They had forged unity and peace, in full view of a blatant symbol showing how important and how fragile such concepts remained.

The event horizon that enclosed Schenck and his renegade armada.

Each of the thousand new city-worlds was magnificent, infinite in her complexity, able to steal as much time as required to grow and get ready . . . to become strong. Each honoured their mother, each loved the inherited memory of her, the first Labyrinth; and each knew well the circumstances that had forced her to produce another generation, and in the process, die.

Spacetime rippled.

**It’s starting.**

Signals flitted among Pilots, but the daughter-Labyrinths had no need of comms. They knew what was about to happen.

The event horizon around the renegade armada and the graveyard ships, along with Roger-and-ship frozen in the instance of their death, collapsed, revealing the ships within. There was no hesitation as, in their wrath and sorrow, the thousand new Labyrinths poured their infinitesimal-point energies upon the captive ships, obliterating spacetime within that horizon.

It blazed, so that even the shining golden void appeared momentarily in shadow.

Then they were gone, the millennium-old enemy, along with the selfless allies who had trapped them, held them in place for the kill.

Victory.

Almost a billion Pilots and ships took part in the remembrance ceremony that followed; and when it was done, they convened among their new homes, their extended realm of a thousand Labyrinths that in future would grow even greater. As the region of mu-space in which they dwelled was now vast, they recognised it was time to choose a name for their realm: a name for the ages, if not for ever.

They chose to call it Ásgarth.

SIXTY

NULAPEIRON ORBIT, 2201 AD

In realspace orbit around the cloud-creamy world, Amber Hawke’s ship drifted. Rekka was in the control cabin with her, some twenty minutes out of delta-coma. They were drinking fragrant tea, taking time over their farewells.

‘Things are coming to a head in UNSA,’ Rekka told her oldest surviving friend. ‘Too much, too soon, your people are asking for.’

‘Maybe,’ said Amber.

Her eye sockets looked scratched around the edges, but the metal was bright as ever across the contact surfaces where the cables plugged in.

‘Jared’s generation might be the last to take ships for granted.’ To Rekka, this was the urgent point. ‘I know they can survive here in realspace, but to be without ships . . .’

‘You mean’ – Amber tapped a fingernail against one of her eye sockets – I/O sockets – in a gesture that Simon, blast his memory, used to describe as scrotum-tightening – ‘they didn’t sacrifice their sight for the organisation.’

They were two old women, looking back across the years; and although both had taken time-dilated journeys, they were not that much younger than they would have been on Earth: Rekka herself was born seventy-eight years earlier, five years before the height of the Changeling Plague, eight years before her adoptive parents rescued her from the Suttee Pavilion.

‘If mu-space is as wonderful as you say, as you’ve always said,’ Rekka told Amber now, ‘then you can’t deny it to the next generation.’

‘Because we need UNSA to build ships.’

‘Well, of course you do . . . er, not. Oh, Amber!’ Rekka found herself grinning. ‘You haven’t, have you? Found a way to—?’

‘If we had,’ said Amber, smiling, ‘we wouldn’t be able to tell anyone, would we? Not even old friends.’

‘No. No, you probably wouldn’t.’

Rekka sipped from her tea, closed her eyes, exhaled.

Good for you.

As for herself, today was surely the beginning of her last big adventure. Relocation at UNSA’s expense was a benefit that few people in her position would have taken, preferring the cash option to add to their pension at home.

That Jared had turned out bad, or at least estranged from both Amber and Rekka, was a festering memory that lay between them, not to be discussed today. For herself, Rekka had occasionally wondered whether the boy would have turned out a better man had he gone to Zurich, when Karyn McNamara still ran the place.

Nowadays only the grandson, Kian, remained alive, as far as anyone knew. He was married to an acerbic American scientist, and had consistently refused plastic surgery, preferring to wear his injuries as a reminder of the way that fear and ignorance produce intolerance.

‘I could still take you back.’ Amber’s voice pulled Rekka into the present. ‘And hang the schedule.’

‘That kind of thing can get you in trouble.’

‘Like I should care, at my age.’

Rekka squeezed Amber’s hand. ‘I’m where I need to be. Nulapeiron. The world with no borders. It’s a good name.’

‘Also ironic, given how they plan to live.’ Amber hesitated. ‘I have a contact for you. Someone who’s ex-AAC. She’ll give you a consulting job if you want it.’

‘XAAC? I’ve never heard of it.’

‘I mean she used to be with the Altair Adventurers’ Combine, the neurocomp division, before they relocated to Fulgor and called themselves LuxPrime.’

All these new colony worlds. It was hard to keep track of them.

‘Her name’s Claudette d’Ovraison,’ Amber went on, ‘and she’s working on a concept called logotropes, which should be right up the alley of a smart person who can make an autofact sit up and beg, never mind force-evolving new proteins on a whim.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Rekka, ‘that smart person got replaced with a tired old woman who falls asleep easily. But I’ll talk to this Claudette.’

Rekka was going to Nulapeiron to live out her remaining days – and that did mean living, not slowly dying. A challenging job, no matter how little she might contribute in the end, was exactly what she needed.

‘She lives on one of those floating terraformer spheres,’ said Amber. ‘Could probably make room for you to stay on one, if you’ve problems finding a place to live.’

‘I’d rather take my chances living below ground,’ said Rekka. ‘But it’s nice to have another option.’

‘So. Good.’ Amber reached out to the side, and a narrow robot arm delivered a package to her hand: a slim box the length of a person’s forearm. Amber held it out and said: ‘A present for my sister.’

No court would recognise the relationship, but they were sisters: the last two members of the de facto family they had chosen.

‘Shall I unwrap it?’

‘If you like. I inherited the thing when Aunt Adele died. I’d rather you owned it, you and not a museum.’

‘Er . . . Amber! Is this some kind of replica? Because if it isn’t, it’s far too valuable.’

It was in the shape of a spearhead, but formed of crystal.

‘Heirlooms should be kept in the family, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, Amber.’

They hugged then, the gift forgotten amid the greater significance of the moment.

*

An hour later, in the cargo hold, they embraced for the last time. Then Rekka stepped into the drop-shuttle that already contained her belongings, everything she needed to begin her new life on a new world, settled back in the tiny cockpit that flowed shut and vitrified into solidity.

She glanced back at Amber standing there with her blind silver eyes, then felt the sudden jerk and the stomach-dropping freefall that followed as her drop-bug took her out into space. It headed down towards the cloud-filled atmosphere, below which a nascent, perhaps superior, civilisation was being brought into existence.

As on the day she learned of Simon and Mary’s betrayal, and later when Jared was orphaned, with Amber unable to cry for the lack of tear-ducts, Rekka bit her lip and wept enough for both of them.

But when she reached the surface, her crying stopped. She would not feel so deeply, had there not been love in her life. That being so, what was there to be sad about?