In his own flawed way, he had tried. Maybe that was all anyone could do. The anger that had flared through her subsided, a little. She would think about the options he'd given her. “If I did live, where would I go? What would I do?”
“You'd be able to fit in with the populations of many worlds. We can invent you an identity, go there in secret, just as your father did. I can alter your appearance within a wide set of parameters, and you can live your life. You get to choose your existence; which world will be your home. It is a possibility few are granted these days.”
She didn't take her eyes off the galaxy as she considered his words, trying to make sense of them.
“There is one more thing I would like you to see, if you have the strength,” he said. “Something smaller. There are wonders in the galaxy as well as horrors. Or there could be.”
“What wonders?”
He looked a little uncomfortable, as if he wasn't sure how she'd react. “You've heard of Coronade?”
His words threw her. Her mind was spinning; she needed to think about everything he'd said, and suddenly he was talking about fairy tales. Had he quietly lost his grip on sanity at some point over the years?
She answered warily. “Who hasn't? Every child grows up with stories of it. The golden planet where all is peace and happiness. What of it?”
“That is what I wish to show you. I've discovered Coronade isn't just a child's story. It's a planet in the galaxy. I know it is real.”
“That's nonsense. How can you know such a thing?”
He couldn't keep the delight from his features. “Because three years ago, I found the proof. I recovered images of the mythical planet of Coronade.”
3. Coronade
“You brought me up here to talk about fairy stories?” His words poured doubt through her. He was crazy. Being pursued so relentlessly by the forces of Concordance had made him paranoid.
“Please,” he said, “tell me which version of the story you know.”
She thought about claiming exhaustion – the short ride in the chair had drained her – but she wanted to know more about him, where his lonely thoughts had taken him. She'd play his game a little longer. “Coronade is a myth, a planet where everything is beautiful and peaceful. All cultures and religions have ideas like it: an idealised place where life makes sense, and everyone is happy.”
“And what do you say to my claim that it is real?”
“I don't believe you.”
“Why?”
Her voice was hoarse from so much talking, her throat rough, but she kept on. “Because … because reality isn't like that. There is no paradise you can simply visit. Things aren't so simple. Life is cruel. Do I have to spell that out? Look at me.”
He moved his head from side-to-side, in a way that suggested she was only half-wrong, that it was more complex than that. “The truth may have been embellished with myths and wishful thinking, but the images I've seen prove Coronade is real.”
“Is real? Even if a planet of that name once existed, Concordance would have destroyed it.”
“Perhaps. You're right, I can only prove that it did exist, not that it still does. Concordance go to great lengths to root out any hints of their Golden Age Heresy. In their version of history, all interplanetary contact was characterised by genocide and bloodshed until they arose to impose the order of Omn. But there is much that doesn't make sense about that, and we can't be completely sure what Concordance would do to Coronade. They may not even know where it is.”
“They know everything.”
“Do they? They don't appear to know where we are. But Coronade definitely did exist, and it's clear it was some sort of beacon or celebration of hope for the galaxy.”
“How do you know this? How can you have these images?” It was like claiming he had photographs of heaven.
“It's what I've devoted my life to doing: piecing together scattered scraps of information in an attempt to put the truth back together. Something bad happened to the galaxy three hundred years ago, and I don't just mean the devastation of the Omnian War. Galactic civilisation was shattered, and since then Concordance have gone to great efforts to wipe out all evidence of our real histories. They are very thorough, but the war left ruins and hulks scattered across the galaxy, and even Concordance hasn't been able to track all of them down in the three centuries since. Every now and then I find one, and if I'm lucky I unearth some fragment of the truth from the mangled ruins. That's what I do, and that's what your father was doing on Maes Far. And, possibly, he was getting too near some truth that Concordance did not wish to be revealed. Often it is a race: we to reveal, they to destroy.”
She was having trouble absorbing all the information he was throwing at her, as if her brain no longer had the capacity for so many ideas. “My father didn't travel the galaxy being pursued by Void Walkers. He didn't have all the forces of Concordance attempting
