“Yeah, that too. But I didn’t want to break into that, it’s kind of like a reserve I’m holding back for when everything settles down again.”

“My hero optimist. Do you think the universe is going to settle down?”

Joshua didn’t like the way the conversation was progressing. He knew her well enough now; she was steering, hoping to angle obliquely into the subject she wanted to discuss. “Who knows? Are we going to finish up talking about Dominique?”

Ione raised her head from his shoulder to give him a puzzled glance. “No. What made you ask that?”

“Not sure. I thought you wanted to talk about us, and what happens after. Dominique and the Vasilkovsky line played a heavy part in my original plans from here on in.”

“There isn’t going to be an after, Joshua, not in the sense of returning to the kind of existence we had before. Knowing there’s an afterlife is going to tilt people’s perception on life for ever.”

“Yeah. It is pretty deep when you think about it.”

“That’s your considered in-depth analysis of the situation is it?” For a moment she thought she’d gone and wounded him. But he just gave a gaunt smile. Not angry.

“Yeah,” he said, quiet and serious. “It’s deep. I had three bloody narrow escapes inside two days on that Lalonde mission. If I’d made one mistake, Ione, just one, I’d be dead now. Only I wouldn’t, as we now know, I’d be trapped in the beyond. And if Shaun Wallace was telling the truth—and I suspect he was—then I’d be screaming silently to be let back in no matter what the cost or who had to pay it.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes. I sent Warlow to his death. I think I knew that even before he went out of the airlock. And now he’s out there, or in there—somewhere, with all the other souls. He might even be watching us now, begging to be given sensation. The trouble with that is, I do owe him.” Joshua put his head back on the silk cushions, staring up at the ceiling. “Do I owe him big enough for that, though? Jesus.”

“If he was your friend, he wouldn’t ask.”

“Maybe.”

Ione sat up and reached for the bottle to pour herself another measure of Norfolk Tears.

I’m going to ask him,she told tranquillity.

Surely you are not about to ask for my blessing?

No. But I’d welcome your opinion.

Very well. I believe he has the necessary resources to complete the task; but then he always has. Whether he is the most desirable candidate still presents me with something of a dilemma. I acknowledge he is maturing; and he would not knowingly betray you. Impetuosity does weigh against him, however.

Yes. Yet I value that trait above all.

I am aware of this. I even accept it, when it applies to your first child and my future. But do you have the right to make that gamble when it concerns the Alchemist?

Maybe not. Although there might be a way around it. And I have simply got to do something.“joshua?”

“Yeah. Sorry, didn’t mean to go all moody on you.”

“That’s all right. I have a little problem of my own right now.”

“You know I’ll help if I can.”

“That’s the first part, I was going to ask you anyway. I’m not sure I can trust anyone else with this. I’m not even sure I can trust you.”

“This sounds interesting.”

She took a breath, committed now, and began: “Do you remember, about a year ago, a woman called Dr Alkad Mzu contacted you about a possible charter?”

He ran a quick check through his neural nanonics memory cells. “I got her. She said she was interested in going to the Garissa system. Some kind of memorial flight. It was pretty weird, and she never followed it up.”

“No, thank God. She asked over sixty captains about a similar charter.”

“Sixty?”

“Yes, Tranquillity and I believe it was an attempt to confuse the intelligence agency teams who keep her under observation.”

“Ah.” Instinct kicked in almost immediately, riding a wave of regret. This was big-time, and major trouble. It almost made him happy they hadn’t leapt straight into bed, unlike the old days (a year ago, ha!). For him it was odd, but he was simply too ambivalent about his own feelings. And he could see how she’d been thrown by his just-old-friends approach, too.

Sex would have been so easy; he just couldn’t bring himself to do it with someone he genuinely liked when it didn’t mean what it used to. That would have been too much like betrayal. I can’t do that to her. Which was a first.

Ione was giving him a cautious, inquiring look. In itself an offer.

I can stop it now if I want.

It was sometimes easy for him to forget that this blond twenty-year-old was technically an entire government, the repository of state, and interstellar, secrets. Secrets it didn’t always pay to know about; invariably the most fascinating kind.

“Go on,” Joshua said.

She smiled faintly in acknowledgement. “There are eight separate agencies with stations here; they have been watching Dr Mzu for nearly twenty-five years now.”

“Why?”

“They believe that just before Garissa was destroyed she designed some kind of doomsday device called the Alchemist. Nobody knows what it is, or what it does, only that the Garissan Department of Defence was pouring billions into a crash-development project to get it built. The CNIS have been investigating the case for over thirty years now, ever since they first heard rumours that it was being built.”

“I saw three men following her when she left Harkey’s Bar that night,” Joshua said, running a search and retrieval program through his neural nanonics. “Oh, hell, of course. The Omuta sanctions have been lifted; they were the ones who committed the Garissa genocide. You don’t think she’d . . . ?”

“She already has. This is not for general release, but last week Alkad Mzu escaped from Tranquillity.”

“Escaped?”

“Yes. She turned up here twenty-six years ago and took a job at the Laymil project. My father promised the Confederation Navy she would neither be allowed to leave nor pass on any technical information relating to the Alchemist to other governments or astroengineering conglomerates. It was an almost ideal solution; everyone knows Tranquillity has no expansionist ambitions, and at the same time she could be observed continually by the habitat personality. The only other alternative was to execute her immediately. My father and the then First Admiral both agreed the Confederation should not have access to a new kind of doomsday device; antimatter is quite bad enough. I continued that policy.”

“Until last week.”

“Yes. Unfortunately, she made total fools out of all of us.”

“I thought Tranquillity’s observation of the interior was perfect. How could she possibly get out without you knowing?”

“Your friend Meyer lifted her away clean. The Udat actually swallowed inside the habitat and took her on board. There was nothing we could do to stop him.”

“Jesus! I thought my Lagrange point stunt was risky.”

“Quite. Like I said, her escape leaves me with one hell of a problem.”

“She’s gone to fetch the Alchemist?”

“Hard to think of any other reason, especially given the timing. The only real puzzle about this is, if it exists, why hasn’t it been used already?”

“The sanctions. No . . .” He started to concentrate on the problem. “There was only ever one navy squadron on blockade duties. A sneak raid would have a good chance of getting through. That’s if one ship was all it took to fire it at the planet.”

“Yes. The more we know about Dr Mzu, the less we understand the whole Alchemist situation. But I really don’t think her ultimate goal can be in any doubt.”

“Right. So she’s probably gone to collect it, and use it. The Udat has a fair payload capacity; and Meyer’s seen combat duty in his time, he can take a bit of heat.” Except . . . Joshua knew Meyer, a wily old sod, for sure, but there was one hell of a difference between the occasional mercenary contract, and annihilating an entire planet of unsuspecting innocents. Meyer wouldn’t do that, no matter how much money was offered. Offhand, Joshua couldn’t think of many (or even any) independent trader captains who would. That kind of atrocity was purely the province of governments and lunatic fanatics.