"Once, back when we were still ironing out glitches in the system. It wasn't pretty, but we've learned a few things since then."

The transport began to descend, pa.s.sing into some kind of enclosed structure nestling in the base of the bubble. Doors sealed it from view.

"C'mon," Skellsgard said. "Let's take a closer look."

Auger followed her through a network of caged ladders down to the lower level. The gla.s.s bulb of the bubble loomed over them. It had been patched and sealed in many areas, with fresh star-shaped flaws marked and dated in luminous paint.

"All this was built in a year?"

"It's been two years since they found the portal," Skellsgard said. "Hey, give the military guys some credit-they did make some progress before I came on the team. Even if most of it consisted of poking the portal with a series of increasingly large sticks."

"All the same...I'm still pretty impressed."

"Well, don't be. We've been as clever as we can be, but we couldn't have achieved any of this without a healthy dose of Slasher know-how. And I don't just mean the kind of intelligence we got from Peter."

"What other kind is there?"

"Technical a.s.sistance," Skellsgard said. "Contraband technology. Not just the obvious stuff like the robots, but control gear-cybernetics, nanotech, all the stuff we need to interface with the pathological-matter mechanisms of the original portal."

"How did you steal that kind of thing?"

"We didn't. We asked nicely and we got it."

Beneath the bubble, the newly arrived transport emerged from the airlock structure, lowering on a piston-driven platform. The cylindrical craft was shaped like an artillery sh.e.l.l, its skin a rococo crawl of complex pewter-coloured machinery. There was evidence of damage. Hinged banks of machinery packed around the cylinder were either mangled or missing entirely, sheared off leaving patches of bright metal. Various panels and ports had been ripped free, exposing scorched, frayed viscera of wiring and fuel lines. The whole thing still smelled faintly of burning oil.

"Told you it was a rough crossing," Skellsgard said. "But she should be good for another round-trip, once we get her patched up again."

"How many trips did it take for her to get into that state?"

"One. But it's not usually that bad."

The ship slid sideways on its platform. Two of the three snake robots slinked over to it, weapons and sensors popping out of their head spheres. A gang of white-clad technicians were already fussing over the transport, plugging bits of equipment into it and making cautious hand gestures to each other. One of them shone a torch into the dark patch that was one of the cabin windows. Meanwhile, one of four intact transports slid over from a storage rack, guided by other technicians. Auger watched as it moved up into the airlock, disappearing and then re-appearing inside the recovery bubble, with its nose aimed towards the far wall. The pressure leak had already been fixed and most of the klaxons had now fallen silent. Odd as it seemed, it all had the feeling of business as usual.

"What'll happen now?" Auger asked.

"They'll run some pre-flight checks, some tests on the ship and the weather conditions in the link. If everything behaves itself, we'll be looking at an insertion in about six hours."

"Insertion," Auger repeated thoughtfully, looking at the blunt machine and the narrowing shaft it was aimed at. "It's all very phallic, isn't it?"

"I know," Skellsgard said confidingly, "but what can you do? The boys must have their toys."

She opened a cabinet and pulled out two white smocks. She pa.s.sed one to Auger and donned the other one, closing the Velcro seams tightly. "Let's see how they're doing, shall we?"

With the snake robots still monitoring events, the technicians used a variety of heavy-duty tools to open the ship's airlock. It finally gave way with a gasp of equalising air pressure, then swung open and aside on complex hinges. Warm red light spilled from the interior of the transport. One of the technicians climbed aboard, then re-emerged a minute or two later accompanied by a cropped-haired woman dressed in what looked like the interior layer of an environment suit. The woman supported one arm with the other, as if she had fractured or broken a bone. A man emerged behind her, his face pale and drawn, etched with what looked like years of fatigue. Skellsgard pushed through the retinue of technicians and spoke briefly to the two pa.s.sengers before giving them both a rea.s.suring hug. A medical team had appeared from somewhere and began fussing over the two arrivals as soon as Skellsgard had finished with them.

"They had it pretty rough," she told Auger. "Hit some bad throat turbulence during the insertion at the other end. But they'll live, which is what matters."

"I thought hyperweb travel was supposed to be routine."

"It is-if you have the experience that the Slashers do. But we've only been doing this for a year. They can squeeze a liner through their portals and not touch the sides. For us, it's a major headache just to get one of these d.i.n.ky little ships through in one piece."

"What were you saying about Slasher technology just now? How can there be Slasher involvement with this if you say they don't even know about this place?"

"We have our share of sympathisers amongst moderate Slashers, people who think the aggressive expansionism needs a moderating influence."

"Defectors and traitors," Auger said scornfully.

"Defectors and traitors like me," said a man's voice from behind them.

Auger turned to face a slender, sleekly muscled individual of uncertain age. He moved within a silver cloud of attendant machines, twinkling at the limit of vision. Auger stepped back, but the man raised a rea.s.suring hand and closed his eyes. The cloud of machines diminished, sucked back into his pores like a time-lapse explosion in reverse.

Standing before her now, he looked almost human.

The latest generation of Slashers-as Auger had forgotten to her cost with Ca.s.sandra-were often indistinguishable from children. This neotenous trend was a matter of efficient resource utilisation: smaller people not only used fewer consumables but were also easier to move around-an important factor even given the near-limitless power of the Slasher bleed-drive. But this Slasher man looked fully adult, albeit youthful. Either he predated the neotenics (and their unstable prototypes, the war babies) or he belonged to one of the factions that retained some nostalgic bond with old-style humanity.

He had flawless, unlined skin the colour of honey, and liquid brown and slightly sad-looking eyes that none the less glittered with an easy enthusiasm. Despite the chamber being too cold for Auger's tastes, the man wore only a single layer of clothing: simple white trousers and a white shirt loosely cinched across his chest.

"This is Niagara," said Skellsgard. "As you might have gathered, he's a citizen of the Federation of Polities."

"It's all right," Niagara said. "I won't be the least bit offended if you call me a Slasher. You probably regard the term as an insult."

"Isn't it?" Auger asked, surprised.

"Only if you want it to be." Niagara made a careful gesture, like some religious benediction: a diagonal slice across his chest and a stab to the heart. "A slash and a dot," he said. "I doubt it means anything to you, but this was once the mark of an alliance of progressive thinkers linked together by one of the very first computer networks. The Federation of Polities can trace its existence right back to that fragile collective, in the early decades of the Void Century. It's less a stigma than a mark of community."

"And do you care about that community?" Auger asked.

"In a broad sense, yes. But I'm not above betraying it if I think its longer term interests are best served that way. How much do you know about the current tensions in the Polities?"

"Enough."

"Well, let me refresh your memory on the basics. There are now two opposing factions within the Federation: the aggressors and the moderates. Both parties broadly support the same goal of repairing the Earth. Where they differ is in their approach to the USNE. The moderates are happy to negotiate access to Earth via reciprocal deals: access to the hyperweb, licensed use of bleed-drive and UR technologies, that sort of thing."

"Eve was only tempted by one apple," Auger said. "The USNE still remembers what your brilliant machines did to our planet."

"None the less, the offer is on the table. As you'll have gathered from your dealings with Ca.s.sandra, the moderates are serious about this proposal."

"And the aggressors?"

"The aggressors take the view that the USNE will never sign a deal with the moderates-that there are too many people who think like you, Verity. So why wait for something that will never happen? Why not just take Earth now, by force?"

"They wouldn't."

"They can and they will. The only thing stopping them has been a certain trepidation: the fear that the Threshers would destroy Earth rather than let it fall into Slasher hands. A 'scorched-earth' policy in the most literal sense. Tanglewood is more than just an orbital community. It's also a repository for enough targeted megatonnage to turn the Earth into a glowing cinder."

"So what's changed?"

"Everything," Nigara said. "For one thing, the battle planners think they may be able to take Tanglewood quickly enough to prevent those warheads from being deployed en ma.s.se. Even if they can't, the new models for repairing the Earth suggest that the warhead strike could be...tolerated. We can brush radioactivity under the carpet using continental subduction zones. And when we restock the planet, the re-introduced organisms will be modified to tolerate an enhanced level of background radiation."

Auger shuddered, imagining what that kind of tectonic reorganisation implied for her beloved cities. "So an invasion is inevitable?"

"I'm saying it is rather more likely now than it was six months ago. That's why some of us-moderates -have long advocated a strengthening of the Thresher position. Call it a deterrent."

"And it's that simple? You help us make this alien junk work just so that we will have a chance of standing up to your own people when the s.h.i.t comes down?"

"Would it help if I made it sound more complicated than it really is?"

"Excuse me if I don't take you at your word, Niagara, but I've only met two Slashers in my life and one of them was a lying little s.h.i.t."

"If it's any consolation," he said, "Ca.s.sandra is one of the staunchest moderates in the entire movement.

If you ever needed a friend in the Polities, she's it."

Skellsgard interposed herself between Auger and the Slasher, holding up her hands as if blocking a fight.

"I know this comes as a shock," she said to Auger, "but they really aren't all villains who'd sooner see us wiped out of existence."

"Believe me, I sympathise with your position," Niagara said to Auger. "I know that terraforming Earth would erase your life's work. I'm simply of the opinion that the end would justify the means."

"Do you believe that, Niagara: that the end always justifies the means?" Auger asked.

"Mostly," he said. "And some would say that-judging by your own track record-you share something of the same philosophy."

"Over your dead body."

"Or the dead body of a boy?" He shook his head. "Sorry. That was uncalled for. But the point remains:

you've always had a certain unflinching instinct for what needs to be done to achieve a particular outcome. I admire that, Verity. I think you have every chance of completing this mission."

"Now we're getting somewhere," she said. "How much do you know about all this?"

"I know that sensitive property has gone missing at the other end of that hyperweb connection, and that

you are excellently equipped to recover it."

"Why can't you recover it?"

"Because I don't know the territory like you do. Nor does Skellsgard, or Aveling, or anyone else in this

organisation. The only person who did know it well enough was Susan White, and she's dead."

"That's a detail Caliskan didn't quite get around to telling me."

"Would it have made a difference to your decision?"

"It might."

"Then he was right not to mention it. But there's more to my answer than you might be aware of. It's not

just that I don't know the territory. I can't even enter it-I would die if I tried."

"And me?"

"You won't find it a problem." Niagara turned to face the transport that had just been loaded into the

bubble. Technicians were still attending to various details around the outside, but everything about their actions suggested that all was going according to plan.

"You want me to get in that thing, don't you? Without a clue as to what's at the other end."

"It's a thirty-hour journey," Niagara said. "There'll be plenty of time to catch up on the way."

"Can I back out?"

"It's a little late for that now, don't you think?" Without waiting for an answer from Auger, he turned his attention to Skellsgard. "Is she ready for her language lesson?"

"Aveling said to do it now. That way she'll have time for it to bed in before she reaches E2."

"What language lesson?" Auger asked.

Niagara raised a hand. A mist of twinkling silver machines erupted from his palm and crossed the s.p.a.ce

to Auger's head. She felt the onset of a bright shining migraine, as if her skull was a fortress being stormed by an army in flashing chrome armour, and then she felt nothing at all.