“Just trying to appear human, put you at your ease. Standard tactics.”

“Your dreams are getting worse again, aren’t they?”

“Sleep is not my high point right now, I’ll admit. Or is that too much weakness as well?”

“Defensiveness now? Gosh, we’ll break through that conditioning yet.”

Something will, he thought bleakly. It had taken several minutes for his fear to sink away after he’d woken. That was a first, having the dread follow him out of the nightmares into the waking world. Another aspect of her growing strength. “Pray you don’t,” he muttered, and glanced back at the table.

“I could find out eventually, I suppose,” Ozzie said. “I still have clout with what remains of the Brandt Dynasty, but your heritage will only ever be a footnote. Even if you’re a long-lost Brandt, that doesn’t explain how the colony ship got inside in the first place. Besides, think how many other Brandts there are left in the Commonwealth. What makes you special?”

“Is there a list of how many Brandts had a tour of duty at Centurion Station?”

“Irrelevant. Your talent doesn’t allow you to talk to a Skylord, which is what we need right now.”

“Knowledge is not irrelevant. Any theory has to be built on a foundation of fact.”

“Sure, man, but that’s the wrong foundation.”

“All information about the Void is what we need to determine-”

Aaron wolfed down the remnants of the roll. “I’m going outside to wait for them.”

“Don’t blame you,” Corrie-Lyn said.

He stood on the veranda, facing the daunting alien city across the still water of the bay. The dreams he was cursed with and whatever was struggling to rise from his subconscious were troubling him. He deflected the worry with a diagnostic review of his biononics and tactical routines, the ones that had failed him this morning. There was no clear answer to how Myraian had crept into his bedroom. The field scan had registered a movement, but it wasn’t sufficient to trigger the beta-grade alert routines. And by sitting on the end of the bed she’d been ten centimeters from triggering an alpha-grade alert. Was that distance a coincidence? If so, they were mounting up.

But at least his u-shadow determined why it hadn’t intercepted Oscar’s call to Ozzie. The house’s smartcores had shielded it with some very sophisticated software. So Ozzie hasn’t quite rolled over. Figures.

The capsule appeared against the strong sheen of the Spike compartment’s translucent crown. Biononics filtered his retinas so he could maintain visual acquisition. His field function scan swept through it. There were seven people inside. Myraian, of course; three men and a woman with biononics configured to low-level defense, allowing him little acuity-however, they weren’t weapons-active; that left an ordinary human male with no biononics and a very large human in an armor suit with a force field already powered up. That alone made Aaron bring several weapon enrichments to active status.

He sent a identity ping into the capsule, which was returned by everyone except the ordinary human. He took a guess that he was the important one Oscar was escorting to meet Ozzie.

The old capsule settled on the swath of purple and green grass between the lake and the house. Its door opened, and the passengers started to clamber out. Myraian was first, waving gaily, which Aaron ignored. Beckia and Tomansio ran a quick field scan across the area, but not Oscar, which was interesting. Only then was the Natural human allowed out. He was slightly older than Commonwealth standard and quite dignified-looking. The armored figure of Troblum was last, having to squirm about to get through the door.

Ozzie, Inigo, and Corrie-Lyn came up behind Aaron to watch the visitors approach. Ozzie was grinning. “Holy crap, it really is Oscar.” He raised his voice. “Yo, dude, been a while there.”

Oscar tipped his forefinger to Ozzie, smiling sheepishly.

But it was Tomansio’s reaction that held Aaron. He was staring right at him, a look of incredulity on his handsome face. “You!” Tomansio gasped. “You’re alive.”

“Never better, man,” Ozzie said cheerfully. He turned to Inigo. “See, legendary genius trumps messiah every time.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Inigo told him.

“I don’t think-” Corrie-Lyn began as she looked from Tomansio to Aaron.

“The Mutineer,” Tomansio whispered. He still hadn’t taken his gaze from Aaron.

A brief memory flickered into Aaron’s mind as if tearing silently through some vital membrane. Her face smiling coyly at him as she lay on the bed beside him. The same woman he’d encountered back in Golden Park the day Ethan had been selected as Cleric Conservator. Different hair but still her. Bad news. “What?” he croaked. “What did you call me?”

Ozzie and Inigo were both frowning now, glancing over at Aaron.

“The Mutineer. It is you. It is!”

“No,” Beckia exclaimed. “It can’t be.”

“Who?” a puzzled Oscar asked.

“Lennox. Lennox McFoster. How can this be?” Tomansio demanded angrily. “How can you be here?”

“The Knights Guardian spent centuries searching for you,” Cheriton said. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry,” Aaron said. “But I really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Even after ten minutes, the Natural man still hadn’t been introduced and Troblum had been completely silent. The Knights Guardian were astounded by Aaron’s existence and quite forceful in insisting he was who they believed him to be. The son of Bruce McFoster, another old legend who had been captured and subverted by the Starflyer and subsequently killed by Gore Burnelli. Lennox had been an infant at the time, they said, brought up by his mother, Samantha, as a Guardian. He’d been one of the first converts to the Cat’s vision, desperate to find a new role for the Guardians of Selfhood as they teetered on the verge of self-destruction.

Their talk made Aaron nervous. Names and events were certainly registering somewhere in his mind, just not in the conscious section. He didn’t doubt that he could originally have been one of the Knights Guardian; theirs was the kind of ability he had in abundance. That made the rest uncomfortably plausible …

“What kind of mutiny did I lead?” he asked curiously. It was a question he shouldn’t have asked. It was irrelevant.

“Pantar Cathedral,” Troblum said in a strangely neutral tone. “It’s on Narrogin. The Knights Guardian were brought in to help one of the local political movements achieve dominance over their rivals. The Cat herself took command in the field. There was a hostage situation. Demands were made with a deadline. Then she started slaughtering them, anyway. Including their children. You stopped her. You stood up to the Cat.”

“That’s when our whole movement changed,” Beckia said. “We finally acknowledged the Cat’s flaws. After that, we rejected her leadership. But not yours.”

“The majority of us rejected her,” Cheriton said slightly awkwardly. “There was something of a schism; after all, she was our founder, bringing us out of the wilderness following the Starflyer War and uniting us with the Barsoomians. Though legend says that part was your idea.”

Aaron knew he had to get the mission back on track; he should find out who the Natural human was, make everyone talk to Ozzie and Inigo. Get Inigo into the Void. That was the universe-all that mattered. But for once the compulsion was weak. Her smile lurked behind his thoughts now. Sometimes he could see it without having to close his eyes.

Bad news.

She hadn’t been kidding, apparently.

“Did I save them?” he asked faintly.

“Who?”

“The children. You said she was killing children when I stopped her.”

Tomansio and Beckia shared an uncomfortable look, which was an eloquent enough answer.

“Do you remember anything since then?” Cheriton asked.