'Sir.'

'Dismissed, Captain.'

Foley's stare stayed exactly where it was for long seconds, until she finally spun on her heel to leave the room by the conventional route.

'Captain,' Tyran shouted after her.

She stopped at the door, still quite obviously fuming.

'Well done,' Tyran commented simply.

Foley gave a hasty salute, before vanishing from the doorway, and Bains found Tyran regarding him with equanimity.

'We'll talk again soon about your role here on Ceres Alpha,' Tyran said. 'When you appreciate the situation fully, I'm sure I can convince you to see things from my point of view. Zach, could you please ensure Professor Bains reaches Medicare Central in one piece without blowing anybody's head off on the way.'

The guard nodded and took Bains by the arm, leading him through the door after Foley and her entourage. As he was leaving, Bains glanced back to see Tyran raising his newly acquired pistol at the Doctor.

The winds were dying as the first purple splashes streaked the orange morning sky of Ceres Alpha. It was a short-lived effect caused by exotic combinations of gases in the upper reaches of the alien atmosphere, and it was Ayla Damsk's favourite part of the day.

Stopping the survey buggy so she could simply sit and watch the sky paint itself silly, she switched off the engine. This moment contained a sumptuous serenity that Ayla understood she was privileged to experience. She was not a religious person, but she did believe in an underlying mysticism in the universe.

An indefinable sorcery that linked all things. Magic without a name, without scientific rationale, a subtle thing she'd not recognised anywhere in any of the sacred teachings she'd ever studied. But it was definitely at work here in this miracle that was morning.

Closing her eyes, Ayla listened to the receding winds and imagined the sound of birdsong in the air. She'd never heard the real thing, of course, but she'd en-87.joyed the virtual reconstructions. With the smell of the soil and the cool gentle breeze in her hair, with a little imagination she could send herself back five hundred years. The time when the last birds sang. The time when the last trees fell. Her grandmother had known birdsong. Her mother had not. It was sad that two generations now had been deprived of such a simple thing. But it was exciting that Ceres Alpha could be a world where birds might be reintroduced from genetic records stored on Earth Central. Ayla's children could well be the first generation in half a millennium to hear the sound of birds. She smiled at the idea and opened her eyes to survey the land.

Deciding to leave the buggy and take a short walk, Ayla grasped her a.n.a.lyser and set off on foot. The ground was pretty even here, fine silt deposited by the aft engines of the city-machine. About thirty or so metres away she could see the lip of a ridge. The area might need some remedial attention from the diggers that scavenged in the wake of the city-machine, tidying up 'pockets'

where collapses had occurred, filling in natural hollows and working localised basins.

On the way she bent to scoop up a sample that she dropped into the a.n.a.lyser while she walked, enjoying the morning and the breeze and the endless nothingness that went off to meet the far distant purple-orange horizon. A blue-white forever was replacing the deeper hues in patches, a.s.serting its supremacy.

The planet was covered in vast stretches of water, like Earth, and it shared with Earth certain qualities of colour. The sky was mostly blue. The clouds were mostly white. The vegetation was mainly green, although the indigenous foliage lacked much variegation and tended to plump for a grey-green h.o.m.o-geneity. Not very exciting, and not in the least bit palatable, although it was nutritionally adequate for human beings to just about survive on.

Reaching the ridge, Ayla peered down into a crater that stretched some hundred or so metres off into the distance. It was longer than it was wide, and ran to about fifty metres at its deepest. There was a good few days' work here for the team, and they'd be chuffed to be handed such a big job on top of all their other troubles at the moment.

Feeding the grid reference into her com, she took an image of the site before clipping the com back on to her tunic. Then she tipped out her sample and plonked herself on the edge of the ridge to enjoy the majestic splendour of the scene. People could live out entire lives without ever seeing such vast landscapes. She felt so d.a.m.n lucky to have earned her position with WorldCorp.

There were days when she just couldn't believe her life, couldn't believe her good fortune.

88.

And that was what she was thinking when her luck changed and the ground gave way beneath her. She fell rapidly, scrambled for a hold, felt the dirt sliding beneath her. Glimpses of sky then the thick heavy stench of soil. And darkness so complete that she switched into panic mode. Thrust her hands, clawed the dirt until she saw light, gasped for air and finally sat upright in the landslide.

The motion had stopped, but she knew full well the danger that it might start again at any moment.

For a while she simply sat there with her heart thudding and the adrenaline coursing through her veins. Standing cautiously, she began to cast about for the a.n.a.lyser, but all she could see was dirt and disturbed rubble.

Then she saw the figure lying half buried. It looked like a man, upper torso and head picked out in relief against the background dirt. If you glanced you could easily miss it. He was covered in mud, perfectly camouflaged.

Alert for new movement, Ayla made her way over with great care and dropped to her knees to inspect the body. There was a pulse, but it was weak and irregular. As far as she could tell he wasn't wearing any kind of all-weather tunic and he didn't have an obvious com clipped to him. She couldn't imagine how he'd got here. You just didn't find half-dead bodies on Ceres Alpha. You just didn't find anything except dirt and sand and storms.

Taking him by the hand, she prepared to tug him out of the muck, but as she disturbed him he made a groaning noise that could have been pain or an attempt to communicate. She leaned in close to his face. Most of the sounds were gibberish mixed with moaning, but a word bobbed intermittently on the surface of the nonsense.

'Doctor. . . '

'It's all right,' Ayla soothed as she got on with the job of getting him out to safe ground. 'You're gonna be OK. We'll get you fixed up. Just hang on.'

But he was a dead weight and the ground slithered hazardously under her feet. They were near the bottom of the ravine, and it wasn't going to be as easy as she was trying to make it sound.

'You're gonna be fine,' she a.s.sured him breathlessly. 'Camp's only ten minutes away. . . We got med facilities there. . . Accelerators and drugs. . . Get you fixed up in no time. . . Don't you worry. . . You're gonna be fine. . . '

As she spoke, voice packed with phoney conviction, she realised abruptly that she was prattling more for her own benefit than his.

Tyran waved the gun in Domecq's face before dropping it on to his desk.

89.'I'm surprised by the speed of your loyalties, Doctor,' Tyran told him, picking up his drink only to find it full of floating detritus.

'I'm afraid I automatically side with the underdog,' Domecq said. 'It's an affliction.'

Dropping heavily into his chair, Tyran surveyed the mess that Foley and her team had left. There were gaping holes where several of the ceiling panels should have been, and the desk and floor were littered with debris and frag-ments of plastic. He prodded the desktop speculatively, and the nearby cabinet opened.

'You seem to be plagued by quite a number of afflictions, Doctor,' he observed casually as he poured two fresh shots of whisky.

Domecq shrugged, playing the fool. 'I don't know what you mean. . . '

Having handed him one of the gla.s.ses, Tyran returned to his seat.

'You seem to have a propensity for confrontation, for a start.'

Domecq sniffed his gla.s.s and gazed into the amber liquid, swirling it around as he spoke.

'I love a good argument,' he said playfully. 'Don't you?'

'I find them tedious, to be honest,' Tyran informed him. 'A game gets boring when you can never lose.'

'Oh, everything and anything can be lost,' Domecq a.s.sured him, his face abruptly cheerless.

Sipping his whisky, enjoying the flames that cavorted around his tongue before leaving their aftertaste of richly blended malts, Tyran shook his head.

'I'll tell you a story that has no middle,' he said. 'Seventy years ago a baby was found abandoned in the drains of Earth Central. When they rescued him he had chunks of flesh missing where the rats had been gnawing. He was basically dead from cold and malnutrition. That's the beginning of the story.'

Tyran opened his arms. 'And this is the story so far. That child became one of the most powerful men in the seven worlds. He controls his own private army.

He owns extensive chunks of Earth Central itself, either directly or circuitously.'

Taking a sip of his drink for effect, Tyran watched Domecq's face carefully.

The man seemed puzzled.

'I'll leave it to your imagination to fill in the gap. Suffice to say ' Tyran fixed Domecq with his sternest look 'I've been called ruthless. I've also been called merciless, s.a.d.i.s.tic and heartless among many other things.'

A light came on in Domecq's eyes. 'Ah,' he said, as if he'd just discovered a lost sock at the back of an old drawer. 'You're threatening me.' He seemed peculiarly relieved at his realisation.

90.

Tyran nodded and smiled. 'I don't appreciate having guns pointed at me, and if you ever do it again it will be the last thing you ever do.'

'I'm sorry about that,' Domecq said. 'It's not something I make a habit of.'

'Professor Bains is a strong-willed man with misplaced zeal. If you can forget all extraneous distractions and concentrate on the job in hand, I think we'll get along just fine.'

Domecq nodded, and Tyran was satisfied that he'd finally got the message.

'You can taste the oak, can't you?' Domecq said. Tyran must have looked completely blank, because Domecq lifted his gla.s.s and jiggled it in the air. 'It really is very good.'

'I only ever have the best,' Tyran said.

'And now you've got me,' Domecq replied.

Peron took the call on her com as she was about to check on the girl. She recognised the callsign instantly as Tyran's, and decided to answer without visual.

Clipping the earpiece into place, she scanned the corridor before replying.

'Peron.'

'Colonel,' Tyran said, his tone clipped and formal. 'There have been developments. Medicare Central is under martial jurisdiction as of now. Get your own men in there. Use civilian technicians where necessary, but keep them to a minimum. Domecq is going to work with Pryce. He's on his way back now.

Give them freedom to work, I don't want Domecq alarmed by a high-profile presence, but watch what he's up to. Let me know when the girl wakes. I want to question her personally. Oh, by the way, you also have a new patient due any moment. Bains. Get him in and out as quickly as you can. He sees nothing, talks to no one.'

The line cut dead and Peron couldn't help grinning as she put in her call to Military One.

When Josef woke for work he was alone in bed. He switched off the alarm and plodded down the corridor to find Veta in the nursery. She was on her knees in front of the holographic incubator, and when he entered she jumped to her feet and grasped his hand.

'Remember the room?' she asked him in an urgent whisper, as if she were trying not to disturb the baby.

'What room?' Josef felt as though he were still asleep.

'The room where we saw our baby.' Her eyes were wild and pleading. Her breath came in little shuddering gasps.

91.'In medicare?'

'Yes.'

Josef nodded, perplexed by the question and her fervour. Turning to the wall beside the door, Veta stretched out her arms.

'There was a window here,' she reminded him.

'Yes,' he agreed.

'And that was the only source of light.'

Josef nodded uncertainly.

'Look.' She grasped his hand and showed him the incubator. He watched their baby lying there lifeless and the hole inside him opened up. He fought the tears that threatened to come.

'See?'

'See what?'

'The shadows are wrong.'

'What?'

'The shadows are wrong for the light. There round his head especially. If the light was coming from over there, those shadows should have been more round the other side. Don't you see?'

But all Josef saw was the grief in her eyes.

'What are you saying?'

'What we saw was not our baby. It was a hologram. This This hologram.' hologram.'

He felt his eyes tingling with tears that fell when he shook his head.

'Don't do this,' he pleaded. 'You're going to kill yourself. . . us. . . '

Now Veta was shaking her head emphatically, squeezing his hand so tight that it hurt.

' Look! Look! ' she snapped. 'It's all ' she snapped. 'It's all wrong wrong.'

He tried to take her in his arms but she pushed him away in frustration and anger.

' Can't you see? Can't you see? ' she screamed, swiping her hand through the 'gram. ' ' she screamed, swiping her hand through the 'gram. ' Can't Can't you see? you see? ' '

And of course he could see her desperation. He could see that she couldn't let go. He could see the madness that was overtaking them both and he could see where they were heading.

Consciousness came and Fitz wished it hadn't. Bits of him were hurting that he'd never known he possessed, uncharted regions of his anatomy that cried out in suffering and torment.

92.

He opened his eyes and the light charged in to ransack his brain, crying havoc and creating a right old mess. He slammed his eyes shut again instantly and let out a low groan. Then he tried a different tack, simply lying there, endeavouring to listen through his thumping head to the distant flapping of canvas in a breeze. There were other sounds, too. A low rumbling of machinery mixed with a higher-pitched mutter of what Fitz took to be a compressor. There was the intermittent clang of impacting metal and the unmistakable sounds of human whistling. There were voices vastly distant and an industrial clamour that Fitz recognised as that of a building site. Completely at odds with the far-off noise, he could smell a clean, antiseptic scent, and he was lying on a firm surface that his fingertips recognised as soft linen.

Risking the eyes again, he found himself in what looked like a makeshift sickbay. Most of the walls seemed to be made of canvas but there were dark-brown cabinets and other medical-looking provisions on metal racks. Alongside these, Fitz saw chunks of nifty looking hi-tech sheets of plastic that appeared to have controls painted on them in such subtle colours that you could hardly make them out.

Sensing movement nearby, he tried to move his head and immediately regretted it.

'Hey, steady on,' said a voice.

She leaned over him, sweeping into sight like some angelic vision. A snub-nosed girl with big brown eyes and a windblown brown bob. She smelled of honeysuckle and smiled like a cover girl.