The table was covered with dishes of a variety that Corso had almost forgotten existed. The California's California's commander, a bluff, broad-shouldered man by the name of Casimir Anders, was meanwhile talking with Martinez and Lamoureaux. commander, a bluff, broad-shouldered man by the name of Casimir Anders, was meanwhile talking with Martinez and Lamoureaux.

'It's nice to meet you, Meredith. You'll have to excuse my manners and my body odour. I don't get to talk to people for long periods sometimes, and the bathroom facilities here still leave something to be desired.'

'But the main thing now is that you're able to go back to the Consortium.'

'That depends . . .'

She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head back slightly as if to get a better look at him. 'I'm not unaware of your circ.u.mstances, Mr Corso,' she said. 'The political situation on Redstone still hasn't stabilized, and you don't need to tell me it wouldn't be safe for you to go home. Not for most of you, either.'

He bit his lip and looked at her thoughtfully, then decided there wasn't any reason not to be honest. 'I'll admit that, in my more candid moments, I've wondered if there'd be any point in going back even if rescue did come. In a sense, this. . .' he waved a hand around the prefab, 'all this is my home now. And, besides, I've made real progress trying to decipher the records I've dug up. It's . . . hard to think I could end up just walking away from it all. But I'll have to, I realize that. I'm not some insane hermit. I don't want to stay here for ever on my own.' He could hear the sadness in his own tone.

Zukovsky nodded and smiled broadly, as if pleased with this answer. 'That's exactly why I came over to talk to you. How would would you feel about staying here?' you feel about staying here?'

He eyed her askance, as if she was kidding him.

'I should maybe be more candid,' she continued. 'We didn't just come out here to look for you, though that was part of it in fact we also wanted to know exactly what happened to the Emissaries. It seemed prudent to try and a.s.sess whether they might still represent some kind of threat.'

'And do they?'

'What happened up there,' she said, shifting her gaze towards the ceiling as if she could look straight through it at the Lantern Constellation, 'wiped out most of their s.p.a.ce-going fleets and crippled their empire, but it didn't put them entirely out of action. They have other surviving caches, so they could regroup and come back at us and we need to be ready for that.'

'So what does that have to do with me being here?'

'We've taken a look at the research you've done here, and it's obvious you already have a better handle on the Emissaries than most of the specialists back home. That counts for a lot when it comes to making the kind of a.s.sessment I'm talking about.'

'You want me to keep working here?' he said. 'Seriously?'

'You wouldn't be alone,' she replied quickly. 'We came here intending to leave a permanent outpost behind. There'll be other ships visiting after the California's California's returned, as we want to use this place as a stepping-off point for deeper exploration into the Perseus Arm. We've already talked to Ted Lamoureaux, who's willing to stay and help us set up the outpost, but I got the feeling he wanted to hear what you had to say first. We'll still be here for at least another six months, and in that time we'll build up what you've already established here, and then some of us are staying behind to get things up and running.' She smiled. 'I know it's a lot to ask of you, but nothing you say meanwhile would be binding. And if you ever changed your mind before we headed back, there'd still be a berth waiting for you.' returned, as we want to use this place as a stepping-off point for deeper exploration into the Perseus Arm. We've already talked to Ted Lamoureaux, who's willing to stay and help us set up the outpost, but I got the feeling he wanted to hear what you had to say first. We'll still be here for at least another six months, and in that time we'll build up what you've already established here, and then some of us are staying behind to get things up and running.' She smiled. 'I know it's a lot to ask of you, but nothing you say meanwhile would be binding. And if you ever changed your mind before we headed back, there'd still be a berth waiting for you.'

Corso cleared his throat and looked her in the eye, almost super-naturally aware of the proximity of her hand to his. There were glinting depths in her pupils, in which he saw himself reflected.

'What about you, Meredith?' he asked. 'Will you yourself be staying?'

She looked back at him with an amused expression. 'As a matter of fact, I will be, yes.'

Do it, he could imagine Dakota urging him. he could imagine Dakota urging him. What else do you have to go back for? Your life is here now. What else do you have to go back for? Your life is here now.

'I'll stay,' he decided.

Epilogue.

Dakota drew in a sharp breath, filling her nostrils with the sickly-sweet scent of flowers in early spring, before opening her eyes and squinting into bright sunlight.

Fields of blossoms stretched out all around her, while the bright cerulean blue of the sky curved overhead like a ceiling. The sun was high, almost at its zenith. Tall, tree-like growths, at odds with the terrestrial flowers, formed a small copse nearby like great black squid frozen in the act of leaping out of the soil, their leaves wide and oval and glossy.

She stood up, uncertainly at first, and looked around. The breath caught in her throat as she sighted the cloud-breaching towers of a Magi memory-complex on the horizon, the soaring towers and great fluted domes of a deserted city surrounding its base like steel and concrete waves breaking on the sh.o.r.es of an island mountain.

She trailed her fingertips across the tops of the flowers around her, and tried to piece together her final memories. She had been in the vicinity of the red giant, with the swarm briefly at bay . . . the star had turned nova, and then . . .

And then she had found herself back here, in this place.

She gazed over towards those distant spires for a long time, remembering the conversation she'd once had in just such a building, with a Magi ent.i.ty calling itself the Head Librarian. That had been during the heat of the battle for Ocean's Deep. One moment she'd been on board a ship with missiles closing in on it, the next she'd been here, in this otherworldly realm generated from the virtual memories of the Magi ships, and weeks of subjective time had pa.s.sed.

She sat on the ground, her mind numb, and watched as the sky slowly darkened until the Milky Way came into view, the great cloud of the Sagittarius cl.u.s.ter spreading before her in all its glory.

And then, finally, she began to walk.

When she finally reached the city, more than a week later, she found that the building under the onion dome hadn't changed since her last visit. A chair and a chaise-longue stood next to an orrery composed of oiled bra.s.s and copper. This time, however, an old man she had never seen before was sitting in the chair, watching her with amused eyes that looked out from amidst a ma.s.s of crinkles.

'Dakota,' he said, rising to greet her as she crossed the carpeted floor. She stared at his long white hair, neatly held out of the way with a small silver clasp. His face was a patchwork of lines, but the set of his mouth and the way he looked at her suggested he knew her from somewhere.

His voice was warm and firm. 'It's been . . .' He paused to shake his head and sigh in a good-humoured way. 'It's been a long time since I last saw you.'

'I . . . I don't recognize you. I'm sorry.'

'My name is Lamoureaux. You don't remember me, but I remember you.'

She couldn't think of anything to say, so she perched carefully on the edge of the chaise-longue. 'I don't understand how I could be here,' she said. 'I only remember I was at the red giant with the swarm, and then-'

'And then the star turned nova,' he finished for her.

Dakota nodded faintly. 'How do I know you?'

'We met after your first resurrection a very, very long time ago.'

'Resurr . . . how long ago?'

'Over three thousand years, Dakota.'

She stared back at him, too stunned to think of anything to say, or how to react at first. Lamoureaux, however, waited with apparently endless patience.

'I still don't. . . How can I even be sitting here?'

'That,' he said, 'will take time to explain. But I can tell you this much: the ship that took you to the swarm gathered and preserved your thoughts and memories, and transmitted them outwards in the last few seconds before the shockwave from the nova reached you. Another Magi ship much closer to home used these thoughts and memories to recreate you. But your mind was preserved in other Magi ships also, and they kept you in stasis for a long, long time. We didn't manage to retrieve a proper copy of you until close to the end of the Thousand Year War.'

She stared at him slack-jawed, then dropped her head towards her knees with a groan. 'I'm sorry, but it's so hard to take all this in.'

He smiled sympathetically. 'There's a lot more to explain, and we're going to give it to you gradually. But here's what you mainly need to know: the Mos Hadroch was discovered, and used to stop the war between the Shoal and the Emissaries. That was followed by the Great Diaspora, as the human race scattered across the galaxy.'

'So you brought me back,' she said, raising her head slowly up again. 'Why?'

'Because we need you. The Accord of Worlds is a successor of sorts to the Consortium, but it's facing its greatest threat since the Emissaries. A Shoal fleet is currently heading for the Greater Magellanic Cloud, intent on building an empire.'

'The Accord of what?' Dakota asked weakly.

'I played a small part in its creation, towards the end of my sixth iteration.' He pointed up: 'If you will.'

Dakota glanced up to see an image of the Greater Magellanic Cloud materialize overhead, filling the s.p.a.ce directly beneath the onion dome.

'A few decades ago,' Lamoureaux continued, 'a small fleet, led by Shoal-members intent on recreating the Hegemony, left our galaxy on a secret mission for the Cloud. There's now reason to believe there's more than one Mos Hadroch. If they do find more, they'll have the means to cripple the Accord. So we have to stop them.'

'And what does this have to do with me me?'

Lamoureaux smiled. 'If there was ever a time we needed you, Dakota, it's now.'

She felt like weeping. 'I can't tell you how out of my depth I feel, just being told all this. I mean, Jesus and Buddha . . .' She laughed. 'I don't know what else to say.'

'The Accord is something special. It's much more than the Hegemony ever hoped to be. And its name is no accident would you like me to show you why?'

Dakota nodded warily.

A moment later she found herself bathed in the sound of a hundred trillion voices, all talking at once. But, rather than cacophony, it was more like a single, infinitely complex piece of music constantly mutating and shifting. She saw through a million eyes, heard a million voices. She felt the touch of an untold number of lovers, smelled the air of a thousand worlds. She felt alien limbs sprouting from her body; tasted the armoured chitin of her brood with her long tongue; swam through sentient corals, sniffing out delicious plankton with a nose resembling a flower.

'There's a lot more I have to explain,' he said, reaching out his hand as he stood up. His movements were fluid, not at all those of an old man. And a lot for you to see. But, if we're going to get started, I don't see any reason why we should delay.'

She licked her lips and glanced around the onion dome, then reached out tentatively and took his hand.