It seemed like a trivial motivation until Sanjay remembered that within the HB community, Makali was famous for tempestuous love affairs and sexual adventurism, at least to the extent that could be practiced in the limited pool of candidates.

So she was risking her life in order to find new partners, which had the virtue of being a basic biological drive.

Which left Sanjay wondering about the other four in the crew, three Bangalores and one Houston. The Bangalores, like Sanjay, were all forty or slightly older—engineers or other Brahma control center functionaries who had been scooped up by the Object.

The Houston team member was a woman slightly older, Bobbi by name. A sales clerk at the Bayport Mall, Bobbi had been the victim of geography (her apartment was near the impact site of the Houston Object) and natural curiosity (she had gone out to see what had happened). Surely her motivation was less primal than Makali’s—probably just the urge to go home.

They were all busy monitoring a suite of 3-D printers that were still creating the fast- and self-replicating chemical-biological-cyber weapons that could be (a) dispersed in Earth’s atmosphere or (b) dumped in Earth’s oceans or (c) quickly spread through soil and groundwater if the vesicle blew up in orbit, crashed in the ocean, or smacked into land.

Thinking about the weapons allowed the new Keanu information to grow clearer in Sanjay’s mind—and more urgent. He needed to have this out with Zhao.

He pushed himself toward the vesicle captain. “How much control do we have over our trajectory?”

“Very little,” Zhao said.

“As far as you’re concerned, we’re just a guided meteoroid.”

“Meteor at the moment,” Zhao said. “A meteoroid when we enter the atmosphere.” He smiled, but not happily. “And a meteorite if all that’s left is a smoking hole in the ground.”

“Becoming a kinetic energy weapon—a giant cannonball—is one of the options, correct?” Sanjay said.

“Yes. Worst-case scenario, we simply crash into this Reiver facility at high speed. That ought to wreck it.”

“And us.”

“I did call it a worst case.”

In the event the vesicle survived its landing—or crash—and if Zhao and team were able to operate undetected, other substances could be delivered via data networks. “That covers everything, I think,” Zhao said.

“What’s the primary landing site?”

“Aquatic, coast of California. The vesicle will do its thing”—which meant rotate, absorbing terrestrial material while dispersing water- and aerosol-borne weapons—“and we will signal Rachel and the others and hope they can rendezvous.

“Then, bam!” Zhao clapped his hands. “Weapons launched, Adventure crew rescued, off we go, home to Keanu.” Now he regarded Sanjay. “You knew all this.”

“We have to change it.” So said the voices in his head, quite insistently now.

“To what?” Zhao spoke so loudly that Makali and the others stopped moving.

“To landing as close to the facility as possible, as soon as we can.”

“Exposing ourselves to attack? The Reivers flew a vesicle to Earth twenty years ago. We have to assume they know how to breach or destroy one. Hell, we could probably be destroyed by American missiles if we get pounded often enough! And,” he said, not waiting for Sanjay to continue his argument, “we lose our waterborne weapons and probably the aerosols, too. Why would we march into this war with a third of our army?”

“The mission is changing.”

“I don’t see it.”

“You don’t have my perspective.”

Zhao sneered. “This is your Keanu link talking to you.”

“You don’t believe it? You used to.” Sanjay remembered Zhao’s tales of his encounter with the Architect, his interactions with Zack Stewart and especially the Revenant Yvonne Hall.

“Seeing Dale Scott as a proponent made me reevaluate Keanu’s taste in messengers.”

“Dale Scott is not in contact with Keanu—”

“I rather think he is, insane as that sounds—”

“Not the way I am!” Sanjay said.

“For God’s sake, Zhao!” Makali joined the argument. “Dale Scott never died. Dale Scott never became a Revenant!” She pointed at Sanjay. “This is how Keanu and the Architects communicate with us! Listen to him—or call Jaidev and Harley and have them tell you the same thing.”

Zhao blinked. “You’re right,” he said, his voice notably softer and quieter. “I am forced to admit that the pressure is affecting me.” He was a brilliant and capable man, the most versatile of all the HBs with his skills in manipulating people as well as machinery. But who could function normally when dealing with the fate of the Earth? “What is the new plan?”

Makali and the other four had not resumed their work but rather drifted closer to Zhao and Sanjay. What was being said might mean whether they lived or died.

“We are no longer a weapons platform; we are now a courier ship. The goal is to get me close enough to the Reiver facility, as soon as possible, to contact Rachel and her team directly.”

“We can’t get there in much less than ten hours,” Zhao said. “Maybe we can accelerate and shave an hour or two.”

Sanjay could feel the response that data triggered. Pleasure, but also more urgency. “Do it, then.”

“What’s so important that you have to tell her?”

“Keanu’s systems know what the Reiver facility is—it’s called the Ring—and what it’s for.”

“Which is?”

“To teleport a Reiver army to the Architect home world.”

“You just lost me.”

Sanjay felt a pressure in his skull so intense that he thought he was having a stroke. His vision blurred for a moment, then returned. “You don’t need to understand it. I don’t. But you need to accept it.”

“The Reivers are opening a portal to another planet . . . in another star system? If they could do that, why did they ever bother with Keanu or the vesicle?”

“It’s new technology for them. Untried.”

“So maybe it won’t work.”

“We can’t take that chance.”

“Doesn’t that argue in favor of our original mission?”

Sanjay shook his head. He shared Zhao’s position, but he was no longer speaking entirely for himself. “Even if we successfully launch all our weapons, some Reivers will survive . . . and we will have killed thousands or even millions of human beings.”

Zhao appeared frustrated. “I just don’t see how taking control of the Ring solves the problem of Reivers on Earth. Wouldn’t it be better to blow up the damn thing and kill them all?”

“Keanu has a plan for the Ring.”

“Oh. And the Reivers?”

“Some will be destroyed. But there is a . . . greater need.” Sanjay struggled to articulate the message. The flood of images and data was so intense and so diverse that he couldn’t accept it. “I . . . I’m no longer certain that Keanu wants the Reivers destroyed, if that’s the price.”

Then he vomited, explosively, with all the horrific side effects that meant. “Oh, Jesus,” Makali said.

His discomfort was short-lived. As he accepted water and stopped shaking, he said, “Here’s how we take control, and why.”

As he started speaking, he saw an expression he never thought he would ever see on Zhao Buoming’s face:

Surprise.

And then, something that surely passed for excitement. Then Zhao said, “I hope the entire plan doesn’t rest on us alone.”

Sanjay felt a jolt like a bolt of lightning in his head, and a shiver up his spine, a form of confirmation. “It doesn’t,” he said, both relieved and disappointed. Relieved because it doubled the chances that this crazy idea might work.

Disappointed because it doubled the chances that Keanu would no longer need him, and he would die as quickly as the earlier Revenants.

QUESTION: For Mr. Toutant, what is your role in the Adventure crew?

TOUTANT: Movie star. (laughter)

QUESTION: Seriously.

TOUTANT: Well, I’m not a pilot, I’m not a politician, so (pats his ample stomach) call me ballast.