"The Ku, sir?"

"Where does he stand? What's he doing? He knows me. He knows the Deified. He knows VII Gemina. If he's taken up arms again, he may be the reason we can't extract a reliable version of the past. He may be causing us to collide with realities reshaped to the workings of the Ku mind. The Ku wizard could believe two or three conflicting truths."

Seeker was troubled. That was not good. It made communication more difficult. Jo did not always understand when he was calm.

She was not looking forward to her next assignment. She and AnyKaat were to record the secrets and history of the Godspeakers as they were known to Seeker's people. If Seeker's race was half as old as he claimed, they would be a long time getting a story.

Jo worked with him while WarAvocat and Notable argued softly about something she was too distracted to catch. Once she grasped what Seeker wanted to convey, she had trouble remaining calm herself.

"WarAvocat?"

"Have you got it?"

"He intercepted a message from the Outsider supreme commander to the commander of the ship shadowing us." That ship was sitting out there now, barely off the strand, watching. "Which goes by the name Hunger of the Destroyer."

"That's cheerful."

"Isn't it? The message was a heavyweight commendation for the way Hunger has hung on to us and made us waste time trying to shake or catch him. Also, for doing a good job, teamed with a ship called Edge of Night, of letting a Traveler deliver a partial message before destroying it."

WarAvocat frowned. He glanced at his woman friend. She shrugged. He asked, "Was that rigged?"

Jo shrugged, too. "They were trying to kill me. I wasn't watching to see if they were trying to time it."

"There were Godspeakers on both ships. They could have."

"In which case I'm luckier than I thought."

"What's the rest of it?"

"The end of the message ran, ‘The dragon took the poisoned bait. Now it is too late. Success is assured.' "

WarAvocat grunted as though he had been kicked in the groin.

Strate did not trust his voice not to crack. Aleas asked the question for him. "You're sure the word was dragon?"

"Yes. I triple-checked it."

How long had the Ku belonged to the Outsiders? He had run from Starbase to a station controlled by Godspeakers. An Outsider-operated Traveler, apparently with Godspeaker aboard, delivered him to the Tregesser system M. Shrilica. Maybe he had been using House Tregesser since. Maybe he had been the grand choreographer, not Lupo Provik.

Hell. Maybe it went back further. Maybe the krekelen, the Concord risings, the Outsider on the Cholot Traveler, had been pawns in a grand design to bring VII Gemina and the Ku together....

He shuddered like a wet dog. A man could go goofy worrying about the ever-widening possibilities. That was then and this was now, and the most dangerous mind alive was active again, directing the most powerful war machine ever. There was no time for might-have-beens.

"Colonel, does he know where the supreme commander is now?"

Klass and the Meddinian huddled. WarAvocat cued Gemina to review what it had overheard.

Klass said, "He says the supreme commander is now sending frequent countdowns. If he listens long enough and has access to good charts, he can position the transmission point. He thinks it's on the M. Bullica—M. Tennica strand now, moving toward M. Tennica."

Deep inside Canon, in the region where the Sixth, Second, and Fourth Presidencies converged. From M. Tennica one dramatically elongated strand arrowed to M. Lakica, into the heart of Canon, directly toward S. Alisonica. "It is Capitola Primagenia! Access, Gemina. Is Kez Maefele correct in thinking it's too late for us to take him at S. Alisonica?"

Tension mounted. Gemina took a long time getting the data up on screen.

The air shuddered, cracked. "Yes. Can catch."

Klass fainted.

Aleas screamed.

WarAvocat sat there chewing air like a fish out of water.

Seeker observed, bewildered.

VII Gemina was almost four thousand years old. Never before had that great mind down in the Core, Gemina, spoken to anyone directly. Speech did not come till a Core mind developed an identity and ego and concluded that it was a singular entity with the Guardship itself as flesh. From that leapoff, it was only centuries before it decided it was not a machine but a demigod.

Speech was the first climbing onto the Web of madness. The end of the strand was the hollow, lonely insanity of a IV Trajana or VI Adjutrix.

It was not too late to stop that. If the news did not leave this compartment, did not get discussed, and the Gemina ego did not become alert to its peril, Starbase could rectify the trouble. But would not try, should the ego become integral to the Guardship's functioning.

He would head in to Starbase as soon as they finished the Ku.

WarAvocat regained his composure. He accessed OpsAvocat and ordered a crash run straight through to S. Alisonica. The hell with Tregesser Prime.

— 128 —

The real Cable Shike and the real Tina Bofoku stood hand in hand on the Isle of Ise, watching the nighttime sky. Shike said, "And that's that. Won't any of them have any more use for House Tregesser now that they know only the innocent stayed behind." He laughed and squeezed Tina's hand.

She said, "I hope Lupo hid himself good. They'll never stop looking for him, will they?"

"No. But the universe itself doesn't have enough years left for anybody to find Lupo Provik if he doesn't want to be found. Let's go in. It's getting chilly."

The emperor and empress of House Tregesser went in out of the cold, content, safe from the wrath of the stars.

— 129 —

Turtle's squadron charged in toward M. Tennica anchor point. The lead vessel shot off down the M. Lakica strand, taking up the countdown transmission. Delicate Harmony and the others shot off along the strand to A. Tellurica, where the squadron then scattered. Two ships remained with Delicate Harmony, one running ahead, one behind. Just in case.

Turtle followed the progress of VII Gemina closely. The Guardship was running the most direct strands toward S. Alisonica. But that meant nothing yet. WarAvocat might be pretending. No telling what he would do if he shook Hunger of the Destroyer. Which he might. He was running so hard that even riding the red on the edge of disaster Hunger was falling back. The race might go to whichever ship lasted longest without a malfunction.

Hunger's commander needed not taunt fortune forever. He needed to maintain contact only till pickets spotted the Guardship headed toward an operational region.

Maybe WarAvocat wanted it known he was coming. He had no reason to suspect that countdown was a lie and zero was the time when all opening phases were supposed to be complete.

The days fled. There was little to do but wait and watch and worry about how he would arrange matters so he and the hostages could get out alive.

Delicate Harmony and its companions broke off the Web and began the long starspace crawl to the loose strand connecting Gateway and Starbase, chasing the attack fleet, which had departed its assembly point three days earlier.

VII Gemina was running toward Capitola Primagenia still.

The pieces were falling into place, smoothly and on time.