"Well," she said, her brown eyes impish. "Before, I would have said I could live another ninety years. But if you average out my one hundred twenty and your thirty, we could make seventy-five. Will that be enough?"

I put on a solemn expression.

"Never," I said, smiling at the surprised look on her face, "but it will have to do. We will treasure all those days together. Will you leave yourself open to the experience?"

"I look forward to it," she said.

We nestled together and I felt the pulse quicken in my veins, the beat to the dance of life.

FOR OLD TIMES SAKE.

Tim Waggoner.

"I want you to tell me how I died."

I'd been a professional actor for over thirty years, but it still took all my training and experience to keep my expression relaxed as I looked up from my bitterroot ale.

"h.e.l.lo, Preita." I smiled and then gave her a slight frown. "It is still Preita, isn't it? Or do you go by something else these days?"

"If you'd responded to any of my attempts to get in touch with you over the last two years, you wouldn't have to ask." Despite the words, her tone was warm, almost amused. I might've been charmed if I hadn't known her to be every bit the actor I was.

"So," she continued, "are you going to ask me to sit down, or am I going to have to be rude and just take a seat myself?"

I smiled again and gestured to the open seat on the other side of the booth.

"Please."

She accepted my invitation with a smile and a nod, but she was unable to completely cloak the cold anger in her gaze as she sat opposite me.

"Did you like my opening line?" she asked.

"Very dramatic. If we had an audience, they'd be sitting on the edges of their seats right now. Of course, as beautiful as you are, you wouldn't need a hook like that to capture an audience's attention. All you'd have to do is walk onstage."

I regretted it as soon as I said it, but I hadn't been able to help myself. She looked lovely. Artfully restrained use of cosmetics to bring out the best in her delicate features, blond hair cut short and professionally styled, trim figure accentuated by a sinfully expensive silkwraith gown that was currently the height of fashion on Amontillado, a couple tasteful accessories-phasegem earrings and a silvarium bracelet coiled around her left forearm. Everyone in the bar was either openly staring at her or pretending not to be staring, and I didn't blame them a bit. Preita was stunning. And it certainly didn't hurt that she appeared twenty years younger than when I last saw her . . . on the day I'd killed her.

"Flatterer," she said, mock-chiding me. "I can't take all the credit, though. A fresh reboot does wonders for the complexion."

"Well, it certainly agrees with you." I was saved from having to come up with something more to say when a server unit glided over to ask Preita if she wanted a drink. I wondered if she'd order her usual or something else-Cascadians weren't exactly the same person after a reboot, and her tastes might have changed-but she ordered a scotch and null-mist, as she usually did, and while I still had two-thirds of my bitterroot left, I ordered another. I had a feeling I was going to need it.

The server transmitted our order to the bar and then glided over to pick it up. Neither of us spoke while the server fetched our drinks. We sat and listened to the music vibrating forth from the walls-Vari cybersynth, which Preita had always found soothing but tends to grate on my nerves after a bit. A few moments later, the server returned and levitated our drinks off its tray and onto the table.

"Thank you," Preita said, and the server moved off to see to other customers. She looked at me and frowned. "Why are you smiling?"

"The server isn't sentient. There's no point in thanking it."

"Just because it isn't organic doesn't mean it isn't alive in its own way," she said, an edge in her voice. "It's narrow-minded and arrogant of us to think our definition of life is the only one that matters."

It was an old argument between us, and I found it oddly refreshing. I was tempted to get into it with her, just as we used to, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else, but I resisted. She hadn't come here to relive the past. At least, not that part of it.

"I caught the matinee today," she said, surprising me with the sudden shift in topic.

The idea that she'd been out in the audience watching me perform less than an hour ago both thrilled me and made me feel sick to my stomach. I took a drink of bitterroot and was pleased to see that my hand didn't shake.

I was currently trodding the boards at the Northern Grand, Amontillado's premier theatre, starring as Uncle Tuyet in a revival of The Song of Ivory. It was an old, tired play, and the reviews had been mixed at best, but it was septems in the bank, so I wasn't complaining. It hadn't taken a great feat of detection for Preita to find me. She knew me, in some ways, probably better than I knew myself. It was my custom to hang out in the nearest stage-door tavern between shows, and I usually drank alone. I don't like to socialize before I perform. I find it breaks my concentration.

"You were good," she said.

Preita was an excruciatingly honest critic, so I knew she wasn't lying. Then, as if to prove my point, she added, "Your energy flagged a bit in the middle of the second act, but you recovered nicely at the end."

"It's been a long run, and I'm a bit tired," I said, but I wasn't certain I was talking about the play. "How about you? What are you up to these days?"

"I've been working on Cascadia." She paused to take a sip of her scotch. "Teaching mostly, though I've done a couple small plays. New stuff. Nothing you've heard of."

I nodded as if I understood, and took another sip of my bitterroot. I knew Preita hadn't been able to afford that dress on an acting teacher's salary, but she'd had five lifetimes to ama.s.s wealth. One thing about Cascadian revivers-they're rarely poor.

"So . . ." she said, the word a study in practiced nonchalance, "why didn't you return my calls? Is it disa.s.sociation? We talked about that before we married."

Talked was an understatement. We'd gone through a month of counseling on Cascadia before the a.s.semblage granted our marriage pet.i.tion. I'm an ordinary, garden-variety human, with no enhancements beyond the basic treatments given in the womb to promote good health and long life. My kind is a minority in the systems of the Seventh Tier, which in addition to the Cascadian revivers is home to the telepaths of Unanimity, the cybernetic Vari, the genetically enhanced Ascendants, and those who eschew physical life and prefer to dwell in the virtual realm of Idyll. We're all descended from the basic human stock that originated on old Earth before our ancestors left their homeworld and moved out into the galaxy a millennia ago. Since then, humanity has developed along separate lines-not just here in the Seventh Tier but throughout the Eternalliance-to the point where we've almost become separate species. Not genetically, perhaps, but certainly culturally, and Preita had been determined that I understood what I was getting into by marrying a reviver. Hence the four weeks of counseling.

The Cascadians have found a way to, if not defeat Death outright, then at least cheat the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. When their current body dies-whether from old age, natural causes, or accidental death-a fresh one is cloned from stored genetic material, brought to adult maturity in a matter of months, and the individual's personality is downloaded into its new home. Revivers save back-up copies of their minds, memories included, every few months, so when it's time for a reboot, the downloaded memories will be as current and complete as possible. I'd first met Preita when we were both cast in supporting roles in a small avant-garde play outside Amontillado's capitol city. She'd been just starting her fifth life then, and she'd looked the same as she did now-a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties who carried herself with a maturity far beyond her years. I'd become enamored with her the first time we ran lines together, and by the end of the play's run, I was hopelessly in love. Preita took a little longer to warm up to me. Appearances aside, she was far older than I and not given to jumping into relationships impulsively. But eventually, she agreed to go out on a date with me and a few years later, we were married. And we'd remained so for fifteen years.

Because a rebooted reviver isn't technically the same person but rather a duplicate, often their friends and relatives-especially the non-Cascadian ones-experience an emotional distancing from a reviver after a rebirth. As a counselor once explained it to me, for some people, seeing their loved one resurrected from the dead is like being haunted by a living ghost. With time, some people are able to adjust to the presence of their revived loved one on their own while others need therapy. But some, no matter how hard they try, simply can't adjust and choose to sever all ties with the revived individual. But that wasn't my problem.

"It's not that," I said. Though for the last two years, I'd been hoping she'd think that. It would've made things easier.

"This isn't my first reboot, you know," she said. "I'd understand if you did feel disa.s.sociated from me. But if it's not disa.s.sociation, then what is it? We were married for fifteen years, Darach. I loved you, and I thought you loved me."

"Of course I loved you." I almost added, I still do. But how could I love this, this ghost made flesh? It was eerie to be sitting across the table from the image of the woman who'd been my wife. I remembered kissing those lips, making love to that body . . . except this was a duplicate. A clone with copies of my wife's memories. I'd never touched this body, no matter what my own memories were telling me.

"Then do me the courtesy of telling me why you don't want to be with me anymore. Did you grow tired of me? Did you miss being able to sample all the adoring young things lining up outside your dressing room?" She forced a smile, but it didn't mask the hurt in her eyes. "Please talk to me. For the sake of what we once had, if nothing else."

I took another sip of bitterroot to give me time to think. I'd imagined this moment many times over the last two years. Preita was strong-willed, and I knew that while it was the custom for revivers to eventually leave disa.s.sociated friends and relatives alone if they no longer desired contact, she would eventually track me down and demand to know why I didn't want to pick up where we left off. But no matter how many scenarios I'd run through in my mind, all the lines I'd imagined myself saying, now that were finally meeting, I found myself at a loss for words. But I shouldn't have been surprised. An actor is lost without a script to follow.

I put my gla.s.s down and decided to start with the question Preita had asked when she'd first approached my table.

"You want to know how you died."

"Well, I know the general details. We'd just finished an inter-system tour with the Wanderl.u.s.t Theatre Company-as the headliners, of course-and we were headed back from Maelstrom when our barque was attacked by a group of Ng needlers. You managed to reach an escape pod, but I was killed in the battle and never made it off the ship. At least, that's what they told me at the revival center on Cascadia when I awoke. I have no direct memories of the event since the last back-up I'd made before my death was four months before the Ng attack, when our troupe performed on Cascadia. When I woke up after my reboot, I expected you to be there to fill me in the gap in my memory. That's what family and friends do on my world. They try to ease the transition from one life to another. But you weren't there." She said this last in an accusatory tone, and for a moment I thought she would continue berating me for having abandoned her-and I wouldn't have blamed her if she had. But she paused to take another sip of her scotch, and when she was finished, she said, almost too casually, "So . . . tell me what happened."

I could've lied to her, I suppose. G.o.d knows I wanted to. But I took a deep breath and told her the truth.

"What do you think about the captain?"

Our cabin was somewhat cramped, but luxurious by starship standards: queen-sized bed, bathroom and vibrashower, and enough s.p.a.ce that we didn't have to crawl over the bed to get from one side of the room to the other. I hadn't seen the Dragonwing's crew quarters, but I'd been on enough ships to know the guest rooms were usually much nicer, and since we were the troupe's stars, we'd gotten the best of the best. I doubted the captain's room was any larger.

Preita and I had just returned from dinner-where we'd sat at the captain's table, of course-and we were both still in formalwear. I was sitting on the bed, loosening the drawstrings on my vest-which, as Preita had pointed out several times during our tour, had become a bit snug on me-and she was standing at the bathroom sink, still in her dress, though she'd kicked off her shoes the moment we'd entered the room. She'd taken off her earrings as well, but not the silvarium bracelet she wore around her left forearm. She'd purchased the bracelet during a shopping spree on Twixt several years before, and she never took it off, not even to shower. It was a pretty enough piece of jewelry, I supposed, though rather plain compared to what Preita usually fancied, and I didn't understand why she was so fond of it. She was leaning over the counter and gazing into the mirror as she removed her makeup, the bathroom door left open so we could talk.

"He seems competent enough," I said. "A bit stuffy and humorless, but then that comes with the job, doesn't it? I mean, when was the last time we ran into a jolly, frivolous starship captain?"

"There was that trader who gave us a lift when we were stranded on the outer ring of the Indria system, remember? He was a delight." Preita spoke louder than usual to be heard over the hum of her makeup neutralizer. She pa.s.sed it slowly over her face, and I loved watching the graceful, precise way she moved.

"I remember. He was drunk most of the time, and he nearly scattered our atoms throughout the Seventh Tier when he pushed his ship's engines too hard and the alluvion drive went critical."

Prieta laughed. "That's right. I'd forgotten that part!" Her expression grew serious again. "You're right about our captain being typical. He's nothing more than another closed-minded military man who'd prefer to shoot first and ask questions later. Or as far as he's concerned, not ask any questions at all."

I knew where this was headed, and I suppressed a sigh. "Need I remind you we're on a barque, dear? It's hardly a military vessel."

"The captain might be working commercial transport now, but he's a retired fleet officer," she said. "You couldn't have missed that little tidbit of information. After all, he spent the better part of the meal regaling us with tales of his glorious battles against the Ng on Backwater. Or have you finally mastered the art of sleeping with your eyes open and miss the whole thing?"

"I wish," I said. When it came to the subject of the Ng, Preita could get so worked up that what began as a discussion of differing viewpoints usually devolved into a shouting match. I'd been holding my breath throughout dinner, afraid she was going to get into it with the captain, and I'd been relieved when she'd made it through the meal without blowing up at him. Actors are, by our very nature, highly emotional people, and we're often drawn to support causes of various sorts. Some actors are merely dilettantes, though, feigning dedication to a cause for appearance's sake, but Preita was deeply and sincerely pa.s.sionate in her belief that the citizens of the Seventh Tier unfairly viewed the Ng as monsters and treated them as such.

"If the captain had had any idea how you felt, I'm sure he would've chosen a different topic of conversation. I thought you demonstrated magnificent self-restraint tonight," I said, half-teasing, half-serious.

"It wasn't easy, believe me. The way he spoke about destroying that Ng installation on the southern continent was positively ghoulish. And the enthusiasm with which he related the gory details . . ." She shook her head in disgust. "It was like he was a vorball player reliving a favorite match. Or more like a hunter discussing a particularly exciting kill." She was agitated now and getting sloppy with the neutralizer, leaving dots of makeup beneath her skin. "People like him make me sick. They have no respect for life."

"The residents of Backwater probably have a different view," I said. "Seeing as how it was their world the Ng occupied."

Preita went on as if she hadn't heard me.

"I understand that there are conflicts between our species, but there are better ways to settle them than with warfare. If we could just learn to understand the Ng . . ."

"I don't think there's much chance of that, my dear. We've been contending with the Ng for centuries now, and if anything, we seem to understand them less and less as time goes by. They're just too different from us."

The Ng aren't aliens, exactly. They're a race of artificial intelligences descended from the AI's that operated unmanned probes in the first days of faster-than-light travel, when alluvian drive was deadly to humans. A number of the AI's that departed Earth never returned, and it was a.s.sumed their craft were lost or destroyed due to imperfections in the early alluvian drive engines. The truth was that the AI's decided to set off on their own, and a thousand years later when humans were able to fly faster-than-light starcraft safely and began moving out into the galaxy, they discovered the AI's-now calling themselves the Ng-waiting for them.

Preita walked into the bedroom, stopped at the foot of the bed, and regarded me, hands on hips, anger smoldering in her gaze.

"Why are they too different? Because they aren't organic? Because their minds are made of datastreams instead of meat? In case you've forgotten, you're married to a reviver. Our minds are stored as data and downloaded into cloned bodies. Does that make me too different from you? Does that make me a monster to be hunted?"

Whenever Preita was on the verge of being this upset, there was only one thing I could say that wouldn't make the situation worse.

"I love you."

She looked at me for a moment and then smiled.

"You d.a.m.ned well better."

If I'd had any doubt it had been the right thing to say, I was rea.s.sured when Preita began to remove her dress.

Later, when we were lying next to each other in the dark, Preita said, "Do you think he was serious or just trying to impress us?"

She had a habit of picking up the thread of a conversation hours, sometimes days, after we'd left it, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking about the captain again.

"You mean about his exploits on Backwater?"

"No, about the special cargo he claimed to be carrying."

She really had lost me now. I hadn't spent the entire dinner listening to the captain. A lawyer from Seigehold had been seated on the other side of me, a specialist in privacy laws for the telepaths that lived on her world, and she was a much more engaging speaker than the captain.

"I'm afraid I didn't catch that."

Preita hrumpfed. "Too busy ogling that lawyer, I suppose."

I wisely made no comment.

"He didn't come out and say so directly, but he hinted that the ship's carrying some sort of weapon built by the scientists on Maelstrom. A weapon designed to be used against the Ng.And not just any weapon,but the weapon-the one that will finally give humanity the edge."

Maelstrom was home to the Ascendants, the most genetically advanced humans in the galaxy. Scientists throughout the Seventh Tier had long been searching for a weapon that would allow us to defeat the Ng. We humans do have powerful weapons-warships equipped with energy lances, singularity charges, graviton ma.s.s drivers and more-but all of our great technology has only managed to allow us to fight a holding action against the Ng. I've always found Ascendants to be arrogant b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but there was no denying their intelligence, and if anyone could create the ultimate weapon to use against the Ng, it would be them. And the Dragonwing had departed Maelstrom only a couple days ago . . .

"I suppose it's possible," I allowed. "Did he say where we were taking the weapon?"

"He gave the impression that we were ferrying it to Amontillado for further testing. But it seems like a lot of trouble to go to. Why not just transmit the plans to Amontillado and let the scientists there build one? And if for some reason you did want to physically transport a prototype, why do it on a barque? A warship would be safer."

"Transmissions can be intercepted," I said. "And a warship might draw the Ng's attention. A barque's the perfect ship to use if you want to slip past an Ng patrol unnoticed. a.s.suming there really is a weapon on board."

"You sound doubtful."

"You said yourself that the captain's an ex-military man who likes to relive his glory days. The Dragonwing's cargo hold may be full, but I don't think there are any super weapons on board. The captain was likely amusing himself by telling a few lies to a beautiful woman."

"Maybe."

Our conversation ended there and we both drifted off. I don't know how long we slept-minutes or hours-but we were awakened by a loud sonorous chiming issuing from the walls around us. We sat up, and I ordered the room to turn on the lights. Neither of us spoke. We were both veteran s.p.a.ce travelers, Preita more so than me due to her greater years, and we knew what to do in an emergency. While we swiftly dressed in comfortable clothes, I asked the room's computer to tell us what was happening.

"We are currently under attack by a squadron of Ng needlers," the computer said in a pleasantly bland voice. "Pa.s.sengers are ordered to remain in their cabins while evasive maneuvers-"

A deep boom sounded from somewhere, and I felt the floor vibrate beneath our feet. The artificial gravity went wonky for a moment, and I felt a dozen pounds lighter. Preita and I grabbed hold of each other to steady ourselves, but we needn't have bothered. An instant later the ship's systems compensated, and the gravity returned to normal. I didn't have to ask what the boom meant: the Ng were firing on us.

"New orders," the computer said, sounding almost chipper this time. "All pa.s.sengers are to head for the nearest escape pod and prepare to evacuate the ship." A pause. "Darach and Preita Cai, to locate the closest escape pod to your current location, exit your room, turn left, and follow the directional holos bearing your name. Thank you for choosing Dragonwing, and good luck."

We didn't bother grabbing any of our personal belongings, not that we had a lot with us. Actors learn early in their careers to travel light. I took hold of Preita's hand and together we ran out of the room and into the corridor, where we were almost knocked down by a panicking crowd of our fellow pa.s.sengers in their mad dash to reach the escape pods. Considering that we were under attack by the Ng, I understood exactly how they felt.

The walls were crawling with holographically projected words spelling pa.s.sengers' last names. I quickly located Cai on the wall next to our cabin door, and the moment my gaze fell upon it, the word began sliding along the wall, guiding us toward the escape pod the ship's main computer had a.s.signed us to. We ignored the people around us, focused our attention on our name, and followed it, moving down the corridor at a run. Another boom sounded, this one louder than the first, and this time the gravity increased, drawing us down toward the floor. The fluctuation lasted a full thirty seconds before the gravity reset and the pa.s.sengers were able to start running again, many of them now crying and wailing with fear. If it hadn't been for the steady way the names flowed along the walls, regulating the crowds' speed, I believe people would've run blindly down the corridors, like terrified animals fleeing a raging fire.

Preita and I were just as scared as anyone else, but we were actors, and we handled our fear as we always did: by performing. Only this time we were our own audience.

"Do you remember the courtroom scene from Seeking Higher Ground?" Preita gasped out as we ran.

In that production I'd played a corrupt prosecuting attorney and Preita, a peace officer falsely accused of murdering her partner.

"Shall we take it from the top?" I gasped back, and we continued running, keeping an eye on our guiding name as we launched into the scene. If the performance we gave didn't do the playwright's material justice, it kept our minds from succ.u.mbing completely to fear, and by the time we reached our a.s.signed escape pod, we were actually laughing, though our merriment had more than an edge of hysteria to it.

"Won't this make a grand story to tell our friends when we get back to Amontillado?" Preita said.

"We'll be able to dine out on it for months!" I agreed.