his nose break before he lost consciousness.
Genevieve squealed in shock as Faurax went crashing to the floor, blood flowing swiftly from his nose.
Endron looked at Fletcher in total shock, too numb to move. His neural nanonics had shut down, and the office light panel was flickering in an epileptic rhythm. “Oh, my God. No! Not you.” He glanced at the door, gauging his chances.
“Do not try to run, sir,” Fletcher said sternly. “I will do whatever I must to protect these ladies.”
“Oh, Fletcher,” Louise groaned in dismay. “We were almost there.”
“His device exposed my nature, my lady. I could do naught else.”
Genevieve ran over to Fletcher and hugged him tightly around his waist. He patted her head lightly.
“Now what are we going to do?” Louise asked.
“Not you as well?” Endron bewailed.
“I’m not possessed,” she said with indignant heat.
“Then what . . . ?”
“Fletcher has been
“But, he’s one of them.”
“One of whom, sir? Many men are murderers and brigands, does that make all of us so?”
“You can’t apply that argument. You’re a possessed. You’re the enemy.”
“Yet, sir, I do not consider myself to be your enemy. My only crime, so it sounds, is that I have died.”
“And come back! You have stolen that man’s body. Your kind want to do the same to mine and everyone else’s.”
“What would you have us do? I am not so valiant that I can resist this release from the torture of the beyond. Perhaps, sir, you see such weakness as my true crime. If so, I plead guilty to that ignominy. Yet, know you this, I would grasp at such an escape every time it is offered, though I know it to be the most immoral of thefts.”
“He saved us,” Genevieve protested hotly. “Quinn Dexter was going to do truly beastly things to me and Louise. Fletcher stopped him. No one else could. He’s not a bad man; you shouldn’t say he is. And I won’t let you do anything horrid to him. I don’t want him to have to go back there into the beyond.” She hugged Fletcher tighter.
“All right,” Endron said. “Maybe you’re not like the Capone Organization, or the ones on Lalonde. But I can’t let you walk around here. This is my home, damn it. Maybe it is unfair, and unkind that you suffered in the beyond. You’re still a possessor, nothing changes that. We are opposed, it’s fundamental to what we are.”
“Then you, sir, have a very pressing problem. For I am sworn to see these ladies to their destination in safety.”
“Wait,” Louise said. She turned to Endron. “Nothing has changed. We still wish to leave Phobos, and you know Fletcher is not a danger to you or your people. You said so.”
Endron gestured at the crumpled form of Faurax. “I can’t,” he said desperately.
“If Fletcher opens your bodies to the souls in the beyond, who knows what the people who come through will be like,” Louise said. “I don’t think they will be as restrained as Fletcher, not if the ones I’ve encountered are anything to judge by. You would be the cause of Phobos falling to the possessed. Is that what you want?”
“What the hell do you think? You’ve backed me into a corner.”
“No we haven’t, there’s an easy way out of this, for all of us.”
“Help us, of course. You can finish recording Fletcher’s passport for us, you can find a zero-tau pod for Faurax and keep him in it until this is all over. And you’ll know for certain that we’ve gone and that your asteroid is safe.”
“This is insane. I don’t trust you, and you’d be bloody stupid to trust me.”
“Not really,” she said. “If you tell us you’ll do it, Fletcher will know if you’re telling us the truth. And once we’re gone you still won’t change your mind, because you could never explain away what you’ve done to the police.”
“You can read minds?” Endron’s consternation had deepened.
“I will indeed know of any treachery which blackens your heart.”
“What do you intend to do once you reach Tranquillity?”
“Find my fiancй. Apart from that, we have no plans.”
Endron gave Faurax another fast appraisal. “I don’t think I have a lot of choice, do I? If you stop this electronic warfare effect, I’ll get a freight mechanoid to take Faurax to the
“You’re saving your world,” Louise said. “You’ll be a hero.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
• • •
The cave went a long way back into the polyp cliff, which allowed Dariat to light a fire without having to worry about it being spotted. He’d chosen the beach at the foot of the endcap as today’s refuge. Surely here at least he and Tatiana would be safe? There were no bridges over the circumfluous reservoir. If Bonney came for them she’d have to use either a boat or one of the tube carriages (however unlikely that was). Which meant that for once they’d have a decent warning.
The hunter’s ability to get close before either he or Rubra located her was unnerving. Even Rubra seemed genuinely concerned by it. Dariat never could understand how she ever located them in the first place. But locate them she did. There hadn’t been a day since he met Tatiana when Bonney hadn’t come after them.
His one guess was that her perception ability was far greater than anyone else’s, allowing her to see the minds of everybody in the habitat. If so, the distance was extraordinary; he couldn’t feel anything beyond a kilometre at the most, and ten metres of solid polyp blocked him completely.
Tatiana finished gutting the pair of trout she’d caught, and wrapped them in foil. Both were slipped into the shallow hole below the fire. “They ought to be done in about half an hour,” she said.
He smiled blankly, remembering the fires he and Anastasia had made, the meals she had prepared for him. Campfire cooking was an outlandish concept to him then. Used to regulated, heat inducted sachets, he was always impressed by the cuisine she produced from such primitive arrangements.
“Did she ever say anything about me?” he asked.
“Not much. I didn’t see much of her after she set herself up as a mistress of Thoale. Besides which, I was discovering boys myself about then.” She gave a raucous laugh.
Apart from the physical resemblance, it was difficult to accept any other connection between Tatiana and Anastasia. It was inconceivable that his beautiful love would have ever grown into anything resembling this cheery, easygoing woman, with an overloud voice. Anastasia would have kept her quiet dignity, her sly humour, her generous spirit.
It was hard for him to feel much sympathy for Tatiana, and harder still to tolerate her behaviour, especially given their circumstances. He persisted, though, knowing that to desert her now would make him unworthy, a betrayal of his own one love.
Damn Rubra for knowing that.
“Whatever she did say, I’d appreciate you telling me.”
“Okay. I suppose I owe you that at least.” She settled herself more comfortably into the thin sand, her bracelets tinkling softly. “She said her new boy—that’s you—was very different. She said you’d been hurt by Anstid since the day you were born, but that she could see the real person buried underneath all the pain and loneliness. She thought she could free you from his thrall. Strange, she really believed it; as if you were some sort of injured bird she’d rescued. I don’t think she realized what a mistake she’d made. Not until the end. That was why she did it.”
“I am true to her. I always have been.”
“So I see. Thirty years planning.” She whistled a long single note.
