Horatio nodded. ‘That’s her. And my boy.’
‘You were snatched by the Olyix once, years before the invasion. Yuri found you.’
‘Yep.’
‘You’re practically a saint yourself,’ Dellian said in admiration.
‘Hardly,’ Horatio said. ‘I’ve spent every waking second since I was re-bodied reviewing files. There are tens of thousands of public records. But with filters, I’ve managed to build a strategy. The key was Lolo Maude.’
‘The Factory warship?’
‘Yes. You see, I knew Lolo as well, back in the Blitz2 days.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘No. Sie used to come to a community kitchen I helped run.’
‘Wait! If you knew Lolo, you must have met hir boyfriend, Ollie, as well. Ollie Heslop?’
Horatio frowned. ‘I don’t think so. Lolo’s boyfriend was Davis Mohan.’
Yirella grinned in delight. ‘That was Ollie’s alias! He was on the run during Blitz2.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just – you’re living history, you know. We learned all about this in school when we were taught about the Saints.’
‘Right. But the point is, Lolo obviously made it to the Factory. After that, sie became a warship like Ainsley.’
‘I know. We picked up Lolo’s signal on the Morgan.’
Horatio leant forwards, his eagerness overcoming lingering apprehension. ‘Once I learned about Lolo, I ran checks through the Morgan’s records. Ainsley said something to you.’
‘His granddaughter,’ Yirella exclaimed. She smiled down at Dellian. ‘Remember? Ainsley said that when the Factory alliance broke up, his granddaughter joined the Katos mothership to establish Sanctuary.’
‘That’s Gwendoline,’ Horatio said.
‘Of course. He told me she was there when he transferred his consciousness into the warship.’ Her delight faded. ‘I’m sorry, Horatio. You’re right, Gwendoline must be at Sanctuary. But—’
‘They called it that for a reason,’ Dellian said firmly. ‘Best guess is that it’s hiding between the stars, the same as a Neána abode. A place the Olyix could never find. Nobody can.’
‘But nobody’s looked,’ Horatio said. ‘Not really. And you’re the greatest expert on it, Yirella.’
‘It was a hobby for a while, that’s all. I accessed what files there are, which are mostly stories. There are no solid facts – not one. Our knowledge of Sanctuary ends when the Katos ship left to build it; the humans who went with them were very thorough in deleting information from the records. From then on, all we have are second-hand recollections that became our legends. I can give you a list of everything I found and you can access them, too.’
‘We can do a lot more than that.’
She gave him a quizzical look. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. We can ask people who were at the Factory.’
‘Ainsley was there, but he didn’t know anything, or he had his memories edited for security. And the only other person we know for sure was at the Factory was Captain Kenelm, and sie’s dead.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Horatio said. ‘There is someone else.’
‘Who?’ she asked sharply.
‘The Lolo Maude.’
Yirella stared at him thoughtfully. ‘We don’t know where the Lolo Maude went. Sie never showed up at the neutron star.’
‘Has anyone searched for hir?’
‘No,’ she agreed reluctantly.
‘Then that would be a good place to start, would it not?’
‘I . . . Well, yes, I suppose so.’
‘It was thousands of years ago,’ Dellian said. ‘And those Factory warships could travel fast. That gives you a very large volume of space. Nice idea, but not practical.’
‘Sie would have flown to the enclave,’ Horatio said. ‘And by now, sie will know the Olyix were defeated. The Alliance is broadcasting a lot of messages out into space to contact lost humans.’
‘Conjecture,’ Yirella said, wishing she could sound more confident. But he’s right, it makes sense.
‘And that’s why I came to you,’ Horatio said. ‘The corpus humans will build you a fleet of ships to search for Lolo Maude if you ask. You’re the genesis human. You created them, then you saved them in the enclave. Am I right?’
‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘that’s a condensed version of events.’
‘A hundred per cent correct,’ Dellian said proudly.
‘I’m asking you to consider my request. You don’t have to join me, but if you could just get me a single ship, I’d be eternally grateful.’
‘If Gwendoline is alive and living in Sanctuary,’ Dellian said, ‘she will have been there for millennia. Have you thought about that?’
‘I have,’ Horatio said. ‘At the end, I gave up everything I’d done on Earth, abandoned people who depended on me, just so I could be with her on the Pasobla. Then the Olyix caught me before I could get through a portal. She knows how much I love her. And she knows I was cocooned, that I’m not dead. I just want to see her again. I want to know she’s okay, that she led a good life after . . .’
Yirella had to look at the floor so she didn’t have to see the tears in Horatio’s eyes. ‘Let me think about it,’ she said.
*
‘You’ll think about it?’ Dellian said once Horatio had left.
‘Well, what else could I say? The poor man clearly loves her.’
‘And I remember their story, how Saint Yuri got Horatio back after he was snatched by Olyix agents. She loved him, too.’
‘Well, there you go.’
‘Over twenty thousand years ago!’
Yirella slumped back into the couch and put her head in her hands. ‘If it was you, I’d find you.’
He sat beside her with a sigh and slipped his arm around her shoulders. ‘Me too.’
She couldn’t look at him. Guilt still haunted her mind, that she didn’t quite trust him enough to confide that her original aspect had left to go hunting the God at the End of Time. And trust was such a huge part of unconditional love. Then there was the knowledge she could never get over, that this her was the clone. Not the person Del had grown up with and fallen in love with. That she was an imposter – however well intentioned.
Would he be flattered or horrified? Would he laugh it off, or walk out of the door? She never wanted to know.
All that shame hung between
