It was always wise to be careful around him.

FORTY

COOLTH, 2606 AD

Jed Goran had never wanted to be a spy – or even a spy’s husband, more to the point – but Labyrinth had enemies and backing down from a fight had never been Jed’s way. Yet there was bravery and there was foolish unpreparedness, so as his bronze ship orbited Coolth he minimised the external-view holorama and reviewed the briefing holos.

So, Coolth.

Ice locked continents; oceans where schools of huge balaenae swam, singing songs of epic learning and grandeur, where once every Coolth year, each herd, some two thousand strong, would gather around their vast matriarch whose skin nodules would begin to pulse and finally burst open, tiny forms streaking upward to the surface and up into the sky, for the nymph form soared like birds, a lifecycle discovered by an early explorer called Rekka Chandri, the events of her real life distorted by the popularity of a twenty-fifth century holodrama series called Chandri, Space Explorer, which created an extended and improbable mythology of its own, in which Pilots were always mysterious and undefeated in space or hand-to-hand combat.

‘True enough,’ said Jed aloud, and grinned.

And what about Pilots’ ships, in the stories?

He slipped lightly into trance.

They were clueless about you, my love. And about Labyrinth’s existence.

Just as well, perhaps.

Jed returned his focus to the briefing material.

*

An hour later, they soared in to land next to Barbourville, an extended series of domes, some large enough to house potentially a thousand people – even though the entire station’s complement was no more than eight hundred – sitting securely on the icescape. It was historical coincidence that this, Coolth’s largest research station, bore the same name as one of Molsin’s former sky-cities that had perished in what people were calling the Conjunction Catastrophe – except that their understanding of what that meant was about to change.

Clara, white faced, had shared news with Jed before he left Labyrinth, information that was yet to spread among the realspace worlds: Molsin had fallen prey to the Anomaly, and final intelligence reports – before surveillance devices stopped functioning and Pilot ships in orbit transited to mu-space before the Anomaly could subsume them – showed the baby sky-cities reaching out to the wreckage of the true cities, such remains as still floated in Molsin’s orange skies, and joining quickglass to quickglass, forming one great floating structure that looked to be extending horizontally, perhaps eventually to cover the entire world like a spherical webbed shell.

And there were hints that it was already lowering tendrils to the hydrofluoric acid oceans below, though for what purpose, no analysts were willing to say for sure. What was clear was that Anomalous components like Rick Mbuli – killed fortuitously by Jed, over and over in his dreams and in waking flashes – had succeeded in carrying out the act that Petra Helsen had only faked, in order to get the sky-cities firing on each other out of panic: carrying out the absorption of individual human beings into one giant planetary gestalt, either part of or identical in nature to the original.

Fulgor, Siganth and now Molsin were lost.

This is Coolth and we need to concentrate.

You are so right, my love.

Ice felt cold on their ventral hull as they landed, then Jed and ship slipped apart, their minds disengaging, so the ship could create an opening to the control cabin and use a slender tendril to carry Jed out and lower him to the chilly ground. He blew her a kiss, breath steaming, then trudged across hard-packed snow to the nearest entrance.

His ship watched until he was safely inside, then she ascended, keeping her attitude horizontal, and took up a floating position a kilometre above Barbourville, ready to act should Jed need her, trying not to worry but unable to help it because this kind of operation was new to both of them, and risky enough for those with experience, never mind first-timers.

Once indoors, the smartgel that had coated his lungs began to crawl up into his mouth, and by the time he walked into a grey-decorated concourse, he was able to spit the stuff out as a blue glob, and push it into a small pocket that formed in his jumpsuit for the purpose. His eyes were their natural obsidian with no need for disguise, as he passed research workers who gave small nods and grew quiet until he was past, a reminder that the mythology of centuries-old holodramas remained strong among most of humanity, arguably with good reason.

Ferl Corplane’s office was in a section dominated by shiny white ceramic with silver edging, which seemed an unnecessary echo of the icescape and freezing oceans outside. But that was true throughout the building: the floors were stacked like decks in a submarine or sky vessel, with armoured hatches everywhere, all of it hard-looking, devoid of luxury.

Perhaps sheer depression had motivated Corplane to pick up extra money by selling shipment details to Zajinet agents – if not to Zajinets directly – with no thought to the lives of Pilots and passengers who might be killed in stealth raids or ambushes, or the subsequent suffering of colonists unable to receive supplies which in some cases were necessary simply to live.

‘I’m Jed Goran.’

‘Corplane.’ In flat near-monotone: ‘Happy to meet you, Pilot.’

He was shaven headed with implant loops curled around his neck. Jed had met members of the Corpuscular Plasmonad before, although he never entirely understood their philosophical views relating humanity’s destiny to homeostasis and apoptosis, the desirability of self-immolation for the sake of the status quo. Those people, he had found unexpectedly good-humoured. Corplane, however, was blank-faced, almost without emotional affect.

Sending you down will be a pleasure, you sour faced bastard.

No doubt a professional would be more even-tempered, but Jed felt anger rising on behalf of the dead, and had consciously to control his breathing, calming down to get on with the job.

‘Here are our shipment requirements,’ Corplane went on. ‘Some of the required delivery dates are quite tight.’

There were no seats or desks in the office, only work-shelves against the walls. That at least was contemporary, as men and women across the realspace worlds were finally throwing off habits from the sedentary centuries that had had such a deleterious effect on mind body health. Jed approved, but Corplane was still the enemy.

A sheaf of holos blossomed in the centre of the room.

‘Let’s see how well we can match up,’ said Jed. ‘You understand that availability and pricing are determined by technical constraints as well as logistics.’

The secrets of mu-space navigation were not to be shared, but it was occasionally necessary to point out the difficulty or impossibility of a would-be client’s request, for example a foray to the galactic core – where the corresponding mu-space region was a turbulent spacetime typhoon – or some mad request such as a voyage to Andromeda, not understanding that other galaxies remained out of reach, if not as unthinkably so as in realspace.

Jed’s tu-ring generated branching possibilities, rendered as golden holo streams that fitted in among the sheaf projected by Corplane, and negotiating modules in the displayware found best fits and highlighted them for approval.

There were two main sets of proposal capable of matching the requirements, and after an emotionless inspection, Corplane pointed to one of them. The corresponding holo elements gleamed.

‘Done,’ said Jed.

The legal notarising took femtoseconds. Holos winked out of existence, leaving only Corplane and Jed standing in the office. Without even a nod, Corplane turned his back on Jed, and gestured to begin working with a his-eyes-only holo.