stared impassively back with his glowing eyes. Owen shook his head slowly.
'They did a hell of a job on you, Moon. I can't see a join anywhere. I mean, that Grendel ripped your head right off.'
'I remember,' said Moon. 'I was there.' He looked at Hazel. 'I remember you coming to see me in the city we built on lost Haden.' He looked back at Owen. 'You never came to see me, Owen.'
'I thought you were dead,' said Owen. 'And when I did finally find out… there were so many things I had to do…'
'I understand. I am, after all, not the Tobias Moon you knew. This is his body, repaired and raised to full Hadenman functioning, and I have full access to all his memories, but I am not him. It is just as well. He had spent too long away from his own kind. He had become too human.'
'So I was right,' said Owen. 'My old companion really is dead, after all. I've lost another friend. You'd think I'd be used to that by now. But it doesn't matter. So, what happens now, Moon?'
'That's rather up to you, Owen. You should have let us know you were coming. We would have prepared a reception for you.'
'Yeah,' growled Hazel. 'I'll bet you would have.'
'Please, put your weapons away,' said Moon calmly. 'You are in no danger. The Redeemer and his companions are always welcome among the Hadenmen.'
Owen looked at the others, shrugged, and put his gun and sword away. After a long moment Hazel sheathed her sword, and Bonnie and Midnight followed her example. Bonnie studied the Hadenmen with open curiosity, and they looked back with equal interest. Presumably they'd never seen anything quite like each other before. Midnight folded her muscular arms across her chest and looked bored, now there was no longer any hope of a little action. Owen looked around him, taking in the blank watching faces of the augmented men. They had a disturbing similarity, as though the same thoughts moved behind different faces. The Hadenmen were perfect in shape and form, but it was not a human perfection. Their bodies were largely machine, their minds boosted by computer implants, their only aim and purpose the perfectability of all Humanity through technology. And if they had lost human attributes along the way, like emotions and conscience and individuality, that was a price the Hadenmen had always been willing to pay.
'We should have known Moon would show up again,' Oz murmured in Owen's ear. 'You can't trust a Hadenman in anything, even to stay dead. Now he's just another of the pale harlequins, with the mark of Cain upon his brow. Watch your back, Owen.'
Owen frowned. The AI's words seemed to stir a memory in him, of something he'd heard in a prophecy from a precog on Mistworld. For a moment he seemed on the brink of understanding something important, but Moon was indicating politely that they should start moving, and Owen let the thought go as he concentrated on the matter at hand. He still had hopes he could talk the Hadenmen into giving up their captives and working with Humanity rather than against them. Together, the two branches of Humanity might be capable of far more than they could ever hope to achieve separately. And the Hadenmen must have learned something from their total defeat in their last Crusade against the Empire. Surely a people so proud of their logic wouldn't make the same mistake twice?
Moon led the four humans down the street, and the rest of the Hadenmen fell in behind them, all of them walking in perfect step. Owen hoped Hazel and her alternates would continue to take their lead from him and not start anything. With luck, he could get some useful information out of Moon before they got to wherever they were going. Which was probably a good place to start.
'So,' he said casually, 'where are we going, Moon?'
'To the heart of the city,' said the Hadenman in his rasping, buzzing voice. 'There is so much we wish to show you, Redeemer. Much that you have made possible.'
'We were allies in the rebellion. Why have you turned against Humanity now?'
'We follow our programming. The imperatives of the Genetic Church. The perfectability of mankind. We bring the gift of transformation for everyone.'
'What if everyone doesn't want it?'
'Such a response is clearly illogical and is therefore ignored. We do as we must. What is necessary.'
It seemed Moon was right when he claimed to have none of his old personality. These responses could have come from any augmented man. Tobias Moon had been different. He'd spent much of his life among humans, absorbing human characteristics despite himself. He'd always said he wanted nothing more than to be among his own people, a Hadenman among Hadenmen, but even then he hadn't been sure whether they'd accept him as he was, as he'd become. In the end, he'd died before Owen could open their Tomb. He'd never seen the second coming of the Hadenmen. Now here he was, living as he'd always wanted, and unable to appreciate it because Hadenmen didn't have feelings like that. Owen felt obscurely angry.
'You have Moon's memories,' he said sharply. 'You remember me and Hazel. We were friends. How do you feel about us now?'
'Hadenmen do have feelings,' Moon said unexpectedly. 'They are just… unlike human emotions. They arise from our minds, not chemical imbalances in the body. Understand that we give up much to become Hadenmen. Our sex is cut away from us, along with other unnecessary appetites and needs, and thus our thoughts and drives derive from different sources than yours. We give up human weaknesses to become something more, to become part of a greater whole. We do not feel pain or despair, heat or cold. We are never alone. My thoughts are logic, my dreams are mathematics. There is far more to me than the barely functioning creature you knew before.'
'Don't bother trying to reach him,' said Hazel. 'I tried often enough back on Haden. There's nothing left of the Moon we knew.'
'I remember,' said Moon. 'You came to me for Blood. Do you require some more?'
'No,' said Hazel. 'I don't need it anymore.'
'Very wise,' said Moon. 'It is very detrimental to the human system.'
'Being human made you capable of things that are probably beyond you now,' said Owen. 'Do you remember how you died. Moon? You were trying to activate the controls that would open the Tomb of the Hadenmen when the Grendel alien caught up with you. You fought, and it tore you apart, ripping your head from your shoulders with its bare hands. It had started eating your body when I found it and killed it. I tried to open the Tomb, but I didn't have the access codes. Only you did. And you came back from death to give me those codes, speaking them with your dead lips. I couldn't have opened the Tomb without your help. Do you remember any of that?'
Moon looked at him for a long moment and then looked away. 'No. I remember none of that. It sounds very unlikely. Probably in the stress of the moment you imagined it. Humans do that.'
Owen decided he'd drop the matter for the moment, and let the Hadenman think about it. He was sure he'd touched something in Moon, even if the augmented man denied it. 'So, how did you know where to find us, Moon?'
'You were detected the moment you entered the city. We have made this place over in our own image, and now every Hadenman is a part of the city, and nothing moves in it that is not us. Our sensors detected you and identified you to us as the Redeemer. So we came to escort you into the heart of our mystery. We will hide nothing from you. You and your Family have always been good allies to the Hadenmen.'
'You said that once before,' Owen said slowly. 'But I never found the time to follow it up. Or perhaps I was afraid to. Exactly what dealings have your kind had with Clan Deathstalker?'
'Our association goes back centuries. Originally through the computers of Giles Deathstalker, who contacted the scientists who passed through the Madness Maze, and afterward made themselves over into the first Hadenmen, and then later, through various Family members, up until our abortive first Crusade. They supported us, provided what we needed, helped us remain hidden from the rest of the Empire. When the Crusade failed, and we fled to our Tomb to wait for better days, your Family kept a watch over us, until it was your destiny to come and awaken us. That's how your dead father's ring came to hold the coordinates for lost Haden. Everything was carefully arranged. You were just the last cog in a great machine.'
'And what was the nature of this relationship?' said Owen, holding his anger within him. 'There must have been a deal. Who promised what to whom?'
'We would help the rebels overthrow the Iron Throne and place them in power. In return, the Hadenmen were promised planets of their own, and a percentage of the Empire's population. A levy, a tithe. Millions of men and women, to be used as found necessary.'
'No,' said Owen. 'No! My father would never have agreed to such a thing!'
