pected to finish the whole shooting match in then- favor?

"You think about that, while we talk about you. "You were born in the Pontisport hinterland on Parrot, in the rest room of a bakery. Your mother was a part-time port wh.o.r.e, one of the refugees who came down the Carling Line in refrigerators from Weber II. She was mainlining adrenochrome activators cut with the ribosomes of a local breed of bat. She asked for a cure, but the port authorities already had her scheduled for resettlement as a displaced person.

No, I'm not asking you any of this, I'm telling you-because I know more about you than you know about yourself.

"s.p.a.ceport Annie Truck was shipped to the Heavy Stars when you were six months old. AdAcs penetrate the placenta, of course, and you had to be weaned off the stuff. She left you behind. Do you ever dream about bats?

"But what's more important about Annie is this: she was a full-blooded Centauran.

"As far as we can decide statistically, there's a ninety-four per cent chance that she was the last true Centauran to exist in the Galaxy. That makes you,a half-breed, Truck. Finally, on this score at least: for some reason, Annie had the primogeniture. If you'd ever read a book, you might have recognized your bone-structure and general proportion as predominantly Centauran. Your father had weak genes, whoever he was.

"You won't find that so amusing in a minute, chum-mie.

"Let's go back to the Centauran War. Have it your own way, genocide; it honestly makes no difference to me. That weapon existed, you know. The MI reports worried us then, but we have our own reasons now.

"We found it, Truck.

"Some b.l.o.o.d.y lunatic of an archaeologist found it in a bunker cut three miles into the crust of Centauri VII,

19.

as nasty a little bolthole as ever I saw, and I've seen a lot.

"We found it, but we don't know how to work it. We can't even get very close to it. We can't get any instrument readings off it. I've seen it myself, and it seems half sentient. Can you see that, Truckie-a sentient bomb?

"We need your genes. They gave up and conceded Centauri without using the weapon all right; but they built its operating codes into the chromosomes of their unborn brats, because they wanted to be able to sneak back to it like dogs to sick, later. It won't go off without a Centauran.

"Annie died twenty years ago, and you're the only one we could find."

Truck mulled it over a little. He felt a wry sympathy for the port lady from Weber II. It was easy to see his own birth as a momentary lapse, a miscalculation. But again: had Annie Truck answered some unconscious *urge on Parrot? In dividing, to produce another vector, a small image of herself? As if by that multiplication of possibilities, the long uncomprehending migrationmight be expedited-something lost by her might be gained by him.

This in the silence that followed General Gaw*s monologue, while her good eye impaled him and wouldn't let go. All s.p.a.cers are incurably sentimental.

Eventually, he got out of his chair and stood looking down at her.

"How much good will your bomb do us when you drop it?" he asked. He wasn't sure on whose behalf he was asking. He fingered the tear in his jacket. "Who will you drop it on?"

When she said, "I expected that, Truck, it's predictable from the way you dress. You can leave it out, because I don't need it," he turned his back on her. She went on: "We blew two UASR agents in the team that

20.

uncovered the Centauri Device. There was a third, but we didn't discover that until he'd shoved off. 'That's what it's about, duckie; it always is."

Indistinctly, because he was thinking about something else: "Then get someone else to prime the thing, General."

He reached the door, went as far as touching the handle, then faced her again.

"I was on Morpheus," he said. "I stacked them up for the graveyard orbit at Cor Caroli. I've seen the library footage of Weber II. You understand, I don't care if you and the Arabs blow each other to junk. But I loaded people who'd never heard of you on to those boats."

She was still lounging, undisturbed and negligent, her thighs powerful and ugly, her eye bright and compelling. He was growing terrified less of what she represented than of the woman herself.

"That shanghai attempt," he said, "was it to persuade me that the Arabs want to talk to me too? That would have made it nice and easy to accept whatever deal you have in mind, wouldn't it? Don't do it again. I'll try and kill the next lot, so help me. The only people who wear lace-ups are Fleet Police. It only makes you look silly, you see. No s.p.a.cer would be seen dead in lace-up shoes. At least the Arabs have the gumption to dress their men for the part."

She laughed, breezy and fierce. **I told the stupid b.i.t.c.h it wouldn't work. Fm going to have to have a chat with her." She swung her lega out of the chair and leaned forward. "I can't say I didn't expect this. We need you, we were prepared to pay for you-but there won't be any offers now." Truck opened the door.

"You've got yourself into my bad books, I don't mind telling you that. I'm giving you twenty-four hours to consider it, then I'll have you pulled in.

Wherever you are. The charge will be trading in Fleet medical The Centauri Device

21.

supplies when you were last on Earth, and I can prove it.

"I'll be here if you should decide to behave yourself. Bye-bye, laddie."

Truck closed the door quietly after him.

He went back to the s.p.a.cer's Rave, feeling as if he had suddenly gained a dependent Why should Annie Truck and her AdAc habit be on fas conscience? It was a strange reversal, but under the hinterland lamps, all kinds of dependency are possible. It a.s.sumed a kind of reality: Annie flickered into life for him there, and he accepted her.

Tiny Skeffern was winding up his gig in a desultory fashion: "Phencyclidine Dream," which he always used as his encore, was over; ba.s.s drums and most of the audience had packed up and gone home, but a cadaverous ectomorphic s.p.a.cer was sitting smirking stupidly over the controls of the Rave's H-Line synthesizer, making attic, flutelike noises, while Tiny picked at the high notes with meditative fingers. Only the stoned and persistent remained to listen, wondering how they might find somewhere to go, something to do at four-thirty St. Crispin's Day morning on Sad al Ban IV.

By the time the last of them had lurched out onto the street, dirty brown light was filtering between the buildings and the vapor lamps were ^wan. An occasional chandler, bleary and reluctant with sleep, crept past the door of the Rave on his way to another day. Tiny turned it all off and gently laid theFender in its hardsh.e.l.l case. He slapped the shoulder of the guy on the synthesizer, yawned, did a weary shuffle. "Oh, man."

There is a kind of cold particular to the dawn. All nightside losers know and revere it for its healing stimulant properties. Shivering and grinning at one another, Truck and Tiny hunched off toward the port and Truck's boat. The compa.s.s wind blew: it lay in wait for them at intersections, came whistling round the corners of warehouses to meet them. When that hap-

22.

pened, Tiny would run on ahead, swinging the Fender case and kicking out at bits of rubbish in the gutter.

"Hey look," he said, "it's an Opener."

Waddling down Bread Street toward them in the morning chill was an enormous splay-footed, wobbling man wearing a plum-colored cloak. His head was bald and round, his features streamlined into his facial tissue so that they were mere suggestions of a mouth, a nose, a chin. His eyes were swaddled deep and tight in flaps and swathes of flesh. His cloak was open at the front He was an Opener all right-one of that curious sect whose members believe that honesty of bodily function is the sole valid praise of G.o.d (the existence of whom they freely and frequently aver), that function being a.n.a.logous, it only through cortical representation, to the very motions of the psyche.

When the wind peeled back the cloak, he was naked. His body was shaved as hairless as his head, his skin was like a pink, shiny polymer. Let into his stomach, thorax, and belly were the thick plastic windows the Openers have surgically inserted to show off then- internal processes. They were surrounded by thick callused lips of flesh, and nothing altogether pleasant was going on behind them.

He stared as he pa.s.sed Truck and Tiny: His eyes were black and secretive. He had eaten a fairly light breakfast. He moved his small, indeterminate lips into a smile. Suddenly, a short thick arm whipped from under his cloak (as if the action were quite divorced from him, the arm belonging to some dwarf or ape hiding beneath the garments-his smile remained). His meaty hand clutched John Truck's shoulder.

"Here," said Truck. "Get off."

"Good morning, Captain," said the Opener. "I am Dr. Grisbkin. The Lord is kind."

"What?"

Truck, gazing through the windows on Dr. Grishkin's raw and convoluted soul, recalled that he The Centat/ri Device

23.

hadn't eaten for some time. The Opener still had hold of his arm. His stomach rumbled.

"I have just this moment come from your ship. Your bosun told me you were unavailable. Fm glad to find him wrong."

"That's right," mumbled Truck, "not available. Sorry."

Dr. Grishkin nodded slowly, once-until he was looking at Truck like a sad fat animal from the cave-mouth of his own brows. It was accomplished, it was dramatic. With his free hand, he spread his cloak wide. Truck began to feel ill.

"Captain, I open myself to you. I appeal to you. Although I can see by your outfit you are not one of my scattered brothers, I know from here"-he tapped each of his windows in turn-"that you are a man of principle, even of charity.

Captain, I beg of you the help only you can give."

Truck shuddered. Dr. Grishkin's enigmatic eyes, full of the revelations of the organism, held his, unwavering. The grip on his arm was paternal, gentle; it was possessive. He experienced an overpowering sensation of dejd vu. Over Grishkin's rounded shoulder, he could see right along Bread Street, which was empty and indifferent. Having got him into this, it wasn't going to get him out. Screw all streets, he thought. He knew he had to break free: ulteriormotive or mere charisma, Grishkin was too strong for him. He was fearful of discovering what the Opener wanted.

A port lady saved him. Trudging s.e.xually down the street with a stoned deck hand hanging on her arm, she swept her long beautiful hah1 out of her eyes and winked at him boldly. He watched her swaying back until it was a wriggling iota in the deadly perspective of the street. Then he said: "Grishkin, p.i.s.s off."

And he walked away, leaving Tiny Skeffern and the Opener staring after him.

Tiny was puzzled, but there

24.

was a certain satisfaction in Grishkin's unconvincing eye. Truck sensed that he had not won the encounter, only postponed it Tiny caught up, swinging the Fender case. "I think I am going to be sick," he chuckled. "How can he live with his own breakfast like that?"

Truck stopped and watched the Opener watching him. His neck ached, and the wind stung his tender lip. "Tiny," he said, "I'm going to Earth. There's no better place to be arrested."

"What?"

Out in s.p.a.ce, other winds blew. While thoughtful Truck brooded round the exterior screens, gazing at the flying streamers of illusion produced by Ella's improbable progress through the impossible medium of the dyne fields, Fix the bosun prepared him meals he didn't eat.

"You got to eat, boss."

Tiny Skeffern patched his Fender into the communi* cations equipment.

Broadcasting the "Dynaflow Blues" into the quaking, distorted universe outside-trailing slow ribbons of tachyon noise that might some day and in some unimaginably distant place be received and decoded as a stretched, alien music-the ship groped and crabbed and hurtled her way by turns a few light years closer to her captain's destiny.

n.o.body mentioned Earth until it became necessary for landing procedures.

By that time, Truck had six of his twenty-four hours left

THREE.

The Longest-running Party in the History of the Universe Earth: IWG and UASR, initially parasites of the political muscle-tissue, had eaten what remained of their twentieth-century hosts during the aftermath of the tragic and infamous "Rat Bomb" wars of 2003-15, when the satellite system, that uneasy and paternalistic compromise between autonomy and empire, fragmented and fell apart.

A new Arabia swallowed the entire Sino-Soviet continent, engulfed the more fertile areas of Africa, but lost its original nerve center in Egypt IWG swelled to contain both Americas, the husk of the unsuccessful European Economic Community, and the Mediterranean sh.o.r.es.

Between them, they devasted Australasia and, in a quarrel over the missile pits of Antarctica, set fire to the Pacific Ocean.

Now, they faced one another along the crooked boundary lines of the Syrian Desert and the Taurus Mountains, the cratered wastes of the German Strip, the Bering Sea. Silos in the radio-gla.s.s puddle of the