"Ach!" Storm growled. "Take me down, Mouse."

The Fortress was a citadel of gloom. There wasn't a smile in the place. The Legion was a worm wriggling on a hook. A big fish was coming up to bite.

"It looks hopeless, doesn't it, Father?" Mouse asked.

"So it does, Mouse. So it does. But maybe we'll fool them all. It's always darkest before the Storm."

"Is that a pun?"

"Me? Make a joke of the family name? Horrors." Make a joke of the family name? Horrors."

Thirty-Nine: 3028-3031 AD

Moira strained to get used to the name she was supposed to a.s.sume at Weideranders. She tried even harder to become a genuinely creative artist. She failed abysmally. She had absolutely no talent for anything but acting.

Blake grumbled, "I guess that'll have to do."

"Do? What's wrong with it? It's legitimate. And dramatist White says Janos Kasafirek..."

"I said all right." Blake smiled. "He's been at me harder than you have, pretty lady. He says it's your future."

She was thrilled. She would really get to do what she wanted...She began cramming cla.s.sical drama, the Old Earth cla.s.sics, especially the Elizabethans. She was mad for Shakespeare. Dramatist White actually broke down and told her she played an inspired Ophelia.

She was floating. Her mission was going to give her a chance to realize her wildest dreams. She would get to study with the great Kasafirek.

"Slight change in plans," Blake said one day not long before she was due to leave. "They've tightened security in Twilight. You're going to leave here as Pollyanna, instead of waiting till you get to Weideranders."

She was to be billed as the touring daughter of Amantea Eight, an under-minister in Confederation's Ministry of Commercial Affairs. The lady actually existed and was obscure enough to cause local officials some concern. The obscure career people were the real powers in Luna Command. The ident.i.ty of surnames was serendipitous.

Moira thought the going would be easy once she left Blackworld. The character was more nearly the real her than the one she portrayed for Edgeward. Her daydreams often revolved around an acting career. She never had given that serious consideration before because Edgeward had such little use for actresses. She had not thought of leaving home except to go stalking after Plainfield.

It came time to leave. She went to the crawler locks reluctantly. This would be the end of one life and the beginning of another. The doubts had begun to hem her in. "Albin. What're you doing here?"

"Boss told me to go with you."

She spotted Blake, ran to his chair, gave him a quick little kiss. "Thank you. For Albin. I won't be nearly so scared."

"I thought not. And I thought we might learn something in Twilight. He knows the city. Be good, Moira. And be careful. You're going to be involved with some strange, dangerous men."

"I'll be all right."

She enjoyed the ride to Twilight. She had never been outdome before. She saw her world from an entirely new perspective.

Bleak ghosts of midnight landscapes slid by the crawler. Crewmen made garrulous by her beauty and exotic skin color provided her with a running commentary. This had happened here, that had happened there. Over yonder was a fantastic landmark mountain that stuck straight up a thousand meters, but you couldn't see it on account of it was dark. The crewmen were from The City of Night. They did not know her. She rehea.r.s.ed her cover for them, as Pollyanna, telling outrageous lies about life in Luna Command.

She reached Twilight in a bright and cheerful mood. It quickly soured.

At first glance Twilight Town appeared to be a clone of Edgeward City. She started to say so to Korando. The human factor intervened.

Two hard-faced policemen began checking papers as the pa.s.sengers started shedding their hotsuits. They were especially nasty to Edgewarders, but only slightly more civil to the Nighter crew and the citizens of Darkside Landing. They were revelers in petty power, the s.a.d.i.s.ts who gave police a bad image everywhere. Pollyanna lost her temper when they started in on Korando.

"You," she snapped, using words as gently as a torturer uses small knives. "You with the face like a pig's b.u.t.t. Yes. You. The one with the nose like stepped-in dog s.h.i.t. We know your mother made a mistake when she decided against the abortion. You don't have to prove it. Go beat your wife if you have to mistreat somebody in order to feel like a man."

Korando flashed a desperate "Shut up!" look. She just smiled.

The policemen were stunned. The other pa.s.sengers made pained faces.

The man she had abused grinned malevolently. He had found himself a victim. "Papers, b.i.t.c.h!"

Malice turned to uncertainty. He looked at her, at her travel pa.s.s. White. Meant offworlder. Youth and s.e.x might mean she was the brat of power.

"These better be good, b.i.t.c.h," he muttered to himself.

"Give them here, Humph," his partner said. "And calm down."

"Can you people read?" Pollyanna demanded. "You can? I'm amazed."

She expected more trouble than they gave her. The one officer became very solicitous once he saw the seals on her pa.s.s. "Be cool, Humph. This fluff's straight out of Luna Command."

Humph grabbed the pa.s.s, flipped through it. His eyes widened slightly. He thrust the booklet at Pollyanna. "I'll be watching you, smarta.s.s."

"I do believe you take after your father." She was a little frightened now. She had to concentrate to maintain her snottiness. "He never forgave your mother either."

And, before he could reply, in a gentler tone, she added, "A little courtesy doesn't hurt, officer. If you're nice to people, they'll usually be nice to you." She stalked away.

Korando came over while she was eating a snack at the station canteen. "That wasn't very smart, Polly. But I appreciate it. He forgot all about me."

For possible watching eyes they pretended to become acquainted. Korando told her he was going to stick a little tighter than he had planned. She needed keeping out of trouble.

And stick he did, like a limpet. So tight that he got no chance to interview Blake's agent. He stayed beside her until he had seen her enrolled in the Modelmog.

The trip thither was an adventure, Edgeward having been her whole universe and most of his. The s.p.a.ce flies were like a visit to a dome devoted to happy times. The big Star Liners were s.p.a.ce-going hotels.

Weideranders Station was different. That vast s.p.a.ce-going roundhouse was too alien. Pollyanna and Korando spent most of their layover in their rooms.

Pollyanna remembered Weideranders. She had been there before, almost too long ago to recall anything but the fear she had known then. They had been running from men who had wanted to kill the people she was with. She could not face all those corridors and shops and eating places filled with outworlders, Toke, the Ulantonid, Starfishers, and other strange people. Not without coming apart, without antic.i.p.ating something dreadful.

She could not have endured it without Korando's help.

She was easing him into the role Frog had vacated by dying. He seemed to accept it.

The Mountain was terrifying too. Though it was the gentlest of worlds, it lacked that without which a Blackworlder never felt secure. It had no dome. Neither she nor Korando ever learned to face the open sky.

Lucifer Storm was almost too easy. She was sleeping with him, loving him, and married to him almost before she herself knew what was happening.

Janos Kasafirek was impressed with her abilities. She was astounded and delighted. He had a reputation as a savage, unrestrained critic.

For a time she was thoroughly content. Life seemed perfect, except that she did not get to see Korando as often as she would have liked. Albin was her sole touchstone with her past and home.

Then, a year after their arrival on The Mountain, Albin announced that he was going home. She protested.

"There's been trouble," he told her. "A skirmish in the Shadowline."

"What can you do?"

"I don't know. Mr. Blake will need me, though. Be calm, Polly. You've got it under control. I'm nothing but excess baggage now."

She cried. She begged. But he went.

Looking back later, she chose that as the day when everything started going wrong.

During her tenure at the Modelmog, Lucifer's father and Richard Hawksblood fought a brief war on The Broken Wings. Lucifer followed the news uneasily. She tried to comfort him, and quickly became engrossed in the action herself, seizing every sketchy report from the Fortress of Iron, skipping from newscast to newscast to find out the latest. It was her first exposure to mercenary warfare. She was intrigued by the gamelike action and by the odd personalities involved. Once she did become enthralled, Lucifer lost interest. He expressed a virulent disapproval of her interest.

She was disappointed because the war ended so quickly.

A few months later Lucifer announced, "We have to go home. I got an instel from my brother Benjamin. Something bad is in the wind."

"To the Fortress?" She became excited. She would be a step closer to Plainfield. And closer to the mercenaries she found so interesting. Lucifer's father had come to their wedding. What a strange, intriguing old man he had been. Two hundred years old! He was a living slice of history. And that Ca.s.sius, who was even older, and Lucifer's brothers...They were like nothing Blackworld or The Mountain had ever seen.

What had begun as an ecstatic honeymoon was fading fast. She did not mind leaving a scene that promised to become unhappy-except that she would miss Janos Kasafirek and her studies.

"I don't want to go," Lucifer told her. "But I have to. And it's cruel to take you away from your studies when you're doing so well."

"I don't mind that much. Really. Janos is getting a little overbearing. I can't take much more. We both need to cool down."

Lucifer looked at her oddly.

He changed after they reached the Fortress. His joy, youth, and poetic romance fled him. He became surly and distant, and ignored her more and more as he tried to fit into the Legion. The Legion tried to adjust to him. He could not meld in.

Inadequate to the mercenary role, he would be little help during the grim pa.s.sage he had returned to help weather. Pollyanna could see it. Everyone else saw it. Lucifer could not. He was a fingerling among sharks, trying to believe he was one of the big boys.

Pollyanna became his outlet for frustration.

Knowing why he was hurting her did not ease her pain. Understanding had its limits.

Loneliness, self-doubt, her own frustration, and spite drove her into the arms of another man. Then another, and another. It became easier each time. Her self-image slipped with each one. Then came Lucifer's father. A challenge at first, he began to remind her of Frog. He gave her moments of real peace. He was gentle, considerate, and attentive, yet somehow remote. Sometimes she thought the body she clasped in their lovemaking was a projection from another plane, an avatar. The quality was even more p.r.o.nounced in Storm's a.s.sociates, spooky old Ca.s.sius and the Darkswords.

Plainfield, wearing the name Michael Dee, finally appeared. She met him with some trepidation, sure her hatred would shine through, or that he would remember her.

He did not remember, and did not sense her odium. Her scheme progressed with such ease that she lost herself in its pace. Before she knew it, she and Plainfield were aboard a ship bound for Old Earth and, eventually, Richard Hawksblood.

Her life seemed to become an ancient black and white movie. Jerky and depressing. Events followed Blake's script perfectly, yet she had a growing feeling that everything would fall apart.

She had lost a marriage that had meant a lot. She did not like the person she had become. Sometimes, lying beside Plainfield while he slept, she held discourse with Frog's ghost. Frog kept telling her nothing was worth the price she was paying.

It worsened. Storm forced her return to the Fortress. She would have killed Plainfield then had she not still felt an obligation to Blake, Korando, and her home city.

She became lonely in a way she had never known in Edgeward. She felt as if she had been dropped into the midst of an alien race. The men helped, for a few minutes each, but when a lover left her he took with him just a little more of her self-respect.

Then Plainfield was beyond her reach, running with the bodies of Storm's sons. She almost committed suicide.

Frog's ghost called her a little idiot. That stopped her.

She still had her duty to Edgeward. She had been living with soldiers long enough, now, to see herself as a soldier for her city. She could persevere.

Forty: 3052 AD

How important is a place? A place is just a place, you say. And I tell you: Not so! You are either of a place, or you are not. If you are, then it is in your heart and flesh and bones; you know it without thought, and it knows you. You are comfortable together. You are partners. You know all the quirks and bad habits and how to sidestep them. If you are an outsider...

It is the difference between new and old boots. You can wear both, but new boots can be trouble if you don't have time to break them in.

Blackworld was new boots for my father and the Iron Legion.

-Masato Igarashi Storm

Forty-One: 3031 AD

The s.p.a.ceport crawler crested the pa.s.s through the White Mountains. Storm saw Edgeward City for the first time. "Looks like a full moon coining up," he murmured. "Or a bubble of jewels rising where a stone fell into dark water." Only half the city dome could be seen above the ringwall surrounding it. It glowed with internal light.

His aide studied him, puzzled. Storm sensed but ignored the scrutiny. He reached for his clarinet case, decided he could not play in this lurching, shaking, rolling rust heap.

He had to do something to ease the tension. It had been ages since his nerves had been this frazzled.