The ship was a big mean-looking Mitsubishi-Kondo that wore the white and gold Macrodur colors and the Big M corporate crest. It had full defensive shields, significant armament, a subspace communicator, an ultraencrypted phone link, and a well-appointed bedroom.

"How long did you say our trip would take?" Joanna inquired in a throaty purr.

I sighed. "Not long enough. Besides, I'm a useless wreck, babe."

"Then a holiday is just what you need."

"It won't take long to get where we're going, even if we stop and shop. This boat toddles along at three kay per. Adam lent us a lovely ride."

We settled in on the flight deck. "He seems like a very nice man," Joanna remarked.

"He lives up to his reputation. No wonder the other Concerns hate Macrodur."

"Yeah. Imagine a businessman who doesn't put business first . . ."

We lofted into the air, moving slowly northward under the control of Toronto Conurb ATZ. The atmosphere was so thick with trapped mist that it was hard to distinguish one tower from another, but our hopper was not immediately vectored out from under the force-field. Instead, we came to a dead stop in midair, joining multiple stalled processions of other aircraft. A moment later the force-field's golden umbrella winked out. The mist that had been held beneath it was torn to bits by sudden wind, and snowflakes swirled around us.

"What the hell?" I murmured, and began querying the navigator.

"Helly, look!" Joanna exclaimed, pointing outside.

A train of starship gigs was descending out of the storm toward the city center. There must have been thirty or forty of them, large and beetle-shaped and decorated with cobalt-blue lights.

They began to touch down at the Macpherson Tower sky-port.

"I'll be damned," I said. "The Haluk are leaving!"

I used the hopper's sensitive scanner to clarify the scene and was proved right. The aliens had somehow obtained permission to embark directly from their tower into Earth orbit, without using Oshawa Starport.

"But why?" Joanna asked in bewilderment. "Is this what the Servant meant by withdrawing the Haluk presence? Is it some formal expression of wounded dignity?"

"I hope that's what it is," I said. But a ghost-icicle had materialized at the back of my neck.

The aerial exodus lasted about forty minutes, while hopper traffic above Toronto remained totally paralyzed and the snowfall thickened, causing mild havoc on the streets below.

I surfed the news channels. The media were giving the amazing event a big play, even broadcasting satellite views of a monstrous alien starship waiting in low geosynchronous orbit for the return of its auxiliaries. It was the flagship of the Servant of Servants. I'd seen it myself twice before, under more ominous circumstances.

When the last gig vanished into the sky, the force-field umbrella was turned on again.

Air traffic resumed its normal pattern. The capital of the Commonwealth of Human Worlds went about its interrupted business and so did we, escaping the restricted airspace of the conurbation and rising to our cruising altitude in the ionosphere.

Had all of the Haluk gone away?

Absolutely not, the media reported breathlessly. Reporters' phone calls to the official Haluk embassy codes were answered-curtly. No comments would be forthcoming from Haluk sources until after tomorrow's Assembly vote. The Servant's flagship was "on a meditative cruise."

Macpherson Tower was shielded against scanners, as were most of the commercial and government buildings in the central city; however, persons of Halukoid physique had been observed moving in front of undraped windows. One enterprising media snoop even analyzed water usage in the upper half of the tower-and concluded that Haluk toilets were being flushed. Lots of the aliens were still in there!

Hoppers carrying tabloid websters that attempted unauthorized landings on the Macpherson skyport were shooed away, as always, by Haluk guards armed with riot- batons. Elevator access was blocked, as usual, by Haluk security personnel. Neither CCID nor the Enforcement Division of Xenoaffairs attempted to enter the tower by force.

Technically, the top two-thirds of it was still alien soil, and no Commonwealth judge was empowered to issue a warrant to search it.

Yet.

Half dozing in the command seat as we soared through the sky under autopilot, I wondered whether my brother Dan was still inside Macpherson Tower. Was Alistair Drummond hiding there, too, along with other blown demiclone spies who had infiltrated other establishments in the capital? Minor genplas makeovers and iris implants would enable them to assume alternate identities. If they avoided sensitive occupations, demis might easily be able to fade away into the general population-especially on the free-soil worlds. All human beings had a genetic profile made at birth, but retesting everyone would be prohibitively expensive.

It was more likely that both the Haluk and their demiclone agents were simply biding their time as we were, awaiting the outcome of the all-important vote.

Nothing of any importance, I believed, could happen until then.

Chapter 10

Now arriving Timmins Municipality ATZ. Please supply next routing.

I started awake at the sound of the navigator's voice. Joanna had also closed her eyes during the half hour or so it had taken us to travel the first leg of our journey. She yawned and stretched and looked out the side window of the flight deck.

We were in a holding pattern at ten thousand meters. We'd left the snowstorm behind, and the clear night sky blazed with stars; there was no moon. The total blackness of the land surface was relieved by widely scattered patches of twinkling lights that marked small communities, plus a single urban constellation of moderate size directly beneath us.

"Timmins, Ontario?" she murmured in disbelief, checking the navigation display.

"This is your secret hideout?"

Timmins was a former mining center 180 miles north of Lake Huron, now a hub for an assortment of wilderness recreation areas.

"It's your one-stop shopping mall," I told her. "We're about halfway to our destination, a place called Kingfisher Lodge, another six hundred fifty klicks northwest of here. The lodge is a great big comfortable house that Rampart once used for corporate junkets and executive family holidays. Nice lake-although that'll be frozen over by now."

I said to the navigator, "Land at Timmins Municipal Sky-port. Proceed to the general aviation terminal."

En route.

"Is the lodge very isolated?" Joanna asked.

"There's a little town called Central Patricia about ninety kilometers west of it, maybe four hundred souls. Otherwise, nothing but bush, a few trails and unpaved roads. No one lives in Kingfisher Lodge during the winter months, but it's always heated and maintained. Domestic robots keep it clean and in good repair. It has a storehouse full of staple foods and all kinds of other supplies. It also has an exceptionally good security system, which is the main reason I decided to stash myself there."

The hopper was plunging inertialessly toward the ground. We'd land within a few minutes. I gave Joanna the Macrodur corporate niobium credit card that I'd found waiting for me on the hopper's instrument console.

"Use this to buy whatever special edibles and winter clothing and personal items you think we might need. Keep my damned wasp-waist in mind when you buy my snow gear.

And no gloves for me, either. My four weird fingers won't fit. Stick with mittens."

"I understand."

"Take as long as you like to shop. We're in no hurry. As a matter of fact, I need time to make a few important phone calls. The Timmins e-merchants and mallearmoire services will deliver right to the hopper. I'll stay out of sight while the stuff is stowed aboard."

"I wonder-does the lodge have equipment for crosscountry skiing?" She smiled in reminiscence. "It might be fun for us to do that again ... unless you think we should stay indoors."

"No, of course not. Why don't you buy skis and envirosuits for us. I know there are snowmobiles at the lodge. We can play with them, too."

We flew over Timmins at low altitude, heading for the skyport north of town. It was only 1935 hours and the place was wide-awake.

"I've never driven a snowmobile," Joanna said. "Is it risky?" "Not if you travel at a reasonable speed and stay off thin ice. The snow won't be very deep this early in the season. Tell you what. Give me your phone. I'll program it with my own dex and links. That way you'll have instant access to all of Rampart's services in an emergency. And you won't end up locked outside the security perimeter or unable to access the in-house systems if I get stomped by a bull moose or something."

She gave me a sidelong glance. " 'Or something.' Are you talking about danger from the Haluk?"

"I'm just saying that in the wilderness, Mother Nature can get you if you don't watch out-or even if you do. It's only sensible to take precautions. As the for the Haluk... I suppose they could come after me, if they knew where to look. But I've covered our tracks pretty well. And now that the Helly-demiclone cat is out of the bag, they no longer have any compelling motive for shutting my mouth. Actually, after the Servant's denials in the Assembly today, it would be counterproductive for them to try it."

"True." But she looked troubled as she rummaged in her shoulder bag and handed me her phone. "I'm afraid it's just an inexpensive thing. It doesn't even have video."

I checked the instrument out. It was a real clunker, at least five years old. "We'll need a model with a bit more pizzazz. Why don't you pick up a Lucevera 4500 just like mine.

I'll teach you how to make it do some great tricks."

She tucked the phone back into her bag with a sigh. "You probably think I'm a hopeless Luddite. To me a phone is just something for talking into, or accessing the odd bit of data when I'm away from my computer."

We were on the ground now-actually hovering just above it-drifting after a FOLLOW ME bot that led us to a parking bay. Timmins had a nice little skyport with heated pavement, but there was no force-umbrella and the air temperature was around minus-ten Celsius. I conversed with the general aviation desk and arranged for a short stay undercover, then turned back to Joanna.

"Tell me the truth, babe. Are you having second thoughts about this jaunt? If so, you can catch a commercial flight back to Toronto in a couple of hours."

"No. I'm going with you," she insisted. "About our fresh food and wine: How long will we be at the lodge?"

I hadn't thought much about that. Besides the basic security considerations, I had a compelling need to put distance between myself and the chaos in Toronto while still remaining accessible for long distance consultation. Whether I'd be able to indulge myself depended on one of the phone calls I was about to make.

"How long would you like to stay?" I asked Joanna.

"We could try it for a week," she said softly, after hesitating a moment. "I'll call my department secretary tomorrow and plead urgent family business. It's more or less the truth."

"Are we ... a family, Joanna?"

She smiled sadly. "I don't know the answer to that, Helly. I don't know you-and I'm talking about the man inside the blue skin, not the captivating alien who had his wicked way with me."

My laugh, at least, was still human. "I beg your pardon, Professor. Who seduced whom?"

She gave a wry shrug. "I confess. You were irresistible." Her expression became somber. "But you've changed so much over the years we've been apart. I can sense it, even in the short time we've been together again. Those stories you told..." Her eyes clouded. "You're more driven, more adamant, less vulnerable. Perhaps it's a good thing."

But she didn't sound convinced.

"I think I'm also a lot wiser than I was when I left you. It was the worst mistake of my life. But I was devastated by what had happened. I didn't want your pity. That, on top of everything else-"

"It wasn't pity I felt for you then! It was love."

I had to ask the question. "How do you feel about me now?"

"I don't know." She looked away.

"I love you. What I did-giving in to despair, not trusting you-was stupid and cowardly. I'd like to start again. This damned body of mine-"

"That's not a factor, Helly. It's only a distraction."

"What is a factor?"

She seemed to take a deep breath before plunging ahead. "For one thing, I was very disturbed when you said that you'd killed your Haluk demiclone in cold blood. It wasn't self-defense, then? Did you really mean what you said?"

"I meant it."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"I'd rather not." I had glossed over the incident when recounting it earlier.

"I'm not morbidly curious. I'm trying to understand."

Understand what goes on inside a killer's head ...

"All right." I spoke slowly and calmly. My stiff Halukoid features were a useful mask to hide behind. "I woke in a kind of hospital room inside Macpherson Tower. There were alien medics tending me for a while, and then they went away. I didn't realize at first that my body had been transformed. When I discovered what had been done to me, and found the unconscious demiclone lying in a bed across the room, I knew what the Haluk were going to do with him. Even knew why they'd let me live. I was going to be forced to tutor my double in his role as me. I smothered him with a pillow."

She nodded slowly, unwilling to comment.

"It wasn't revenge, Joanna." But as I said it, I had to wonder. "It was mortal combat.

An act of war against an enemy that intended to use my persona to further their conspiracy against humanity."

"But there is no war!"

"The Haluk Grand Design is equivalent to war. And demicloning is a weapon. I had a right and an obligation to prevent that weapon from being used against us. Fake Helly had no right to live, any more than a dog infected with rabies has. There was no way I could cure the demi of his ... condition. All I could do was prevent him from using it to harm the Human Commonwealth."

She spoke calmly. "You killed him because he stole your identity and was going to insinuate himself into Rampart. Not because you believed he was going to harm anyone."

"I admit that those notions were in my mind. But there were larger considerations as well. You don't know the Haluk as I do, the monstrous things they've done. What they intend to do. And you have no idea of my real feelings about Rampart. I don't love the Concern or live for it, the way Eve does. And I certainly would never kill for it."

But it wasn't my motivation that distressed Joanna so much as the state of my conscience. "When you killed the clone ... didn't you feel any remorse?" Her tone was now almost desperate. I knew the reassurance she wanted, but I couldn't give it to her. She had a right to the truth.

"What I felt was revulsion," I told her. "Regret that the actions were necessary. But I had no sense of doing wrong and certainly no remorse. I wasn't sorry then and I'm not sorry now. Do you remember my telling you and the others about the two hundred demiclones in the secret lab on Dagasatt? I killed them deliberately, too, because it seemed necessary at the time. I've had nightmares about it for years, and I'll probably dream about snuffing Fake Helly when my overloaded brain gets the incident fully processed. I killed because I had to, Joanna. If you can't bring yourself to accept that-"

She lifted her hand, touched the side of my alien face. Tears welled in her eyes. "I'll try. I'll do my best to try to understand. When I see what the Haluk did to you-your poor face, the lost smile that I loved so much, the rest of your body-I'm so sorry, Helly! I didn't intend to make it worse for you." She threw her arms around me, buried her head in my chest. "But it's hard."

Hard to love, easy to pity.

I said, "Let it alone. Put it out of your mind, at least for a week. Please, Joanna."

"All right," she said, drawing away, trying to smile. "I'll begin by applying woman's sovereign remedy: shopping."

While she was inside the terminal, I retreated to the hopper's bedroom to make the first of the phone calls. After engaging encryption, I programmed the data-strip to identify me by my real name, sans code ID. I left the video option engaged, then buzzed my old pal and political antagonist Geraldo Gonzalez, the lone Delegate of the Reversionist party.