Did she trust Greenaway? Of course not. He’d planned for Marc to go walkabout in netherspace; and Tatia, his own long-lost daughter, to go off with the Originators. He would sacrifice Kara in a moment if he thought Earth’s survival depended on it.
“Keep up with the big world?”
Kara shrugged. “More fucked than usual. Which should be impossible.”
“If it all goes tits-up,” he said calmly, “you’ll never get your people back.”
“To tell the truth,” she said, “I’m not sure I can.” It wouldn’t stop her trying.
“But you want to.”
“Always.”
“You had your vehicle charged up yesterday.”
“Housekeeping.” She saw that he’d moved to stand at an angle to her, seemingly relaxed but with his weight on the back foot, hands slightly curled. He was half expecting her to attack him. And if she did, where would the well-deserved strike go? And would he parry or try and deliver his own crippling counter blow? If one of them had been a pre-cog, they’d know. If the two of them had been pre-cogs they’d probably still be standing there tomorrow, trying to work out what was going to happen.
“You want your people back,” he said quietly. “That’s good.”
“You care so much.”
Greenaway ignored the insult. “My guess, you plan on help from the Wild.”
She didn’t deny it. “They’ve got better transport.” GalDiv SUTs were mostly cargo containers welded together then covered with an alien-produced protective foam. The Wild’s SUTs were purpose built, sleeker and far more efficient. Like all city staters, Kara had grown up believing the Wild was home to savage hippies. Her recent discovery that it was more technically advanced than the city states had made her a little resentful. And she knew who’d help: Jeff, important in the Scottish Wild and Marc’s adopted uncle.
“If you want to talk to the Wild, talk to me. Through me.”
She looked over at the man who controlled GalDiv. “They don’t do government.” She paused for a moment and the anger burst. “Tatia’s your daughter, for fuck’s sake! But you let her get taken. You and Tse planned it!”
Tse, the human pre-cog who’d suicided when he had realised that the pull of the species-spanning alien pre-cog network would mean him betraying humanity for a higher cause: a calm, predictable, always ordered future for the galaxy. He’d taken a shipload of the Gliese with him, and left behind a few cryptic forecasts... including that Kara would find her sister. He hadn’t said it would end well.
Pre-cognition, Kara thought bitterly. It can lead to an obsession with process because the unexpected, the alternative, may be experienced as a physical and mental pain. The alien pre-cogs hated creativity because it was unexpected, never respected order and reminded them of their ultimate entropic fate.
“You bred Tatia and Marc like they were animals!”
He recoiled. “The programme began before I was born.”
“You fucking knew!”
“That it was vital for humanity’s survival.”
Kara remembered him saying that his wife had died for the same cause. “So you say. Want to tell me how a man lost in netherspace and a woman off with pre-cog aliens can save the world?” Her fingers relaxed on the knife.
“Not on their own. As a team.”
“Come on! They can’t do shit on their...” understanding flooded into her mind, “... without me to wipe their noses...”
“You were always part of the programme.”
“Always?”
“People like Marc, like my daughter, weren’t bred like you think. Pre-cognition doesn’t work that way. You are what you were always meant to be.”
Time stopped for her. Motes of dust seemed to hang in the air. She could feel the suddenly ominous, oppressive weight of the Black Mountains away to her left. “People like me?” She saw what could be pity – impossible, maybe sympathy – in his eyes. “How old is this fucking plan, Anson?”
“Programme, not plan,” he corrected. “It’s multi-flexible. Has to be. From what Tse said, at least five hundred years. For as long as the pre-cogs on Earth have been aware that all aliens have their own pre-cogs, and some of them formed an empire that wants a galaxy run the pre-cog way.”
“But if you, if they knew...” She thought about how Earth had reacted when the Gliese arrived. “It was all a bit too easy, right?”
He watched her carefully. “What was?”
“When the Gliese first showed up. The world fell apart, but never too badly. But suddenly there’s Earth Central, the old UN, taking over. Except the old UN was crap, could never have done it unless...” She paused, words running ahead of thoughts, “and then GalDiv is there, the hard boys of world government. City states emerge and okay, some wars I remember from school, but overall it’s a peaceful transition. I mean, what the fuck!”
“Don’t go thinking secret world rulers,” he warned. “It’s trying to ensure Earth develops the best way it can.” He smiled sourly. “Like Tse said, the landmarks on the horizon are visible, but the paths to them obscured. Often you have to sit back and let people fuck up.” He paused and looked out across the river. “Don’t think the good guys had it easy. Plenty of people happy to see the aliens take over.”
“When did I first feature in this programme?”
“Maybe featured,” he said. “At first a possibility.”
“When?”
“As Tse told it, around seventy-five years ago.” He saw the shock in her eyes. “Before we were born. There were thousands of people our good pre-cogs viewed who could save Earth, without knowing how they’d do it. You and Marc and Tatia are the end result. Five teams went into space before you. They all vanished. Tse went along to give you a better chance, knowing a greater exposure to alien pre-cogs would probably kill him. He, we, knew that Tatia had to be captured by the Cancri. That museum on their home world, where her
