clean out of this universe. We can create our own universe around us; one with new laws, a place where there’s no empty eternity around us, and where we’re safely sealed off from the beyond. We’ll be safe there, from Rubra, from the Edenists, from everybody. Safe and immortal.”
“Quite right,” Kiera said. Most possessed had only been back for a few hours, but already the urge was growing. To run, to hide from the dreadful empty sky. Enclosed Valisk was better than a planet; but Kiera had hated the starscrapers with their windows showing the naked stars, always reminding her of the beyond. Yes, she thought, we will have to leave that sight eventually. But not yet. There were other, older instincts prising at her thoughts. For when Valisk departed to a universe where anything became possible to every individual, the need for leadership would fade away, lost among the dream of eternal sybaritic life into which they would all fall. Kiera Salter would cease to be anything special. Maybe it was inevitable, but there was no need to rush into it. “What about the threat from ourselves?” she asked them, a high note of curiosity in her voice. As if they’d already solved the obvious problem.
“What threat?” Stanyon asked.
“Think about it. How long are we intending to leave this universe for?”
“I wasn’t planning on coming back,” Hudson Proctor said caustically.
“Me neither. But eternity is rather a long time, isn’t it? And those are the terms we’re going to have to start thinking in nowadays.”
“So?” he demanded.
“So how many people are there in Valisk right now? Stanyon?”
“Close to nine hundred thousand.”
“Not quite nine hundred thousand people. And the purpose of life, or the nearest definition I’ll ever make, is to experience. Experience whatever you can for as long as you can.” She gave the councillors a morbid smile. “That isn’t going to change whatever universe we occupy. As it stands, there aren’t enough of us; not if we want to keep providing ourselves with new and different experiences for all of eternity. We have to have variety to keep on generating freshness, otherwise we’ll just be playing variants on a theme for ever. Fifty thousand years of that, and we’ll be so desperate for a change that we’ll even come back here just for the novelty.” She’d won them; she could see and sense the doubt and insecurity fission in their minds.
Hudson Proctor sat back in his chair and favoured her with a languid smile. “Go on, Kiera, you’ve obviously thought this through. What’s the solution?”
“There are two possibilities. First, we use the hellhawks to evacuate ourselves to a terracompatible world and begin the possession campaign all over again. Personally I’d hate to risk that. Srinagar’s warships might not be able to break into Valisk, but if we tried to land on the planet it would be a shooting gallery. Alternatively, we can play it smart and gather people in to us. Valisk can support at least six or seven million, and that’s without our energistic ability enhancing it. Six million should be enough to keep our society alive and fresh.”
“You’re joking. Bring in over five million people?”
“Yes. It’ll take time, but it can be done.”
“Bringing some people in, yes, but so many . . . Surely our population is going to grow anyway?”
“Not by five million it isn’t. We’d have to make permanent pregnancy compulsory for every female for the next ten years. This council might be in command now, but try implementing that and see how long we last.”
“I’m not talking about right now, I’m talking about after. We’ll have children after we leave.”
“Will we? These aren’t our actual bodies, they’d never be
“All right, even assuming you’re right, and I’m not saying you are, how are you going to get that kind of influx, launch the hellhawks on pirate flights to capture people?”
“No,” she said confidently. “Invite them. You’ve seen the Starbridge tribes. There are the disaffected just like them in every society throughout the Confederation. I know, one of the charities I used to work for helped rehabilitate youngsters who couldn’t cope with modern life. Gather them all together, and you could fill twenty habitats this size.”
“But how? What’s going to make them want to come here, to Valisk?”
“We just have to find the right message, that’s all.”
• • •
Even by day, Burley Palace stood aloof from the city of Atherstone; surrounded by extensive parkland at the top of a small rise, it surveyed the sprawling lower districts with a suitably regal detachment. At night the isolation made it positively imperious. Atherstone’s lights turned the motorways, boulevards, and grand squares into a gaudy mother-of-pearl blaze which shimmered as though it were alive. Right in the centre, however, the palace grounds were a lake of midnight darkness. And in the centre of that, Burley Palace shone brighter than it ever did under the noon sun, illuminated by a bracelet of five hundred spotlights. It was visible from almost anywhere in the city.
Ralph Hiltch observed it through the Royal Navy Marine flyer’s sensor suite as they approached. It was a neoclassic building with innumerable wings slotting together at not quite geometrical angles, and five quadrangles enclosing verdant gardens. Even though it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, there were a lot of cars using the long drive which cut through the parkland, headlights creating a near-constant stream of white light. Although highly ornamental, the palace was the genuine centre of government; so given the planet’s current state of alert, the activity was only to be expected.
The pilot brought the flyer down on one of the discreetly positioned rooftop pads. Roche Skark was waiting for Ralph as he came down the airstairs, two bodyguards standing unobtrusively a few metres behind.
“How are you?” the ESA director asked.
Ralph shook his hand. “Still in one piece, sir. Unlike Mortonridge.”
“That’s a nasty case of guilt you’ve got there, Ralph. I hope it’s not clouding your judgement.”
“No, sir. In any case, it isn’t guilt. Just resentment. We nearly had them, we were so close.”
Roche gave the younger operative a sympathetic look. “I know, Ralph. But you drove them out of Pasto, and that’s got to be a colossal achievement. Just think what would have happened if it had fallen to the likes of Annette Ekelund. Mortonridge multiplied by a hundred. And if they’d possessed that many people they wouldn’t have been content to stay put like they are on the peninsula.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked into the palace.
“This idea the pair of you came up with. Is it workable?” Roche asked.
“I believe so, sir,” Ralph said. “And I appreciate you allowing me to outline it to the Princess myself.” The notion had evolved from several strategy reviews he and Colonel Palmer had held during the occasional lull in the frantic two days of the Mortonridge evacuation. Ralph knew that it contained suggestions which had to be made to the Princess personally. He feared it being diluted by navy staff analysts and tacticians if he routed it through the correct procedural channels. Smooth minds polishing away the raw substance to present a sleek concept, one that was politically acceptable. And that wouldn’t work, nothing short of hundred per cent adherence to the proposal would produce success.
Sometimes when he stood back and observed this obsessional character he’d become he wondered if he wasn’t simply overdosing on arrogance.
“Given the circumstances, it was the least we could do,” Roche Skark said. “As I told you, your efforts have not gone unnoticed.”
Sylvester Geray was waiting for them in the decagonal reception room with its gleaming gold and platinum pillars. The equerry in his perfect uniform gave Ralph’s borrowed marine fatigues a reluctant appraisal, then opened a set of doors.
After the opulence of the state rooms outside, Princess Kirsten’s private office was almost subdued, the kind of quietly refined study a noble landowner would run an estate from. He couldn’t quite make the leap to accepting that the entire Ombey star system was ruled from this room.
He stepped up to the desk, feeling he ought to salute, but knowing it would appear ridiculous; he wasn’t military. The Princess didn’t look much different from her images on the news, a dignified lady who seemed to be
