A little bit of fine-tuning was all it would take. Something he’d been analyzing and rationalizing-well, sort of-for the last forty years. Then every sentient species in the galaxy would be aware of every other species, which would be truly wonderful. Unless there was something else like the Prime out there. And prescience/rationality species would probably think their gods were calling. Oh, and greedy little psychopaths like the Ocisen Empire would use it as a map of worlds to conquer.

Yeah, fine-tuning. That’s all.

Which he would have gotten around to. Eventually. Except now the Commonwealth and its incredible idiocies and factions and violence had followed him to the Spike. His basic instinct was to just cut and run again. But Inigo’s boneheaded stupidity was finally paying off, with the Void going apeshit and everyone desperate for a solution. To what Ozzie wasn’t sure. But sure as bears shit in the woods, they came searching him out for it, treating him like the ultimate guru.

So once again, here he was doing the right thing, which would have appalled the him of centuries past. Today, he just figured that this was the quickest way to get them the fuck off the Spike.

The capsule approached the water column, one of twelve massive support structures that stretched from the chamber’s landscape right up to the opaque roof forty kilometers above. They always reminded Ozzie of giant cocktail swizzle sticks, huge narrow cylinders with ridges that spiraled the entire length. It was part of the chamber’s irrigation system; water flowed constantly down them, racing around and around in a white-foam cascade. The top third of the twists had sharp angled kinks that sent thundering bursts of spume swirling off in long clouds that traced huge arcs as they fell downward and outward until they’d evolved into ordinary stratus scudding through the air before eventually drizzling on the ground far below.

He flew directly underneath one of the churning ribbons of thick white mist and began a steep descent. A broad expanse of Octoron’s purple and green grass lay below, with a herd of sprightly tranalin racing away from the lake at the base of the water column. Ozzie expanded his biononic field scan function and probed the ground directly below. Three human figures were waiting for him, which was odd because he couldn’t perceive any incursion of thoughts within mindspace. He frowned and refined the scan. One was standing waiting, integral force field active; the other two were lying on the grass, unconscious.

“Ah,” he grunted as realization dawned. “Clever.”

The capsule touched down, and he emerged to face the standing man. No doubt he was the bodyguard type who’d unleashed hell back in the town. The man’s biological appearance was mid-thirties, which was slightly older than Highers usually maintained their physical looks. Ozzie was drawn to his eyes, which were gray with weird flecks of purple. His Commonwealth Navy tunic was simple gray-blue semiorganic, with several burn scars where energy weapons had fired out from subdermal enrichments. But it was the expression, or rather lack of it, that was most intriguing. He didn’t express a single flicker of emotion. Whatever thoughts were animating the body were extraordinarily simple, like those of a small animal. Ozzie had to get within ten meters before he could even sense them.

“Yo, dude, you hurt a lot of people back there. Some are going to have to be re-lifed, and that hospital doesn’t have a whole lot of medical capsules.” He had to raise his voice above the crashing white water waves of the column as they poured into the lake behind him. Very humid air was surging out. His semiorganic shirt hardened slightly to become water resilient, but he could feel it starting to saturate his Afro hairstyle.

The man put his hand out. Ozzie raised an eyebrow.

“I need to confirm your DNA,” the man said.

“Ho, brother.” Ozzie touched his palm to the one offered, allowing the biononic filaments to sample his dermal layer cells.

“You are Ozzie,” the man declared.

“Really? I thought I was just fooling myself.” In itself the confirmation was interesting; that particular datum was extremely hard to get hold of in the Commonwealth. Ozzie had made sure of that before he left, and ANA enforced the proscription on access. You’d need to be quite the player to get hold of it.

“No, you are not. Please turn off the telepathy effect.”

“Say what?”

“Turn off the telepathy effect. It allows the Chikoya to track Inigo.”

“Ah, I get it. Smart. No.”

“I have brought Inigo to you. You cannot function effectively together if we are constantly interrupted by hostile elements.”

“Man, I don’t want to function effectively or any other way with that little turd.”

“You have to.”

“No, dude, I don’t.”

“I will exterminate the woman if you do not switch it off.”

“Jesus fuck! Why? Who is she?”

“Corrie-Lyn. A past member of the Living Dream Cleric Council and Inigo’s lover.”

“So why kill her?” Ozzie was getting a bad feeling about the way the man’s thoughts functioned. In fact, he was beginning to wonder just what kind of biology was nestling inside the human skull. And who it belonged to.

“She is my leverage. If you do not comply, I will find others to kill until you do.”

“Okay. I’ll accept that threat is real for the moment. What does Inigo want with me?”

“He doesn’t know yet. I am following orders from another source to bring you both together.”

“Shit. Who wants that to happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on! Seriously, dude?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. So what do you expect us to do when we’re up and talking?”

“I do not know. Those operational instructions will not activate until that stage of the mission has reached active status.”

“You’re not human.”

“I was.”

Yep, very bad feeling. “I know of this kind of conditioning. The last time it was used on humans was by the Starflyer. And I’m pretty sure we got rid of that bastard.” Ozzie grinned evilly. “But you never know, do you?”

“I do not know who I work for.”

“So I have to take a chance, huh?”

“Yes. And spare Corrie-Lyn’s life.”

“Hmm. I guess the only reason your boss would get me and the dickhead messiah here together is if he or she or it thinks we can do something about the Void. And for that reason, and that alone, I’ll switch it off. I’m curious to see what you think I can do.” He directed his u-shadow to deactivate the device. “This will take a while.”

“How long?”

“I have no idea. Maybe half an hour. It’s never been switched off before.”

“I will wait.”

Ozzie watched him. The man wasn’t kidding. What followed was no vaguely awkward interval where they occasionally made eye contact and hurriedly looked away, nor was there any attempt to talk. He just stood there, his field scan sweeping around; otherwise he had no interest in anything. That wasn’t human. His thought routines, such as they were, resembled machine code in their simplicity. In one respect that was a relief; Starflyer conditioning was different.

After a while Ozzie felt mindspace withdrawing, collapsing in on itself. It was akin to closing down his gaiamotes. The minds glimmering all around him faded away, most of them expressing sorrow and alarm as they felt mindspace fading. The loss was more profound than he was expecting, even though he knew it was temporary. But he’d lived with and embraced mindspace for so long now that it was a part of his existence.

“It’s done,” he said grimly, and pushed his hair back off his forehead. It had absorbed so much of the vapor thrown out by the water column, it had begun to sag and tangle in unpleasant rattails.

A tic started on the man’s left cheek. Expression slowly emerged on his face, like color filling a penciled-in outline. He let out a long sigh, the kind a witness to something awful would make. “Okay, then, that’s good.”