“She’s just standing there,” Janne Palmer datavised. “She’ll be able to see anything approaching up the link road into town.”

“Any weapons apparent?” Ralph asked. Along with the twelve-strong platoon the colonel had assigned him, he was crouched down at the side of the road, a hundred metres short of the first houses. They were using a small embankment for cover as they crept in towards the town.

His head was ringing with a mental version of tinnitus, which he suspected was due to the stimulants. After only two hours sleep in the last thirty-six he was having to use both chemical and software excitants to keep his edge. But he couldn’t afford to relax his guard, not now.

“Definitely not,” Janne Palmer told him. “At least not any heavy-calibre hardware, anyway. She’s wearing a jacket, so she could be concealing a small pistol inside it.”

“Not that it makes any difference if she’s possessed. We’ve not seen them use a weapon yet.”

“Quite.”

“Dumb question, but is she alive?”

“Yes. We can see her chest moving when she breathes, and her infrared signature is optimum.”

“She’s some kind of bait, do you think?”

“No, too obvious. I’d guess some kind of sentry, except they must know we’re here. Several squads have skirmished while we were setting up the perimeter.”

“Hell, you mean they’re loose in the woods?”

“ ’Fraid so. Which means I can’t confirm that all the possessed are inside the cordon. I’ve requested some more troops from Admiral Farquar to start searching the locality. The request is up before the security committee as we speak.”

Ralph cursed silently. Possessed roaming around in this area would be nigh on impossible to track down. The Mortonridge countryside was a rugged nightmare. Pity we haven’t got any affinity-bonded hounds, he thought. The ones he’d seen the settlement supervisors use back on Lalonde would have been perfect for the job. And I can just see Jannike Dermot’s face if I make that suggestion to the security committee. But . . . hell, they’re what we need.

“Ralph, one moment please,” Colonel Palmer datavised. “We’ve run an ident check on our lady sentry. It’s confirmed, she’s Angeline Gallagher.”

“Hell. That changes everything.”

“Yes. Opinion here is that she’s wanting to talk. She’s not stupid. Allowing herself to be seen like this must be their equivalent of a white flag.”

“I expect you’re right.” Ralph gave the platoon’s lieutenant an order to halt their advance while the security committee came on line. The marines formed themselves into a defensive circle, scanning the trees and the nearby houses with their most basic sensors. Ralph let his automatic rifle hang at his side as he squatted in the middle of some thick marloop bushes. He had a terrible intimation that Gallagher (or rather her possessor) wasn’t about to lay out some convenient terms of surrender. There never can be surrender between us, he acknowledged gloomily.

So what could she want to say?

“Mr Hiltch, we concur with Colonel Palmer that the woman wants to negotiate,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “I know it’s a lot to ask after all you’ve been through, but I’d like you to go in there and talk to her.”

“We can set up SD ground-strike coverage to support you,” Deborah Unwin datavised. “Put you in the eye of a hurricane, so to speak. Any tricks or attempts to overwhelm you, and we’ll laser out a two-hundred-metre circle with you at the centre. We know they can’t withstand the SD platform’s power levels.”

“It’s all right,” Ralph told his invisible audience. “I’ll go in. After all, I was the one who brought her here.”

Strangely enough, Ralph didn’t think of very much at all when he was walking the last five hundred metres along the road. All he wanted to do now was get the job over. The road which had started at the mouth of a titanic river on a different, distant planet finished inside a pretty rural town on the rump of nowhere. If there was an irony to be had in those circumstances, Ralph couldn’t taste it.

Angeline Gallagher’s possessor waited calmly outside the cheap single-storey diner as he walked towards her. Dean, Will, and Cathal accompanied him for most of the way; then when they were still a hundred metres away from her he told them to wait and carried on alone. Nothing moved in any of the simple, elegant buildings which lined the link road. But he knew they were waiting behind the walls and blanked windows. The conviction grew inside him that they weren’t showing themselves because it wasn’t yet their time to do so. Their part in the drama would come later.

This was a surety he’d never known before, a kind of psychic upswelling. And with it his intimation of disaster grew ever stronger.

The closer he got to the woman, the less the electronic warfare field affected his implants and suit blocks. By the time he was five metres away, the security committee was receiving a full sensevise again.

He stopped. Squared his shoulders. Took off his shell helmet.

Her smile was almost pitying in its sparsity. “Looks like we’ve arrived at the crunch time,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“Annette Ekelund. And you are Ralph Hiltch, the ESA’s head of station on Lalonde. I might have known you would be the one they set on us. You’ve done quite a good job so far.”

“Could we cut the bullshit? What do you want?”

“Philosophically, to live for ever. Practically, I want you to call off the police and marines you’ve got circling this town along with the other three we’ve managed to occupy. Right now.”

“No.”

“I see you’ve already learned not to make threats. No or else. No if you don’t you’ll regret it. That’s good. After all, what can you threaten me with?”

“Zero-tau.”

Annette Ekelund frowned as she considered the response. “Yes. Possibly. It is, I admit, certainly frightening enough for us. But there’s no finality to that, not anymore. If we flee our possessed bodies to escape zero-tau, we can still return. There are already several million possessed walking upon the Confederation worlds. Within weeks, that number will be hundreds of millions, a few days later billions. I will always have a way back now. As long as a single human body is left alive my kind can resurrect me. Do you understand now?”

“I understand the zero-tau option works. We will put you in the pods; and we will keep putting you in the pods until there are no more of you left. Do you understand that?”

“I’m sorry, Ralph, but as I said, you simply cannot threaten me. Have you worked out why yet? Have you worked out the real reason I will win? It is because you will ultimately join me. You are going to die, Ralph. Today. Tomorrow. A year from now. If you’re lucky, in fifty years time. It doesn’t matter when. It is entropy, it is fate, it is the way the universe works. Death, not love, conquers all in the end. And when you die, you will find yourself in the beyond. That is when you and I will become brother and sister in the same fellowship. United against the living. Coveting the living.”

“No.”

“Do not speak about something you know nothing about.”

“I still do not believe you. God is not that cruel. There will be more to death than this emptiness you found.”

She laughed bitterly. “Fool. Know-nothing fool.”

“But a living fool. A fool you have to contend with here and now.”

“There is no such thing as God, Ralph. Only humans are stupid enough to create religions. Have you noticed that? None of the xenocs we’ve encountered need to bandage their insecurities and fears with promises of incorporeal glory that are every soul’s due. Oh, no, Ralph; God is merely the term an ignorant primitive uses when he wants to say quantum cosmology. The universe is an entirely natural structure, one which is exceptionally vicious in its attitude to life. And now we have an opportunity to leave it for good, a chance of salvation. We’re not going to let you stop us, Ralph.”