"This way. He's leading it off."

She considered fighting him off, but was just too frightened. He certainly did not look like a proctor. So she ran with him, sometimes supported by him, sometimes supporting him when he stumbled. Gasping for breath, she was wondering how much further she could manage to run when he tugged her by the arm towards a tumble of massive boulders. Rounding the first boulder, two other people appeared and shoved her past them into a cave in which a fire was burning. Standing amid equipment stacked on the floor, she stared at the three now crouching at the cave mouth, heavy rifles clutched in readiness.

"What was it?" asked the only woman of the three: her hair and one side of her face concealed under a military-issue coms helmet.

"Didn't see it clearly," said the man she addressed. "I'd just eye-balled Fethan and this one heading our way when it started to come out of the valley after them. It was big."

The woman studied him for a moment then turned to Eldene. "Did you see it?"

Eldene shook her head in bewilderment.

"Whoa," said the woman, now speaking into her helmet mike. "That you, Fethan?" She listened for a moment then her expression paled. "Fuck," she said succinctly and stared out again into the night.

"What is it, Lellan?" the second man asked her.

"He's leading it away," she replied. "Says he'll be back with us by morning."

"Lellan…" the man said warningly.

"Seems we got ourselves a hooder out there."

Eldene studied the sick expressions worn by these three heavily armed individuals and wondered just how terrible a hooder could be.

"You're Lellan Stanton," she said at last.

"Yeah," replied the woman. "Welcome to the Underworld." Then she faced back out into the night.

As the ship drew away, Hierarch Loman gazed into the mouth of Faith and contemplated his work. It had been said that on Amoloran's ascension a red mist had swept through the cylinder world from the bodies of the thousands who had been tortured and killed. Not wishing to be outdone, Loman had ordered the Up Mirror to be painted with the blood of traitors, to cast a red light into the world, for a thousand days. His technical advisors had nervously informed him of the impracticality of doing this in vacuum, but then quickly told him how the reflective surfaces did allow for an amount of tunable refraction — usually to prevent too much ultraviolet being reflected in. So now the light of Faith was red, though only for a maximum of ten days — anything beyond that would start killing the plants in the gardens.

"A jewel in your crown," Aberil commented.

Loman turned to him and nodded, before scanning the rather cramped cabin in which he and his brother had been installed.

"Amoloran should not have sent the General Patten. What was he thinking?" he asked.

Sitting on the edge of the sofa as if distrustful of its comfort, Aberil replied, "He had the ridiculous idea that Outlinkers might serve as hostages should the Polity decide to come in; also the idea that in their gratitude at being rescued they might help upgrade the laser arrays and close some of the gaps in coverage. Had he spent a little less time killing off those technicians who disagreed with him, that would not have become necessary."

Loman winced and briefly wondered if he himself had been a bit hasty in having the chief mirror technician thrown out of the upper tower window into vacuum. Then he dismissed the idea: the man had been impertinent, and could have at least attempted the blood-painting idea.

"Reverend Hierarch, we are ready to U-jump upon your order," spoke a voice from a console set into one wall.

"Then do so," said Loman, waving his hand dismissively.

After a short delay, the viewing screen turned black and engines thrummed deep within the ship. Loman grimaced, well aware that Polity ships did not need to warm up like this before dropping into underspace, and that grav-plates were used throughout their ships, not just in one luxury suite like this. He looked around it contemptuously.

"Now all our plans mesh," he said. "You are sure that no possible connection can be made between the mycelium and us?"

Aberil shook his head. "Our agent entered the Polity at Cheyne III, and travelled via many worlds before finally coming to Miranda, and even he did not know what he was taking there. He thought he was taking a listening device to install on a communications array, and anyway the virus we also gave him before he set out killed him shortly after he delivered the mycelium. Our only problem will be Behemoth himself, should he inform the Polity he gave us the mycelium twenty years ago."

"Ah, but would the Polity believe him? I think not. They will assume he has done the same as his twin did on Samarkand, and so seek to destroy him. Behemoth will flee them," said Loman. "Soon we will be utterly free of this Tempter."

"God willing," added Aberil.

Loman walked away from the screen and dropped into the sofa beside his brother. "And once free of him, we can at last excise this cancer that grows at the heart of our civilization." He paused and reached up to touch his aug, discomfited by this much-needed Gift. "How long until Ragnorak is ready?" He picked up the inhaler provided to prevent U-space sickness — another aspect of space travel that Polity citizens supposedly did not have to suffer.

"Construction is completed. It will just take another month to move it into position. If Amoloran had started moving it after the construction of the initial framework, it would have been there by now. For some reason he wanted it ready before it was moved."

Loman thought that he understood Amoloran's motivations: having Ragnorak already working whilst it was towed past the cylinder worlds to its orbital position would certainly terrify any aspiring usurpers on Hope, Faith and Charity. He stared at the black screen for a long moment before taking a pull on his inhaler.

Aberil did the same before saying, "You called my mission to supply the Cheyne III Separatists a 'fool's errand'…"

"Amoloran was too unsubtle, and not sufficiently ruthless when the situation required it," Loman replied. "He would never have made so decisive a move as we in planting that mycelium. Yet he wanted us to risk supplying Separatist groups on the Line — an action that gains us very little. We must get our own house in order. It is the Polity way that they never take over a stable system, as that would seem unacceptably militaristic to many of its member worlds. We will rid ourselves of the Underworld, and thereafter give the Polity no reason to attempt to seize control of us." He paused as the whole cabin seemed to distort, and he experienced the sensation of weightlessness even though the grav-plates in the cabin held him firm. Feeling slightly nauseous despite the inhaler, he went on, "The Polity cannot continue to expand, and without the guiding morality of God it will eventually be torn apart by internecine conflict. We will assist it along that course, but subtly — keeping ourselves distant and safe."

"You believe this… Hierarch?" asked Aberil.

"How can I doubt? A civilization run by soulless machines cannot succeed. God will not allow it to succeed."

"Yes, that is true," said Aberil. "God would not allow it."

"You have to understand our destiny, Aberil. You have to see the larger picture. We are an outpost of the truth, and when the Polity falls, as it must, we will bring that truth back to its worlds."

"I try not to doubt, Reverend, but sometimes it is hard when one considers the Polity. It contains thousands of colonized worlds, between which its citizens can travel in an instant. It has hundreds of thousands of ships, many of them the size of Calypse's moons, and many of them capable of destroying planets…"