying to determine what God was, rather than what God demanded.

And worse. He had tried to use God's name to accomplish his own ends. He manipulated his fellow men with visions of God that appealed to the human ego.

Adam had once preached the notion that mankind could shape the course of God's growth—each person contributing a tiny share—like the minute influence of a single DNA molecule in a single cell upon the course of the larger creature it inhabits. Adam's ideas cast the universe as a splatter painting rather than a grand design. He had slandered God by overextending a metaphor. Evolution was adaptation to an environment. Why would God need to adapt to anything?

Adam was never certain if he truly believed that strange theology, but it played well. And he had grand goals. Fine intentions. The Draconian system needed reformation. Adam thought he could bring about a great moral revolution. What arrogance!

God needing to grow! Man influencing God! Folly! He remembered the prohibitions of the Mishnah: It is forbidden to contemplate what is below, what is above, what was before time, and what will be after.

Adam walked over to his desk in the main office and extracted from the drawers a long bundle of papers. There were complex calculations scrawled in Hebrew letters, which were numbers as well. Adam's equations were based on numerology and folklore more than anything else. He was trying to read a pattern into Abaddon's time labyrinths. He tried to weigh the flight of days, assign values to the spread of minutes. He tried to discover correlations between places and degrees of time distortion.

Adam was trying to find the Day of Atonement.

Chapter Ten

A BANQUET OF WEEDS

The day before his first mission, Veil took Chev to the city of Dante. They visited open-air markets and listened to fortune-tellers; some were more accurate than others, according to Veil. They passed by quaint displays of unicorn skulls, and drug boutiques rich with the smell of cadmadine oils.

Under pastel banks of torch-lit fog, mystics and pseudomystics conducted their commerce, hawking incantations, prayers, theories about the colors that butterflies see, pamphlets explaining the mysteries of God, handwritten prophecies, and other forms of esoterica.

A cultist pushed a wheeled cart over the cobblestones, distributing food to his fellows. Steam rose from the cart, and the smell of freshly fried vegetables and melted cheese mingled with the fog. The smell, richly spiced with tarragon and savory, enticed Veil. Her stomach growled. She pulled Chev over to the cart.

"Will you share some of your food with outsiders?" asked Veil. "We have nothing to trade but gratitude."

"I am not supposed to," said the cultist, a thin boy, good intentions and weakness evident in his voice. He scanned the odd pair, Chev in his khakis and holsters and Veil in her robes. His eyes kept returning to Veil, though he could not meet her gaze.

"If I am seen, I'll be out of the cult. I'll starve. I got no way to get offworld."

"I will make certain no one sees you," said Veil.

"I can't. This is holy food."

"We are God's creatures and hungry." It was hard to refuse Veil anything.

The cultist sighed deeply and flipped open a panel flap on his cart. He extracted two fist-sized bread pockets filled near to bursting with oily vegetables and webs of melted cheese. Surrendering the handouts, he cautioned, "This is holy food. It must not touch the ground."

Chev took cautious nibbles, turning the bread pocket carefully, maintaining a steady balance. Veil tried to imitate Chev's method, but her fingers were too clumsy and she couldn't eat fast enough. The oil began to seep into the bread, making it more friable.

"I can do it. I can do it. I can manage," said Veil, trying to convince the cultist and herself.

A glob of stuffing breached the side of the pocket. Veil propped up two fingers to cage it.

"Don't let the food fall." The cultist broke into a sweat.

"Don't worry," said Veil. She took a deep breath, studying the meal like a puzzle. An errant cluster of eggplant slid through her fingers.

Chev's hands were full of his own meal, but he twisted sharply and kicked the eggplant into Veil's robe. The vegetable hung in an unsightly splatter on the crisp, otherwise flawlessly white silk.

"I'm sorry," said Chev. The oil and vegetable juices were already bleeding into the fabric.

"It was that or the ground," said Veil, not bothering to wipe the stain, her entire attention focused on the crisis in her hands. The bread was disintegrating. "Ooh, this is impossible."

Chev stuffed the remainder of his food into his mouth, bloating his cheeks. He put his hands around Veil's hands, encasing them and the collapsing sandwich.

"Thank you," said Veil.

Chev said something incomprehensible, his mouth still overstuffed. Veil began to eat from the bowl formed by two pairs of hands.

Chev held Veil's hands until she finished eating.

The cultist, soaked in nervous sweat, let out a weak sigh.

Later, as if in reward for his services, Veil handed Chev the battle plans given to her by the Council of Autumn. Uncanny material, written in a rambling, dreamlike prose, with surprising details about Olagy's security systems and troop movements. Aerial tactics were listed in advance; including some snap decisions that would be made in battle No wonder Magen had been able to shake the economic foundation of the Draconian system.

When Veil escorted Chev to the airfield, she seemed buoyant, filled with excitement at having a new warrior for her cause. All along the way, Chev took deep breaths, forcing himself into rigid control, a sort of combat posture he constantly maintained around Veil. Chev feared her, as a child fears a strict parent, or the dark, or a ghost.

As Chev prepared to leave, Veil said, "The others want to wish you luck, too."

"What others?"

Then he spied a group of slaves peering at him from a thicket of shadows. Veil smiled, inviting them over with a hand gesture. The slaves shyly gathered around Chev, their eyes gaping—not their usual glassy stares. They wore curious, amazed expressions. Some hesitantly touched the bright gold buttons of Chev's leather flight coat.

"Get them away from me," said Chev.

"They won't harm you," said Veil.

"All right."

Veil was stroking the stringy hair of an emaciated girl. Suddenly, a swarm of cretinous parasites crawled from their nesting places under the girl's scalp and attached themselves to the skin of Veil's hand. She did not recoil. Calmly, Veil lifted the hand up to the moonlight. Purple blisters, full of bugs, dotted her knuckles and palms. She called for a needle. One by one, she teased the bugs from their carbuncled berths. Because she allowed the slaves to remain pressed up against her, every bug she removed was instantly replaced.

"I think the Autumn World makes people insane!" said Chev.

"So they say all throughout the system," replied Veil. "And it is true, in away. But Summer is just as insane. Summer is Draconia's flesh and Autumn is its soul. Flesh and soul are always at odds, each thinking the other mad." Chev thought he detected a note of sadness, a repressed sigh, an admission of inner turmoil. Then she added, "Summer says we have hallucinogens in the fog. We say they have aphrodisiacs in the water."

Veil and Chev laughed. For some reason, she seemed happy around him, and that made things easier.

Veil lifted a child with one arm to wave good-bye to Chev. She extended her free arm, inviting an embrace. He couldn't pass on the opportunity for contact, even though it yielded only a brief passionless hug. The adult slaves huddled around them.

As Chev was climbing up to the hatch of his ship, the bugs began to attack his cheeks.

He gripped his visionary battle plans, and thought about the power entrusted to him. The bugs pulsing under his skin no longer seemed vile. Instead they carried a humble beauty, jewels of poverty, connecting him to Veil, the slaves, and the Council of Autumn.

Adam awoke to find his head cradled in his arms. His back ached. He had fallen asleep seated at a dusty old writing table. A muscle spasmed painfully at the back of his neck.

Syckle had vanished, presumably lured off somewhere by the fireworks outside, or the vibrations humming through the air. Strobing lights shined through the window, as if from lightning. Adam looked up from the desktop. The papers he had been working on stuck to his bare forearms.

A time storm ripped across the surface of Abaddon. Chronostreams collided and reversed, their ecologies upset by the closure of the hole in the sky. At the epicenter of the time storm, the tragic fall of the energy towers replayed across the sky. Again and again, the showers of sparks, the arcs of lasers, the collision of the intruding craft. The planet itself seemed preoccupied with the event, displaying endless repetitions like a visual mantra.

He heard the wail of dissolving hours.

Ten feet away from Adam's window, a blond-haired boy watched the skies. He wore the blue-grey costume of a novice shuttle pilot freshly promoted in the Air Force Bod. His lips were trembling. Overwhelmed at being trapped beneath the grey dome, the despised scud, he unholstered his laser pistol, pressed the nozzle to his temple, and pulled the trigger. The blast looked like a spray of vomit exploding from his head, full of pink-tinged brain mush and blond-fringed rags of scalp, all riding a core of red lightning. As the boy fell, he splashed into a stream of reversed time, and the vomit spray sucked itself back into his head. The burn hole on his temple sealed. Then his arm spastically snapped back up, repositioning the gun, and he blew his brains out again. The boy would never be able to stop killing himself. His eyes kept rolling up and down with the rhythms of his suicide, like the eyes of a toy doll. There was no escaping from Abaddon, not even in death.

Jet fighters took to the air. Even people who didn't know how to fly were jumping into planes and taking off. They would do anything to escape.

Images of planes from past, present, and future crossed one another in flight. Waves of wings beat over clouds of smoke and fire. Lasers were firing at the grey dome. The skies glittered with shining wings and swords of light and crystal canopies. It seemed as if the entire population was trying to take flight, all at once. One of the panicking young pilots took off so quickly, he collided with himself in a moment of chronofeedback.

In the midst of the chaos, trying to convince himself that Abaddon was no different from Earth, or the Summer World, or anywhere, Adam tried to pray. He wanted to show that he loved God and God's commandments, no matter how terrible his afflictions. This life was a cloak of illusions, a disguise wrapped around an incomprehensible core. Adam remembered the words of his teachers, that the only way to bring meaning to chaos was through the laws laid down at Sinai, the halakah, the complex matrix of deeds that transformed the chore of living into an act of worship. He wanted to demonstrate his repentance.

And yet, Adam lacked the proper tools for Jewish worship. Perhaps that was part of his punishment. No holy books. No tallith. No't'fillin No minyan. No temple. No Shabbat. No family. No community. No home. How could he be a Jew in a vacuum?

When Adam first arrived on Abaddon, he found small mitzvahs he could perform. He tended a small garden of seminutritious weeds so that he could have something kosher to eat. He cultivated hope in much the same way, because optimism is a sign of respect for the wisdom of God's choices. He found ways to help his fellow slaves, and even showed kindness to his masters.

Now Abaddon was sealed. No one could escape that grey shell of impenetrable time. How could Adam continue to hope?

Outside the exploratory station, crushed airships rained from the skies. Flaming, broken wings streaked downward.

Over the hill, two hastily formed coalitions were bat-ding over a food storage bin. Adam sat at a worm-eaten, splintering rolltop desk. He picked up a pencil and started jotting down notes about the destruction of the energy tower, peppering his objective observations with speculations about Abaddon's chronoecology. Even though he knew his masters would never call for this report, he was obliged to finish writing it. He remained obedient to the unretracted order.

Billows of smoke rolled toward the exploratory station and soon obscured Adam's view of the battler raging outside. A dingy yellow film began to coat the windowpanes. Adam could hear shouts and whining weapons, sometimes playing in reverse like the voices of demons. Men were dying out there, or rather they were doing what passed for dying on Abaddon.

As the night wore on, food battles intensified. Wayward laser beams poked holes in the walls and windowpanes. Snakes of smoke writhed through Adam covered his nose and mouth with rags to keep from breathing the smoke, for it stank of laser kills, a noxious odor heavy with aerosol fragments of DNA.

Adam looked up from his work. He stared out into the vistas of smoke, trying to read the patterns playing across his line of sight. The indistinct form of a soldier emerged from the haze, at first only a silhouette, a shadow accumulating detail as it drew closer. A metal flak jacket glittered on the form. A flash of laser reflected off a goggled helmet. He thought about trying to get away from the approaching soldier—but choosing an escape route required too much will. He sat very still, hoping to be ignored. The shadow ran elegantly, chased by other shadows. More laser lines slammed through the walls. The running soldier was drawing fire in Adam's direction. Still, Adam did not try to flee. He watched the warriors outside perform their ugly dances.

Suddenly the smoke was parted by a wet, red explosion. A blast of light had ripped open a human body. A volley of white projectiles tore uneven holes in the windowpanes. The projectiles ricocheted, then clattered like dice on the wooden floor. When they came to rest, Adam saw they were teeth.

Now only one soldier remained in the field of smoke. There was something familiar about the soldier's stride, an echo of confidence and anger, a glide of effortless coordination, and a hint of sexuality. It was a female soldier. She reminded him very much of someone he knew, someone from long ago, from a distant other life.

Adam stood up from his desk to get a better view.

The closer the woman soldier got, the more striking the resemblance became.

Magen.

He couldn't believe his eyes. Surely this was too much of a coincidence, absurd and improbable. And yet who else would be crazy enough to invade Abaddon?

What would he do if it were really Magen?

It couldn't be Magen. The image had to be some kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy. A Rorschach Magen. Of course he saw Magen in the running form. He thought about her all the time and saw her in all things. In dreams, he chased her shadow through the corridors of their old home. While exploring the plains of Abaddon for his masters, he rehearsed reunions with Magen he never expected would come to pass. In part he blamed her for his present circumstances and sometimes would rage in phantom arguments with her inside his own mind, but he was still the victim of the obsessive love he'd felt for her from the very beginning. That woman, that beguiling, dangerous, forbidden fruit. He loved her, and hated her, and craved her, and prayed for their reunion, and in the same breath prayed to never see her again. He felt every kind of deep emotion a man could feel for a woman who wasn't there. In the course of his constant pondering about her, she achieved the weight of legend in his mind.

Could it really be her? How should he act? Like the slave that he was, or should he pretend to be something more? He had come to think of his broken spirit as a puzzle to occupy the time between now and death, an issue between Adam and God that Adam would have to work out by himself. He couldn't stand the thought of Magen finding him like this. Broken. A slave.

The door of the exploratory station swung open, and the woman walked in amid a wave of foul-smelling smoke. Her nose was broken, her lips painted luridly with her own blood. Her eyes had changed color since the last time he saw her, and she had aged much more than he had. But he recognized her.

Magen. Undeniably Magen. If nothing else, he could tell it was her by the way she stared at him.

"Thank God I have found you," she said, after a long silence.

He stood very still, trying to decide what to do. His choices were simple. Give her the ugly truth, tell her that he had been turned into a slave and grovel at her feet. Or opt for theatrics. He could pretend to be a real man with a real soul. He didn't know what to do.

They stared at each other a long time, shaking their heads in disbelief.

"I told them you were alive," she said. "Everyone said I was crazy, but I knew in my heart."

"You are crazy. You have no idea what you have done to yourself."

"I know, Adam. I have been on Abaddon for a while. I can't say how long. Maybe a week. It is so hard to say. I tell time by my smell. I haven't even changed clothes since I landed." She laughed. "My odor is terrible. I think I smell like a week."

"I wish I could say I was happy to see you. I am, in a way—but Abaddon is a wretched place to be. I can't take happiness from anything that will bring you misery."

"It is worth it for this moment."

She crossed over to where he stood. He felt her eyes probing his soot-smeared flesh, his labor-pumped muscles, his rags. Her gaze finally met his sleep-deprived, time-tortured eyes.

"How long has it been?"

"Five years, Adam."

He shook his head. "I didn't think it would be so long. It is impossible to judge time on this world. I thought maybe it has only been nine months. Maybe less."

"It seemed much more than five years to me, Adam. It seemed a lifetime."

"Maybe five years for you, maybe less than a year for me. Time passes differently here."

She took his hand, just for a second. The two of them tested what contact would be like. He felt her blood lubricating the space between their skin. She pulled back suddenly, blushing.

"I know it has been a long time and you have been through much. So have I. Maybe I have not been so good a wife to you as I should have been, and you have many reasons to be angry with me. But I have gone through so much hardship to get here. You can't even imagine what I have been through."

"I am not angry," said Adam.

"You don't look so bad." She forced a smile. "I was expecting so much worse. I have been with slaves, too much, these five years. You don't look so bad for a slave."

What could he say to her? She had come so far and endured so much, or so she said, and he didn't doubt her. Finding a mental cripple at the end of her quest seemed too shabby a reward.

"I am not a slave."

He lied to her. He couldn't stand the thought of her treating him like a slave. Somehow he would have to maintain an illusion of will to support the lie. He believed he could do it. The slavers had not broken him completely, as they had the others. And he understood the nature of Abaddon, which Magen did not. Perhaps Adam could hide his infirmities behind the vagaries of this place. Maybe he could fool her indefinitely, if no one gave him any direct orders.

"How is it that you are not a slave?"

He lowered his head toward the ground. "I had to trade my identity so they would not give me brain drugs. I gave them my name, my real name, in return for my soul. I had to let them know my mind was of some value to them, so they wouldn't kill it. On Abaddon, they needed someone who understood physics to make reports. That's why I am here, because of physics." He told the story convincingly because he did not have to lie. He had managed to rescue some of his will from total obliteration. Still, he was too ashamed to tell her how much damage had been done before they sent him to Abaddon.

"What do you know of physics? You have to be in a bod to learn such things."

"I used to read a lot of books. Anything I could get my hands on. Even books on obsolete sciences like economics, sociology, philosophy. I used to memorize the names of stars that can't be seen from here. I don't know why. Once I studied some outdated physics."

"You have been lucky, then."

"No."

"All right, Adam, you have not been lucky if you think so. But I am grateful to God that I have found you and you don't look so bad and you are not a slave. They have not cut you in body or brain."

He was afraid of conversation, afraid that he might reveal his crippled state. He said nothing.

"I have changed, Adam."

He inspected her the way she had inspected him. Two lightweight rifles hung from slings, one over each shoulder. He counted three holstered handguns. Too many knives to count. A belt of grenades. His eyes began to tarry on her breasts and hips. He tried to force his eyes to the ground, but they stayed on her body. Primitive lusts swept through his torso. Animal lusts, slave lusts. Magen deserved better than that.

"Tomorrow, we find a way out of this mess," she said unconvincingly, trying to get him to talk.

He started to tell her there was no way out of the mess, but he held his tongue. It was too much like something a slave would say, even though it was true.

"I have some food," said Magen. She slipped the rifles off her shoulders, then pulled loose the knapsack strapped to her back. From inside, she extracted a portion of pink meat wrapped in cellophane. She offered the meat to him, but he pushed her hand away.

As his hand touched her knuckles, he was overwhelmed by hungers that had nothing to do with food. Her cheeks flushed pink under the soot. He wanted to grab her, but he fought back the urge.

"The food isn't kosher," said Adam.

"You should eat it anyway. You will need strength."

Adam shuddered. Magen's entreaty hit him with the full force of an order, and he was compelled to obey. Despite the revulsion sieging through his nerves, he found himself reaching for the pink slab of flesh. He took the bag into his hands, felt the meat sliding on grease under the cellophane.

"All right, all right, don't eat it if it makes you so unhappy," said Magen. "You have something better to eat?"

Adam walked over to his bed and pulled his mattress to one side. He wanted to give her a kiss, but instead, he offered a handful of weeds.

She sniffed the stems, then skeptically took a small taste. "I can't live on this," she said.

"You do as you wish."

"We are talking about life and death here, Adam. God doesn't want I should starve to stay kosher."

"These plants have kept me alive."

Magen took the weeds from Adam's hands and stuffed them into her mouth.

"You must eat slowly. They are hard to digest."

She glared, but she continued eating. The situation struck Adam as weirdly ironic. Unknowingly, she had bowed to the influence of a slave.

"I don't think I will get very much strength from this meal…" she said. A tear began to pool in the corner of her eye, very slowly. Her tear continued to grow, eventually gaining enough weight to amble down her cheek. Clicking noises came from the base of her throat. A long, drawn-out hiss separated each click. She was talking, too slowly to be understood. Magen had settled into a stream of retarded time. A look of desperation froze on her face, as if caught inadvertently on a snapshot. Adam had seen that look before. Maybe she had changed, as she said, but as far as he could see, the past was repeating itself, as the past often did on Abaddon.

He should have married someone modest and demure—not this wild, warrior woman who had only minimal ties to the faith of her ancestors. But Adam had been drawn to Magen, violently attracted by her recklessness, lured by their differences.

It seemed so strange to be sharing a meal with his wife again, after all this time. The meal itself seemed endless and unreal, even more unreal than the time storm outside. Magen remained fixed and rigid, trapped in amber, hissing and clicking, separated from Adam in ways she did not realize.

Adam looked away from Magen. He realized that her being here was not a coincidence at all, but rather the product of some enormous effort on her part.

Magen seemed to resent Adam's insistence on observing the ancient laws under these bizarre circumstances, but she didn't understand how terrible and hopeless their situation was. They had nothing but faith and observance to keep them from madness, and no hope for deliverance outside of a miracle. He felt a sudden, profound gratitude for his dinner of weeds.

Adam was glad that he had kept the kosher laws on Abaddon. Now he and his wife had their own food stores and would not have to join the battle for sustenance raging outside. He could eat his simple dinner in the shadows, sheltered from Hell. The weeds had almost no taste, except for a slight hint of bitterness. They had a rubbery texture that made them difficult to chew. Still, the weeds would sustain them.

God did not reveal himself through miracles, nor through human introspection. God did not reveal himself in coincidences, or in chaos. God did not even reveal himself in nature, as Adam once supposed. He revealed himself by hiding. And here, on Abaddon, where God was most hidden, Adam found God most revealed. In a vacuum, where there should have been no proper tools for Jewish worship, Adam found God growing in the weeds.

* * *

As Magen came back into sync with Adam, she asked, "How can I tell you I am sorry?"

She reached across the table and took both of his hands in hers. "Come closer," she said.

He stood and crossed over to her. He couldn't disobey, even if he wanted to.

The smells of her body, once so familiar to him, had been intensified by the long period she had gone without washing. Her pungent musk invaded his nostrils, provoking him. He pulled her close and their lips met. The gamy taste of her mouth sent jolts through his abdomen. His passions quickened.

The way he grabbed her was crude and insensitive, but he couldn't help himself. He was desperate for her. Yet he was terrified of contact. Lovemaking opened windows into the soul. He was afraid that even the smallest of intimate contact would allow her to see the ruins of his will.

"Wait…" she protested.

He pulled back, his arms dropping to his sides.

"You don't have to be so rushed."

"Just tell me what you want."

"Adam!"

"I mean I just want to make you happy."

"Let's get clean."

He escorted her to a small shower stall at the rear of the exploratory station. Slowly, she peeled off her sticky garments. Her body still retained its severe beauty. The tight panels of her abdomen rippled with her heavy breathing. The sculpted forms of her belly and hips led his eyes to her loins. Already he could see desire glistening on her brown tuft of hair.

"Adam, it is so strange the way you look at me."

He turned his eyes away.

"No, look at me, please, just stop staring. And stop staring there."

He stepped out of his clothes and stood naked in front of his wife. Now she was staring, as if seeing his body for the first time.

Together, they climbed under the running water. She lathered up her hands with a bar of soap that smelled of flammable disinfectant; then she smeared the soapy foam on his belly. As she worked the lather over his body hair, it turned grey as the dust of Abaddon. He took the soap from her and greased her breasts with it. He felt her nipples pointing into the palms of his hands, tracing designs on his slippery caresses. Their mouths met.

He lathered her thighs, then found her center. She felt rough and viscous as he washed her. She soaped him in reciprocity, her fingers lubricated with alcoholic foam.

She cupped her hands to catch water from the shower, then poured it warmly over him, washing away the lather. He swept the soap from her body with his wet hands.

He ached, mad with desire.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

"You said to wait…" The words involuntarily escaped from his lips.

She laughed. She thought he was joking. "Well, if you need to be told when to stop waiting, then you can just wait."

He broke from the embrace.

"Adam, I was joking."

She climbed him like a ladder into a chair made of his arms. The shower sprayed on them. "We've been waiting too long. We don't have to wait anymore." Her long legs wrapped around his, and she enveloped him.

* * *

Magen awoke to find her husband naked and asleep beside her, the two of them cramped on a simple cot. She touched him gently, to test the depth of his slumber. At the contact of their skin, a warm, fluid sensation fluttered in her abdomen. He continued to sleep. She crept out of bed without disturbing him.

Her stomach began to growl. She crossed over to a rear corridor, looking for something to eat. At that moment, she felt hungrier than she had ever felt in her life. The dented metal walls of the exploratory station had faded to a pale yellow, except for black streaks of baked-on tar, splatters from an ancient explosion. Magen peeled off a long strip of tar, and found a military shade of avocado lurking underneath. The place had once housed soldiers or mercs.

Magen crossed from room to room, checking for food bins. She found some bags that were supposed to contain dehydrated food. The powder inside tasted like chalk. For all she knew, she was eating dirt, but she ate it anyway, greedily stuffing handfuls into her mouth.

A battery of laser cannons, all equipped with telescopic sights, lined the rear barricade. She paused at the laser cannons. They appeared to be in good condition. Even the subspace aimers still worked, antique defenses against invading warpships.

As she took a look through the high-powered telescopic aiming device, the broken towers rolled into view. The image of her ship crashing still played across the sky above the towers. Perversely, she adjusted the telescopies for a clearer view of herself. Regarding the shadow of her former folly between the crosshairs of the laser cannon, she saw her own lips stretched thin, her eyes wide behind green-tinted goggles during the approach to Hell. Magen laughed at herself and all of her old determination. Young girl, young fool, charging into Hell.

She looked past herself, up to the grey sky, where the access hole was closing again and again. She readjusted the telescopies, and the spiral-shaped hole came into sharp focus. For the first time in an eternity, she saw outer space: black and silver, infinite depth speckled with points of light. She lingered there, watching the heavens like a child with a kaleidoscope.

Then a searing flash of laser light blurred the scene. A ship drifted into view, flying in slow motion. Amelia's assault craft. She saw a terrified expression gradually playing over Amelia's features.

She tested the cannon. It could still fire. She adjusted the fine-tuning on the blue beam. In an effort to warn Amelia away, she shot bits and pieces of nonessential machinery off her ship. It didn't seem to dissuade her.

She waited and waited.

Amelia kept coming, diving toward the planet. Then, aiming directly at Amelia's face, Magen opened fire again. It took her an hour or more to burn her warning across her windshield.

TURN BACK.

Amelia showed up one day, unannounced, at the headquarters of the Slavers Bod on the Summer World. Her hair had been elaborately braided. Her gown was shockingly cut to show off her firm flesh. She wanted to look her best for this occasion. Dawson stood armed at her side.

She presented herself to the slave at the receptionist booth and demanded to see Chadwick Hubbel. She met the usual bureaucratic resistance.

Amelia pounded on the Plexiglas wire mesh window of the booth. With deliberately inappropriate volume, flushed in the face, she shouted to the slave, "Tell your supervisor and your supervisor's supervisor, and his super-visor too, that Amelia Strados brings news about Magen Hirsch. I must see Chadwick Hubbel within the next ten minutes!"

The tone caught the receptionist's attention. Within moments from the receptionist's call, Hubbel emerged from the elevator bank in the lobby, a vaguely irritated falseness shining through his smile. He looked magnificent, dressed in prime director's robes of royal blue velvet with copper brocades.

Hubbel personally escorted Amelia to his office in the left eyeball of Bacchus.

Amelia glanced around and ran a finger along marbled paneling. "Nice, real nice," she said. "Olagy made you chief of operations after all. That must have been a hard sell."

"Very hard. I had to kill him. Three times, in fact. Then I finally found one of the clones willing to give me the appointment."

"I am glad for you."

"I thought you were dead," said Hubbel.

"I've just been through a long run of bad luck. Really awful rotten luck."

Hubbel raised an eyebrow. "That boy. What was his name? He lasted such a long time with you. A lot longer than I did."

"He lasted too long. Much too long. He's gone now. You want to hear something silly? I thought I was in love. I thought I had stumbled onto some long-lost ancient secret. It was just some silly behavior pattern I picked up from Magen. It ended up killing her."

"Hirsch is dead? Are you sure? Her raids haven't stopped."

"She's dead. Someone's taken her place."

"I'm glad to have the information. Perhaps I can exploit it in some way." Hubbel scribbled a note on a small tablet.

"She was shot down over Abaddon—supposedly chasing some lead on her husband that you gave her. Is it true?"

"I told her Adam Hirsch is on Abaddon. Yes. That is what my sources reported. He was supposed to be alive, too, if you consider being on Abaddon life."

"Now I understand why love is so poorly regarded."

"Actually, I'd like to try it sometime. I hear it is a potent aphrodisiac."

Settling back into her chair, eyes gleaming, she asked, "Did you forget our deal?"

"No. But I wasn't about to volunteer anything— especially if you forgot. But we did have a deal. You did what I asked, I remember."

"You'll have all the sanctions lifted against me? I can do business with the bods again?"

"Yes." He jotted down some more notes.

"You'll give me my ten thousand slaves?"

"That was our deal. We have plenty to spare."

Amelia smiled, an easy, confident smile. She never expected things to be this easy. Perhaps her luck had changed at last.

Hubbel glanced up from his note scribbling, catching Amelia midgaze, looking deep into her eyes to reinforce the appearance of sincerity. "I shall have the sanctions lifted against you at once; however, I am going to delay delivery of the slaves. Only for a short time, perhaps. I am not reneging on our deal. There are a lot of forms to fill out."

"I want my slaves by tomorrow, Hubbel, or I will distribute across the entire system specific instructions on how to successfully deprogram your slaves."

"Tomorrow, then." He turned his attention to his scribbling, and away from her. His face flushed with repressed rage.

She left the office, quickly returning to Dawson's protection. He escorted her from the building.

"You heard what I said in there?" she asked.

"I did. Auditory monitoring—for your protection, of course."

"I wasn't bluffing. I know how to free slaves. Do you want your freedom, old friend?"

"What would I do with it? What would I do different with the rest of my life—besides trying to keep you happy?"

"You're not just saying that because of your conditioning?"

"Is that a question or an order?"

She took his impertinence as a sign that he had more than enough will to make this decision on his own.

Inside her diamond mansion, Amelia took a long, leisurely swim, nude in a pool filled with pink-tinged carbonated water. Overhead, the lights shone gloriously, photon-filtered and wave-controlled.

The water, gently heated to her body temperature, soothed her joints. She had toned up, looking better and firmer, still one of the most beautiful women in the Draconian system. Her swim was part of a new routine of strenuous exercises. When she finished swimming, she tackled a set of weight-lifting devices that adjusted automatically to her fatigue levels. She spent anywhere from six to eight hours a day swimming, cycling, walking, and weight lifting. Amelia had been watching herself transform from wretchedness to strength. This transformation made her think of what Magen had said back on the Autumn World about using times of loss as opportunities to grow. Magen was wrong, Amelia decided. Deprivation did not promote growth. Pain was just pain, not a fire that transmuted base mettle into sterner stuff. Losses only made one poorer. Personal growth needed to be taken leisurely. It couldn't be rushed. It needed to be cultivated in the proper environment, in places like the mansion, accommodations that delighted the eye and stimulated the mind.

Amelia had needed to come home. It gave her the strength and cunning to force Hubbel into upholding his bargain. Under the right conditions, there were no limits to what the human will could accomplish.

That is what aristocracy is all about, she thought.

She stepped onto her balcony, where she could see the large bod ships unloading their cargo of fresh slaves. Magen and Veil would disapprove. Amelia reflected on her dealings with those two. They had been enlightening—but also tedious, costly, and trying.

The old notions about a hidden order lying beneath the chaos of perception still held a disquieting appeal. God made sense in a simplistic way. What if Amelia were truly special to God, as Veil claimed? What had been lost in the cosmic scheme of things? Amelia shuddered, remembering Veil's warnings about the Devil, and the creature she had seen in her dreams.

Perhaps someday Amelia would give this atonement thing another try. Someday. But for now, she planned to travel, pursue expensive entertainments, and indulge in the luxuries she had always loved.

Magen turned to find Adam standing beside her.

She said, "We have to find a way out of here." Her voice held a note of forced, strained control.

"I spent months thinking about escape. I couldn't find a way to get off this planet, except through the spiral hole and it was too well guarded. There was only one way out. Magen, you destroyed it. There is no way to repair the towers. There is no escape."

"Everyone said it was impossible to find you. I am not the kind of person who quits."

"This is different."

"Yes, the stakes are higher, now."

He began to beat his forehead with the heel of his palm, as if pain could undo the infirmity of his thought process. Nothing seemed to change. He tried hitting harder. And harder.

"Stop it," she said.

He immediately stopped.

"Adam, I don't understand these things at all. I don't understand why we can't just fly out or blast our way out."

"Take my word for it. It can't be done so easily."

"Then, since you understand it so well, you've got to think of a way to get us off this world. You have to," she said.

Obediently, he walked back into the office, sat down at the table, and folded his hands in front of him.

Magen tried talking to Adam, but she found that he had slipped into a different time frame. She could tell he was talking when his lips blurred to a pinkish smudge, but she could not tell if he was trying to talk to her, or if he was praying. His eyelids, rapidly blinking, had become faintly visible, peach-tone veils.

Then she heard a voice speaking in deep, time-dragged tones. The pace of syllables accelerated as Adam came back into sync with her. "… You see how time is distorted here. Perhaps we can find some area on the planet's surface where the past has been preserved, or perhaps we can find a stream of time that will carry us far back. This world wasn't always enclosed. There might be a spot of preserved past where the sky is open."

"I don't know anything about such things, Adam. It sounds so strange to me."

Something flickered in Adam's eyes, a trace of hope, a faint recollection. "There are many places where Abaddon's past is preserved—but I have never seen any sky but the hard grey shell. I don't know if we will be able to find an opening, but we have no other chance."

Magen began to gather her belongings, her weapons and food. Determined to endure Adam's weeds for as long as possible, she stuffed them into her backpack. Preparing for temptation, she also packed the portions of unkosher meat.

Magen crossed the space that separated her from Adam—only a few feet, but it took her a long time to cross.

They stepped outside together.

Vicious battles over food raged all around, but a quirk of time flow had changed a field of slaughter into a field of miracles. Time flowed in reverse. Like a preview of Judgment Day, the dead flew up from the ground, landing on their feet like cats. Their reversed falls looked like gravity-defying leaps. Those who had died by laser blast emerged from coalescing crimson clouds. Sprays of blood snaked back into opened veins and arteries. Cyanotic cheeks pinked.

Clouds of flies dropped like rain, becoming maggots on impact with the ground. Then the maggots would spread skin back onto faces, like workers rolling down carpets, or vomit lungs back into the dustbowls of empty rib cages.

Carrion birds were spitting toes back onto cold, dead feet.

The victim of an acid sword lay on the ground, his skin unburning, regenerating, the acid rolling upward and off him in a sizzling tide, spreading an abdomen of beautifully toned sweat-glazed muscles over the girdle of a gore-blackened skeleton.

On the field of battle mortal enemies embraced, ex-traded knives from one another's kidneys, cauterizing wounds with backhand motions of their blades.

Magen trod carefully, cautious of light blasts that whistled backward around her, unsure whether or not they could still inflict injury.

The spectacle of battle became a spectacle of peace, a vision of a perfect world of brotherly love, a foreshadow of the messianic era—men forsaking war, the dead waking. Guns repented of their anger, pulling back spears of light and returning forever to their holsters. The smells of putrescence reformed and sweetened in the air. Soldiers were revived by inhaling their own death screams. Men were healing each other's wounds, reconciling their differences, and exchanging food. Resurrections churned the mud around them. It was moving, in a way, beautiful.

As they left the battle behind them, Magen walked with surer steps. The brittle ground crackled like frying grease as her pace quickened. A thousand shifting smells cascaded through the air, a bouquet of history. Some distant time long ago, there had been flowers in the desert. And trees. She could smell echoes of ancient garbage, snow, sulfur—and long, long ago there had been an ocean.

Chapter Eleven

THE ARK

Out in the desert, Magen could feel time distortions vibrating across her face. In a valley far from the exploratory station, they found a wrecked cruiser lying twisted between boulders. The ship's fins, slender as razors, bent at odd angles along the fuselage. Scrape marks scored the hull. Paint had been scratched from the nose and wings in long swaths.

The remains of two pilots rested inside. Scum-coated bones tangled beneath the canopy blister. They had obviously been testing themselves against the grey scud. Though the pilots had failed to breach the barrier, they managed an astounding escape of another kind. The skeletons lay still, truly dead. The eyes, runny as oysters, fixated on one another. The mouths gaped open, rejoicing the miracle of nonresurrection, singing silence. The dead pilots seemed to have died embracing one another, their stiff white fingers now interlocked. It was the first sign of true death that Magen had seen since coming to Abaddon. No tremors stirred these corpses. No false life. Not even a twitch. Perhaps these stubborn bones had achieved their measure of peace because they had died so close to the time wall, pounding themselves against the shell.

Magen pried the skeletons from their sticky, leather thrones. She took the larger of the two flak jackets and handed it to Adam. The jacket fit him fine. The helmet also fit him. The coincidence troubled her.

"What is wrong?" asked Adam.

"I am terrified of what I feel for you, Adam. In so many ways, we are almost strangers. I haven't seen you for five years."

"When I think of all you have done for me, for the sake of our love and marriage, I am overwhelmed. It makes the old passions seem vapid and unworthy. I cannot tell you how very much I love you at this moment."

She cut in, "Is that why you say yes to everything I ask?" She laughed, for a moment, then sobered.

Magen asked Adam to help fix the ship. He nodded stiffly. Using dry white stones that powdered and chipped on impact, he hammered the bent fins back into place. Magen peeled back the hood cover. She spliced wires and rerouted gas pipes. Cannibalizing components from some of the luxury systems, like the auto-aimers and the climate controls, she fed the ship's essentials. She disassembled her guns and culled parts from them as well. Magen had been trained by her bod to make spot repairs. She could patch the insides of a ship with her eyes closed. Her fingers moved on automatic, even though she understood almost nothing of the mechanics involved. The work went quickly.

She began to get frustrated when she tried to make the final linkup between the engine and the control console.

The genders of the outlets and plugs, the colors of the wire coverings, would not match up. She suspected the ship had already gone through a fair amount of customizing before it had fallen into her hands. Every time she loosened a screw, foreign parts revealed themselves, many from older models she couldn't even recognize. As she fiddled with the circuitry, Magen got lost in a maze of purple and green wires and silver circuit chips. She banged at a ceramic socket that was so old, it could have come from Earth. She tried to bluff her way through the problem, or solve it by blind luck.

Adam was still straightening the fins, clanging as he bent out the metal. Magen's hands tugged at the wire jungle.

Suddenly overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task, she pulled loose a handful of connections and tossed them in the dust. Cursing, she kicked the ship.

"Maybe we should try to find a different ship," suggested Adam.

Magen waved away the notion, scattering dust motes that hovered in front of her face. "I am not giving up, Adam. I don't care how long it takes. We are going to work this through. What is time on Abaddon that we should worry about wasting it?" She laughed at herself, a forced, ugly laugh. "You almost made me lose hope, you know. Don't try it again! Make me keep working on this ship until I can get it to fly. Even if I change my mind, don't listen to me. I don't care how long it takes."

He nodded stiffly, then turned his attention to the exposed engine circuitry, prodding wires with his dusty fingers.

Adam and Magen sat on the crusted ground together, trying to decipher form and function.

* * *

Beyond the valley where they worked, the lines of vision divided into two half-planes, one grey, the other dull yellow. The bisecting horizon blurred at the edge where the desert met the sky. Cracks of varying size veined the ground, distorting perspectives. A fine, grey powder spewed from the cracks.

After an undetermined time, working on the ship's engine, dust invaded Magen's eyes, gathering in muddy balls along her lashes. It caked in her hair and stuffed her ears. Her feet began to ache; then the pain spread to her knees and thighs. Her tendons felt like piano wires slicing through muscle and nerve. Adam's knuckles were making popping sounds whenever he moved his hands. His fingernails were scratching staccato whispers over the surface of the engine's firewall. An impassive mask of dust covered his face. He caught saw-edged breaths between fits of coughing. If he felt pain, he didn't show it.

Magen collapsed. Adam stopped working when she did, dropping to the ground behind her, like a shadow.

When Magen awoke, she continued her efforts to repair the electrical system. She struggled to find meaning in the mechanical hieroglyphs. Slowly the male, the female, and the bisexual outlets linked up in ways that seemed to be correct.

Suddenly she saw dark lines drawing around the horizon, marching threads etching new divisions on the monotonous landscape. As the lines drew closer, they knitted into human forms. At least a hundred men were tramping toward them.

Magen reached for her guns, but found her holsters empty. Her pistols and rifles lay in heaps of junk on the ground, their jeweled hearts beating inside the ship engine, which was nearly repaired. Magen shook Adam awake. She said, "We've got to get out of here."

Hurriedly, they made a few last-minute adjustments to the engine, then climbed into the cockpit together. Magen pulled back on the starter. Metal parts scraped under the hood; then the engine gasped. She pumped in more gas and a fist of kerosene fumes hit her face. Sputtering sounds followed. She had been too impatient and flooded the engine. The ignition would not turn over.

Magen threw open the canopy blister. She said to Adam, "Get out slowly and walk away. There's plenty of distance between us and them. Don't run. They'll think we have something valuable. If they have lasers, they'll be able to cu us down from where they stand."

"Who knows?" said Adam. "Those men could be from a hundred years ago. When they reach us, they could be bone,. Or we could be bones. Or they could never reach us."

"Ye can't take any chances."

"But I can't leave this place."

"We have to."

"I can't, Magen. You ordered me to stay until the ship was repaired"

"What do you mean?" Her eyes widened. Suddenly it became obvious to her.

"I can't leave. I'm under orders. You said even if you changed your mind, I am not to leave until the ship is repaired."

"They made you a slave."

"Yes. I lied to you. I am sorry."

"God damn you, Adam! I don't have the strength to carry you. How can I undo this order?"

"I don't think you can."

"God damn you! Why didn't you be honest with me? It wouldn't have made any difference to me! God damn it! I was expecting you should be a slave!" She threw up her hand, exasperated.

A the forms drew closer, the sound of jangling chains drifted through the time currents. Then the images thrust forward faster than Magen had expected, moving through accelerated time.

Suddenly, they were surrounded.

Defensively, Magen affected the listless amble and indifferent stare of a slave. She copied the look convincingly.

A group of six gunmen led a procession of shackled slaves and walking corpses. The marching footsteps fluffed up sheets of low-lying dust over the brittle plane. At the head of the procession, the leader shouted commands that whistled through small, sharp teeth.

"Olagy," said Magen, trying hard not to let her surprise ruin her impersonation of a slave.

Olagy approached her, took her face into his webbed hand. He looked her up and down. "You know me?" he hissed.

"Everyone in the system knows about Olagy," she replied.

"They know my clones. No one knows me, the real Olagy. Olagy the first. They exiled me to Abaddon; a long time ago, I guess."

One of the gunmen started pulling weapons off Magen. Quill implants striped his spine and arms. His eyes were purple. "I am the duke of Abaddon," he said.

"We have been gathering slaves," said Olagy. "Establishing a way of doing things, here. A new way like the old way, based on slavery." His slit eyes took on a nostalgic cast. "This reminds me of the old days, when I first wanted to be the chairman of the Slavers Bod. Now, there was an Olagy to be feared." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to three identical boys with hair close-cropped to a fine fuzz, triplets or clones. "These are the barons." Then, gesturing toward a fat male, Olagy said, "And that's the queen. These men are my chiefs, with slaves of their own. Obey them. They serve me."

Olagy slapped a wrist shackle on Magen, adding her to the procession like a new charm on a bracelet.

Magen froze with her head cocked in Olagy's direction as he finished frisking her. Adam was chained as well.

The aristocrats of Abaddon herded their slaves off to one side and left them standing. They tested the half-repaired ship, listening to the gunning engine.

While the aristocrats played with the ship, Adam maneuvered past the other slaves and brought himself close to Magen's side. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I wish I could have been of more help. I should have tried to escape with you, or I should have fought them, but I could not."

"I don't expect you should fight for me, Adam. If I had wanted a fight, there would have been a fight. I should have known that they made you into a slave. I should have known it."

"I don't understand why he has put us in chains. He doesn't need them. We're slaves. Perhaps the symbolism appeals to him. Or perhaps he suspects you."

"I don't mind the chains," she said, jangling a six-inch length while she toyed with the small locks that linked them together. "They give me a weapon."

The aristocrats found that the ship wouldn't work. They had no interest in attempting repairs. With prodding lasers, they drove the slaves back into motion. The chained slaves ambled wearily. At least half of them were mush-skinned Abaddon corpses, walking dead.

"Stop," said Adam. "We cannot leave this place."

"What do you mean?" asked Olagy, surprised by the slave's impertinence.

"We have to stay here."

Magen cursed under her breath.

"I say no."

"We have to leave Abaddon!" shouted Adam.

"I don't want to leave," said Olagy matter-of-factly. He was unholstering his gun, an irritated look on his face.

"I can't leave this place," said Adam. "I was ordered to stay."

"Yeah? Who ordered you?" Olagy had enough of this. He leveled his pistol at Adam.

Magen snapped her chain loose. The aristocrats were unprepared for the sudden, skilled attack. Wi th a flick of her wrist, she blinded the duke, splattering jelly and bony orbital fragments as the chain whipped across his face. Magen spun the chain over to one of the barons, snaking it around his neck. She jerked him forward, cracking his cervical spine. She pulled the cooling body into collision with Olagy, who lost balance.

Magen lunged for the dead baron's handgun. She grabbed it with her right hand, using a scooping gesture as she hit the ground rolling. Then she bounced to her feet, aiming the gun.

And she stood there.

And stood there.

And stood.

Poised, she pointed her gun at Olagy's head. A battle cry was sounding on her lips in slow hisses and clicks. Magen was frozen in a block of slow-moving time, trapped like a fly in amber.

Her left hand dangled in real time, spastically shaking as if it had been severed. The chain linked to her wrist shackle jangled softly.

Olagy peeled off a shot at her. The other aristocrats opened fire as well. Three red beams flashed toward Magen. All three beams slowed to a creep as they crossed the perimeters of the time block. The aristocrats shrieked with delight.

"Leave her alone!" shouted Adam.

"Keep out of this," Olagy replied, and his words fell with the full force of a command.

The sluggish deadly beams seemed to ooze their way toward Magen through the medium of aberrant time.

The aristocrats were laughing at the image, which had been fixed at an unexpected moment, like an embarrassing photograph.

Now one of the beams wormed past Magen's temple, bathing her forehead with a crimson glow. A straight line of blistered weals slowly bubbled over her eyebrows.

The next beam plodded on a track toward Magen's heart.

Adam began to sweat. He could almost feel the heat searing across his wife's skin.

A moment before the beam could lacerate Magen's breast, Olagy grabbed the end of her chain and pulled hard. She jerked sideways, back into real time, stunned. Her eyes rolled, unfocused. Before she could recover, one of the remaining barons threw a snap kick to her midriff, propelling her back into the time block. Magen froze in midair, bent at the waist, just above the original laser beams, which were about to finish their crawl. As the beams touched the invisible outer shell of the block, they squirted out across the plains, bright flashes escaping to the horizon.

Olagy fired at Magen's frozen form once again. A new red beam inched toward her face.

Adam was shaking now. His head burned. He couldn't think. He couldn't act. Disassociated anger sat in abstract chunks in his wounded mind. Caught in crossfires of mixed messages, his nerves just shook.

The aristocrats waited until the bar of light painted a soft pink glow on Magen's lips; then they jerked her out again.

Olagy let her stay in real time for just a second, then he threw her back in. Olagy fired a new laser shot. It seemed he reserved this pleasure for himself, a privilege of rank.

They pulled Magen out again, then they tossed her back in. The aristocrats laughed like children.

Adam felt he was dying. His larynx constricted. Pressure built in his heart. He gripped his chains as if they were a lifeline.

Adam squeezed the rough, rusty metal into the palms of his sweaty hands.

By this time, Magen hung in the block, curled in a fetal position. A line of laser light was creeping toward her spine.

Adam heard the sound of the aristocrats laughing and shooting their jeweled guns. He heard the crackling of laser beams as they zapped through real space and smacked with dull thuds against the walls of the time block. He heard the hissing and clicking of Magen's battle yell. Or was she sobbing now?

This was Adam's fault. He had taken this woman out of her natural element and plunged her into the rigors of his ancient customs. He had let himself be captured. He had let himself become a slave. He hated himself, an utterly useless, shaking thing.

He spoke to God. "Punish me, don't punish her. She doesn't deserve this. She came to this world, this hell, to rescue me. She was trying to do a mitzvah. I am the one who committed the blasphemies. Not her. Punish me."

A line of laser light was plodding toward Magen.

"Can you hear me, God?" whispered Adam.

No answer.

"Are you there?"

No answer.

Adam would make God listen to his pleas. He tried to shout, he tried to make a sound that would penetrate Abaddon's shell. His throat was too tight. Blood frothed on his lips and made small popping sounds, that was all. He gripped his chains and shook them. The links rattled and clanked. It still wasn't enough sound to attract God's attention.

Adam pulled on his chains until one link snapped. He whipped the chains, sent them whistling through the air. Centrifugal force tugged at his shoulders. He smacked the chains into Olagy's ribs, which yielded a great, cracking sound. Then he swung out wildly in all directions, harvesting screams. The screams, the loud, agonized screams, the whistling links, the jangling of metal, it still wasn't enough sound. He kept beating the air, and anything that occupied the air. His own voice failed him.

And then it was quiet again, so quiet he could hear Magen hissing from her separate time. He pulled her out of the block.

The aristocrats of Abaddon lay on the floor of the desert, soaked in blood. Only the blind duke remained alive, sobbing in the dust. The surrounding slaves began to murmur.

Confusion swept through Adam, a deep disorientation that confounded even dream chaos. His brain hurt. Even though he knew the human brain contained no nerve endings and was not supposed to feel pain directly, he believed that his brain was the source of his agony, and not the tissues surrounding the interior of his skull. His brain, not his eyes, though they throbbed, too. His brain. He had resisted a command and the effort of breaking his conditioning seemed to have ripped vital tissue in his thought centers.

Raw animal rage had broken his programming. Not prayer. Not divine intervention. A fury that put him back to his origins. It was as if he had been suddenly set free and his first human response was to kill.

Magen slowly came back into sync with him. "What happened?"she asked.

"We should get out of here."

They tried the ship again. This time it took flight with ferocious ignition. They ripped into the sky.

Magen could see a hunched figure on horseback herding up the stray slaves. Reptilian scales twinkled under Abaddon's grey glow, as Olagy shouted commands and gestured angrily. Maybe it was a time replay, or another clone.

Even before the ship hit Abaddon's barrier, the cruiser was vibrating like a banner in a storm. It would fly, but for how long?

Magen cruised around as high as she could get under the envelope, looking for an opening, a patch of blue or black.

From the air, traveling at high speeds, they could read the history of Abaddon. The past flickered beneath them. A city began to rise on the ground, its structures spreading like fast-forming crystals on the continent. In an instant, the structures collapsed. A ravenous jungle erupted, swallowing the ruins. Then the green, rolling vistas shimmered into oceans, and the oceans vanished like mirages. Magen poured on the speed, even though they were running short of fuel. The grey scud, the shell of Hell, went on forever.

"It's impossible," said Magen. "This world wasn't always closed off. It could not be that it was always shut. Why can't we find an opening?"

"I think we have gone past a million years or more."

She accelerated again, bringing the slender fins of the ship so close to the boundaries of the sky that they etched a trail of sparks. Recklessly, she let the ship's nose bounce off the barrier.

Adam shouted, "It does no good."

She ignored him. She bounced against the shell even harder this time, trying to crash through or die trying.

She lost control. The ship slammed upward. On im-pact with the walled-off sky, the fins bent at awkward angles and the windows exploded.

They smacked into the shell three times, then plummeted downward. The ground flew up to embrace them.

Adam climbed from the wreckage. He fell to his knees as he touched the ground. Magen struggled at the console, slamming the accelerator, tugging on the steering column. She pulled until her knuckles blanched, as if she were trying to lift the ship back into the sky with her bare hands.

"It is hopeless," said Adam.

Magen clawed her way up through the twisted brambles of the shattered canopy blister. "We'll get another ship," she announced.

"It is hopeless."

"No. It was a good idea."

"Now it is time for us to give up. I am finally free enough to disobey your command. I give up, Magen! I have been watching the shell, Magen. I believe it is part of the ecology of this place. The times may change on the ground, but the shell holds everything in. Like the banks of a river. There is no escape from Abaddon."

Magen started to laugh hysterically. "There is away."

"No, Magen. Never. We are trapped here forever."

"There is a way." Her eyes were wide and full of awe, as if she were looking straight into the eyes of the Almighty. She was going into shock.

Adam hit her. She kept on laughing and repeating, "There is a way." He hit her again, and again. He knew she was the better fighter—she could kill him if she wanted to, but he kept on hitting her. She never hit back, never made any threats. She just kept on laughing. He stopped hitting her. He could not tell if he had been trying to slap her to her senses, or if he had just been venting all his frustration on the nearest target.

Then she stopped laughing. She was making an intense effort to bring herself under control.

"There is a way," she said, straight-faced. But the laughter snorted out through her nose, and broke out again all over, an instant after the words were out of her mouth.

Adam sadly shook his head.

Magen couldn't talk anymore, she was laughing too hard. She grabbed Adam by the collar of his flak jacket and she pointed.

Adam saw a ship poised against the horizon. Enormous gantries flanked the ship on either side like the frame of an incomplete cathedral.

Even though it was far away, Adam could see much of its design because the ship was so huge—at least forty stories tall. The decorative architecture along the enormous vistaview windows suggested ancient artistry. Its golden skin shined under the grey skies. The lines were sleek, but the forms seemed to rotate around a longitudinal axis. It looked more like a stationary monument than something that could fly. The retros and thrusters were tiny in scale, almost out of place—like vestigial remains of a primitive technology, clearly incapable of bearing the ship any significant distance.

"There is a way is a way is way is way… there is…"

Adam stared.

They had stumbled upon a warpship.

Magen and Adam ran toward the warpship. They held hands, screaming for joy, as their feet slammed furiously against the crusted ground, raising clouds of dust.

The ship began to move in time.

Pockmarks of corrosion were dulling the metal. Magen dropped Adam's hand and ran faster, hoping to outrace the deterioration. The faster she ran, the faster the corrosion spread. Adam's pace slowed to a leisurely amble. His eyes stayed fixed on the warpship. The pockmarks on the metal blistered, then popped open into lacy clusters of small rust holes. The holes widened, feeding into one another.

She kicked the fuselage of the warpship and rust flakes sprayed on impact. Then she beat her fists on the old hulk, as if trying to resuscitate it. Her blows rang and bellowed with hollow metal echoes.

Magen cried, "Why does nothing good ever happen on this world? It seems wicked by design, made to torment you with false hope."

Adam had reached her side. He commented, in a detached tone, "You are right. Nothing good ever seems to happen here." Then he thought about her observation. His mind felt strong and unburdened, hopeful, curious. He had been engaged intellectually by the chain of adverse coincidences that had befallen them, and it distracted him from the grimness of their situation. He felt hope when he had every reason to despair, and he felt determined to uncover a means to escape their plight. Was this the product of Magen's former, unretracted commands? Or was it the product of free will? He couldn't tell.

He continued, "It seems that there should occasionally be some pleasant by-products of these disturbed time currents—like a return to youth, or a chance to right a past mistake. But such things never happen here. I suppose if there were positive effects from warp travel, mankind would have never given it up. You see, God does let his will be known."

"We are trapped here forever. That is what God is telling us."

"No, we'll find a way."

Magen shook her head sadly. "It will never hold air. Nothing good ever happens here. Nothing. The ship is just one more torment. It is good for one thing only. It is a way to kill ourselves. We can escape from Hell, Adam. But not to life."

Adam approached the ship. He reached for a handful of ancient metal and let it crumble in his fingertips.

Magen continued, "At least we will die together." She began to cry. "Death is not so terrible. It is better than staying here."

"We can try to make a new outer shell."

"Adam, if there is even a tiny hole, the ship will burst in space. Where will we get the machinery to make a flawless hull? Now you are getting… you are getting crazy about keeping hope alive."

"I won't give up."

"This isn't giving up. This is a kind of victory. This is the end we have been heading for, Adam. Not a good end, but not so terrible an end either. This is our destiny."

"Yes."

"Are you ready?"

"Give me a minute."

"I am ready. We should not delay, Adam. It makes it harder."

"Not yet…"

"Now."

He studied the ruined outer sheath, waiting for a miracle. On one part of the ship, the erosion seemed to be reversing, a trick of the time currents. Perhaps if he waited long enough, the sheath would be regenerated by backward-moving time.

Now Magen's tears were crawling back up her cheeks. He could hear her cheering along with himself as they ran toward the ship, uncountable moments ago, their shouts drifting forward and back.

"… this is a kind of victory," Magen repeated.

The sheath was rebuilding itself. One minute, and it was glistening and whole.

The next minute, it crumbled away again.

Nothing good ever came from the contrary time currents of Abaddon. Only torture through hope.

"… this is a kind of victory…"

Was Magen repeating herself? Or was it a loop of time?

"You told me never to give up," said Adam. He didn't know if it was a new thought, or a replay of an old one.

"Adam, the ship will never hold air."

He thought about trying to follow a time current back to the moment when the ship was whole. Another impossibility. Nothing good ever came from Abaddon. He thought about taking Magen's hand and shooting them into the vacuum. It would be painless. The moment they came out of subspace, they would burst in the vacuum of space.

The concept of death in space replayed in Adam's mind. He thought about bursting open in the vacuum like a popcorn kernel filled with gore.

Then he said, "It doesn't have to hold air. It is a warp-ship. We don't have to travel through space."

"I don't know about this." She thought about it for a minute. "Even if it doesn't have to hold air in subspace, so what. We are still trapped here. What do you know about traveling between worlds?"

"Enough."

"This would be easy if all we had to do was get past Abaddon's shell. That I could handle. We could get out to space, and then I could get our bearings. Without a shell, in order to live, we must come out of subspace on a world with air. There are things you need to have in advance when you plot a course, Adam. You need to know where you are. You need to know how fast you will be going. And you need to know your starting time. How are you going to find out these things, Adam?"

"These old ships had computers."

They climbed up the side of the ship, using sections of the exposed frame as a ladder. Then, one at a time, they swung through one of the larger rust holes. They found the main computer terminal in the center of the cockpit, draped in the remains of a rotted g-web, beside the tilted console.

Magen and Adam stared at the glowing multicolored readout screen of the computer. Like many of the old Earth models of its time, the computer was almost absurdly simple in its operations. As Adam suspected, it could calculate all the necessary information for subspace travel.

"We should aim for the Autumn World," said Magen. "There's no radar to track us. No bod installations. And I have friends there."

Magen pulled up a screen of star charts. She punched in a series of coordinates. The computer automatically accommodated spatial distortions. The sensors had some difficulty fixing the position of the gantries—but fortunately that information was retrievable from the memory banks. The gantries had not moved in three hundred years.

The computer figured the warp parallaxes, the travel time to the Autumn World, the logarithmic scales, the speed curves.

But the computer couldn't tell time.

The chrono calculator stayed frozen on a date over two centuries old.

Magen said, "Without the exact time, Adam, we can't go anywhere. The computer cannot fix our position if it doesn't know the time. With a broken chronometer, it is just the same as aiming at random."

"Maybe it isn't broken."

"It doesn't even measure seconds, Adam."

"Maybe time isn't passing. Look at the mechanism, Magen. It looks as if it is new. Maybe time isn't passing at all. Abaddon is a singularity. I think we have been trapped inside a moment, a slice of time. That is why Abaddon doesn't orbit. That is why nothing dies."

"Adam—even if you are right… what day is it outside the shell of Abaddon? The Autumn World—every world in the system is changing position all the time. Maybe the computer can aim at the place the Autumn World was two hundred years ago—but does that help us? We will still end up in deep space. We will end up dead."

Adam sat back and studied the frozen chronometer. He drummed his fingers. "There has to be some kind of mechanism built into the computer to allow the chronometer to readjust before it leaves subspace. There has to be; otherwise, our ancestors would not have been able to navigate these old ships. Remember, they were coming from Earth, where the light from this system did not even register as stars. They were aiming themselves through a void, crossing vast gulfs of incalculable light-years. Earth time had no meaning by the end of the voyage. I believe the chronometer will readjust before we hit real space. Just tell the computer where we want to go."

"You talk like you are so sure, but you are really guessing about a lot of this."

"We have nothing to lose."

She punched in the coordinates for the Autumn World.

Adam and Magen sat down together, sharing the frame of a single strapless, cushionless chair.

Magen squeezed her eyes shut, as if expecting an explosion; then she hit the starter. The engine rumbled, sending shivers through the antique frame.

Magen feared the ship would shake apart before the engine kicked over. She cocked her head, listening intently for the sound of ignition. It was hard to hear over the clattering of disjointed metal seams. She relaxed the starter, then hesitantly tested it again.

Another rush of chattering rippled through the cockpit; then, beneath the ship, a soft rasping sound whispered.

Magen and Adam gulped air. She reached for him and found fingers groping for her. They reeled in one another's arms, pulling close.

Suddenly the world flashed away. A sweep of lights and sound, a rush of void, and they found themselves engulfed in emptiness. This was worse than Abaddon. Nothingness, absolute nothingness, and it seemed that Adam and Magen had become nothingness as well, losing substance.

The journey took no time at all. They might not have even been aware of their passage, but their time perceptions had been skewed to adjust to the caprices of Abaddon. Part of them remained intact, at least enough to apprehend their surroundings.

Unreal colors pulsated on Adam's retinas, a neurologic reaction to the absolute nothingness, like the formless music pounding on his eardrums. A terrible cold numbed his sense of touch, but not completely. Certain tactile sensations lingered like an afterthought, frozen at the moment they reached his brain, textures signaling through his nerves: the roughness of the corroded floor beneath his legs, the teeth of rust holes biting into skin, the pressure of his wife's embrace.

The air Adam held in his chest seemed to warm his in-sides without any hint of pressure.

He tried to speak, but could not. Perhaps Magen was trying to speak as well. The medium of nothingness conducted neither particle nor wave to their deprived sensory organs. They pulled closer, seeking shelter from the ambient void.

They sped through the underbelly of creation, the primal stuff of raw chaos that existed for an eternity before the coming of light. This was the forbidden realm. They were committing the greatest sin of their culture— traveling faster than light.

What was waiting for Adam and Magen at the end of their trespass? They had as much chance of landing in deep space as they had of reaching the Autumn World. Adam had made many assumptions. There would be no way of knowing if he was right until they reached the end of the void. Perhaps there would be no way of knowing at all.

There was nothing for a while, cracked time and empty space. Nothing but the ancient collapsing ship, the sea of chaos, the waves of abstraction. Nothing but each other. Nothing but a need to hold and be held that went beyond the necessities of love or lust. Nothing but male and female, the flicker of life under the shadow of death.

Suddenly gravity grabbed them.

Time was moving again. They found themselves sheltered in a knot of limbs, a frost from nowhere spreading over the parts of their bodies that weren't touching, hair crinkling as it froze, their back muscles constricting and shivering. The rust holes lit up, filled with bright azure. Air blew into their lungs.

Magen twisted loose from Adam's embrace as the ship dropped. Her fingers scrambled over the console, then hit the retro switches. Their descent slowed.

The rotted old ship floated like a leaf, weeping parts of itself onto the Autumn forests below.

Magen still shivered from the chill of subspace, even though the sun had begun to beat upon the hull and warm the ship.

The old engines began to quake under the demands of flight. Magen dumped altitude. Time was taking its toll, and a ripple of ruin shook the deteriorating frame like a death rattle. Slowly and carefully, she brought the great antique to a landing.

Magen pulled herself free of her chair. She stood in the center of a giant rust hole, brightness all around, gulping air like a newborn.

"God has been kind to us," she said.

"Very kind, it would seem. But this is mostly your doing, Magen. Because you did not forget me, as so many other women would have. God has blessed me with good fortune, but mostly, he has blessed me with you."

"I am just stubborn. I don't like people should take what is mine." Then emotion began to overwhelm her. Adam took her into his embrace before she began to weep.

He said, "Perhaps God has new joys for us, and new sorrows. At least we have some part to play in his future. I don't wonder about his motives anymore." The rhythm of his wife's breathing, the beat of his own heart, gave form and moment to their return to reality. Then he added, "The passage of time is welcome, even with all of its consequences."

A child appeared, stepping from the shade of a great oak. One of the children from the slave settlement.

The sound of crunching leaves warned that more people were coming.

A crowd of former slaves began to gather around the great warpship. They stood barefoot in evenly spaced geometric rows. All wore simple, colorless, hand-stitched uniforms made from flax they grew themselves.

Most of the former slaves had lost the listless stares of slavery—but they seemed to lack individuated responses, adopting group expressions, as if they shared a single mind. Now they were transfixed by the presence of the warpship.

Word of the ship's arrival seemed to be spreading silently, telepathically. More and more of the former slaves began to appear, some in their nightclothes, some dirty with topsoil. Their lot seemed to have improved in Magen's absence. The parasites had been plucked from their hair. They demonstrated some new connection to life with their frank reverence for the ancient ruin.

The fields and dormitories must have been empty. The forest had filled with free slaves.