She wished her super-duper SI inserts had a function that could reverse time. Just a few seconds would do. “Well, did you?” she asked weakly.
Morton sat down, all his belligerence gone. “I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t remember.”
Mellanie’s arm went around his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, Morty. It’s all over now. It’s the past.”
Nigel gave a loud sigh, and crumpled up his napkin. “Well, as breakfast seems to be over, I suppose we’d better get started.”
***
Dudley Bose and the Bose motile were waiting for them in Nigel’s office. Mellanie could see Dudley obviously hadn’t slept last night. The skin under his eyes was dark, like it had been just after she met up with him. Stubble shaded his chin and cheeks, and he was still in the same clothes he wore yesterday, a rust-orange shirt and creased blue jeans. But it wasn’t the same haunted fatigue that used to be his permanent companion in those early days; Dudley actually looked contented. He was staring around the study with glazed eyes, almost as if he’d just emerged from a long sleep.
She hadn’t quite forgiven him for what he’d called her yesterday in front of everyone, even though it was heat of the moment, so she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek. “How are you?”
“Good,” he said, and smiled as if it were a revelation. “Yes, good. Funny, isn’t it, remembering how I died is actually quite liberating. Normally it causes tremendous trouble for people who are re-lifed. I remember you telling me about Morton’s ex-wife.”
“I think she was a bit bonkers before,” Mellanie said.
Morton had been snappy at being excluded from the meeting. “Arrogant prick,” he’d muttered at Nelson, after the Dynasty security chief told him he wasn’t on the list.
“I’ll tell you everything, I promise,” Mellanie had said. In fact, she was quite relieved he wasn’t going to be there. He and Dudley in the same room would be awkward. She still didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about that—let Dudley down gently, she supposed. Of course, Morton didn’t have quite the appeal he used to; he was exciting, but then so was Nigel.
“Was it…” Mellanie didn’t quite know how to ask. “Your death, did you—”
“It was quick. I didn’t even know it was going to happen. MorningLightMountain just shot me. The only vile part is having some of its memories from when it dissected me to extract the memorycell; that’s really stomach churning.” He looked around and raised an eyebrow as Wilson and Anna came into the office. “Admiral, good to see you again.”
Wilson gave him an astounded glance before being drawn to the motile. “Dudley, glad you made it back in the end.”
“It was an interesting route,” the Bose motile said.
“Thanks for the warning,” Wilson said. “I owe you one for that. The Conway wouldn’t have made it back otherwise.”
“The Commonwealth had to be told,” Dudley said modestly. “What else could I do?”
Wilson’s gaze flicked back to the human, slightly unnerved by the double act. “Of course.”
Mellanie didn’t know what to make of Dudley, either. It bothered her; usually Dudley could barely fasten his clothes without her being there to reassure him he was doing it right. Now here he was, self-assured and calm as he talked to the one person he hated most of all. This wasn’t her Dudley, not anymore; he wasn’t even stealing lustful glances at her.
Nigel walked around the Bose motile, giving it a curious gaze before sitting behind his desk. It was quite something to have a creature in his office whose other segments regarded every other species in the galaxy as aberrations to be exterminated. His e-butler reassured him that the office’s security systems were scanning it constantly.
That didn’t seem to satisfy Nelson, who took an unusually close position beside Nigel’s desk. Campbell showed Justine to a long leather chesterfield sofa, and put out a courteous arm to help her sit down. He’d become quite protective, Nigel thought, even taking the room next to hers last night.
The study door shut behind Paula. Its e-seal came on, turning the windows slightly misty.
“Paula,” Nigel said. “Would you like to kick off?”
“Of course.” Paula stood up in front of a large portal. It came to life, showing Qatux. “Thank you for joining us,” she said.
“It is my pleasure. I recognize many of the humans with you. So many powerful figures. How emotions must be charged in that room.”
“We’re all stimulated by what is happening,” Paula said. “I should tell everyone here that Qatux joins us today because after Illuminatus—”
“Actually,” Dudley said, “I think I should be first. I have the most relevant information.”
Nigel didn’t say anything; in fact, he was rather intrigued by this new, composed Dudley, who had all the brash confidence of the old astronomer who’d lobbied so effectively for a place on the Second Chance, but without the immense irritation factor. He caught Mellanie sinking down into the cushions, her hand rubbing at her forehead, avoiding all eye contact with Dudley.
“All right, Dudley,” Nigel said with bogus civility. “Please go ahead.”
“I know what the Starflyer is,” the astronomer said.
“What?” Nigel asked.
“There is something I’d like in return for participating today.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve been through a lot, and I’m contributing more than anyone else. I believe that should receive some recognition, don’t you?”
“Dudley!” Mellanie said. “Don’t you understand what this is?”
“Perfectly, thank you, Mellanie. Are you sure you do?”
“What do you want?” Nigel asked.
“To continue as your chief advisor on MorningLightMountain should it be successful in destroying the Commonwealth.”
“Ah,” Nigel said. “I see. A berth on one of my lifeboats.” He saw Mellanie start to color, the girl’s shoulders lifted in anger.
“Hardly an extravagance for you,” Dudley said.
“No. Does this request extend to your new twin?”
Dudley shrugged. “If you wish.”
Nigel was tempted to wait long enough to hear what Mellanie was going to shout at her erstwhile lover, because she was clearly about to—unfortunately they didn’t need contention right now. “It will be done.”
“Thank you,” Dudley said. “Very well: while it was at the structure we named the Watchtower, the Second Chance transmitted a signal to the Dyson Alpha homeworld.”
“We know that,” Wilson told him. “Oscar found a record of the dish deployment in our log files. But the Starflyer got to them before we could tell anyone.”
“But do you know what it transmitted?” Dudley asked, keen to maintain his advantage.
“No.”
“It was a warning that the Second Chance was alien, and should be destroyed. The message was in the Primes’ communications pattern.”
“I don’t understand,” Wilson said.
“The Primes did leave Dyson Alpha before the barrier was erected,” Dudley said. “Their fusion drives were allowing them to colonize every other planet and large asteroid in their system. They could see that one day all their star system’s resources would be exhausted. Several of the immotile clusters sent ships out to their neighboring star, Dyson Beta, to establish colonies there. They are a very insular and arrogant species, the Primes; they assumed Dyson Beta would have material resources and nothing more. They were wrong. The immotile on board the first starship found another alien species. It followed its nature, and fought the new species into submission. After that, it absorbed their industrial and scientific base.
“That’s where the real problem started. The Primes on Dyson Alpha, the original Primes, have continuity built into their souls; it’s an integral part of their racial identity. They can remember their ancestors beginning to think, their own rise to consciousness. Those ancient thoughts lock them into what they are. A lone immotile three and a half years distant from its original immotile group cluster was a little more flexible in attitude. The native Dyson Beta species were developing genetics, the whole concept of which is verboten to the Primes. But the starship immotile started to use genetic science to modify itself physically, and God knows there are a lot of minor limitations and deficiencies in all creatures. The motiles were improved drastically, which led to a subsequent improvement in immotiles. For a start they regained their ability to move.”
Dudley gave his audience a mirthless smile. “The Dyson Alpha Primes were horrified. They called the Dyson Beta hybrids alienPrime, and regarded them as heretical abominations. A war started, then ended very abruptly when the barriers appeared around both stars. The next time MorningLightMountain saw the universe was when the barrier came down, and it received a signal from an immotile whose communications pattern identified it as MorningLightMountain17,735. That was a subsidiary group cluster MorningLightMountain had put on one of the early starships. That’s what the Starflyer is.”
“The Starflyer is MorningLightMountain?” Mellanie asked.
“An alienPrime version of MorningLightMountain, yes. It was on a starship that must have been in space between Dyson Alpha and Beta when the barriers were established. When it couldn’t attack its target, or go home, it must have flown off into interstellar space, and finally crashed on Far Away.”
“I’m afraid not,” Wilson said. “I checked with the Institute director, James Timothy Halgarth, personally. The Marie Celeste couldn’t have come from Dyson Beta; it hadn’t been in space long enough to travel that far.”
“If you’re basing that assumption on information from the Institute, then it must be regarded as invalid,” Paula said. “The Director would have lied to you to cover up the Starflyer’s true nature.”
“We’ve been sucked into the worst kind of war,” Nelson muttered.
“In what way?” Campbell asked.
“This is a civil war. They’re always the most violent and hard fought. And we’re caught in the middle of it.”
“No, we’re fighting for the Starflyer,” Nigel said. “We’re its storm troopers, whether we like it or not. If what Dudley has told us about the original Primes is true, then the Starflyer knows they will never allow the alienPrimes to survive. It’s using us to fight them, and conveniently ourselves, into destruction. We’re the new class of motile, to be manipulated and sent out to die while it remains intact behind the battle lines.”
“That’s why MorningLightMountain had flare bombs,” Wilson said in a relieved tone. “The technology didn’t leak from us to Dyson Alpha; the Primes had it all along. The Starflyer fed the theory to us. Oh! Wait. When the barrier fell we detected an unusual quantum signature inside the Dark Fortress. It wasn’t there before.”
