Thirty-two years old, and you see everything in such jaded terms, she told herself wearily. Pity that Mosul had formed a permanent attachment, though. He would have made a good father.

She clucked her tongue in self-admonition. But then her mother had conceived two children by the time she was thirty.

There’s always Ruben,Oenone suggested.

It wouldn’t be fair to him, not even to ask. He’d feel obligated to say yes.

I would like you to have a child. You are feeling incomplete. It upsets you. I don’t like that.

I am not feeling incomplete!

You haven’t even prepared any zygotes for my children yet. You should think about these things.

Oh goodness. You’re starting to sound like Mother.

I don’t know how to lie.

Rubbish!

Not to you. And it was you who was thinking of Mosul in that light.

Yes.syrinx stopped trying to argue, it was stupidly blinkered. What would I do without you?

Oenone wrapped her thoughts with a loving embrace, and for a moment Syrinx imagined the flyer’s ion field had leaked inside the cabin, filling it with golden haze.

They landed on one of the pads in the commercial section. The electrophorescent-cell ridge around the metal grid shone with a strong pink radiance. Few of the accommodation tower windows were lit.

It looks like they’re in mourning,syrinx said to Oxley in singular engagement mode as she walked down the aluminium stair. They had flown down alone so that the little flyer could carry more cargo, but it was still going to take three trips to bring all sixty cases down.

Yes.he glanced about, frowning. There aren’t many fishing boats in dock, either.

Eysk and Mosul walked out of the shadows beyond the ridge.

Syrinx forgot everything else as Mosul sent out a burst of rapturous greeting, mingled with mischievously erotic subliminals.

She put her arms around him and enjoyed a long kiss.

I’d like to meet her,she told him. Lucky thing that she is.

You shall.

They stood about on the pad, chatting idly, as the island’s lizard-skinned housechimps unloaded the first batch of cases under Oxley’s careful direction and stacked them on a processor-controlled flat-top trolley. When all eighteen cases were on, the drone trundled off towards one of the low warehouse domes ringing the park.

Do you want me to bring the rest down tonight?oxley asked.

Please,eysk said. I have already organized sales with other families.

The pilot nodded, winked at Syrinx, who was still standing with Mosul’s arm around her shoulder, and went back into the flyer. Sitting in the command seat he linked his mind with the controlling processor array.

Something was affecting the coherent magnetic-field generation. It took a long time to form, and he had to bring compensator programs on-line. By the time he finally lifted from the pad the fusion generator was operating alarmingly close to maximum capacity.

He almost turned back there and then. But once he rose above a hundred metres the field stabilized rapidly. He had to cut the power levels back. Diagnostic programs reported the systems were all functioning flawlessly.

With a quick curse directed at all Kulu-produced machinery, he ordered the flight computer to design an orbital-injection trajectory that would bring him to a rendezvous with Oenone.

See you in three hours,syrinx called as the sparkling artificial comet performed a tight curve around the accommodation towers before soaring up into the night sky.

Three hours!oxley let his groan filter back down the affinity link.

You’re professionals. You can handle it.

He put the flyer into a steep climb. One thing about an oceanic world, there was no worry about supersonic-boom footprints stomping all over civic areas. He was doing Mach two by the time he was fifteen kilometres away.

Pernik vanished from his affinity perception. Ordinarily a contact would simply fade with distance until it was no more. But this was different, like steel shutters slamming into place. Oxley was over a hundred and fifty years old, in his time he’d visited almost ninety per cent of the Confederation, and he had never known an Edenist habitat to react in such a manner. It was alien to the whole creed of consensual unity.

He switched in the aft sensors. A luminous red pearl haunted the horizon, sending shimmer-spears of light dancing across the black water.

“What is . . .” The words dried up at the back of his throat.

Pernik?he demanded. Pernik, what is going on? What is that light?

The silence was total. There wasn’t the slightest trace of the personality’s thoughts left anywhere in the affinity band.

Syrinx?

Nothing.

Oenone, something’s happening on Pernik, can you reach Syrinx?

She is there,the worried voidhawk answered. But I cannot converse with her. Something is interfering.

Oh, heavens.he banked the flyer round, heading back for the island.

Affinity broadened out from the single tenuous thread to the orbiting voidhawk, offering him the support of innumerable minds combining into a homogenized entity, buoying him up on a tide of intellect. He wasn’t alone, and he wasn’t anxious any more. Doubts and personal fears bled away, exchanged for confidence and determination, a much-needed reinforcement of his embattled psyche. For a moment, flying over the gargantuan ocean in a tiny machine, he had been horribly lonely; now his kind had joined him, from the eager honoured enthusiasms of sixteen-year-olds up to the glacial thoughts of the islands themselves. He felt like a child again, comforted by the loving arms of an adult, wiser and stronger. It was a reconfirmation of Edenism which left him profoundly grateful for the mere privilege of belonging.

This is Thalia Island, Oxley, we are aware of Pernik’s withdrawal from affinity and we are summoning a planetary consensus to deal with the problem.

That red lighting effect has me worried,he replied. The flyer had dropped below subsonic again. Pernik gleamed a sickly vermilion eight kilometres away.

Around the planet, consensus finalized, bringing together every sentient entity in an affinity union orchestrated by the islands. Information, such as it had, was reviewed, opinions formed, discussed, discarded, or elaborated. Two seconds after considering the problem the consensus said: We believe it to be Laton. A ship of the same class as the Yaku arrived last night and sent a spaceplane down to the island. From that time onward Pernik’s communication has declined by sixty per cent.

Laton?the appalled question came from Oenone and its crew.

Yes.the atlantean consensus summarized the information that had been delivered by a voidhawk two days earlier. As we have no orbital stations our checks on arriving ships were naturally less than ideal, depending solely on civil traffic control satellite-platform sensors. The ship has of course departed, but the spaceplane remained. Pernik and its population must have been sequestrated by the energy virus.

Oh no,oxley cried brokenly. Not him. Not again.

Ahead of him, Pernik issued a brilliant golden light, as though sunrise had come to the ocean. The flyer gave a violent lurch to starboard, and began to lose height.

Syrinx watched the little flyer disappear into the east. The night air was cooler than she remembered from her last visit, bringing up goosebumps below her ship-tunic. Mosul, who was dressed in a baggy sleeveless sweatshirt and shorts, seemed completely unaffected. She eyed him with a degree of annoyance. Macho outdoors type.