Текст книги "The Abyss Beyond Dreams"

Автор книги: Peter F. Hamilton

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Текущая страница: 31 (всего у книги 44 страниц)

‘So what was it like?’ Jymoar asked.

‘Bad. Remind me to believe you next time.’

‘Next—’ He gave her an appalled look, which made her smirk. For all he’d travelled a lot more than her on boats up and down the Mozal, he was the naive one.

Kysandra walked round the wheelhouse where she was hidden from the shore and the rapt crowd gathered around Nigel – who was still playing them. She cast a mild fuzz and started to undo the buttons on her blouse.

‘Uh!’ Jymoar grunted. He gave an anxious look round, but he was the only one who could see her.

She kicked the boots off and slipped her skirt down. ‘I need this very badly.’ She plonked her hat down on his head in a quick playful motion. ‘You going to join me?’ she asked as she slithered quickly out of her grimy underwear, then jumped straight into the river.

The water was cold and delicious. There had been times, back in the desert, when she’d doubted it ever existed, that water was just some figment of her sun-punished brain. She stayed under for a long moment, feeling the dirt start to flake off. Her hair began to move again, long strands sloughing about languidly in the current. She kicked hard and broke surface. Just in time to see a naked Jymoar leaping off the gunnel.

He swam over to her as she luxuriated in the clean flow of water. ‘What did you find out there?’ he asked timidly.

‘Death. Death and suffering on a scale that really could drive you mad. But, strangely, in the end, it helped me.’

His open features produced a sorrowful frown. ‘How?’

‘I grew up a bit out there. I think. I know now that I’m not going to live a normal life, Jymoar. And I think what I saw, what I discovered about this world, made me come to terms with that. I know not to waste this life I have. I know so many things are petty and stupid, and that you should grab happiness when you can, for you never know what this universe is going to throw at you. I want to celebrate those moments of happiness. I need to be happy after the desert.’ She put her arms on top of his shoulders and twined her fingers through the thick dark hair at the back of his head. Looking unflinchingly into his eyes as she let a lot of her shell drop. Waiting . . .

Jymoar pulled her to him and kissed her. They sank below the surface, then bobbed up together, spluttering and laughing in delight.

*

From Croixtown, it took them just two and a half weeks to reach Blair Farm. Kysandra was disappointed at how fast the Gothora made the trip back to Portlynn, but with the relentless current pushing them along as well as the ship’s steam engine labouring away, they made it downstream in five days. Nigel had sold their animals to one of the rancheros in Croixtown (at a loss), which left the forward cargo hold empty. They altered its bamboo frame and canvas so it was more like a tent, where she and Jymoar spent most of the trip locked together in sweaty carnal bliss.

Kysandra was worried that, when it was over, she’d be unable to say goodbye. But when they did tie up at a jetty on the west shore of Nilsson Sound, just below the railway station, she just cried a lot and wrapped her arms round him for a long hug. They both promised to write all the time and made elaborate plans and promises for her to visit next year.

It was a lovely fib to end it on. As she walked beside Nigel along the platform to the first-class carriages of the Varlan express, her eyes were still damp. She expected a lot of teasing from Nigel, but there was none. He was supportive and sympathetic, treating her like an equal. Like he always does, actually, she realized. Understanding that was probably the best conclusion the trip could possibly have.

It took the Skylady’s smartcore four days to read all the data from the assortment of damaged electronics they’d brought back. Then it spent another two days piecing together coherent sequences from dozens of broken files.

‘Are you ready for this?’ Nigel asked as he came back to the farmhouse carrying a module with the newly transcribed master file in a simple old-fashioned Total Sensory Immersion format, covering a time period lasting twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes.

Kysandra was about to give him a boisterous: ‘’Course I am,’ but his pensive expression made her hesitate. ‘How bad is it?’

‘It explains what happened. And from a historical perspective, it’s fascinating. You’ll actually get to see Captain Cornelius. But I have to warn you, it’s not pretty.’

‘Worse than the Desert of Bone?’

‘The scale isn’t quite the same.’

‘I’d like to see it. No. Actually, I have to see it. You know that.’

‘Yes. I know.’

She settled back in the front room’s deep settee and told her u-shadow to access the file. Her nerves tingled, as if someone had stroked a feather over all of her skin at once. Exovision produced a blurred full-colour optical image. And she looked out of Laura Brandt’s eyes as the tank yank pulled her roughly back to consciousness.

7

Months of preparation, months of watching and the interminable waiting had finally paid off. They’d intercepted the eggs. Then along came the regiment squad and almost wrecked everything. Kysandra stood on the prow of the steam-powered cargo barge as it backed away from the wanno trees lining the riverbank. Directly ahead of her, clustered in a gap between the trees’ big weeping boughs, the idiot one-armed lieutenant and his troops watched as the pistons below deck chugged loudly, taking them away from the temporary mooring and out into the broad channel of fast-flowing water.

‘Wave. Smile. Be happy,’ Nigel said as he stood beside her. He raised his own arm solemnly.

Across the muddy water, Lieutenant Slvasta responded with a fast, precise gesture – half-wave, half-salute.

Kysandra held back from giving him a mildly obscene gesture and waved her hand without any enthusiasm. ‘Wow, I’m amazed we’ve not been completely overrun by Fallers if that’s what passes for officer material these days.’

‘I don’t think you’ll find a more devoted officer, frankly,’ Nigel said. ‘He’s certainly dedicated to exterminating Fallers. And he knows something’s not quite right about us.’

‘But lacks the courage to do anything about it.’

‘That’s not lack of courage. You’re talking about someone who escaped being eggsumed. I’ve never heard of anyone being saved before.’

‘Captain Xaxon’s granddaughter,’ she said automatically as they turned from the lieutenant and made their way back to the mid cabin.

‘Who?’

‘Big part of Mrs Brewster’s history lessons. I’ll tell you about it one day. But for anyone in the regiment to succumb to a lure is just pathetic.’

Nigel sighed. ‘You’re becoming very judgemental these days.’

‘Can’t think why.’

The barge reached the middle of the river and turned downstream. The pistons reversed amid a loud clattering and began to power the boat forwards. They soon rounded a curve, taking them out of sight of Lieutenant Slvasta and his troops.

‘You were getting very friendly with him,’ she accused. ‘I thought you were prepping him for domination.’

‘Just planting a few seeds of doubt, that’s all. The good lieutenant is seething with righteous indignation at the way things are. That’s always to be encouraged.’

Kysandra glanced at the thumb which Slvasta had cut, frowning in disapproval. ‘I’m going to get some antiseptic on this. We all should before we die of blood poisoning from your righteous friend’s paranoia.’

‘He’s a good man in a bad world. You never know when you might need someone like that.’

‘He’s a loser.’ She gave Nigel a jubilant grin. ‘Forget him. Come on, we actually did it!’

Nigel nodded thoughtfully before breaking into a wide smile. ‘We did, didn’t we?’

Two hours later they caught up with the third steam barge, the Mellanie. ‘Old girlfriend?’ Kysandra had baited when Nigel renamed the boat after it had undergone a fortnight’s refit in Adeone’s largest boatyard. Ma had been slowly squeezing the owner out over the past two years – a position Nigel had subsequently regularized to become a sleeping partner.

‘Someone I underestimated once,’ he said with a certain distant gaze. ‘Don’t worry; it doesn’t happen often.’

In the Mellanie’s wheelhouse, Fergus reduced speed so they could come alongside. Kysandra followed Nigel, hopping over the narrow gap while the two barges chugged along steadily. Russell and his team were quite content to stay on their barge, looking after the horses.

Ma Ulvon was waiting for them on deck, dressed in a tailored grey suit under a black longcoat that was still damp from the rain. A pump-action shotgun was slung across her chest on a polished leather strap. ‘Any problems?’ she asked.

‘He knew something was wrong,’ Nigel said. ‘But we didn’t give him a chance to work out what.’

‘So my boys behaved themselves?’ The men in her old organization, who were now under Nigel’s domination, respected and obeyed him eagerly, but they still feared Ma.

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ she said in satisfaction.

Even now, over a year since Nigel had arrived, Kysandra couldn’t quite get used to Ma like this. Nigel or an ANAdroid refreshed the domination every few months, but even so there was a background worry that Ma would one day break free. Kysandra studiously avoided eye contact as she walked past.

Nigel climbed through the deck hatch to the forward hold. Kysandra went down the ladder after him. Mellanie’s refit had seen the big deck loading doors elevated until the forward hold was just over four metres high – easily large enough to install the two circular cast-iron cages it now contained.

Yalseed oil lamps fixed high up on the hull walls shone a bright yellow light across the hold. Demitri was waiting for them at the bottom of the ladder, creating a fuzz so strong it was like passing through a curtain of cold mist. Even standing on deck Kysandra hadn’t been able to perceive what the Mellanie was carrying.

Now, standing in the hold, she gazed in trepidation at the two dark Faller eggs in their cages. It had taken them nearly a day to drag those precious, deadly eggs through the violet bamboo on their stone sledges. Even after all that exposure, she still couldn’t get over her fear at being so close to the implacable threat to her whole world. The lure was drawing her in; she wanted to rush to the front of the boat where Jymoar was waiting for her as usual, to tremble in delight at her lover’s touch. When she breathed in, she could even smell him. So close.

‘Don’t,’ Nigel said sharply.

Kysandra opened her eyes to realize she had taken a couple of paces towards the first cage. There was no Jymoar, no promise of satisfaction. She was immediately furious with herself for allowing the egg lure to ensnare her, and glared at the dark malign shape. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, red faced.

‘It can get to you if you’re not careful,’ Demitri said sympathetically. Of all the ANAdroids, he was the most sensitive and compassionate, almost as if he wasn’t really cut out for this kind of work.

‘So what have we got?’ Nigel asked, prowling round the cage as if he was studying a wild beast. ‘Is there a brain in there?’

‘It’s fuzzed itself effectively,’ Demitri said, ‘so there are obviously some kind of thought processes occurring inside. But here’s the interesting thing: the ultrasound can cut clean through it.’ He pointed at the small electronic sensors stuck to the egg. ‘There’s no solid cell structure inside. The cells are all suspended in the yolk fluid, and evenly distributed. Just as the institute’s papers claimed.’

They’d spent a couple of months scanning in all the research papers Coulan had sent them from the Varlan university library, where he’d established himself as just another unobtrusive student. For a century after the Vermillion landed, the scientists who’d been on board had studied the eggs, discovering very little as their equipment slowly failed around them. They didn’t understand the method of absorption/duplication, suspecting a mechanism whose principles were similar to human biononic organelles – but the Faller system worked while the human one failed miserably in the Void. They’d also been unable to establish communication with the controlling intelligence residing in the egg.

‘So it’s a homogenized distribution,’ Nigel said. ‘Interesting. That suggests an artificial construct to me.’

‘You mean the Fallers were made by someone?’ Kysandra asked.

‘Yes. But I’m more interested in why. I’m thinking some kind of weapon.’

‘Against who?’ Demitri challenged.

‘Any biological species. Think: Primes.’

‘Who are Primes?’ Kysandra asked.

‘Aliens who nearly wiped us out,’ Nigel replied. ‘We got lucky and defeated them. But it was a sharp lesson that not every sentient species in the galaxy shares our moral viewpoint.’

She glanced back at the ominous dark sphere, determined to try and lose her fear. The cage wasn’t there to keep the egg confined, that was ludicrous; the bars were to prevent anyone who succumbed to the lure from being eggsumed. ‘Does anything like the Fallers exist outside the Void?’

‘We haven’t come across them,’ Demitri said. ‘Yet. It’s a big galaxy.’

‘I wonder,’ Nigel mused. ‘If we prevented the egg from eggsuming for long enough, would it revert and form the species it was developed from?’

‘Nothing in the institute papers mentioned that,’ Demitri said. ‘I’m hoping my fusion will provide all the information we need.’

Kysandra shuddered. She’d always thought this plan to be insane, but Nigel insisted it was necessary. They had to understand the Fallers in order to work out what was happening up at the Forest. Only then could they start planning how to defeat them.

‘Fergus,’ Nigel ’pathed, ‘let’s get out of here fast before Lieutenant Slvasta figures it out and comes charging after us.’

As she climbed up out of the hold, Kysandra could hear the steam engine picking up speed. It had been modified to Nigel’s more efficient design during the refit, giving the Mellanie a surprising turn of speed. One of a great many preparations they’d been making.

In the long months since they’d returned from the Desert of Bone, Skylady’s sensors had been searching the sky above Bienvenido for Falling eggs. The resolution was nothing like it would have been in the real universe outside, and the radar often glitched, but nonetheless, even with the interruptions and degraded results, they’d spotted nearly a dozen Falls long before the Watcher Guild’s whitescreen telescopes. Nigel wanted the advance warning so the team could be in and out of the landing zone before the regiments even began their sweep. What they needed was a Fall in an area with an accessible river nearby; close enough to Adeone that they could reach it before the regiment arrived, yet not so close that people would recognize them.

The Fall south of Adice was the best chance they’d been offered in six weeks. As soon as the Skylady detected the eggs leaving the Forest and plotted their trajectory, they rode hard for Adeone and took the three barges out, powering along quickly until they reached the Colbal, then turned upstream. Now the Mellanie was retracing that route, but at a more sedate pace than the one used on the outbound leg. The last thing Nigel wanted was to attract attention. However, there were enough logs in the aft hold to keep the engine going for the whole time until they returned to Adeone; there were to be no stops en route.

They took three days of continuous sailing to reach Adeone. The Mellanie anchored three miles downstream for the afternoon, while the other two barges docked. Marek and Ma’s boys got everything ready for the Mellanie’s arrival.

When they did finally tie up at the town’s docks just after midnight, the whole riverside area was deserted apart from Nigel’s people. Three ge-eagles sculpted by Skylady flew high overhead, checking that nobody was venturing close, innocently or otherwise.

Nigel stood on the jetty, supervising the extraction operation. They didn’t bother with a crane. Their combined teekay lifted the eggs (in their cages) out of the hold and onto a pair of custom-built carts. The cages were locked in place and quickly covered with a canvas sheet. The ANAdroids maintained their competent fuzz as they drove the carts carefully along Adeone’s empty streets, escorted by the rest of the group on terrestrial horses.

Barn Seven had been built to hold the eggs. The outside walls were ordinary planks, but then behind that was a further wall of metre-thick cob, followed by an inner brick wall. The roof was held in place by a series of large anbor beams which held up sheets of beaten tin, followed by a half metre of soil, capped by ordinary shingle tiles. To any observer, the structure was no different to the other farm buildings in the compound, and if they followed that up with a quick ex-sight scan, their perception would never get through the solid walls. The inside had been divided into a pair of large pits, with broad metal basin floors, ready to catch any of the yolk fluid if/when the eggs were broken open.

At four o’clock in the morning Kysandra stood on the rim between the two, yawning heavily as she watched the eggs being lowered into place. Bright electric lights shone down, illuminating them in a stark monochrome which only served to emphasize how disturbing they were. The electric cables run into Barn Seven from Skylady also powered a variety of sensors. The ANAdroids set to work fixing them to the eggs. Kysandra yawned again.

‘Go to bed,’ Nigel said. ‘Don’t worry; this part is going to take a couple of days. We don’t get to the next stage until after we’ve learned everything we can from passive scans.’

She nodded agreement and went back to the farmhouse.

The results were pretty much as anticipated and added little to their database. Biononic infiltration filaments were unable to permeate the shell, probably due to their instability in the Void environment. Equally, though, a detailed nuclear analysis determined that the shell wasn’t organic. There was no cell structure, and the molecular bonds were too complex. It was an artificial construct.

Laura Brandt’s doomed science team was right; they were manufactured in the Forest trees.

Two days after the eggs arrived, Kysandra was back on the rim of the pit, along with Nigel and Fergus, looking down fearfully as Demitri walked across the metal floor towards the cage. He was naked, the harsh light giving his pale skin a bright sheen.

‘Do you really need to do this?’ she asked.

Demitri paused at the cage door, and turned round to look at her. ‘I’m not human. Please try and remember that. My eggsumption and conversion will provide a great deal of information.’

‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly.

‘You don’t have to watch,’ Nigel said.

Kysandra didn’t even bother answering that. But she did let the scorn escape her shell.

Demitri smiled as he put the key into the Ysdom lock and opened the door. Kysandra took a deep breath as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Nigel’s teekay turned the key, then the little brass cylinder was flashing through the air to land in Nigel’s hand.

‘Recording,’ Fergus said. ‘Sensors are at eighty per cent efficiency. That’s not too bad.’ The egg had thirty-five sensor pads stuck to it, their thin cables snaking away across the metal basin to three management modules. More sensors were clipped to the cage bars, focused on the shell.

‘Proceed,’ Nigel said.

Demitri shuffled round so he was side-on to the egg, next to a curving sensor band.

‘Good angle,’ Fergus assured him.

‘Deleting now,’ Demitri said.

‘Deleting?’ Kysandra asked.

‘The egg absorbs memories as well as the physical body,’ Nigel said. ‘The institute was quite clear on that. It’s like the memory read the Commonwealth Justice Department has. I don’t want the Faller to know everything I do. And it certainly can’t realize that we’re going to download a copy of its memories.’

‘It’s clear,’ Fergus said. ‘We’re down to basic autonomics.’

When she looked back at Demitri she saw him staring emptily into the distance, as if he was asleep with his eyes open. ANAdroids didn’t sleep.

Nigel took a sideways step. Demitri copied the movement exactly, his right arm and leg touched the egg, and stuck.

Kysandra drew in a gasp. ‘Uracus!’ But she clenched her jaw and stared ahead resolutely. Use your logic, not emotion, she told herself sternly. Observe this as a Commonwealth scientist would. It’s an experiment, that’s all. No humans will be hurt during this research.

Just yesterday she’d laughed and joked with Demitri, sharing the excitement of the egg capture mission. She liked him. Machine body or not, he was still a person.

Was a person, she corrected. Demitri’s shell was non-existent now, allowing her to perceive his thoughts. The patterns in his head were little more than an animal’s: basic routines that animated the body, but nothing else, no awareness or memories. That had all gone, downloaded into Skylady. Death of sorts.

Demitri’s shoulder was sinking slowly into the egg, as was his hip. Sensors observed closely as the molecular structure of the eggshell changed to become permeable where Demitri’s skin touched it.

‘That has to have a specific trigger,’ Nigel muttered. ‘The internal intelligence must have direct control over the shell structure.’

‘Or it’s touch sensitive,’ Fergus said.

‘There’s a discrimination effect involved,’ Nigel countered. ‘There has to be. You’d get stones and raindrops being absorbed otherwise.’

Kysandra concentrated on the datastream coming from Demitri. His medical routines were showing her how the skin that had been drawn into the egg was already starting to break down at a cellular level. It was being penetrated by micro-organisms which were methodically dissolving the dermal cell membrane walls.

Demitri’s head reached the egg, and started to sink into it.

‘Here we go,’ Nigel muttered as he stared raptly at Demitri’s eggsumption.

Exovision showed Kysandra the egg organisms devouring Demitri’s ear then exposing the skull bone. He sank deeper and deeper into the egg. After another twenty minutes half of his head was inside, at which point the egg finally eroded a small patch of his skull just above the jaw. With the breakthrough complete, the rest of the bone began to vanish like window frost before a warm breath. The organisms began to infiltrate the brain, forming long, superfine threads whose tips pierced individual neurones.

‘That is one sophisticated weapon,’ Nigel said in a troubled voice. ‘Commonwealth biononics are a long way behind this kind of nanobyte ability.’

‘Why would we want to build it?’ Fergus replied, his nose wrinkled up in dismay.

Nearly half of Demitri’s body had been absorbed into the egg now. A status review of his medical routines showed Kysandra that the egg had stripped his arm, leg and torso of skin. It was beginning to consume the exposed musculature. Her ex-sense could perceive the yolk substance thickening around the section where he was being drawn in, with denser folds beginning to accrete, like swirls within a black nebula. Strands began to slither into the missing slivers of muscle. Blood began to pulse out of frayed veins and arteries, to be sucked deeper into the egg. The egg’s serene thoughts were also starting to quicken. She glimpsed strange fractured images seeping free, and the sensation of profound cold . . .

‘What’s happening?’ Nigel asked. ‘Is that normal?’

The sharpness of his voice made Kysandra start. When she looked at him, he was frowning down at the flaccid ANAdroid protruding from the egg. The edge of Demitri’s body where it was being absorbed into the egg was oozing blood.

‘He’s coming out!’ Fergus barked.

Kysandra’s mouth dropped open in shock. The whole process was reversing. The egg was expelling Demitri’s body. She could perceive the egg’s thoughts fluttering, radiating out a sensation close to human panic.

‘Dammit,’ Nigel grunted.

Blood was flowing freely now as more of the semi-devoured body was expelled from the egg, splattering across the metal basin floor. Egg yolk began to spray out through the exposed muscles and slippery blood vessels.

Kysandra winced. ‘Uracus! That’s horrible.’

‘It’s rejecting him,’ Nigel said. ‘Hell, there must be something in his biochemistry that’s incompatible with the egg.’

‘What?’

Exasperated, Nigel gave her an almost pitying look.

‘Sorry.’

The flow of yolk liquid abruptly increased, forcing Demitri’s body out of the gap which the eggshell had created to ingest it. With a sickening fluid crunch, it collapsed onto the floor, heart still pumping strongly to squirt long streams of blood from the unravelled arteries in the leg and arm. Muscles fell off, slithering across the slick basin like gory fish.

Kysandra cried out and shut her eyes, feeling the bile rising in her throat. For a long moment she thought she was going to be sick. She made sure she turned round before opening her eyes again. The brick wall of Barn Seven was directly in front of her, reassuring in its bland normality. While behind her the last of the gurgling sounds faded away. ‘Now what?’ she asked miserably.

‘I’m storing the data in my lacuna,’ Nigel said. ‘Not that there is much.’

It was as if he hadn’t heard her, or didn’t care. She frowned at him.

‘Give me your hand,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I’m going to undo this, obviously. I can tolerate losing Demitri if it achieved something. But it hasn’t. So . . .’ He held out his hand.

Kysandra grasped it, surprised by how warm and sweaty it was. Just like hers. As before, her ex-sense perceived the weird echoes of herself pervading the hidden fabric of this universe as Nigel pushed his thoughts deeper into the memory layer. She glided back through them, through herself, watching events rewind.

‘Stop,’ Nigel commanded.

Kysandra was standing on the rim of the pit, looking down as a naked Demitri reached out to put a brass key into the cage’s Ysdom lock. He paused, and looked up at Nigel.

‘It doesn’t work,’ Nigel said.

There was a long moment while Nigel downloaded the data he’d saved from the non-existent future to Demitri’s u-shadow.

‘Damn,’ Demitri grunted. He grinned. ‘Something I ate?’

‘I don’t think you’re organic enough,’ Nigel said. ‘Once it started to break down your cells into specific compounds it realized something was wrong. There’s got to be a whole load of protective protocols built in.’

Demitri gave the dark egg a suspicious glance. ‘Clever. So: plan B, then?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘What’s plan B?’ Kysandra blurted. Nobody had mentioned this before.

‘We use a body that won’t be rejected,’ Nigel said.

‘A body? You mean a human?’ Her voice rose in alarm. ‘You’re going to let a human be eggsumed? To Fall? That’s . . . That’s . . .’

‘Pretty bad.’

‘You can’t. I won’t let you.’

‘Sometimes to do what’s right, you have to do what’s wrong.’

‘Still no.’

‘Not even Ma?’

Kysandra blanched. Hesitated for a moment. ‘No,’ she said, then more firmly. ‘No, not even her.’

‘Interesting moral dilemma,’ Nigel said. ‘Given a soul in the Void is effectively immortal, and we desperately need the information. Just who is unworthy enough to qualify?’

*

Proval was lucky. He’d left the safety of the Shanty to visit the public bar of the Kripshire pub, which was at the back of the building with its entrance in the alley leading off Broad Street, when he saw her: the blissfully sweet teenager. Proval didn’t like using the main streets in any town, not with all the people walking and riding about. Main streets were all clean and proper, a town’s pride, where the sheriffs kept an eye out for trouble and troublemakers. But underpinning them were the smaller streets, where it was possible for a man to walk without drawing any kind of attention. Home to the kind of people and places he preferred.

He’d already pushed the door open when she passed the end of the alley. Late teens. Long emerald-green skirt swishing about, white blouse with plenty of buttons undone to show off great tits. She knows she’s doing that. Slut. Red hair falling halfway down her back, all clean and glossy. Freckled skin with a wonderful clear complexion. Sunny smile showing off happy confidence. Pretty. Oh so pretty.

Proval got all that in one swift glance before she passed the alley. He did a perfect one-eighty turn and walked smartly away from the bar. You have to grab opportunity when you see it. And he recognized one instantly these days. As he walked back down the alley he ’pathed his mod-bird, which was circling high overhead. The bird banked and glided down along Broad Street. He watched through its eyes.

She was carrying a big shoulder bag that bulged. Out shopping, then. Bag’s full, so she’s heading home. Where? Where is home, sweetness?

Proval hurried along the backstreets, keeping more or less parallel to Broad Street. The exquisite girl kept walking, heading for the west end of town, away from the river. Proval barely knew which town this was, just another set of jetties with houses sprawling along the Nubain tributaries – one of hundreds. The whole river basin was his territory. Travel here was easy, and the sheriffs just minded their own patch.

The girl turned off down a side street, bringing her just that fraction closer to him. He couldn’t help the smile. Luck. When you were due it, luck came like a torrent. Was she heading for the stables? Please, Giu. Please.

Proval almost ran the last two hundred metres to the livery. He was actually in the saddle of his mod-horse, leaving the main gates when she arrived at the front.

Yes. Oh yes, today Giu is smiling on me.

His horse ambled along the road out of town. A kilometre further on, the neat fields had begun and there was a fork in the road. He hesitated. The mod-bird showed him the sweetness on a terrestrial horse leaving the livery, the bag slung on the back of her saddle. She lived out in the countryside somewhere. Probably a nice well-to-do farmhouse. The sweetness was that type.

Decision. He took the left-hand road, lined with tall goldpines. Behind him the mod-bird glided lazily on a thermal, keeping the sweetness in sight. If she took the right-hand road, it didn’t matter: he could ride fast and catch up. But if she turned left – well, that would be so easy.