Mellanie’s Redemption hung in transdimensional suspension a hundred thousand kilometers above Viotia. Passive sensors absorbed what information they could, revealing that space around the planet was empty apart from a single Dunbavend Line starship in a thousand-kilometer orbit. For a passenger ship it seemed to have an awful lot of weapons systems, several of which were active.

A secure TD link routed Troblum’s u-shadow to the planetary cybersphere, allowing him to monitor events. The u-shadow also kept watch for the SI. So far it hadn’t intercepted his connection, but Troblum was convinced it would be watching the data flowing along the link.

“Why are we here?” Catriona Saleeb asked. She was sitting on a simple stool beside the cabin wall, which had pushed out a small wooden bar. Appropriately, she was dressed for an evening out on the town, wearing a slinky blue snakeskin dress, her hair spiraling in an elaborate style and sparkling with small red gems.

“It was the course I’d designated before the Swarm went active,” Troblum said gruffly. “And we had to test the hyperdrive.”

Catriona glanced at the big image of Viotia that a portal was projecting into the middle of the cabin. “Are you going to call him?”

“Who?”

“Oscar Monroe.”

“No.” He brought some performance tables into his exovision and studied them, checking through the hyperdrive’s functions. Peripheral displays showed the violence playing out across the planet as residents took their revenge on Living Dream members.

“If you help them, they’ll take care of the Cat,” she said.

His u-shadow slid the performance tables to one side. He gave her an angry stare. “They’ll do that anyway. Paula knows she’s been taken out of suspension; she won’t rest until the Cat is back where she belongs. It’s over. Do you understand that? Now I’m going to review the hyperdrive. Once I’m satisfied it’s working correctly, we’ll leave.”

“I just want you to be safe; you know that.” Catriona picked up a long-stemmed cocktail glass and drained its sticky red liquid. She swirled the ice cubes around the bottom. “And I know you need closure on the Cat. If you run now, you’ll never know what happened. You won’t be able to live with that. You’ll spend the rest of your life seeing her everywhere; you’ll panic at every strange noise in the wind.”

“I’m not that weak.”

“If you’re not afraid, then call Oscar.”

“That’s machine logic.”

Her lips pouted, their glossy scales darkening down to purple. “For someone who cares about no one, you can be a real bastard at times.”

“Shut the fuck up. I mean it.” He brought his exovision intensity up. On a street in Colwyn City a family of Living Dream followers was being chased by a mob armed with power tools and thick clubs. Their clothes had betrayed them, made from simple cloth in old styles. Two adults were dragging along three terrified crying children, the oldest no more than eleven. It was a residential street, houses and apartment blocks packed tight. The father found one he obviously recognized and dashed up to the front door, pounding away, yelling furiously. The mob slowed and surrounded them in an eerily quiet, efficient maneuver, some primeval hunter knowledge governing their movements. They closed in. The father kept hitting the door with his fist while the weeping mother pleaded for her children to be let through. As if knowing how futile it was, she put her arms around them, clutching them to her as she started screaming. The news show’s reporter was good, focusing perfectly on the makeshift clubs as they rose.

Troblum actually turned his head away as his u-shadow canceled the news show; it was all too vivid.

“Do you want to be human?” Troblum asked. “Did you think I would grow you a clone body and transfer your personality in?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is that what you were hoping for?”

“No,” Catriona said, sounding quite shocked.

“I won’t do that. Not ever. The universe doesn’t need more humans. We have nothing to offer the universe. We need to leave our original form behind. It does nothing but generate misery and suffering. The External worlds are full of animals. They can’t be classified as true humans. They don’t think; they just act. Animals, that’s all they are-animals.”

“So how do you define real humans? People like yourself?”

“A real person would want independence. If you were real, you’d want a body. Did you talk about it with Trisha and Isabella and Howard?”

“Troblum?” She sounded troubled. “Don’t.”

“Was Howard a part of it, too? Were you going to put pressure on me to make it happen?”

“No.”

“Did you tell the Cat about me?” he yelled.

“Stop this!”

“I don’t need you.”

“But I need you. I love you.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

She climbed off the stool and knelt at his feet. “I only exist because of you. How could I not love you for that? I would not betray you. I cannot. You know this.”

Troblum flinched. His hand hovered above her thick, tightly wound hair.

“Please,” she said. There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. “Please, Troblum. Don’t do this to yourself.”

He sighed, lowering his palm onto her head, feeling the springy strands of hair against his skin. Then her hand closed around his, letting him know her warmth, her light touch. She kissed his fingers one at a time. Troblum groaned, half-ashamed, half-delighted. She’s not real. She’s an I-sentient. Does that make her the perfect human for me? His whole mind was in chaos.

“You’d change,” he whispered. “If I gave you a meat body, you’d change. Your routines would be running in neural paths that are never fixed. I don’t want you to change.”

“I don’t want a meat body. I just want you. Always. And I need you to be safe and happy for that to happen. Do you understand that, Troblum?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I get it.”

The starship’s sensors reported energy weapon discharges above Colwyn City. Troblum frowned. “What’s that?” he queried. His u-shadow started refining the scan.

It had been a while since Araminta had used the melange program. Nothing wrong with the program; it was its association with Likan that made her all squirmy and uncomfortable. That was stupid. She certainly couldn’t afford that kind of weakness now.

As she walked beside the little brook, she sent her perception seeping out ahead of her, experiencing it flowing along the path. Far away she could feel the Silfen Motherholme, sympathetic and imposing. There was the human gaiafield, fizzing with agitation and excitement. On the other side of her mind was the Skylord-she recoiled from that right away. Her feet kept on walking. All around her the trees were growing higher, muddling those on the world she walked among with those of Francola Wood. She knew now where the path would take her into Francola Wood, smelling the scent of the whiplit fronds. Her mind found a host of people lurking in the undergrowth, cleverly concealed by their gadgetry while their steely thoughts filled with expectation. They were waiting for her.

Yet even as it swept her along to its ending, she knew the path was fluid, simply anchored in place by past wishes, directions sung to it by Silfen millennia ago. She tried to make her own wishes known. Somehow they weren’t clear enough, and the path remained obdurately in place. So she summoned up the melange and felt the calmness sinking through her body, centering her, enabling her to concentrate on every sensation she was receiving.

The tunes imprinted on the path’s structure were easier to trace, to comprehend. With that knowledge she began to form the new tunes that her thoughts spun out. Wishes amplified by a fond nostalgia and the most fragile of hopes.