But he had to continue the work, and no one was more reliable. Tom Rom took his ship and departed from Pergamus in search of new diseases.

CHAPTER.

46.

ARITA.

When she arrived back at Theroc after her unsettling expedition to Eljiid, Arita drank in the sight of the green, tree-covered planet. Home. But by now Reyn was likely on Earth.

Bristling verdani battleships orbited the world like a crown of thorns, huge sentient trees that had burst free of their roots, transformed into mighty guardians. Integrated into each treeship was a green priest pilot, a body and mind combined with the heartwood to watch over the worldforest. Friendly vessels considered the verdani battleships majestic and awe inspiring, while enemies feared the enormous orbiting trees.

As her shuttle passed among them, Arita could feel nothing from the giant treeships beyond a distant and haunting echo, a tantalizing whisper of what she should have been able to hear. The worldtrees had altered her before rejecting her. She had been prepared for all the changes associated with taking the green, but none of that had happened. The failure itself was not unusual, supposedly not a humiliation, but no one had ever heard of a candidate being changed in any other way. Once again, Arita didn't understand.

Back home again, she bounded off beneath the canopy, listening to the constant stir of fronds overhead as well as the movement of people, the buzz of winged vehicles flitting among the thick trees, shuttles landing and taking off.

More than a dozen lifts ran up to the primary fungus-reef. Arita worked her way through levels of offices and reception halls, passing guards and protocol officers who recognized her. She found her parents in the main throne room. Although they ruled the whole Confederation, each afternoon Peter and Estarra served as Father and Mother of Theroc. Wearing traditional robes and headdresses made of insect wings and beetle carapaces, they listened to the concerns of their people.

Arita entered in time to hear a complaint that a wyvern had been terrorizing a village on the coast. The large carnivorous creatures were rare, but this one had already devoured four people, and the villagers asked for assistance. King Peter ordered a team of hunters to go slay the monster.

When the villagers left, Estarra rose from her throne, smiling. "Arita! You didn't let us know you were home!" She and King Peter came down to greet their daughter.

Old Father Idriss sat in his chair of honor. Though retired, Idriss liked to feel he was still an important leader. His wife had died when Arita was thirteen, and he had little else to do, so he sat in on many sessions. Lately, Arita had seen Idriss snooze through the discussions (despite his insistence that he was paying close attention). Now, the old man stirred himself awake. "Ah, Arita is back-about time!" His gray brows drew together. "Where did you go again? I've forgotten. Earth?"

"Reynald went to Earth," Peter said. "Arita went to Eljiid."

"Never heard of it. Is it an Ildiran world?"

"Klikiss world," Arita said. "Lots of ruins."

The old man grimaced and levered himself out of the chair. "I kept this chair warm for you, Granddaughter. You'll have to take my place. Watch closely, listen closely. There are important matters afoot."

"Important matters?" Arita asked. "What's happening?"

Father Idriss shook his head. "I don't know-ask your mother. I'm going to go lie down."

After he made his slow way out of the throne room, Arita settled into the secondary throne, as instructed, while King Peter called for the next petitioners.

Ten green priests entered, led by tall, humorless Kennebar. Arita's friend Collin was with them, and her heart skipped a beat; she caught his eyes, and he turned away but not before she saw a confused patchwork of emotions in his eyes: embarrassment, guilt, and worst of all, pity for her.

Arita felt disappointed in how her childhood friend seemed to be giving her a cold shoulder. They had been so close, had cared so much for each other. Did Collin believe the trees might think less of him if he maintained his friendship with her? Now he spent most of his time with Kennebar's increasingly isolated green priests.

As children, she and Collin had been equally fascinated with bugs and plants. Neither of them had imagined the verdani would accept one of them and abandon the other. Even if he no longer saw her as a proper partner, romantic or otherwise, Arita missed his friendship. It wasn't unheard of for a green priest and a normal person to fall in love....

Now Kennebar presented himself to her parents. "Mother Estarra, Father Peter, my people and I have reached a decision."

That sounded ominous, Arita thought.

Estarra said, "You've served Theroc well. How can we help you?"

"We intend to become examples of what it means to be true green priests. Unlike so many other priests who have scattered themselves to far worlds, we serve the trees, not any human government. My group will leave here and go into the Wild." Even after generations of settlement, huge parts of Theroc's other main continent, the Wild, remained unexplored and undocumented. Kennebar glanced at his followers, at Collin. "Two hundred of us will travel across the sea to where the worldforest is pristine and uninhabited. By living all alone with the trees, we can do our real work without distractions."

Arita gazed at Collin, wishing she could accompany the green priests, but she didn't belong among them.

"Did someone offend you here?" King Peter asked, clearly troubled. "Have we hurt you in some way?"

Kennebar shook his head. "Too many green priests have become part of the Confederation and have forgotten that they belong to the worldforest. My people and I don't wish to be exploited. Our work is sacred. We should serve the trees-not outsiders."

Queen Estarra said with a sigh, "I cannot give you instructions if the trees tell you otherwise. We hope you find what you're looking for in the Wild."

Kennebar gave a brusque farewell, and his group of green priests followed him out. Arita tried to hide her pain and disappointment when Collin didn't even turn to give her a glance....

That evening, Arita attended a banquet that was thrown for her. Many Therons welcomed her back home, asking questions about the desert planet and the whispering cacti. She was weary, she missed Reyn, and she felt sad that Kennebar's green priests were departing.

Late at night, when she entered her room, she sensed that something was different. The soft round window in the fungus-reef let in a night breeze, as well as the buzz of jungle insects. On the shelf near the window, some of her keepsakes had been nudged aside, and she found a note on the gossamer sheets of her bed-just a small scrap of leaf paper. It was from Collin.

The young green priest must have climbed the outer walls of the fungus-reef, knowing exactly which window was hers. Had he been too embarrassed to send a message through the trees knowing that all green priests could hear what he said? His handwritten message had a single word, "Sorry."

Arita picked it up, felt the texture of the scrap, and held it close for a long while.

CHAPTER.

47.

EXXOS.

The black void was incomprehensible to his sensors, to his racing thoughts, and to his thousands of years of experience. It was not part of the same universe, did not follow the same physical laws, to which he was accustomed. Exxos was lost in an infinite, formless darkness.

The three surviving robot ships had plunged into the shadow cloud, hoping to elude the pursuing humans and Ildirans. But this irrational gulf seemed worse than nonexistence. As soon as his vessels were swallowed up in the dark nebula, the systems shut down, and the armored hulls crumbled and vanished, as if the matter itself were being unmade-leaving the robots drifting and helpless in a confusing nowhere.

The flood of data was irreconcilable. Space-time paused and shifted. The hundreds of black robots found themselves tumbling in a place where the universe itself seemed-literally-unreal.

Exxos sent sensor sweeps through his lenses and detectors. He could still communicate with his comrades, and their flow of inquiries shot back and forth like weapons fire. Although the black robots were materially identical, Exxos served as their de facto leader. Yet he had no answers either. His diagnostics made no sense out of the swirling void, and the boundaries seemed infinite.

The darkness around him changed, and a small section became impossibly blacker, a pulsing random shape, an inkblot that defined the very concept of un-light. Other blots manifested in the darkness, and in the center of each ebony blob there appeared an eerie and improbable eye.

The bizarre shadow-eyes brightened ... focused on the black robots. On Exxos.

"You are different." The thundering voice poured into his complex robot mind. "You are aware. You are intelligent-but your thoughts do not scream into the flesh of the universe. What are you?"

Instantly wary, Exxos guarded his information. "We are unique," he said. Scouring his memory, he searched through his exhaustive internal database of historical records and personal experiences, including numerous encounters with the Ildiran Empire and their recorded history. He reached the inevitable conclusion: "You are the Shana Rei."

"We are the purity and personification of the void." The throbbing voice seemed to come from the staring inkblot in front of him, but also emanated from all the others that surrounded the helpless, drifting robots. "We cannot hear the scream of your existence, unlike all other sentients."

"We are unique," Exxos said again, trying to understand what the Shana Rei were saying. Something had interested the creatures of darkness enough that they kept the robots alive.

One of the floating, aimless Klikiss robots-Exxos identified the argumentative Azzar-split open his rounded carapace, extended angular wings. Thrusters sent heated exhaust through tiny rocket ports in the beetlelike body as Azzar tried to escape, though Exxos did not know where he intended to go. The void appeared infinite around them.

The Shana Rei focused on Azzar, and the robot froze in space, suspended like an ebony insect in obsidian amber. As if with invisible hands, the Shana Rei plucked the long wings from the robot's body, one at a time. They tore the angular alloy film, crumpling it. Azzar struggled, but the Shana Rei were fascinated with their deconstruction activity.

Unseen hands snapped off the carapace. They plucked out the articulated limbs one at a time, peeled off the front plates that covered Azzar's circuits. Next, they spun the robot's angular head in a full circle before detaching it.

Even then, the Shana Rei weren't finished. They tore out each of Azzar's now-dull optical sensors and extracted circuits, spreading out an ever-growing cloud of debris. After the argumentative robot was completely dismantled, the Shana Rei broke down the components even further, snapping them, twisting them, until the large pieces were smaller pieces, then tiny bits that broke down into nothing at all.

Exxos had been correct in withholding detailed information. The Shana Rei could easily destroy all of the robots, but Exxos had to find some way to make himself, and his comrades, worthwhile.

Finally, the throbbing dark stain turned its eerie eye back toward Exxos and pronounced, "You are machines, but you are aware."

"We are intelligent. We are independent. Our ships were escaping an enemy. We did not mean to intrude. We intend you no harm."

The Shana Rei said in unison, "We cannot be harmed. The Shana Rei are everywhere. We live beneath, between, and behind the cosmos. You cannot intrude."

Exxos pondered the conundrum, his thoughts racing. "We understand. Perhaps we can assist you."

The black blot continued. "Order and precision offend us ... but your robot thoughts do not cause us pain, as the Ildiran thism does, as the thrumming and rattling of verdani thoughts, as the piercing wail of the faeros..."

From Ildiran databases, the black robots knew that ages ago the Shana Rei had leaked through from the void to uproot the stranglehold of Ildiran thism. It had been a tremendous battle, and only an unlikely alliance with the fiery faeros had driven them back.

The Shana Rei grew more strident, more agitated, more deafening. "As does biological life everywhere-festering, chattering, droning, pounding."

Exxos spoke, trying to stall while he thought of a way to save himself. "The Shana Rei are creatures of the void, chaos incarnate and entropy itself."

"We are the natural state of the universe. Order and form are contaminants in the cosmos," said the shadow blot. "We hold you now in an entropy bubble, safely walled off from the rest of the universe. Once, we resided quietly in the dark spaces between the stars, but now we have been forced to move, driven out of the silent emptiness because something tremendous is awakening."

Reacting with incomprehensible anger, the formless Shana Rei expanded and collapsed like a midnight heartbeat. Then they used their invisible force to separate another helpless robot from the rest and sent the specimen spinning and careening.

Exxos watched as they toyed with it like a malicious child who had caught an interesting insect. The black robot struggled, bleated out signals of panic, but the others could not help. Exxos remained silent, fearing how many of his remaining robots would be torn apart on the whims of the shadow creatures. He began to doubt any of them would survive-unless he could find a way to make the black robots valuable.

As if testing their abilities, or just destructively curious, the Shana Rei extended the victim's segmented metal legs, breaking off one at a time, before splitting open the back carapace to toy with the internal circuitry.

"We are only searching for peace, silence," the Shana Rei continued. "To restore the universe to the way it was before the infestation of life." The dark things continued their casual dissection of the robot. "The screams of living things and the thrum of minds make the universe an intolerable place."

With a vicious yank, the Shana Rei tore off the robot's flat head and sent it spinning into the emptiness.

"The noise just became intolerably louder as something great and terrible is awakening. It poses a powerful threat."

With swift invisible strokes, they continued the methodical disassembly, breaking the robot's pieces into smaller and smaller fragments, until nothing visible remained.

"The Shana Rei have been driven out and forced to war. Though the universe holds more emptiness than substance, we are losing the battle for creation."

Before the Shana Rei could turn on other robots, Exxos decided he had to gamble to survive. He lied. "We are unique-and we know how to win that battle. You would be wise to ally yourselves with us."

CHAPTER.

48.

OSIRA'H The astronomy team rushed Osira'h directly to Ildira from the turbulent star Wulfton. Because her other halfbreed siblings were connected with Gale'nh, she knew Rod'h, Tamo'l, and Muree'n had also sensed the crisis aboard the Kolpraxa.

The distant expeditionary ship had been swallowed in nothingness, a paralyzing shadow. The Ildirans aboard had cried out into the thism, despairing and drowning in cold, infinite blackness.

Though the rest of the Kolpraxa's crew had fallen silent, her brother Gale'nh was still in there somewhere, alive but separate, immersed in a cold blindness that went to her marrow. She could sense him but could not comprehend the flood of his thoughts and emotions any more than she could understand the faeros. But she felt his urgency.

She raced back to join Rod'h and Muree'n in Mijistra; maybe together they would find a solution....

When she met him inside the Prism Palace, Rod'h wore a grim, lost expression that could not be softened even by the rainbows that shone through the crystal walls. "The entire Kolpraxa-it's gone. I sensed fear throbbing from the crew. Gale'nh tried to challenge it, but he was overwhelmed."

Osira'h nodded. "There was no explosion or attack that I could understand. We have to go see my father. He must have sensed something when the Kolpraxa vanished. All those Ildirans."

Rod'h shook his head. "He failed to sense it the way we did. The other Ildirans were just ... removed from the thism, as if taken out of the universe entirely." He narrowed his eyes. "But there is more. Through the treelings, our mother received a message from the CDF flagship accompanying Adar Kori'nh on war exercises. They encountered an infestation of black robots at Dhula."

Osira'h frowned. "I don't believe black robots are responsible for what happened to Gale'nh."