He saw Makali Pillay—aged a decade, but still recognizably herself—wearing a bizarre costume of some kind as she floated in a habitat with several Skyphoi!

Even in his dreamlike state, he could chortle with smug satisfaction: You dumb bastards, you told me bullshit about Makali, so she stayed in my mind.

Makali led, in one of those odd little connections, to Zhao. Where had he gone?

He was elsewhere in Keanu, too . . . in a chamber Dale did not immediately recognize, but clearly working on something important and urgent.

Makali and Zhao—what was it?

He wanted to find them, go where they were.

He wanted out of this jail—

He opened his eyes now and saw that he was staring up at the “night” sky of the human habitat. The roof and walls of the hut had vanished as if they’d never existed.

Before he could sit up, a drop of rain hit him in the mouth.

It was followed by more rain.

He actually swallowed some water before feeling strong enough to get up.

When he did, grabbing his shabby clothes, all he thought was that a bit of rain might mean he was leaving tracks as he removed himself from the habitat.

No worry. Harley and the others, once they realized that their jail had disappeared and that they were no longer dealing with plain old Dale Scott, wouldn’t dare follow him.

Day Two

SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2040

QUESTION: What was there about life on Earth that you missed most?

PAV: Very little.

QUESTION: Seriously?

PAV: Look, throughout human history, most people lived their lives within a thirty-kilometer radius. Our habitat was pretty close to that.

QUESTION: That might have been true prior to the nineteenth century, but you were born in 2003. You grew up with travel and cities and commerce—

PAV: True. But on Keanu, we were mostly trying to survive . . . like humans born prior to the nineteenth century.

INTERVIEW AT YELAHANKA,

APRIL 14, 2040

RACHEL

“It’s worse than we thought,” Pav told her, when they stepped out into their second Bangalore morning. Both of them blinked like prisoners released from a cell, even though the sky was overcast, threatening rain.

Rachel’s first night of Earth sleep in twenty years had been restful—she believed she had truly slept at least five hours—but for a series of strange dreams, including the predictable one in which she was still inside the Temple on Keanu, late to the launch of Adventure.

In another, she was back in the home in Houston she shared with her father and mother—though her current age. And Yvonne Hall, the astronaut turned Revenant, simply called her on the phone to tell her, “I’m here for you.”

Rachel had awakened at that point, feeling foolishly, possibly insanely reassured—the predictable residue of a dream.

Before beating herself up, however, she had to consider this vital point: All three of those people, Father, Mother, and Yvonne, had died . . . and two had become Revenants. They were proof that the Architects of Keanu had a handle on the existence of consciousness or personality beyond physical death.

Would it be crazy to assume that their technology extended to communication from beyond the grave? To invading your dreams with actual messages?

Rachel said to Pav, “Did you ever smoke?”

“Cigarettes? Of course I smoked! I spent part of my childhood in Russia! Why?”

“I never did,” Rachel said. “But right now . . . it’s supposed to help you think, isn’t it?”

“That’s what they say.” He put his arm around her. “You don’t need nicotine to help you think.”

“I feel as though I need something. A boost.”

“We’re sticking to our plan. Land, make contact, learn as much as we can, then—”

“Then move, yes. But so far we’re doing exactly what we expected, and that bothers me.”

“Because you’re a pessimist.”

“A realist.”

“Well, then, realist, keep this in mind: Our plan didn’t include having Sanjay get critically injured.”

Rachel sighed. “And what do we do about Sanjay? Leave him? And Zeds . . . trying to move him is just going to be difficult—”

“Zeds can move himself, and we both know it.”

“But not quietly or discreetly, darling. Wherever he goes, people are going to know.”

Pav frowned as he looked at her. “We’re going clandestine, are we? Maybe you do need to catch me up—”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem. We need Xavier to do what he and Sanjay were going to do, and quickly. We need money, support, transportation.”

She sighed. “It’s been so strange to find . . . what we’ve found.”

“Come on,” Pav said, “we didn’t really expect them to be better. We knew the Reivers had reached Earth. I’m just surprised the entire planet isn’t buried neck deep in the things.”

“Are we sure it isn’t?”

Pav started to reply, but smiled instead. “You’re right; we only know what we’ve been told by our hosts. Of course, this is my father we’re talking about—”

“And that’s why we wanted him to be part of the reception, yes, but—”

“What do we really know? I mean, it’s possible he could be a Reiver Aggregate. All of them could be—Remilla, Kaushal.”

“Now who’s the pessimist?” she said.

“You have rubbed off on me.” A horn blared nearby, startling both of them. All around them, the business of Yelahanka Air Base continued as it always had. Buses and Jeeps passed—some distance away, prevented from approaching the hospital—but audible, visible, and smellable.

On the flight line not far away, a jet engine had been revved up . . . likely for maintenance, not preflight. In the relative quiet between revs, they had been able to put their heads close together and be heard. Now, however, the jet was running at military power, it seemed—without break.

“That’s a good thing, right?” Rachel said.

“Yes, it means no one can overhear us as we plot.” When she shot him a look, he said, “Come on, Rachel, if we are being so closely observed, it’s because they are suspicious and assume we are plotting.”

“It just . . . I wish I had more experience.” She knew she was displaying more caution than the situation warranted. They had trained themselves to operate “like you are visiting China,” Zhao had told them. As a former Guan Bao agent, he knew the means and methods.

Which were constant audio surveillance wherever they went inside a building, tails and shadows whenever they left, and likely directional microphones aimed at them when they spoke outside—as they were now.

“But lipreading is easy to beat,” Zhao had told them, “if you’re careful, especially if you lean close and block the cameras.” And while computer enhancement would easily separate human words from background jet engine noise, it would take time.

“Don’t you think they assume we have ways of communicating with . . . Manchester United?” Pav was sensitive on this subject, since he had come up with the code name.

“Why don’t you just say ‘Keanu’ and be done with it?”

It was his turn to shoot her a look. “Fine. They will assume we are in touch, they will assume we are about our own business, and, in fact, they would be far more suspicious if their surveillance showed that we were hiding nothing.”

“Which is why,” Rachel said, “I wish I had a cigarette.”

“I’ll ask one of the guards, how about that?”

She took his hand, trying to tell him, in the most secret way possible, that she really wasn’t angry with him. She pulled him close, to speak directly into his left ear. “I never expected to be scouting, then attacking an entire continent.”