naked, her bare toes curling over the edge of the rock. Wet dark hair flicked against her eyes. She reached up and pushed it back from her brow. There was no crest on her scalp, and the absence of it made her inhale in sharp surprise. She was fully human again; the Wolf had restored her body. She heard, distantly, the crowdlike roar of ocean waves. The sky above her was a pale grey-green inseparable from the mist that reached to the ground. It made her feel nauseous. The first fumbling attempts at communication between Skade and the Wolf had been through Galiana’s mouth, which proved to be hopelessly one-dimensional and slow compared with mind-to-mind linkage. Since then, Skade had agreed to meet the Wolf in a rendered environment, a three-dimensional simulation in which she was fully immersed and fully participatory. The Wolf chose it, not her. It wove a space that Skade was obliged to enter under the Wolf’s strict terms. Skade could have overlaid this reality with something of her own choosing, but she feared that there might have been some nuance or detail that she was missing. It was better to play the game according to the Wolfs rules, even if she felt in less than complete control of the situation. It was, Skade knew, a dangerously double-edged sword. She would have trusted nothing that the Wolf told her, but Galiana was in there as well, somewhere. And Galiana had learned much that might still be useful to the Mother Nest. The trick was to distinguish the Wolf from its host, which was why Skade had to be so attuned to the nuances of the environment. She never knew when Galiana might break through, if only for an instant. I’m here. Where are you? The tidal roar increased. The wind dragged a curtain of hair across her face. She felt precarious, surrounded by so many sharp-edged ridges. But without warning the mist opened up a little before her, and a mist-grey figure hovered into existence at the edge of vision. The figure was really no more than a suggestion of the human form; there were no details at all, and the mist continually thickened and thinned around it. It could just as easily have been a stump of weatherworn wood. But Skade felt its presence, and the presence was familiar. There was a frightening cold intelligence beaming out from the figure like a narrow searchlight. It was intelligence without consciousness; thought without emotion or any sense of self. Skade sensed only analysis and inference. The distant roar of the tide shaped words. ‘What is it that you want of me now, Skade?’ The same thing… ‘Use your voice.’ She obeyed without question. ‘The same thing that I always want: advice.’ The tide said, ‘Where are we, Skade?’ ‘I thought you decided that.’ ‘That isn’t what I meant. I mean, where exactly is her body?’ ‘Aboard a ship,’ Skade said. ‘In interstellar space, midway between Epsilon Eridani and Delta Pavonis.’ She wondered how the Wolf had been able to tell that they were no longer in the Mother Nest. Perhaps it had been a lucky guess, she told herself, with no real sense of conviction. ‘Why?’ ‘You know why. The weapons are around Resurgam. We must recover them before the machines arrive.’ The figure became momentarily clearer. For an instant there was a hint of snout, dark canine eyes and a lupine glint from steely incisors. ‘You must appreciate that I have mixed feelings about such a mission.’ Skade tugged her gown even tighter. ‘Why?’ ‘You already know why. Because that of which I am a part would be inconvenienced by the use of those weapons.’ ‘I don’t want a debate,’ Skade said, ‘just assistance. You have two choices, Wolf. Let the weapons fall into someone else’s hands — someone you have no influence over — or help me to recover them. You see the logic, don’t you? If any human faction has to obtain them, surely it had better be one you know, one you have already infiltrated.’ Above, the sky became less opaque. A silver sun scoured through the pale green canopy. Light sparkled on the ridges linking the rockpools and stones, tracing a pattern that reminded Skade of the synaptic pathways revealed by a slice through brain tissue. Then the mist closed in again and she was colder than before, colder and more vulnerable. ‘So what is the problem?’ ‘There’s a ship behind me. It’s been on my tail ever since we left Yellowstone space. We have inertia-suppression machinery, Wolf. Our inertial mass is twenty-five per cent at the moment. Yet the other ship is still playing catchup, as if it has the same technology aboard it.’ ‘Who is operating this other ship?’ ‘Clavain,’ she said, watching the Wolf’s reaction with great interest. ‘At least, I’m reasonably certain it must be him. I was trying to bring him back to the Mother Nest after he defected. He gave me the slip around Yellowstone. He got his hands on another ship, stealing it from the Ultras. But I don’t know where he got the technology from.’ The Wolf appeared troubled. It shifted in and out of the mist, its form contorting with each moment of clarity. ‘Have you tried killing him?’ ‘Yes, but I haven’t managed it — he’s very tenacious, Wolf. And he hasn’t been deterred, which was my next hope.’ ‘That’s Clavain for you.’ Skade wondered whether that was the Wolf or Galiana speaking, or some incomprehensible fusion of the two. ‘Well, what did your precious Night Council suggest, Skade?’ ‘That I push the machinery harder.’ The Wolf faded, returned. ‘And if Clavain continues to match you step for step… ? Have you considered what you might do then?’ ‘Don’t be absurd.’ ‘Fears must be faced, Skade. The unthinkable must be contemplated. There is a way to slip ahead of him, if only you have the nerve to do it.’ ‘I won’t do it. I don’t know how to do it.’ Skade felt dizzy, on the point of toppling from the smooth platform of rock. The ridges looked sharp enough to cut her skin. ‘We know nothing about how the machinery operates in that regime.’ ‘You can learn,’ the Wolf told her teasingly. ‘Exordium would show you what you needed to do, wouldn’t it?’ ‘The more exotic the technology, the more difficult it is to interpret the messages describing it, Wolf.’ ‘But I could help you.’ Skade narrowed her eyes. ‘Help me?’ ‘In Exordium. Our minds are linked now, Skade. There’s no reason why we couldn’t continue to the next phase of the experiment. My mind could filter and process the Exordium information. With the clues we will receive, I could show you exactly what you need to do to make the state-four transition.’ ‘It’s that easy? You’d help me, just to make sure I get the weapons?’ ‘Of course.’ For a moment the Wolf’s voice was
