Lewis had collapsed twitching into a corner, soles of his boots slipping on his own blood. “Bastard,” he spat through white lips. “Just do it. Get it over with and laugh, you shithead prick sucker.”

“Sorry, Lewis. But like I told you, I shall consume you in your entirety. It’s almost a vampiric process, really—though I expect that particular irony is sadly lost on you. And in order for the transfer to work you must remain conscious for the entire feast.” Laton gave him a lopsided, half-apologetic smile.

The true meaning of what the Edenist was saying finally sank in. Lewis started to scream. He was still screaming when Laton picked up his severed arm and bit into it.

Pernik’s illumination returned to normality with eye-jarring suddenness. The accommodation towers blazed with diamond-blue light from every window, winding pathways through the park were set out by orange fairy lanterns, circular landing pads glowed hotly around the entire rim, the floating quays were like fluorescent roots radiating out into the opaque glassy water.

Oxley thought it looked quite magnificent. So cruelly treacherous, that a creation of such beauty could play host to the most heinous evil.

Land immediately please, Oxley,laton said. I don’t have much time. They are resisting me.

Land?oxley felt his throat snarl up as outrage vied with a shaky form of laugh. Show me where you are, and I’ll come to you, Laton. I’ll be doing around Mach twenty when we embrace. Show yourself!

Don’t be a fool. I am Pernik now.

Where’s Syrinx?

She lives. Oenone will confirm that. But you must pick her up now, she requires urgent medical attention.

Oenone?he sent the querying thought lancing upwards, while at the back of his mind he was aware of Laton delivering a vast quantity of information to the Atlantean consensus.

The voidhawk registered as a subdued jumble of thoughts. It had stopped its crazed descent; now it was rising laboriously up out of the mesosphere, its distortion effect generating barely a tenth of a gee.

Oenone, is she alive?

Yes.

The emotional discharge in the voidhawk’s thought brought tears to his eyes.

Oxley,ruben called, if there’s any chance . . . please.

OK.he studied the island. pinpricks of light were blooming and dying right across it, stars with a lifetime measurable in fractions of a second. It looked quite magical, though he didn’t like to dwell too hard upon what their cause would be.

Consensus, should I go in?

Yes. No other spaceplanes can reach Pernik in time. Trust Laton.

That was it, the universe had finally gone totally insane. Oh, shit. OK, I’m taking the flyer down.

Fires had taken hold in the central park when Oxley piloted the flyer down onto one of the pads. He could see a spaceplane further along the row, wings retracted, lying on its side with its undercarriage struts sticking up in the air and its fuselage cracked open around the midsection. Bodies were sprawled on the polyp around the base of the nearest accommodation tower; most of them looked as though they had been caught in a firestorm, skin blackened, faces unrecognizable, clothes still smoking.

An explosion sounded in the distance, and a ball of orange flame rolled out of a window on the other side of the park.

They are learning,laton said impassively. Grouped together they can ward off my energistic assaults. It won’t do them any good in the long run, of course.

Oxley’s nerves were raw edged. He still thought this was some giant trap. The steel-clad jaws would snap shut any second; conversation might just be the trigger. Where’s Syrinx?

Coming. Open the flyer airlock.

He felt the consensus balance his insecurities with an injection of urbane courage. Somehow he was giving the order to cut the ion field and open the airlock.

Faint shouts and the drawn out screeching of metal under tremendous stress penetrated the cabin. Oxley sniffed the air. Mingled with the brine was a frowsty putrescence which furred the roof of his mouth. With his hand clamped firmly over his nose he made his way aft.

Someone was walking towards the flyer. A giant, three metres tall, hairless, naked skin a frail cream colour, virtually devoid of facial features. It was holding a figure in its outstretched arms.

“Syrinx,” he gasped. He could feel Oenone pushing behind his eyes, desperate to see.

Three-quarters of her body was engulfed by green medical nanonic packages. But even that thick covering couldn’t disguise the terrible damage inflicted on her limbs and torso.

The nanonic packages do not function well in this environment,laton said as the giant mounted the flyer’s airstairs. Once you are airborne their efficiency will recover.

Who did this?

I do not know their names. But I assure you the bodies they possessed have been rendered nonfunctional.

Oxley backed into the cabin, too shaken to offer further comment. Laton must have loaded an order into the flight-control processors, because the front passenger seat hinged open to form a flat couch. It was the one designed for transporting casualty cases. Basic medical monitor and support equipment slid out from recesses in the cabin wall above it.

The giant laid Syrinx down gently, then stood, its head touching the cabin ceiling. Oxley wanted to rush over to her, but all he could do was stare dumbly at the hulking titan. Its blank face crawled as though the skin was boiling. Laton looked down at him.

“Go to the Sol system,” the simulacrum said. “There are superior medical facilities available there in any case. But the Jovian consensus must be informed of the true nature of the threat these returning souls pose to the Confederation; indeed to this whole section of the galaxy. That is your priority now.”

Oxley managed to jerk a nod. “What about you?”

“I will hold the possessed off until you leave Pernik. Then I will begin the great journey.” The big lips pressed together in compassion. “If it is of any comfort, you may tell our kind I am now truly sorry for Jantrit. I was utterly and completely wrong.”

“Yes.”

“I do not ask forgiveness, for it would not be in Edenism’s power to grant. But tell them also that I came good in the end.” The face managed a small, clumsy smile. “That ought to set the cat among the pigeons.”

The giant turned and clumped out of the cabin. When it reached the top of the airlock stairs it lost all cohesion. A huge gout of milky white liquid sloshed down onto the metal grid of the landing pad, splattering the flyer’s landing gear struts.

The flyer was five hundred kilometres from Pernik and travelling at Mach fifteen up through the ionosphere when the end came.

Laton waited until the diminutive craft was beyond any conceivable blast range, then used his all-pervasive control to release every erg of chemical energy stored in the island’s cells simultaneously. It produced an explosion to rival an antimatter planetbuster strike. Several of the tsunami which raced out from the epicentre were powerful enough to traverse the world.