She looked around, perhaps doubting his words. Floyd, too, had found it difficult to believe that a portal transition could be this smooth, this unexciting. It was like a ride in a well-oiled hea.r.s.e.

"So where is Niagara right now?" she asked.

"Somewhere ahead of us, further along the pipe."

"I didn't think they ever put two ships in at the same time," Auger said, frowning.

"I don't think it's exactly routine."

"Does Tunguska think we'll catch up with Niagara's ship, or maybe get close enough to shoot it down?"

"I don't know. I think he's more worried about what will happen when Niagara pops out the other end.

There's a danger we'll lose the trail."

"That can't be allowed to happen," Auger said. "If we lose the trail, then we lose everything. Your whole world, Floyd-everyone you know, everyone you ever loved-will die in an instant."

"I'll tell Tunguska to throw a few more chairs in the furnace."

"I'm sorry," she said, sinking back into the hollow of her pillow, as if drained of energy. "I don't know

why I'm making this any more difficult for you than it already is. Tunguska's bound to be doing all he can." Then she looked at Floyd sharply, some random dislodged memory slotting back into place. "The ALS co-ordinates," she said. "Did you figure them out?"

"No. Tunguska's still chewing on that one. He says we may never find them."

"We're missing something here, Floyd. Something so d.a.m.ned obvious it's staring us in the face."

Tunguska came to see her a little later. He was a huge man, but he moved and spoke with such unhurried calm that Auger couldn't help but relax in his presence. His mere existence seemed to a.s.sure her that nothing bad would happen.

"Have you come to let me out of bed?" she asked. "I feel as if I'm missing all the excitement."

"In my experience," Tunguska said, making himself a temporary seat, "excitement is always better when

it happens to other people. But that's not why I came. I have a message for you. We intercepted it shortly before entering the portal."

"What kind of message?"

"It's from Peter Auger. Would you like to see it?"

"You really should have told me sooner."

"Peter specifically asked that you not be disturbed until you were feeling better. Anyway, there was no

possibility of replying. We told Peter that you would be unconscious until we were already in the hyperweb."

"Then he knows I'm safe?"

"He does now. But why don't I just play the message?" Without waiting for an answer, Tunguska cast a hand towards one wall and conjured a screen into being. It filled with a flat, static image of Peter, looking a bit more harried and rough around the edges than usual.

"I'll leave you to view the message in private," Tunguska said, standing and gesturing for his seat to dissolve into the floor.

The image came to life as soon as Tunguska left the room. "h.e.l.lo, Verity," Peter said. "I hope that this reaches you safe and sound. Before you start worrying, I want you to know that the kids are all right. We're in the protection of Polity moderates-friends of Ca.s.sandra's-and they're taking very good care of us. Tunguska will make sure we're all reunited once this madness is over."

"Good," Auger mouthed.

"Now let's talk about you," Peter continued. "I still don't have all the facts-and I don't expect to get them until we're face to face-but I've heard enough to know that you're basically intact and that you're in excellent hands. I'm sorry about what happened to Caliskan and Ca.s.sandra. I know you've been through quite an ordeal since you returned from E2, never mind what actually happened at the other end of the link. All I can say is-and I know this is going to sound strange coming from me-but I'm proud to know you. We would have been satisfied if all you'd done was complete the mission that was a.s.signed to you. But you did so much more than that. You lived up to the memory of Susan White. You made sure her death was not in vain." Peter paused and held up a flat display screen upon which a complex three-dimensional form-like a metallic snowflake or starfish-twisted and tumbled. "You probably won't recognise this. It's a single replicating element of Silver Rain-the same strain that Ca.s.sandra's people think Niagara has got his hands on."

He was right: she shouldn't have recognised it. But she had felt a glimmer of familiarity when she first saw the rotating form. Ca.s.sandra's machines recognised it, even if Auger didn't.

"Officially, it never should have been possible," Peter went on. "All stocks were supposed to have been incinerated twenty years ago. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. In blatant violation of the treaty, the Polities held on to a strategic reserve. They even dedicated a small team to making improvements in the weapon."

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Auger said.

"But don't be too harsh on them," Peter said with a glint in his eye, as always knowing exactly what her response would be. "We did just the same. The only difference is that our research teams weren't quite so inventive. Or, perhaps, clever." He tilted the display screen so that he was able to look at it for himself. "Really, what the Polity scientists did was very simple. The original Silver Rain was a broad-spectrum anti-biological agent. It couldn't discriminate between people and plants, or any kind of microorganism. It infiltrated itself into all living organisms and killed them all at the same preprogrammed moment: that's why we still have the Scoured Zone on Mars. Very good for destroying an entire ecology...not so good for surgically removing one element of it. But the new strain is able to do just that -it's human-specific. When it's done its work, there will be n.o.body left alive anywhere on E2. In a few weeks there won't even be corpses. Yet in every other respect the ecosystem will remain untouched. To the rest of nature, it will feel like a brief, bad fever has just ended. A million-year fever called h.o.m.o sapiens. The cities will crumble and decay. The dams will crack and collapse. The wilderness will reclaim what was rightfully its own. The animals probably won't even notice the difference, except that the air will taste a little cleaner to the birds, and the oceans will sound a little quieter to the whales. There won't even be any nuclear power stations or ships to run out of control, poisoning the world when their masters depart."

Peter cleared the panel with a flex of his wrist and placed it aside. "Why am I telling you all this, when Niagara already has the weapon? Simply because you are our only hope of stopping this from happening. If that weapon is released into the atmosphere of E2, understand that it will work. There is no realistic probability of failure. No antidote we can release later, and hope that it mops up the replicators before they trigger. The only way to stop this happening is to intercept Niagara before he reaches Earth. If he isn't intercepted, the murder of three billion souls in E2 will be bad enough. But that's not the end of it. If the aggressors fail, then I believe we have a hope of ending this insane war before it escalates any further. We may have lost the Earth, but we don't have to lose the entire system. But if Silver Rain reaches E2, the hardliners on our side will never consent to any ceasefire, even with the moderates. It will go all the way. It will be the end of everything." He shrugged. "We'll lose, of course. I just felt you needed to be absolutely clear about that, so that you know what's at stake."

"I know," Auger said. "You didn't have-"

"I know, I know," Peter said, nodding. "After all that you've gone through, all that you've done for us, to have to ask this much more of you...it's neither fair nor reasonable. But we simply have no alternative. I know you have the strength, Verity. More than that, I know you have the courage. Just do what you can. And then come home to us. You have more friends than you know, and we're all waiting for you."

Later, she had another visitor. The dark-haired girl walked into the room without invitation, then stood demurely at the foot of her bed with her hands clasped behind her back, as if awaiting some mild reprimand for late homework.

"I could make myself transparent, if you thought that might help," Ca.s.sandra said.

"Don't bother. I know you're not real."

"I felt it best to appear in person. You don't mind, do you? Compared to what I've already done to you, altering your perceptual feeds seems rather tame."

"What is this about, Ca.s.sandra?"

"It's about you and me. It's about what happened to us, and what we do about it."

"I'm under no illusions," Auger said. "You hijacked my body to save us in Paris."

"I also saved myself in the process. I can't deny that there was a degree of self-interest involved."

"Why? I'm sure those machines of yours could have hidden themselves out of harm's way until the danger was over."

"They could have, but I wouldn't have survived very long without a host mind. A personality is a fragile thing at the best of times."

Auger felt some chill sense of what Ca.s.sandra had endured. "How much of you..." But she couldn't find it in herself to finish the question.

"How much of me survived? More than I could have hoped for. A lot less than I would have liked. Mentally, I had time to write a message in a bottle. You're talking to that message."

"And your memories?"

"In principle, the machines would only ever have been able to encode and transfer a tiny fraction. My memories feel complete...but thin, like a sketch for a life rather than the thing itself. There's no texture to them, no sense that I actually lived through those events. I feel as if my life is something that happened to someone else, something I only heard about at second-hand." She composed herself, looking down at her shoes. "But perhaps that's what life always feels like. The trouble is, I can't remember if there was a difference before I died."

"I'm sorry, Ca.s.sandra."

"Oh, don't get me wrong-it's better than being dead. And when we sort out this mess, there'll always be a chance that I can reintegrate backed-up memories from the Polity mnemonic archives. If they survive."

"I hope they do."

"We'll see. The main thing is that I've made it this far. I have you to thank for that, Auger. You could have refused me."

"I don't remember a discussion taking place."

Ca.s.sandra gave a half-smile. "Well, it didn't take very long, I'll admit. And in the process of me storming your brain, you probably lost the last few seconds of your short-term memory. But I a.s.sure you I had your permission to do what needed to be done."

"You saved us," Auger said. "And when I was injured, when Floyd came back to rescue me, you stayed with me."

"What else was I supposed to do?"

"You could have fled my body...abandoned me in Paris. I'm sure your machines would have coped until they found another host. You could have made do with Floyd, after all." "You have the wrong idea about us," Ca.s.sandra said. "I would never have abandoned you. I would rather have died than live with that."

"Then I'm grateful."

"You saved me as well. After all that has gone between us, it was nothing I counted on. You have my

thanks, Auger. I just hope that in some way this has taught both of us a lesson."

"I was the one who needed the lesson," Auger said. "I hated you because you told the truth about me."

"Then I'll make a small confession. Even as I was preparing to testify against you, I admired your

dedication. You had the fire in your belly."

"It nearly burnt me."

"But at least you cared. At least you were ready to do something."

"This little mess," Auger said, "is all because of people who were ready to do something. People like

me, who always know when they're right and everyone else is wrong. Maybe what we need is a few less

of us."

"Or the right kind," Ca.s.sandra said, shrugging. She shifted awkwardly. "Look, I'll come to the point. I meant everything that I just said, but the reason I came to talk to you is very simple: it's your choice now."

"What's my choice?"

"What you do with me. You're healed. You no longer need me in your head to keep you alive."

"Then you've identified a new host?"

"Not exactly. Tunguska would take me if he had spare capacity...which he doesn't, not with all the extra tactical processing he's having to do. The same goes for the rest of the crew. But there are techniques.

They can hold my machines in suspension until we return to the Polities and find a host."

"Answer me truthfully: how stable would that suspension be, compared to you remaining where you

are?"

"The suspension procedure is more than capable-"

"Truthfully," Auger said.

"There'd be some additional losses. Impossible to quantify, but almost inevitable."

"Then you're staying put. No ifs, no buts."

Ca.s.sandra flicked aside her lick of black hair. "I don't know what to say. I never expected this kindness."