Given that Colwyn City had sustained by far the worst damage, its infrastructure was still limping along as repairs and replacement operations were implemented. Bots and civil engineering crews were hard at work, aided by equipment delivered by starships flying in from across the Commonwealth. But commerce was sluggish, and a surprising number of businesses still hadn’t reopened despite the urging of the city council.

“I think they’ve done well, considering the general apathy,” Tomansio said. “It’s going to take a couple of years before everything gets back to preinvasion levels. It doesn’t help that Likan’s company is currently shut down; it was a huge part of the planetary economy. The treasury will have to step in and refloat its finances. And the cabinet isn’t strong enough to orchestrate that right now. There’ll have to be an election to restore public confidence in government.”

“Which is the main problem,” Oscar said. “What’s the point? Our gloriously idiotic Dreamer is going to launch the Pilgrimage fleet in seven hours. You’re not going to get an election if there’s nothing left of the galaxy to hold an election in.”

“So remind me why we’re still here,” Tomansio said.

Oscar was going to launch into his usual impassioned plea for hope and faith based on that five seconds of raw face-to-face impression he’d gained of Araminta back in Bodant Park. He had been so utterly certain that she was playing Living Dream somehow. But the team had heard it all so many times from him, and now here he was examining ways to flee from the galaxy in one of the finest starships ANA had ever constructed. “I don’t know,” he said, surprised by how hard the admission was. It meant that the mission was over, that they could do nothing, that there was no future.

He wondered what Dushiku and Anja and dear mercurial Jesaral would say when he landed outside their house in a stealthed ultradrive starship and told them they’d have to flee the galaxy. It had been so long since he’d spoken to them, they were actually starting to drift away from his consideration. That wasn’t good. He really could survive without them. Especially now that I’m living life properly again.

A dismayed groan escaped his lips. Oh, you treacherous, treacherous man. Beckia is right; I have no dignity.

Cheriton, Tomansio, and Beckia exchanged mildly confused glances as the rush of conflicting emotions spilled out of Oscar’s gaiamotes.

“What will you do when the expansion starts?” he asked them.

“The Knights Guardian will survive,” Tomansio said. “I expect we will relocate to a new world in a fresh galaxy.”

“You’d need to find such a world,” Oscar said cautiously. “For that you’ll need a good scoutship. An ultradrive would be perfect.”

“It would. And we would be honored for you to join us.”

“This is difficult,” Oscar said miserably. “To acknowledge we have failed so completely, not just the five of us but our entire species.”

“Justine is still inside the Void,” Beckia said. “Gore may yet triumph. He clearly intends something.”

“Clutching at straws,” Oscar told her. “That’s not strong.”

“No, but part of what I believe in is having the strength to admit when you’ve been defeated. We didn’t secure Araminta, and she’s made her own choice, despicable bitch that she is. Our part in this is over.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. He still wasn’t sure how his life partners would react to all this. Not that he was so shallow that he’d fly off without making the offer to take them. But they all had family, which made an exodus complicated. Whereas he was truly alone. Probably the closest connection he had to anyone alive today was with Paula Myo, a notion that made him smile.

Every one of Oscar’s exovision displays was abruptly blanked out by a priority protocol as his u-shadow reported that someone was activating a link from an ultrasecure onetime contact code.

“Bloody hell!” he blurted.

“Hello, Oscar,” Araminta said. “I believe you told me to call.”

Even with a combination of smartcores and modern cybernetics and replicator factories and a legion of bots and effectively bottomless government resources, not to mention the loving devotion of every single project worker, building the twelve giant Pilgrimage ships was a phenomenal achievement by any standards. But for all that, the prodigious amount of processing power and human thought that had been utilized to manage the project was focused primarily on planning and facilitating the fabrication itself. It was unfortunate, therefore, that a proportional amount of consideration hadn’t been given to working out the embarkation procedure for the lucky twenty-four million.

Mareble had been reduced to tears when she and Danal had received confirmation that they’d been allocated a place on board the Macsen’s Dream. She actually sank to her knees in the hotel room and sent the strongest prayer of thanks into the gaiafield, wishing it toward the Dreamer Araminta for the kindness she’d shown toward them yet again. For days afterward she’d gone through life in a daze of happiness. Her brain was stuck in the most amazing fantasies of what she would do when she walked the streets of Makkathran itself that it was a miracle she even remembered to eat. Then her wonder and excitement were channeled into preparation; she was one of the chosen ones, an opportunity she must never waste. She and Danal spent hours reviewing the kinds of supplies they wanted to take. Allocation was strictly limited to one cubic meter per person, with the strong advice not to bring any advanced technological items.

It was her deepest wish that she could somehow become an Eggshaper like the Waterwalker himself. For years she’d studied the techniques he’d employed in those first dreams; she was sure she could emulate the ability if she could just get into proximity with a pregnant default genistar. Once the basic clothes and utensils and tools were packed, she set about filling the precious remaining space with the kinds of tough coats and jeans and boots that were essential to any branch of animal husbandry, with practical veterinary instruments occupying the last remaining cubic centimeters. Danal filled his container with some luxury food packets and a range of seeds, but mostly his allowance was taken up by old-fashioned books printed on superstrong paper by a small specialist replicator unit he bought for the occasion. He wanted to be a teacher, he told her, which was why he also took pencils and pens and all the paraphernalia necessary to make ink.

Embarkation began three days after the drives and force fields arrived. Before she’d met the Dreamer Araminta, the unsavory origin of the technology would have troubled Mareble. But now that she’d witnessed Dreamer Araminta confront the disquieting Ilanthe-thing, she had confidence that their Pilgrimage wasn’t being perverted for a faction’s sinister agenda. Araminta was quite right: The Void would prevail over any wickedness. When their capsule arrived at the construction yard, she was carefree and dizzy with the prospect of the flight itself. Everything her life had been devoted to was about to be consummated.

The capsule had to wait outside the yard’s force field dome for seven hours, stacked three hundred meters above the ground in a matrix resembling a metallic locust swarm, all of them awaiting landing clearance. When they finally did get down outside one of the materiel egress facilities, bots loaded their containers on a trolley that quickly slipped away through the air. Mareble and Danal had to walk through the facility past an array of scanners and sensor fields before they were finally out under the domes that cloaked the evening sky in a pale purple nimbus. Long braids of trolleys buzzed high through the air, forking and flowing like a dark river tributary network as they glided to their designated ship to off-load. Staring up at the appallingly complex, fast-moving streams, Mareble glumly resigned herself to never seeing her personal container again.