Kenna had told them, pleased that they were here at this time together, that something interesting was about to occur, and they might like to view it from one of the many balconies. And so they had come outside, watching from mid-way up the titanic, complex palace that their headquarters had become over hundreds of millennia. In the beginning, electro-magnetic distortion fields had hidden the place, but for a long time, according to Kenna, there had been no need to hide.

No explanation embellished that item of information, and Roger and Gavriela knew better than to ask, because there were severe limits on such knowledge as could be taken into the past to their original minds, despite such thoughts being buried beneath layers of amnesia and misdirection, unavailable to their long-dead conscious selves.

They both remembered what Kenna had told Roger a century earlier.

—This is not the first Ragnarok Council.

—If we’re the second, what happened to the others?

—They perished in paradox. I will not allow you to fall that way.

Silver discs were growing on the planet’s surface, thirteen of them fully or partly visible, covering land or sea without distinction, then stabilising as unmoving dots.

Kenna stepped onto the balcony.

—The Diaspora has been a long time coming. Its execution is fast.

Gavriela asked:

—Humanity’s leaving Earth?

—You could say that.

Whatever craft they used would be invisible from here.

—And do Pilots like Roger still exist?

—I dare not learn the answer to that myself.

Roger was about to ask a question concerning the future, but Kenna forestalled him.

—We should wait a century for things to settle. Perhaps two centuries.

—Before doing what?

Starlight reflections painted Kenna’s crystal smile.

—Making Earth ready for the warriors to come. Our very own Einherjar.

They were perfectly adapted to vacuum; yet Roger and Gavriela shivered.

Perhaps a part of them had hoped that Ragnarökkr could yet be avoided.

TWELVE

VIJAYA ORBIT, 2604 AD

Since its construction in the decades following first contact with the Haxigoji, the orbital called Vachss Station had become a floating city, kept in geosynch orbit above Mintberg (once Mint City, its renaming a xenosemantic subtlety), one of the hubs of global Haxigoji culture. Up here in orbit, the architecture was a complex embellishment of the station’s original cage-like design, with polyhedral nodes, some the size of a single cabin, others the size of a thousand-room hotel, linked by giant spars, some of which were important thoroughfares, their corridors busy. Much of it glittered gold, due to the use of an exotic 2-D sulphur allotrope in its construction.

Everyone said the Haxigoji were a fine species, which was an anthropomorphic slant on things: their behaviour paralleled the best of human virtues, even the self-sacrificing pain involved in child-rearing, in the passing-on of knowledge. Only the manner of that sharing disconcerted human observers.

‘I find cannibalism hard to swallow,’ Jed said in Spanalian.

He was in his control cabin, on slow approach to the orbital, its image rendered in sharp-contrast chiaroscuro in the holoramic display. A secondary volume showed Clara’s face, her expression neutral. She was on board the orbital, having made things ready. Waiting for him.

‘Spanalian is not the only human language that talks about digesting knowledge,’ she said. ‘And while Faraday used the concept of “field” as a metaphor to help understand electro-magnetic phenomena, Einstein said that physicists of his day “imbibed the concept with their mother’s milk”, considering fields as real things.’

‘You’re saying Einstein was one of the Haxigoji? Never saw antlers in any of the old holos.’

‘Food absorption, potentiation at the molecular level, and neural connection formation: it’s all biochemistry, and languages reflect that. Metaphor from intuition. The human brain is basically a structured lump of fat.’ Still no trace of a smile. ‘Some more so than others, wouldn’t you say?’

‘I have no idea why I put up with this,’ said Jed.

‘Because you love me.’

He looked at her lean, endurance-athlete features in the holo. Now she was smiling.

‘That must be it, then,’ he said.

‘Good.’ For a second, they stared at each other. ‘All right, we’re ready to receive them both. Check their autodoc status?’

Still lightly conjoined with his ship, Jed knew the answer without checking the tertiary holo floating beside him: like bodily sensations, he felt the signals inside the passenger hold.

‘Check,’ he said. ‘Both passengers fine and healthy, the autodocs say.’

‘Healthy.’

‘Yeah, until they wake up and remember everything.’

‘Shit,’ said Clara.

Never mind all that stuff about fields and metaphors and cannibals, keeping them occupied while the on-station facilities made themselves ready. This was the Clara that Jed had fallen in love with: hard-edged, with the kind of practical compassion only a tough person can possess.

Station management gave Pilots a great deal of leeway – the orbital’s total dependence made that a given – which they usually made little use of; but today, several tunnels were closed ‘for maintenance’ to allow Jed and the two autodocs to pass unhindered, all the way to the on-station Pilots Sanctuary. In comparison to the set-up he had enjoyed on Fulgor, the elegant walled enclosure on the edge of Lucis City, this Sanctuary would be utilitarian, but never mind: this was no holiday.

Jed, along with his colleagues Angus and Al, had destroyed that other Sanctuary’s systems before getting clear of the place when the planet fell, but the superstructure would have remained intact. Now any humans on Fulgor were components of the global gestalt Anomaly. He wondered if they used the buildings, or stood about outdoors in herds, uncaring of physical comfort.

Ants in a group mind. Cells in a body.

The Vachss Station Sanctuary entrance folded inwards, and the two autodocs slid inside, Jed following. As things sealed up behind him, the welcoming committee came forward: Clara, not huggable while working, with her boss Pavel Karelin, plus a hatchet-faced woman unknown to Jed.

‘Dr Sapherson will be on hand as we wake them up,’ said Pavel. ‘Tannier has already been conscious for a period after leaving Molsin, so we’ll do him first.’

‘And the other?’ Jed placed a hand on the autodoc.

‘You talked to Leeja Rigelle, not to mention rescuing her. Perhaps yours should be the first face she sees.’

‘I’d only just said hello when everything went to hell. There’s no actual, er, relationship. Although she was more than friendly with Roger.’

‘Friendliness is good.’ The tiny muscles of Clara’s face moved when she smiled.

‘This Roger—’ began Sapherson.

‘Not available,’ said Pavel.

Clara looked satisfied at the way he cut Sapherson off. No love lost, then.

‘We’ll tell Leeja Rigelle, when she wakes up,’ said Clara, ‘that Roger sent his love. Wishes he could be here, sort of thing.’

Sapherson said, ‘Why reassure her? The more off-balance she is, the easier she’ll be to question.’

‘She’s not a prisoner,’ said Pavel.

Clara stared at Sapherson with loathing.

‘I’ll make myself scarce,’ said Jed. ‘Just in case some of that classified stuff comes up, things I’m not meant to know.’

‘Yeah,’ said Clara, still focused on Sapherson. ‘That might be best. When people learn a little too much, it doesn’t always turn out well.’

Sapherson looked away.

I am so not going to ask.

Jed headed for an inner doorway, hoping that the on-board systems could produce a decent cup of daistral.