'Yes, here I am. I would like to know why you're running out. I think I'm entitled after the offer I made you. I know you enjoyed yourself last night. So what is this?

Araminta glanced at the distraught girl who was hovering between them, uncertain who to go to. 'Are you sure?

Likan took a step forward and put his arm around Clemance's shoulder, helping to pull her wrap on. 'I don't keep anything from my wives.

'Even that they're psychoneural profiled?

His face remained impassive. 'It was helpful to begin with.

'Helpful? she cried. 'You had them bred to be your slaves. Profiling like that is illegal, it always has been. It's a vile, inhuman thing to do. They don't have a choice. They don't have free will. It's obscene! Why, for Ozzie's sake? You don't need to force people into your bed. I would have probably joined you. And I know there are thousands of others who'd love the chance. Why did you do it?

Likan glanced down at Clemance with an almost paternal expression. 'They were the first, he said simply.

'First?

'Of my harem. I had to start it somewhere. It was the bootstrap principle.

'What are you talking about?

'To start with, when you have nothing, you begin by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I needed to be him, to be Nigel Sheldon. He had a harem, therefore I had one. You don't understand what that man was. He ruled hundreds of worlds, billions of people. I wasn't joking when I called him an emperor. He was the greatest human who ever lived. I need to know how to think like he did. He almost ground the words out.

'So you created slaves to achieve that?

'They're not slaves. All of us are predisposed to various personality traits. The way they combine: that's what makes us individuals. I just amplified a few of the behavioural attributes in the girls.

'Yeah: submissiveness! I watched them last night, Likan. They obeyed you like they were bots.

'The relationship is a lot more complex than that.

'That's what it boils down to. Why didn't you profile yourself to think like Sheldon? If you have to wreck somebody, why not yourself?

'I have incorporated his known neural characteristics into my DNA. But a neural structure is only a vessel for personality. You need the environment as well. As complete as you can make it.

'Oh, for Ozzie's sake! You have deliberately, maliciously bred slaves. And you think that's an acceptable way to achieve what you are. That makes me sick. I don't want any part of you or your perverted family. You won't even let them go! Why don't you remove their profiling when they go for rejuvenation treatment?

'I created them because of my belief, wrongly in your opinion; now you think they should be altered because of your belief. Does that strike you as slightly ironic? There's an old saying that two wrongs don't make a right. I take responsibility for my wives, especially the profiled ones — just as Sheldon would have done.

Araminta glowered at him, then she switched her attention to Clemance, softening her expression to plead. 'Come with me. Come away from here. It's reversible. I can show you what it's like to be free, to be truly human. I know you don't believe me, but just please try. Try Clemance.

'You're such a fool, the girl said. She pressed harder into Likan. 'I'm not profiled. I like this. I like being in the harem. I like the money. I like the life. I like that my children will rule whole planets. Without Likan, what will yours ever be?

'Themselves, Araminta said weakly.

Clemance gave her a genuinely pitying look. 'That's not good enough for me.

Araminta raised an uncertain hand. 'Is she…?

'There were only ever three, Likan said. 'Clemance is not one of them. Would you like to guess again?

Araminta shook her head. She didn't trust herself to speak. Marakata. Marakata is one, I know. Perhaps if I just…

'Goodbye, Likan said.

Araminta climbed into the carry capsule, and told it to take her home.

Oscar had never thought he'd return to the very place where he died. Of course, he hadn't expected to see Paula Myo again, either.

Just to make matters worse, enterprising Far Away natives had turned his last desperate hyperglide flight into a tourist attraction. Worse still, it was a failing attraction.

Still, at least Oscar had got to name the brand new starship which ANA had delivered to Orakum for him, and without much thought went and called it the Elvin's Payback. There was a large briefing file sitting in its smartcore, which he zipped through and sent a few queries to Paula, who by then was back in her own starship and en route to somewhere. She wouldn't say where.

After he'd finished the file, one thing became very clear to him. Paula had severely overestimated his abilities. There were a lot of very powerful, very determined groups searching for the Second Dreamer. Now that might not have fazed Paula, but… 'I'm only a pilot, he repeated to her when she called him on a secure TD channel and asked him why he was flying to Far Away. She hadn't said she could track the Elvin's Payback, but somehow he wasn't surprised.

'I'm going to need help. And as you trust me, so I trust someone else. He got an evil little buzz out of not telling her who. Though he suspected she would know — it was hardly hyperspace science.

He landed at Armstrong City starport, which was a huge field to the north east of the city itself with four big terminal buildings handling passenger flights and a grid of warehouses where the freighters came and went. He picked out a parking pad out near the fence, away from any real activity. As the starship descended he swept its visual sensors across the ancient city that spread back from the shore of the North Sea. Inevitably, there was a dense congregation of tall towers and pyramids above the coast; while broad estates of big houses swamped the land behind. It was all a lot more chaotic than the layout of most Commonwealth cities, which he rather enjoyed. He was looking for a glimpse of Highway One, the historic road where his friends had chased the Starflyer to its doom. All that remained now was a long, fat urban strip following the old route as it struck out for miles across the Great Iril Steppes, as if city buildings were seeking to escape from their historical anchor at the centre. Like every Commonwealth world, Far Away's ground traffic was now a shrinking minority. The sky above the city swarmed with regrav capsules.

Oscar floated down out of the airlock underneath the Elvin's Payback, and stood once more on the ground of Far Away. For some ridiculous reason he was trembling. He took a long moment, breathing in the air, then moved away from the starship. His feet pushed gently on the short grass, sending his body gliding in a short arc in the low gravity. He'd forgotten how enjoyable that part of this world was, those soar-lope steps were a freedom like having teenage hormones again.

Once he'd cleared the starship he stopped and turned a full circle. There was the city skyline on one side, some distant mountains. Nothing he recognized. Apart from the glorious sapphire sky. Thankfully, that had remained the same, as the planet's biosphere slowly regenerated with the new plants and creatures which humans had brought to this world.

Warm sea air gusted constantly from the passage of starships using the terminals, ruffling his hair. It was all very different to Orakum's main starport which he flew from, and had barely fifty flights a day. But then Far Away was the self-proclaimed capital of the External Worlds; the planet which had refused political and economic integration with the Greater Commonwealth. Even today, it was technically only an affiliate member. Its staunch independence had inspired a whole generation of newly settled worlds after the Starflyer War. The political will, coupled with the end of CST's transport monopoly which the starships brought, allowed the first cultural division to open within Commonwealth society as a whole. As the Sheldon Dynasty made biononics available, starting Higher culture, so Far Away's Bar-soomians introduced genetic improvements which took the human body far beyond its natural meridian, developing into the Advancer movement. After that, Far Away with its fierce libertar-ianist tradition declared itself the ideological counterweight to Earth and ANA. The Commonwealth's Senators might regard the notion with their ancient wise distain, but Far Away's citizens believed their own destiny.