— 52 —

Turtle established them in an empty office overlooking that cavernous birth canal where new Guardships came to life. For him the location was no better than any other. But it pleased Midnight. She could launch herself on fanciful acrobatic flights in the inconsequential gravity of the construction channel. Her wings had gained color and luster.

For six days Turtle worked himself to exhaustion. If Starbase had secrets it wanted kept, he could not detect the blocks locking him out. If there were living beings anywhere, he could not track them down. He could locate none of the Deified supposed to haunt the system. There seemed to be no omniscient observer as there was aboard VII Gemina.

He could find no evidence Starbase was anything but what it appeared, a half-forgotten fortress where no one had remembered to shut the gate and the garrison were dozing at their posts. The neglect of absolute assurance.

No defenses were active.

Turtle could not focus on the monitor. He went to watch Midnight's ballet. "Castle Dreaming," he murmured, recalling a myth as Midnight looped. A fortress dire and invincible, defended by unkillable demons with claws of steel and fangs of diamond. But Tae Kyodo had entered unchallenged and had walked out with the Bowl of Truth because the demons were taking a siesta, confident their reputation would keep the bad guys away.

Up the cavern the automated factory went to work. Sparks flew. Midnight glided down. "That was beautiful," he said.

"It's easy where there's so little gravity. Did you find a way?"

"It's so easy it's pathetic. We just get on one of the shuttle ships. The Deified operating them aren't interested in what happens inside them. But once we reach the Barbican, we'll have problems. We'll have to change ships. And they will be alert for people who do not belong."

"I'm going to check on Amber Soul."

"All right." Turtle stared at nothing. Somewhere along his life path he had lost the fervor that had driven him in the days of the Dire Radiant.

All those years slinking through the shadows, peeking through the cracks, educating and arming himself against his next bout with the necromancers, and now his inclination was to lay his sword aside and declare peace on the Guardships. Revolutionary change would deliver Canon into the jaws of predators.

There was an evolutionary thing happening, and he'd just begun to recognize it—though he had listed symptoms for WarAvocat.

Canon grew as inexorably as a black hole. Growth would not stop while there were Guardships and Outsiders to offend them.

Give them that. The conquerers never struck first.

Within the ever-advancing Rims a vacuum was developing, consequent to human depopulation. The race was old and, maybe, beginning to fade from the stage of the Web.

The vacuum was pulling nonhumans off the worlds where they sulked, to fill empty shoes. Almost by capillary action, some were oozing upward into the hierarchies. This great empire, Canon, might be theirs to inherit. Ten thousand years hence, Canon law and the Guardships might be the only evidence of the human race's passing.

Circumstances argued that the greatest good for the greatest number sprang from the status quo.

How to get out? Just the one way. Stealth. Going without being seen, without leaving a spoor. But the Barbican stood athwart his path like a wall a thousand kilometers long and five hundred high.

"Turtle!" Midnight squealed. "Come here! She's waking up! For real this time."

He hurried into the office.

— 53 —

Blessed Tregesser paused before leaving the cozy Voyager for the uncertainties dockside. M. Shrilica 3A. Not exactly the hub of the Tregesser empire. A financial loser. The in-system station, 3B, unaffected by Canon regulations, was almost completely shut down.

The world, too, was a source of negative profits. To recommend it, it had nothing but its value as a place to dump exiles.

Rash Norym, whose governorship he would usurp, looked like a woman who had received an unconditional pardon. She waited dockside with the Station Master and a platoon of functionaries who looked like they were doing life without parole.

"If we're going to do it, let's get it done." Blessed started walking. Nyo and Tina Bofoku and Cable Shike followed, willing companions in exile.

Shike was twenty-two. He came out of the darkest dark of the Black Ring. His eyes were the eyes of an old man who had seen all the evils that men do. Blessed hoped to make Shike his own Lupo Provik. Cable aspired to the role.

Blessed stopped in front of Norym, took her hand in his. "Don't question your good fortune. Make use of the opportunity. I'll do the same here." She seemed pained because her escape would be at the expense of another. "Nyo. The envelope."

Nyo handed it to Norym. "Transfer, travel authorization, whatnot."

She opened it. She read. "Tregesser Horata? The Pylon?"

"I pulled a string. It would be nice to have a friend inside. Somebody who would send the occasional letter telling me the latest gossip."

Her face closed down. She knew there would be more to it. A time would come when a major payback would be demanded. "I understand. Thank you."

"Good. The Voyager is waiting. Go when you like. I'll need to meet with your managers to see if we can't turn this operation around."

Rash Norym looked at him hard, a seventeen-year-old talking about turning around the worst loser in the Tregesser empire. "Lots of luck."

"We studied it coming out. Cable thinks he sees a way to cut our losses."

Norym glanced at Shike. "Like I said, good luck. I'll write when I'm settled." She was amused. But there was no humor in her companions. They had heard the deadly edge in Blessed's voice.

— 54 —

Valerena stood staring through double armor glass into the high noon gloom of a mild and sunny day on C. Pwellia 2, a world in its toddler stage. It was so active tectonically nothing dared be built upon its surface. Everyone lived aboard the same airborne prison, a feeble giant of an imitation starship that could not rise above fifteen thousand meters with prayer boosting it.

"Tregesser Tzeged," she muttered. "Armpit of the universe."

C. Pwellia 2 boasted a crop of volcanos so vigorous the planet seemed to simmer. Its surface was a treacherous scum that could break up or turn over any moment. Sometimes the activity exposed concentrations of rare elements worth harvesting.

It was a low-budget operation, marginally profitable, kept in place by the Tregesser need to possess. If House Tregesser pulled out, some other House might move in.

Valerena wondered if the seeds of disaster might not lurk inside that attitude. If you were too stubborn about holding on you might not recognize when getting out was your only viable option.

She had brought a retinue of a hundred to this hellhole, where it rained only at stratospheric altitudes, and that a deadly corrosive rain. Her retainers were there behind her. She turned. "They sent us to Hell on a pretext. Let's shove it down their throats."