'Call me Oscar. I was that longer than I was ever Yaohui. His new identity when he went on the run for over forty years.

'As you wish.

Oscar managed to prop himself up on his elbows. A movement which surprised him; he'd seen re-life clones several times; pitiful things with thin flesh stretched over bones and organs that had been force-grown to adolescence, unable to move for months while they painfully built up muscle mass. This body, though, seemed almost complete. Which meant the technique had improved. There had been a lot of bodyloss in the War — tens of millions at least. He'd probably been shoved down to the bottom of the list. 'How long?

'Please understand, er, Oscar, you were put on trial for your, uh, previous crime. It set quite a few legal precedents, given your, uh, state at the time.

'What trial? What do you mean, state? I was dead.

'You suffered bodyloss. Your memorycell survived the crash intact — legally that is recognized by the Commonwealth as being your true self. It was recovered by one Paula Myo.

'Uh— Oscar was suddenly getting a very bad feeling about this. 'Paula recovered me?

'Yes. You and Anna Kime. She brought both of you back to Earth.

'But Anna was a Starflyer agent.

'Yes. Under the terms of the Doi amnesty her Starflyer conditioning was edited out of her memories and she was re-lifed as a normal human. Apparently she went on to have a long life and a successful marriage to Wilson Kime. She was certainly on the Discovery with him when it flew round the galaxy.

Oscar's shoulders weren't so strong after all; he sagged back on to the mattress. 'How long? he repeated, there was an urgency in his growl.

'You were found guilty at the trial. Your Navy service record was a mitigating factor in sentencing of course, but it couldn't compensate for the number of people who were killed at Abadan Station. The judge gave you suspension. But as the Commonwealth clinics were unable to cope with the sheer quantity of, uh, non-criminals requiring re-life at the time, he allowed you to remain as a stored memory rather than be re-lifed before the sentence began.

'How long? Oscar whispered.

'You were sentenced to one thousand one hundred years.

'Fuck me!

He was all alone. That was probably a worse punishment than suspension. After all, he wasn't aware of time passing during that millennia, he couldn't reflect and repent on his wrongdoing. But in this present, life was different. Everyone he'd known had either died or migrated inwards — ridiculous phrase, a politically correct way of saying they'd committed euthanasia with a safety net. Maybe that was the point of suspension after all. It certainly hurt.

So, with no friends, no family, knowledge and skills that even museums wouldn't be interested in, Oscar Monroe had to start afresh.

The Navy, rather understandably, didn't want him. He explained he didn't expect to be part of the deterrence fleet, and offered to retrain as a pilot for their exploration crews. They declined again.

Back before the Starflyer War he'd worked in the exploration division at CST. Opening new planets, giving people a fresh start, was kind of like a self-imposed penance. Except he'd really enjoyed it. So he did train as a starship pilot. Fortunately the modern continuous wormhole drive used principles and theories developed during his first life, he brought himself up to speed on its current technology applications quite rapidly.

Orakum SolarStar was the third company he'd worked for since his re-life. It wasn't much different to any other External World starline. In fact it was smaller than most. Orakum was on the edge of the Greater Commonwealth, settled for a mere two hundred years. But that location made it a chief candidate from which to mount new exploration flights, opening up yet more worlds. They were rare events. The Navy had charted every star system directly outside the External Worlds. Expansion to new worlds was also at a historical low. The boundary between Central and External Worlds hadn't changed much for centuries. The old assumption that Higher culture would always be extending outwards, and the ordinary humans would be an expanding wave in front of it was proving to be a fallacy. With inward migration, the number of Higher humans remained about constant; and the External Worlds provided just about every kind of society in terms of ethnicity, ideology, technology, and religion. Should any citizen feel disenfranchised on their own planet they just had to take a commercial flight to relocate. There was very little reason to found a new world these days.

In the nineteen years he'd been on Orakum, SolarStar had only launched three planetary survey flights. Two of these had been closer than the company's long-range commercial flights travelled. Hardly breaking through new frontiers. But he had seniority now. If another outward venture came along, he ought to be chosen. Like all pilots, he was an eternal optimist.

There was no hint of that elusive mission in the company offices when he filed his flight report. He'd just got back from a long haul flight to Troyan, seventy lightyears away. A fifteen-hour trip with nothing to do other than talk to the smartcore and trawl the Unisphere for anything interesting. One day soon, he was sure, people would finally chuck the notion that they had to have a fellow human in charge. He was only sitting up in the front of the starship for public relations. In fact there were probably people sitting in the passenger cabin who were better qualified than him if repairs were ever needed. Not that they ever were.

But at least he got to visit new planets. The same ones. Over and over again.

His regrav capsule sank out of the wispy clouds to curve sedately round the house and land on the grass beside the spinney of lofty rancata trees, nearly twenty metres tall with reddish-brown whip-leaves that swayed in the mild breeze. He climbed out and took a deep breath of the warm, plains-scented air. Out beyond the horizon, Orakum's untamed countryside was carpeted by spiky wildflowers that budded most of the year. Another reason to choose Orakum was its benign climate.

Jesaral was walking out from underneath the house. The splendidly handsome youth didn't quite have a welcoming smile on his face, but definitely looked relieved to see Oscar. He was only wearing a pair of knee-length white trousers, showing off a tanned body that always got Oscar's blood pumping a little faster. Jesaral was the youngest of his three life partners, barely twenty.

Which, Oscar suspected, probably qualified him as the worst Punk Skunk in the galaxy. A thousand-year-plus age gap: it was delightfully naughty.

The youth opened his arms wide and gave Oscar a big hug to accompany a long sultry kiss. Enthusiasm sprayed out heedlessly into the gaiafield.

'What's the matter? Oscar asked.

'Them, Jesaral said, stabbing a thumb dismissively back at the house.

Oscar refused to sigh. He and his other partners Dushiku and Anja had been a stable trio for over a decade. They were both over a hundred, and completely at ease with each other. At their age they understood perfectly the little accommodations necessary to make any relationship to work. It was taking everyone longer than expected to accommodate and adjust to their newcomer — who didn't have anything like their experience and sophistication. Which was what made him so exciting in and out of bed.

'What have they done?

'It's a surprise for you. And I know how you hate surprises.

'Not always, Oscar assured him. 'Depends if it's good or bad. What's this one?

'Oh no. I'm just telling you there is a surprise for you. I don't want you to be upset that it's there, that's all'

Oscar used a macrocellular cluster to connect to the house's net. Whatever was waiting inside had been skilfully blocked. That would be Anja, who developed commercial neural routines. She was one of the best on the planet.