“You might be right,” Stephanie said. “I don’t think I’d like to live in any of the towns we’ve passed through so far.”

“The way I see it,” said Moyo, “is that the possessed are developing into two groups.”

“Please don’t use that word,” Rana said. Sitting cross-legged next to the flamboyantly feminine Tina Sudol, Rana appeared fastidiously androgynous with her short hair and baggy blue sweater.

“What word?” Moyo asked.

“Possession. I find it offensive and prejudicial.”

“That’s right, babe,” Cochrane chortled. “We’re not possessors, we’re just like dimensionally disadvantaged.”

“Call our cross-continuum placement situation whatever you wish,” she snapped back. “You cannot alter the fact that the term is wholly derogatory. The Confederation’s military-industrial complex is using it to demonize us so they can justify increased spending on their armaments programs.”

Stephanie pressed her face into Moyo’s arm to smother her giggles.

“Come on, we’re not exactly on the side of the saints,” Franklin observed.

“The perception of common morality is enforced entirely by the circumstances of male-dominated society. Our new and unique circumstances require us to re-evaluate that original morality. As there are clearly not enough living bodies to go around the human race, sensory ownership should be distributed on an equitable basis. It’s no good the living protesting about us. We have as much right to sensory input as they do.”

Cochrane took the reefer from his mouth and gave it a sad stare. “Man, I wish I could manifest your trips.”

“You ignore him, darling,” Tina Sudol said to Rana. “He’s a perfect example of male brutality.”

“I suppose a fuck is out of the question tonight, then?”

Tina sucked in her cheeks theatrically as she glowered at the unrepentant hippie. “I’m only interested in men.”

“And always have been,” McPhee said, in an unsubtle whisper.

Tina flounced her glossy, highlighted hair back with a manicured hand. “You men are animals, all of you, simply rancid with hormones. No wonder I wanted to escape that prison of flesh I was in.”

“The two groups ,” Moyo said, “seem to be divided into those that stay put, like the café proprietors, and the restless ones—like us I suppose, though we’re an exception. They complement each other perfectly. The wanderers go around playing tourist, drinking down the sights and experiences. And wherever they go, they meet the stayers and tell them about their journeys. That way both types get what they want. Both of us exist to relish experience; some like to go out and find it, others like it brought to them.”

“You think that’s what it’s going to be like from now on?” McPhee asked.

“Yes. That’s what we’ll settle down into.”

“But for how long? Wanting to see and feel is just a reaction from the beyond. Once we’ve had our fill, human nature will come back. People want to settle down, have a family. Procreation is our biological imperative. And that’s one thing we never can do. We will always be frustrated.”

“I’ll like give it a try,” Cochrane said. “Me and Tina can make babies in my tepee anytime.”

Tina gave him a single disgusted look, and shuddered.

“But they wouldn’t be yours,” McPhee said. “That isn’t your body, and it certainly isn’t your DNA. You will never have a child again, not one of your own. That phase of our lives is over, it cannot be regained no matter how much of our energistic ability we expend.”

“You’re also forgetting the third type walking among us,” Franklin said. “The Ekelund type. And I do know her. I signed up with her for the first couple of days. She seemed to know what she was doing. We had ‘objectives’ and ‘target assignments,’ and ‘command structures’—and God help anyone who disobeyed those fascists. She’s a straight power nut with a Napoleonic complex. She’s got her little army of wannabe toughs running around in combat fatigues thinking they’re reborn special forces brigades. And they’re going to keep sniping away at the Royal Marines over the border until the Princess gets so pissed with us she nukes Mortonridge down to the bedrock.”

“That situation won’t last,” McPhee said. “Give it a month, or a year, and the Confederation will fall. Don’t you listen to the whispers in the beyond? Capone is getting his act together out there. It won’t be long before the Organization fleet jumps to Ombey. Then there will be nobody left for Ekelund to fight, and her command structure will simply fade away. Nobody is going to do what she tells them for the rest of time.”

“I don’t want to live for the rest of time,” Stephanie said. “I really don’t. That’s almost as frightening as being trapped in the beyond. We’re not made to live forever, we can’t handle it.”

“Lighten up, babe,” Cochrane said. “I don’t mind giving eternity a try; it’s the flipside which is the real bummer.”

“We’ve been back a week, and Mortonridge is already falling apart. There’s hardly any food left, nothing works properly.”

“Give it a chance,” Moyo said. “We’re all badly shocked, we don’t know how to control this new power we’ve got, and the non-possessed want to hunt us down and fling us back. You can hardly expect instant civilization under those circumstances. We’ll find a way to adjust. As soon as the rest of Ombey is possessed we’ll take it out of this universe altogether. Once that happens, things will be different. You’ll see; this is just an interim stage.” He put his arm around her as she leaned into him. She kissed him lightly, mind shining with appreciation.

“Yo, love machines,” Cochrane said. “So while you two screw like hot bunnies for the rest of the night, who’s going into town to track down some food?”

•   •   •

Got a beacon,edwin announced. his mind was hot with triumph.

Around Oenone ’s bridge, the communal tension level reduced with a strong mental sigh. They had arrived above Ngeuni twenty minutes ago. Every sensor extended. The crew in alert status one. Weapons powered up. Ready for anything. To retrieve Thakrar. To fight possessed starships that had captured Thakrar.

And there had been nothing. No ships in orbit. No response from the small development company advance camp on the planet.

Oenone accelerated into a high polar orbit, and Edwin activated every sensor they had.

It’s very weak, some kind of capsule emergency signal. Definitely the Tigara ’s identification code, though. The ship must have broken up.

Lock on to it, please,syrinx said. she was aware of the astrogration data from the sensors flooding into the bitek processor array. From that, she and Oenone understood exactly where the signal was in relation to themselves.

Go.

The voidhawk swallowed through a wormhole that barely had any internal length at all. Starlight blue-shifted slightly as it twisted into a tight rosette, kissing the hull, then expanding. A life-support capsule was spinning idly ten kilometres in front of the terminus as Oenone shot out. Local space was smeared with scraps of debris from the Tigara ’s violent end. Syrinx could feel the capsule’s mass in her mind as it hung in Oenone ’s distortion field. Sensors and communications dishes in the lower hull pods swung around to point at the dingy sphere.

There’s no response from the capsule,edwin said. I’m registering some power circuits active in there, but they’re very weak. And it’s been venting its atmosphere.

Oxley, Serina, take the MSV over there,syrinx ordered. Bring him back.

Oenone ’s crew watched through Serina’s armour suit sensors as she crept through the decks of the life-support capsule, searching for Captain Thakrar. It was a shambles inside, with equipment torn off bulkheads, hatches jammed, lockers broken open to send junk and old clothes floating free. The air had gone, allowing several pipes to burst and release globules of fluid, which had subsequently frozen solid. She had to use a high-powered fission cutter on the latches around the final hatch before she could worm her way into the bridge. At first she didn’t even recognize the SII-suited figure clutching at one of the emergency supply cases on the ceiling. Granules of frost had solidified on him as they had on every surface, glinting a dusty grey in the beams thrown out by her helmet lights. In his fetal position he looked like some kind of giant mummified larva.