...the way he walked....

He turned, perhaps sensing another's gaze on him, and theirs met. Met and held. His walk slowed to a crawl but he continued moving. As did she. That he was there, calm and alone, sauntering easily across the paved expanse, told her he had done this before. Like her, he was an agent of the Fusion.

She frowned as her gaze skimmed his regular and attractive features.

If she chopped some length from his legs....

Changed the colour of his skin....

Thickened his lips....

Twisted his features....

Drel.

Her feet faltered to a stop as she stared at him openly, her entire body shivering suddenly in the watery sun. After a brief sardonic salute, he broke the connection and continued on his way, letting her dark gaze bore into his back.

She thought only one person was ever dropped into a covert mission. She thought she was the lynchpin of the Fusion's Menon campaign. She thought she was critical to how the events unfolded on that dusty, scrubby planet.That was how she managed to rationalise Rumis's death.

She was wrong.

The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds had managed to outwit her again.

Her first instinct was to rush after the familiar stranger, the Fusion/Drel spy. He had recognised her too, the quick acknowledgement before he continued on his way was proof of that. She wanted to stop him, spin him around, probe his features, shake him, yell at him, and convince herself of what she already knew.

But to what end? Like her, he was a p.a.w.n in a much bigger game. What did she expect he would say? With the Fusion's longevity treatments, it was difficult to tell, but he looked to be the same age as her. He was probably still in love with the Fusion and the job he'd been given to do. Would he even understand what she would incoherently try to explain? Or would he dismiss her as a washed-out intelligence has-been?

Laisen thought she knew the answer to the last question.

All right then. If not Fusion/Drel then maybe Copan. Did he know about this? He must have. Laisen was disoriented and angry enough to burst in on him, regardless of whether he was in consultation with another agent or not. But, as the silver rising sun beat down on her, she knew it would be like exposing her belly to a predator.

With dull eyes, she headed back into the centre of the city and stopped at the first bar she came across, briskly ordering a drink while she thought through her experiences on Menon. Of course. That answered the only outstanding question. Why hadn't Drel denounced Lith as a Fusion spy after their escape from his camp? Because, dear Laisen, he was Fusion as well and probably thought he was protecting a colleague. Game, set and f.u.c.king match.

She nursed a succession of drinks and thought she looked morose and bitter enough to be left alone but that wasn't the case. A bright and brash young tourist from one of the belter communities bought her a drink. Laisen knew she had been watching her as she downed the Plasma Breaks, one after the other like they were beakers of distilled water. When she was finished, they went back to her hotel room for a quick f.u.c.k.

It was so unlike her lovemaking with Lith. There was no threat of discovery here, just a cramped and strangely-shaped room, with ropes and ledges jutting out from every angled wall. It looked eerie and incomprehensible until her young seducer switched off the gravity control and they twirled in weightlessness, b.u.mping into the soft upholstery that covered every surface.

Her lover-she never did ask for her name-was slim, androgynous and eager to please. With cheerful tolerance, she unclothed Laisen then herself, secreting their garments in a concealed compartment beneath one ledge, then floated toward her, rich and lithe with l.u.s.t.

They grappled and she was ruthless, stabbing with tongue and fingers. She invaded the other's warmth, licking saltiness and sourness with no thought beyond her own needs. She bit at flesh, suckled and tongued as if possessed, her energy not abating until the young woman screamed out her climax, convulsing for several minutes, and pushed her away.

"I've never had it like that before," the beautiful svelte tourist panted, after she got her breath back. "Up till now, I've only had s.e.x with men. Do you live in the city? Do you want to have dinner together?"

Laisen smiled and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. "Why don't you get some sleep?"

She waited until her contented lover drifted into unconsciousness, then hunted for her clothes. After half an hour of fiddling with the controls, she gently landed the young naked woman on the floor, dressed and left.

Almost two years later, the evenings still hurt.

Laisen rested her forearms and elbows along the smooth bronze-coloured handrail, the heavy metal tube held in place by a pressor field, and looked down upon the darkening outline of Gaard's Sub-Prime. It was a small city, patterned along the layout of some medieval town of a civilisation she had barely heard of. From where she stood, the design resembled a gigantic wheel. There was a large circular s.p.a.ce in the middle, filled with restaurants and shops. Fanning outwards from there was an interspersing of official buildings and multi-level residence towers. Like spokes, wide boulevards ran from the perimeter to the centre of the city. The residents had elected to erect ancient replica lights-on tall physical poles no less-along the boulevards. At times like this, with the day dimming, the warm yellow lights looked ancient and welcoming against the fading sunlight.

Eys had been particularly happy when she'd obtained permission to build their house within reasonable distance of the city, known throughout Floks Nine as the oldest artisan hub in the semi-dyson. She had an eye for scouting out unusual and breathtaking locations, and this was no exception. Who else would have thought of approaching one of the local agricultural unions for building approval?

A breeze caressed Laisen's cheek, lifting the hair from her forehead and rattling through the surrounding fields of sevet gra.s.s. The long stalks drooped, heavy with ripe red-yellow grain, resembling ripples of fire as the wind blew through them.

The house was built well above the fields of grain. It rested on poles so ethereal-looking that, from a distance, it looked like there were none. A casual observer would see a levitating timber box, surreal and angular, hovering above the swaying fields. Eys had actually considered using propulsive technologies to permanently float their home above the ground, but the union was adamant that it would interfere with their harvesting machines. The couple had to settle on the skinny columns that looked like insect legs and gave the machines something tangible to avoid.

The debate currently consuming the semi-dyson was the perennial one of whether or not to have artificial starscapes projected onto the atmospheric shields during slices of night. Because people lived in a half-clear tube that encircled the sun and not on a revolving planet, they were constantly facing the light. Night and day were artificially created and maintained by Floks's general administrative body. Several bands of night rippled along the ma.s.sive, slowly-rotating, constructed ribbon, bringing a configurable circadian rhythm to the entire system. Night was the blocking of sunlight by the shields. Day was the unblocking. The semi-dyson was even large enough, and the created topography turbulent and varied enough, to sustain its own weather patterns. There were clouds, wind, rain, storms but there were no stars.

One group preferred it that way. After all, it was part of the reality of living on such an artificial edifice. Another cited the psychological comfort of looking up into the night sky and seeing blinking dots of light. Laisen thought that if that was all people had to worry about-not even the gigantic countervailing forces that kept the giant tube in one piece, or the banks of endlessly working pressor fields that kept the bodies of water more or less stable while allowing people to go frolicking in them with little loss of life, but whether f.u.c.king lights should be pinned to the interior of the skyside half of the tube-then maybe the Fusion really was as soft as the Perlim accused it of being.

The wall to the interior of the house had been folded back completely, blurring the lines between inside and outside. The feeds Laisen subscribed to were soft and un.o.btrusive in the background. She tuned her ear to snippets that sounded interesting, then tuned them out again when they proved to be the same boring threads of news.

"...as more prefects have been implicated in the illegal tournament series. The Higher Convergence stressed that the actions of consenting adults are their own affair, however the misappropriation of funds...."

"...action against the Lasc Prein has once more dominated debate within the Lower Convergence's Emergent Committee. The plea, this time from the Fa-Drunn system...."

"...the Perlim Empire continues to face heavy casualties across its governing territory, losing two more systems to independent control. The rout at Menon IV that began almost two standard years ago...."

"House," she finally called out in irritation, "can't you turn that off?"

"But you requested it on, Ed Laisen," the house protested.

"I've changed my mind. Switch it off."

She knew she sounded rude, but the house was only an AI. So what if she hurt its feelings?

"As you wish. Would you like something to replace it? Music? An educational seminar? The latest schedule information for the upcoming festival at Gaard's Sub-Prime is available. You expressed interest in some of the events."

Laisen softened her voice, repentant. "Silence will be fine."

The sounds from the news faded gradually, as if she was receding from them.

If only she could turn off the rest of her thoughts so easily.

The nightmares had lessened in their frequency, although Copan still expressed worry every time he contacted her. It was as if he was trying to take over in person the intrusiveness of his brainware self. He had taken to calling her every two or three months under the flimsiest of pretexts, searching her face anxiously.

In a way, she was sorry she treated him so abominably. That his concern transcended his duty was obvious. After being her main liaison for two decades, a bond had formed. He was genuinely interested in her welfare. But he was also a member of the intelligence services and that was something Laisen couldn't forget.

She would fob him off with remarks bordering on the facetious. He would drop the call, dejected, only to call again two or so months later, with hope in his eyes and confidence in his voice.

After two years, there was still nothing she wanted to share with him.

There was the nagging feeling that she was somehow still under surveillance. That she was a file closed but not lost, still scattered on the desk of Fusion strategy, to be opened and delved into once again if the need arose. The Fusion had emptied her of all knowledge and opinion, filling their knowledge base with the totality of her wisdom, yet there was still the lingering feeling of being the continued subject of distant consideration. Was this what all washed-out agents went through? Maybe it was nothing more than a phantom pain, imagining her employer was still interested when they had forgotten all about her. Either way, it was a depressing thought.

She dreamt of Rumis of course. To a lesser extent, Koul as well. It hadn't really mattered that she couldn't see Rumis's dying body clearly through the mute bubble's haze that morning. She had seen enough death to know what it looked like in all its permutations. That razor-sharp mental vision of her former adjutant, his dark eyes wide with betrayal, his mouth mute with pain, his body almost sliced in two, was what continued to haunt her sleep. In her dreams, Rumis was staring upwards, his eyes already glazed and vacant, his blood spilling in a giant ruby river down the slope, but his mouth was still moving, words still emerging despite the blankness of his expression.

"I trusted you, Colonel. How could you do this to me? I was the brightest and the best. You knew it. And you killed me. Was this all part of your plan? Were you laughing at me while I scurried around under your command? I trusted you, Colonel."

It was worse than the Copan in her head because she couldn't turn him on or off at will. She would get nights of peace then suddenly Rumis would be back, quietly vengeful and remorseless.

She knew she shouldn't have even thought of doing it. Knew it interfered with her own recovery. But on several nights, soaked with alcohol and in an effort to banish his ghost, she had the house record a letter to Rumis's parents. By now, almost two years after she had been evacuated by the Fusion, the house had fourteen drafts saved in its memory. Laisen knew she couldn't send any of them but, conversely, she didn't want to delete them. She didn't want the galaxy to forget that someone like Rumis Swonnessy had ever lived. Somebody had to know the truth, even it was beyond her lifetime. Someone had to remember his steadfast loyalty, his sharp intelligence and his unerring sense of discipline and integrity.

The nightmares of Koul trying to kill her were trivial by comparison.

It was ironic that the escape from one nightmare had led her to another, and she was saddened by the fact that she felt only a twinge when she finally approached the boxy house, high above the grain fields of the semi-dyson, after such a long absence. Because her parents held positions of influence on Floks, she had been allowed to keep the house as her primary domicile, rather than have it given to someone else. Of course it also helped that Floks was a little out of the way of main Fusion traffic and there were few transient inhabitants. Most people seemed to prefer natural planets to live on rather than the artificial habitats that dotted Fusion s.p.a.ce.

She had been expecting a belated, organ-rending grief of loss over Eys when she first saw the house again, an explosion of utter misery and bereavement that she had been a.s.sociating with the place for twelve years. She felt guilty that she didn't. Her grief was muted rather than combustible, a steady regret, and she started cleaning the house of its layers of fossilised memory quietly and methodically.

The house itself had kept the s.p.a.ce clean and aired, recording one visit from her brother who was normally stationed at the emba.s.sy hub world of Anvil. But only she could move through each room, separating possessions into piles. What she would keep. What she would discard.

The things she kept were some keepsakes that had belonged to Eys and the joint art purchases from several trips together. She held onto the old, broken flitter that was currently stored in a warehouse at Gaard's Sub-Prime, confirming the ownership and extending the length of safekeeping. Maybe she'd even start the renovation of the vehicle itself. Some day. But for most of it-Eys' clothes and her personal files-she instructed the house to recycle or destroy. Some of her own things went too, mostly work-related information, and she fervently hoped that she was closing that part of her life forever.

It was like beginning again. She had not come back to Floks for more than a decade and knew few people on the giant ring. That made her happy. Her parents knew she was back but they were circ.u.mspect and un.o.btrusive in their communications, more so than Copan. She was reminded again of how much she missed them and how she would need to pay them a visit soon. Start explaining what had happened to her in the past decade. What she had gained. What she had lost.

As part of rediscovering a life outside subterfuge, she thought she would take a trip down to the small city. Maybe tomorrow. The house was always nagging her about the forthcoming art festival. It would be an ideal opportunity to introduce herself to life outside the intelligence service's convoluted machinations.

If only she could forget Lith, she might almost call herself...happy.

"You have a visitor, Ed Laisen."

Laisen looked out into the filtered darkness and frowned. Whoever it was must have arced in from the rear, landing at the small clearing behind the house, positioned there deliberately so it didn't spoil the expansive view towards the city. Or maybe it was one of the occasional walkers who had taken it into his or her mind to cover as much of the entire inside perimeter of the semi-dyson on foot as they could. That was a fairly common pastime. According to the unwritten rules of Floks, she was duty bound to offer such pedestrians at least a night's hospitality before cheering them on their way, watching as they trampled more sevet on their onward journey. Or- "It's not Copan, is it?" Her words emerged, fearful yet comical, before she had time to think.

"No, the female-"

Laisen's heart gave a leap...

"-introduces herself as Uin Szolt."

...and settled back down to its steady beat again.

"Is she after Eys?"

"No, Ed Laisen. She mentioned you by name."

"Is she related to my family?"

There was a small pause. "She says not."

Laisen knew it was unbearably rude leaving a stranger outside a residence in the dark, but she couldn't think of anyone who would track her down to Floks of all places. With the exception of sending a quick burst to her parents on the other side of the sun, she had deliberately remained anonymous for the past several months.

Could it be the young experimenter from Tatrex? That angry, s.e.xual wrestle one and a half years' ago had been the last time she was intimate with anyone. But she and the young belter hadn't exchanged names. Besides that was a casual encounter, the unsuccessful exorcism of ghosts, and she was sure the point was driven home when the woman in question woke up and found herself alone in that strange and comfortable room.

Someone from Floks' administration? That was more like it. A bureaucrat perhaps, with some kind of task that couldn't be handled over a communications channel and who was now confronted by a deepening dusk and locked doors. That was unheard of on the creative and bohemian semi-dyson, where one's home was normally open to everyone who wandered past.

"Weapons?" She knew she was delaying the inevitable but couldn't help herself.

"No. Bioscans indicate no communicable diseases either." Was there a hint of testiness in her house's AI?

Laisen quirked an eyebrow. "In that case, House, let her in."

She turned around and leant against the handrail. Whoever the stranger was, she would have to walk the breadth of the house before reaching the balcony, giving Laisen time enough to see who had punctured her bubble of isolation.

Her breath caught as the woman cleared the stairs and entered the living area.

Lith Yinalna was even more beautiful out of uniform than she was in it. She wore a long flowing tunic of pale yellow, with russet and black embroidery decorating every square centimetre of the material, above a slim skirt of black velvet. Gold embroidered slippers peeked from beneath the skirt's hem.

"House," Laisen whispered, afraid that if she spoke any louder, the mirage might disappear, "get me a tawny life-water. Make it a double."

She was content to watch Lith from the balcony, remaining still to escape notice. She observed her visitor looking around, a slight frown marring her forehead, taking in the eclectic pieces of furniture that dotted the room. Laisen wondered whether they were to her taste. Maybe the chairs were too deep? Or the wrong colour? She wondered how long it would take to get a new set ordered and delivered.

Her gaze followed her visitor as she moved to the ladder-like steps resting against one wall, looking up to the loft s.p.a.ce that housed the main bedroom.

I could take you there. Guide you up the steps, unclothe you reverently and worship your body while the universe turned over our heads.

After a long hesitation, Lith moved her head and kept looking around.

It was the tray that finally gave Laisen away. It caught Lith's attention as it whizzed out of the kitchen and she followed its progress to the balcony, her steps slowing as she finally took in Laisen's figure, merging into the approaching night.

Feeling suddenly, unaccountably, fearfully nervous, Laisen straightened and took a sip of the life-water then put the gla.s.s back on the tray. It followed her as she walked towards the woman who had been her driver, her heart, in a life she otherwise wanted to forget.

Lith searched her face and Laisen forgot that she must look a little different to how she did two years ago. She had decided to keep Cheloi's height as her own. She had always felt too gawky at her natural, taller, stature. Otherwise, the surgeons had reverted her to her normal biology. Both inside her body, which meant she didn't have the mutated blood, organic b.u.t.tresses or those psychologically uncomfortable fat nets any more. And outside of it, with her skin darkened to its natural hue, almost matching the bitter chocolate of her eyes. They had also removed the padding from her cheeks, jaw and forehead, making her look leaner, and more in proportion. Would Lith like the changes? Or did she find the slightly plumper Cheloi version more to her liking? Laisen wanted to ask, wanted to say something, but the words were stuck in her throat, suddenly full with a ball of emotion that only let quick breaths through.

"Laisen?"

"LitHouse gave me a different name," and she winced at the accusatory tone in her voice. She was useless at these personal interactions, she decided. Where was a straightforward fire fight when she needed it?

"Uin Szolt," Lith said.

"Is that your real name?"

Lith laughed, a strange sound in a house not used to such noise. Laisen liked the difference. Perhaps she could convince Lith to stay and fill the void with further cadences of life? Or was that just her stupidity taking over again?

"No. Lith Yinalna is-was-my real name. But the Fusion organised the other name for me and," she tilted her head, "their reasoning made sense, so I accepted it."

Really? Because it wasn't making any sense to her.

Why did you come? Are you all right? Are you living with anyone? I'll wring his, or her, neck if you are.

She gestured back into the house and followed after, the tray limping obediently along.

"And what reasons would they be?" she asked, picking up the dropped thread of disclosure.

As owner of the house, she should have offered Lith-no, Uin, no, Lith!-some refreshments but the rational part of her didn't want her to stay. Lith staying meant them talking, it meant truth coming out. And Laisen was quite content with her fantasies, where Lith loved her, in spite of who and what she was. She was curious about Lith's visit but under no illusions that it meant a happy-ever-after ending.

"The Perlim might come after me," Lith replied easily, settling into a pod-seat. She gestured to the balcony. "This is a beautiful location for a house. I could see all of Gaard's Sub-Prime as I landed. Did I get the name right? It's a very pretty city. Not quite what I was expecting."

Laisen nodded, lowering herself more slowly into a less comfortable chair opposite. She had thought of the Perlim tracking Lith down. That's why she had been so adamant that she get off Menon as quickly as possible, focusing on a direct escape route straight to Fusion s.p.a.ce. But she had not expected Perlim repercussions even into Fusion territory. She herself shed ident.i.ties with each mission, so never had to worry about an enemy coming after her with revenge on their mind. But she remembered that Lith's parents were Perlim. And if she retained their name, that meant she would be easily traceable. Perlim a.s.sa.s.sins? The thought of some agent, stalking Lith, watching her every move, preparing the most efficient form of murder.... Laisen shut such thoughts from her mind, too badly shaken to continue the conjectured fantasy. She loosened her death-grip on the armrests and swallowed, but remained silent.