More turmoil in Rekka’s head: she had come to rescue Jared only to find him unlikeable at best; and now it seemed the Haxigoji were scared, of Jared or something more.

‘I don’t understand, Bittersweet.’

The reply stopped Rekka’s heart for a moment.

‘Do you not smell the darkness, Rekka Chandri?’

They finally said farewell in a calm, regretful fashion, after Bittersweet had detailed terms which Rekka knew that UNSA would have to agree with: Vachss Station alone to be where humans were based, with no more of the constant traffic between surface and orbital. Human individuals were to be allowed down to the surface only on occasion, after they had been vetted in advance, right here, by Haxigoji officials. The numbers of Haxigoji living on Vachss Station would diminish; and while they were here, they would live in separate quarters, capable of being isolated from the rest of the station, and equipped with drop-bugs that would allow them to evacuate and descend safely to Vijaya’s surface in case of emergency.

No definition of a likely emergency was ever spelt out.

As for Jared Schenck, the Haxigoji wanted him off the station as soon as possible, with no word said about punishment. Rekka felt they needed him to be far away, and that was enough; of course she agreed.

Finally Bittersweet’s double-thumbed hand grasped Rekka’s shoulder.

‘We will not meet again, I think.’

‘No . . .’ Rekka blinked. ‘I need to say . . . about Sharp.’

The grip, which could have crushed her shoulder, tightened just a fraction.

‘What about my brother?’

Rekka sniffed.

‘I loved him,’ she said. ‘I’ve never met anyone as brave.’

‘Neither have I, dear Rekka.’ Bittersweet’s alien eyes softened. ‘Neither have I.’

She bowed and walked away.

THIRTY-SIX

NULAPEIRON, 2713-2721 AD

At one point early in the extended process of self-transformation, something happened to give Kenna pause. Inside the Oraculum, where Lord Alvix’s proto-Oracles, still children, lay dreamily on couches and occasionally muttered fragments relating to future perceptions, the one called Mandia turned her head to stare at the wall – right where Kenna’s main sensors were hidden – and focused her eyes to an unusual extent.

‘Liquid. Crystal. Moving,’ she said, then turned her head away.

Her shoulders slumped into normal listlessness.

No. This tells me nothing new.

In particular, it did not guarantee Kenna’s success.

As for the alpha-class servitors who tended the poor, damaged children, they were unlikely to make anything of those words, for Kenna had hidden her project nicely. And of course the original crystal spearhead was long gone, no doubt in Labyrinth now. She wondered what the Admiralty analysts were making of it; but she had her own concerns, and in truth, she was neither Pilot nor ordinary human these days. She was a cyborg on the threshold of becoming something else.

Except that the transition took another eight years of preparation, by which time Mandia had become a young woman, or nearly so, and her Oracular perceptions had diminished as the rest of her brain rewired itself defensively: a process the researchers had allowed to continue, because it allowed them to analyse the warning signs of such reversal, and the complex neurochemical changes they would need to prevent in order to create true Oracles.

To Kenna, it implied that Mandia, unlike her fellow pro-to-Oracles whose health was dreadful and worsening, might some day be able to take care of herself, living a reasonably independent life, provided her environment was not overly challenging.

Kenna’s timetable matched the weightiness of her intent: to get everything right, she expected another five years of work, and would be happy if it was longer. No sense of hurry infected her work, until one Shyedemday in the month of Jyueech, when her most distant sensors perceived alarm signals at the Palace perimeter, along with the tang of burnt flesh, before coherent graser beams tore through her furthest components and all sensation there was lost.

Palace Avernon was under attack.

My fault, Alvix.

Her Liege Lord – except that she had never sworn legal fealty, neither to him nor his forebears, not even the Duke – had made enemies, by virtue of his experimental Oraculum, and the potential wealth and political threat it represented. She should have been more forceful in telling him to form strong alliances, or else in strengthening his demesne’s defences. Even now she could sense Palace guards, attempting to rush to the attack location, being blocked by quickstone walls flowing across corridors and hardening in place, resistant even to grasers: the result of sophisticated sabotage, subverting the Palace itself.

She had done the same, of course, for very different purposes.

I’m years from being ready.

But she was even less prepared to die, and if the Palace was being attacked with subversive femtovectors, she had to trigger the transfer now, before her distributed self could be caught up in the sabotageware attack, and her mind was rewritten. That could not be allowed.

So it happens today.

Quickstone under her control melted away, forming access tunnels to a hidden chamber where her masterpiece lay on a couch formed of steel and platinum: a body of living crystal, grown and adapted from a tiny fragment of that ancient crystal spearhead, linked by a thousand crystal fibres to her cyborg nervous system, embedded in the Palace walls.

Some fibres ran all the way to her pseudo-face and other components splayed against the side of Alvix’s main laboratory chamber, where he had been working but had now vacated – her optical surveillance sensors told her in the seconds before she shut them down for ever – and was now running towards the Great Hall, calling for Lady Suzanne.

Conscious of her face on that laboratory wall, she closed her eyes for the final time, and felt her sensations withdraw as she triggered the process now.

System.getController(  ).getTransform(Project.Metamorph).initialize( )

Every part of her seemed to shudder, though she had no proprioceptive or autokinetic senses in her current form, the distributed body she was about to leave.

And she wanted to scream but her output channels were already disconnected; and then it began.

Transfer.

Afterwards, it was like remembering dying – again – with every separate thread and shard of cognition accompanied by howling, burning pain. Cascades of processes split apart, rushed headlong to their new receptacles, and came crashing together in a torrent of new computation, far closer to death than birth because a baby during expulsion from the womb is yet to have a mind, while she destroyed – had to destroy – every part of her complex, long-lived self in order to survive.

The ceiling was above/before her when she opened her eyes.

I will have to move.

This was supposed to have been years in duration, the process of learning to move once more, the gradual sharing of thoughts between her Palace embedded self and this new – glorious! – form. But her old self was gone.

Really move, because they can kill me now.

She looked like nothing anyone would recognise. Any Palace guard or member of the attacking forces would trigger their weapons at the sight of her, and at this stage she was not even sure that she could walk, let alone run or fight.

The transformation, performed this way instead of to plan, had left her vulnerable. A baby without care will not survive; but she had to survive, because she was needed, and if she could not get through one armed attack, what use would she be in the great confrontation to come?

She wondered if Alvix was calling her, if he had time to be shocked or feel regret at her old self’s death, or whether he was wrapped up in thoughts of his own and Lady Suzanne’s survival. That probably depended on the attack force’s orders: if their objective was to steal the contents of the Oraculum and get away, that would bode better than if they intended to secure the Palace while an occupation force made its way here, and then took over.