Her name was Viertz Accu, one hundred seventeen years old, Advancer heritage, currently married to Asher Lel. Two children. The youngest, Harry, was two years old. She was upset that she had pulled another late shift; little Harry did so like her reading to him before bedtime.

Aaron's software moved the acquisition focus up toward the present.

All earlier emotional content was superseded by sheer terror. Body's sensory input was minimal, sinking below waves of pain from the force field collapse. One memory rose above all the others, bright and loud: the surgical cutter descending. Starting to repeat. Thoughts becoming incoherent as the memory degenerated into a psychosis loop. Limbs shaking as bodyshock commenced.

Forget that, Aaron's thoughts instruct the brain he now rules. He has to concentrate, to exert his own thoughts to squash the terror memory. His influence is assisted by the flawless positioning of the neuron override tendrils, making it impossible for her to resist. A different kind of mental pressure then is exerted. Her conscious thoughts wither to insensate status, effectively sinking her into a coma.

Stand, he commands the puppet body.

It straightens up, and Aaron rises beside it. His hand remains locked in place on top of her ruined head by the mucilage force field.

Clinic security system review. Schematics flip up into their mutual exovision, showing alert points. His u-shadow ends its roguish electronic assaults as he accesses the clinic net through Viertz's private secure link. False signals are generated within the administration building to replace the equipment he neutralized during his entry.

Codes. Up from Viertz's own memory and her macrocellular clusters spill file after file of codes for every aspect of the clinic. He deploys them to damp down the security net, reducing it to a level-zero state. Another set of commands resets the smartcore's alertness, convincing it that it was receiving malfunction warnings and that the security managers now have everything under control.

Several operatives across the forest are calling in.

It's all right, he mouths, and Viertz sends on a secure link. There's been a spate of glitches; those boogledamned glints have been getting into the cabling again. They were chewing on a node, little bastards. "Boogledamned" is a word Viertz is fond of. Glints are tiny native rodents infesting the forest and always causing problems to the clinic and its machinery despite two illegal attempts by the management to exterminate them.

Generally the explanation is accepted. Viertz exchanges a few more in-character comments with colleagues and signs off.

Vault.

They walk along the ground floor corridor side by side, Aaron's hand still firmly in place on her head. Viertz's code opens the elevator doors. Aaron extracts additional overrides that will clear him to accompany her down to the bottom.

The vault level poses more of a problem. It is covered in sensors, all of which are linked directly to the clinic smartcore through isolated protected circuits. There are no overrides he can utilize to smooth his passage. If it sees him, it will query his identity immediately.

The mission is now time-critical.

As the elevator reaches the vault level, Aaron uses an em-pulse to kill all power circuits and unguarded systems. His scrambler field disables the protected security network. The smartcore now knows something is wrong but cannot detect what. The entire floor is an electronic dead zone.

Aaron slides the elevator door open with his free hand. Metal provides considerable resistance. The activators emit a screech as they are buckled by the pressure he exerts. He steps into darkness. Field function scans and infrared imaging reveal the short, empty corridor ahead. He walks along it with the zombie Viertz marching beside him until they reach the large vault door of metabonded malmetal at the end. Both wall and door are guarded by a strong force field that is powered independently from within. His free hand strokes across the undefended corridor wall until his fingers are resting over the armored conduit carrying part of the security net's cabling. He presses down. A small disrupter pulse disintegrates the concrete. Dust pours out, and he pushes his hand deeper into the hole. He has to excavate up to his elbow until he reaches the conduit. There is a brief clash of energy fields, and the conduit shatters, exposing the optical cables inside.

The fingertips of his hand extrude slender filaments that penetrate the optical cables, immersing themselves in the blaze of coherent light flashing along the interior. His enrichments are interfaced directly into the smartcore through an unprotected link. A torrent of destructive software is unleashed by his u-shadow, corroding the smartcore's primary routines like acid on skin. In the first eight milliseconds of the assault, the smartcore loses over half of its intellectual processing capacity. Its default preservation routines withdraw its connections to the vault security system, allowing it to retreat and lick its wounds in isolation.

Aaron's u-shadow turns its attention to the connections along the other end of the expropriated optical cable and examines the security network inside the vault. It takes less than a second to map the system's nodes and kubes, allowing it to remove the smartcore's control and safeguard procedures. The force field switches off, and the thick door opens with a low swish of retracting malmetal.

Aaron removes his hand from the ragged hole. He and Viertz walk forward in tandem, passing through the air/dust shield with a gentle buzzt. Independent lighting panels click on, revealing a shiny oblong chamber filled with floor-to-ceiling racks of translucent pink plastic kubes.

The registry is a simple slim pedestal of metal just inside.

Viertz accesses the dormant software within. She is asked for her DNA-based authority certificate.

As he passes the threshold, Aaron's field scans reveal two strange energy signatures emerging from the walls on either side of the vault. It is the final fail-safe to protect the priceless half million secure memorycells within the vault: not listed anywhere in the security net inventory and quietly imported from a Central world where such technology is unexceptional. Two guards with heavy weapons enrichments are sealed within the temporal suspension zone of exotic matter cages. Their enrichments were fully powered up when they began their two-year duty period. They do not ask questions as they step back into real time; they simply open fire.

Aaron's force field immediately is pushed close to overload as it struggles to protect him and Viertz. His disadvantage is terribly obvious as energy beams pummel him and the woman. Dense waves of scarlet photons ignite with blinding ferocity around his chest and arms. He staggers back half a step.

Send authority certificate.

But the pedestal uses non-military-grade hardware. It cannot receive and acknowledge any information in such a hostile electromagnetic environment.

"Shit!" His bandolier belts launch a flock of electronic countermeasure drones and five niling sponges. The guards twist away from the threat, ducking behind the racks. Aaron reaches out with his free hand and manages to grip the top of the pedestal as the last of the energy barrage drains away from his force field. The filaments emerge from his fingertips and try to burrow into the nodes and cables underneath the metal.

Both guards spin out from behind the racks and open fire again. The niling sponges cluster together and activate their absorption horizons. Energy beams from the weapons curve bizarrely through the hot air to sink harmlessly into the black-star blooms drifting sedately in front of Aaron. Their horizons start to expand significantly. The guards shift to kinetic carbines. Their hypervelocity projectiles are unaffected by the niling sponges and smash against Aaron and Viertz. The force field flares bright copper, shading up toward carmine. Aaron can feel the strain the impacts are punishing his body with; reinforcement fields are struggling to hold him upright.

On your knees.

Viertz sinks quickly to the shiny floor, presenting a smaller, more stable target. His filaments have penetrated the metal casing of the pedestal and begin to affiliate themselves with the fine mesh of optical strands beneath.

A couple of energy dumpers skim toward Aaron. He shoots them with a simple ion shot from an enrichment in his forearm. His force field has to reformat momentarily to allow the ions through. It is a weakness that the guards exploit ruthlessly, concentrating their fire. He feels the kinetic projectiles lance into his shoulder and upper torso. Combat software reports five direct hits. Field scans reveal the nature of the foreign projectiles. Number one is a straight explosive, which is countered by a damping field, turning it to a lump of white-hot metal. Two releases a pack of firewire tangles, which expand through his flesh, ripping it apart at a cellular level, incinerating as they go, wrecking biononic organelles. They can be staved off only by a specific frequency disrupter field that attacks their molecular structure; that has a debilitating effect on the biononics still functional in the area. Three dispenses a nerve agent in sufficient quantity to exterminate five hundred humans. Biononics converge quickly to counteract the deadly toxin. Four is another explosive, neutralized along with one. Five is a cluster of microjanglers, microbe-size generators that jam his nervous system, inhibiting biononic and enrichment operations; a secondary function is to induce pain impulses. They require a scrambler field to kill them.

Blood pumps out from the cratered flesh and torn suit, to be flattened back beneath the reformatted force field. The surrounding fabric of his suit is saturated quickly. Biononics congregate around the edge of the wounds, acting in concert to knit the damage back together, sealing up veins, arteries, and capillaries. Inside his body the firewire tangles halt their expansion as the disrupter sabotages their molecular cohesion. It is too slow; they are causing a massive amount of damage-damage that is amplified by the microjanglers.

Aaron flings his head back to scream in agony as the microscopic technology war is fought within his muscles and blood vessels. But still he keeps hold of both Viertz and the pedestal.

His biononics shut off a whole series of nerves, eliminating the pain and all sensation in his shoulder and arm. A disconcertingly large section of the medical status display in his exovision is flashing red. Nausea plagues him. Shivers run along his limbs. The field medic sac in his thigh pushes a dose of suppressants into his bloodstream.

Another wave of kinetics pounds him. He is in danger of falling backward. His biononics and enrichments are reaching maximum capacity. Countermeasure drones do their best to confuse the enemy targeting sensors, but the narrow confines of the vault make such systems almost irrelevant.

His filaments interface with the registry kube in the pedestal.

Send authority certificate.

The registry software acknowledges Viertz's authority, and the u-shadow runs a search for Inigo's secure store. It locates the memorycell. The physical coordinates are loaded into Aaron's combat routines: a volume of eight cubic centimeters to be held inviolate. The rest of the vault's structure is now expendable.

He lets go of the pedestal and Viertz. The woman slumps forward, a motion that jolts her unsecured brain. A fresh upwelling of blood bubbles out around the circle of cut bone. The protective swirl of niling sponges deactivates, their black horizons folding in on themselves. Aaron raises his head and smiles an animal snarl through the clear air at the guards. Their barrage has paused as they take stock.

"Payback time," he growls enthusiastically.

The first disrupter pulse smashes out. Half the precious racks rupture in a maelstrom of molten plastic. Both guards stagger backward. Jelly gun shots hammer at their force fields. Energy dumpers zip about, launched by both sides. Black niling horizons expand and contract like inverse novas. Kinetic projectiles chew into the vault's concrete-and-marble walls. More racks suffer, shattering like antique glass. The plastic catches fire, molten rivulets streaking across the floor, spitting feeble flames from their leading edges.

Aaron positions himself between the guards and Inigo's memorycell, shielding it from any possible damage. He manages to puncture the force field of one guard's leg and fires the jelly gun into the gap. The leg instantly transforms to a liquid pulp of ruined cells. The guard screams as he topples over. His force field reconfigures over the stump, allowing the blood and gore to splash across the ground, where it starts to steam softly. Energy dumpers attach themselves to him like predatory rodents. He thrashes about helplessly as his force field diminishes.

Now it is just Aaron and the remaining guard. They advance on each other, each trusting in his own weapons enrichments. This is no longer a battle of software or even human wits. It is brute strength only that will prevail now.

At the end they resemble two atomic fireballs colliding. A shock wave of incandescent energy flares out from the impact, vaporizing everything it touches. One fireball is extinguished abruptly.

Aaron stands over the clutter of charcoal that seconds before was his opponent. While still staring down, he extends his good arm sideways. An X-ray laser muzzle emerges from his forearm. Its beam slices through the head of the legless guard, curves up to annihilate the man's memorycell. Aaron lets out a long sigh, then winces at the dull pain throbbing deep in his shoulder. When he glances at it, the bloodstain has spread across most of his chest. The hole torn and burned through the suit fabric reveals nothing but a mangled patch of blackened skin seeping blood. His medical monitors report that the firewire tangles have burrowed deep; the damage is extensive. Sharp stabs of pain from his left leg make him gasp. His knee almost gives way. Biononics act in concert to trace and eliminate the microjanglers that are cruising recklessly through his bloodstream. If they infiltrate his brain, he will be in serious trouble. The medical sac still is pumping drugs into him to counter shock. Blood loss will become a problem very soon unless he can reach a medical facility. However, he remains functional, though he will have to undergo decontamination for the nerve agent. His biononics are not satisfied they have located all the toxin. The field scan function fine-tunes itself and scans again.

Aaron walks over to the rack containing Inigo's memorycell. Niling sponges flutter through the air and return to his bandolier, snuggling back into their pouches. His feet crunch on a scree of fragments before squelching on blood and plastic magma. Then the memorycell is in his hand, and the most difficult stage of the mission is over.

Flames are taking hold across Viertz's uniform as he walks out of the vault. She has not moved from her kneeling position. Aaron shoots her through the head with the X-ray laser, an act of mercy in case her memorycell is still recording impulses. It is not like him, but he can afford to be magnanimous in the face of success.

Three minutes later Aaron made it out onto the roof of the administration block. He walked over to the edge, drawing breath in short gasps. The numb shoulder wound had started to coldburn, radiating out waves of dizziness that his medical enrichments could barely prevent from overwhelming him. A terrible burst of pain from his legs, stomach, and spine drilled into him, blinding him as he convulsed. Unseen in his exovision displays, the biononics reported progress in their quest to trace and eliminate the remaining elusive microjanglers still contaminating his blood.

Slowly, stiffly, he straightened up again, teetering close to a two-story fall. His u-shadow reconnected to the unisphere as soon as he clambered out of the elevator shaft and reported that the remnant of the smartcore was yelling for help on just about every link the clinic had with the unisphere.

"Police tactical troops are responding," the u-shadow informed him. "Clinic security officers are arming themselves. Perimeter is sealing."

"We'd better leave, then," Aaron said with bravado. He winced again at a shiver of phantom pain from his collarbone and called Corrie-Lyn. "Let's go. I'm at designated position one-A."

"Oh," she replied. "Are you finished already?"

For a moment he thought she was joking. "What?"

"I didn't realize you'd be that quick."

Anger swiftly turned him to ice. The schedule he had given her had been utterly clear-cut. Not even the unexpected guards and subsequent firefight had delayed him more than forty seconds. "Where are you?" His exovision was showing him a local map with the police cruisers closing on the clinic at Mach eight.

"Er...I'm still in the reception area. You know they have some really nice clothes here, and Ruth Stol has actually been quite useful with styling. Who'd have thought it? I've already tried on a couple of these lovely wool-"

"Get the fuck into the capsule! Right fucking now!" he screamed. Tactical software assessed the situation, corresponding with his own instinct. The roof was far too exposed. Another involuntary shudder ran up his legs, and he went with it, tumbling over the edge, totally reliant on his combat software. The program formatted his force field to cushion his landing. Even so, the pain seemed to explode directly into his brain as he thudded into the ground. He rolled over and stumbled to his feet-far too slowly.

"The doors won't open," Corrie-Lyn said. "I can't get to the capsule. The alarm is going off. Wait...Ruth is telling me not to move."

Aaron groaned as he staggered erratically across the band of lawn surrounding the administration block-not that the trees would provide the slightest cover, not against the kinds of forces heading for him. Seeking darkness was a simple animal instinct.

"Take the bitch out," he told Corrie-Lyn.

"What?"

"Hit her. Here's a combat program," he said as his u-shadow shunted the appropriate file at her. "Go for a disabling blow. Don't hesitate."

"I can't do that."

"Hit her. And call the capsule over. It can smash through the doors for you."

"Aaron, can't I just get the capsule to break in? I'm really not comfortable hitting someone without warning."

Aaron reached the tree line. His legs gave way, sending him sprawling in the dirt and spiky vines. Pain that had nothing to do with the microjanglers pulsed from his damaged shoulder. "Help," he croaked. "Oh, fuck it, Corrie-Lyn, get the capsule here." He started crawling. His exoimages were a blurred scintillation coursing around his constricting vision.

"Hey, she's grabbed me."

"Corrie-Lyn-"

"Cow!"

"I can't make it." He pushed against the damp sandy soil with his good arm, trying to lever himself back onto his feet. Two police capsules flashed silently overhead. A second later their hypersonic boom smashed him back down onto the ground. Tree branches splintered from the violence of the sound. Aaron whimpered as he rolled onto his back.

"Oh, Ozzie, there's blood everywhere. I think I've broken her nose. I didn't hit her hard, really."

"Get me," he whispered. He sent a single command thought to the niling sponges in his bandolier harness. The little spheres soared away into the night, arching away over the waving trees. Violet laser beams sliced through the air, as bright as lightning forks. He grinned weakly. "Wrong," he told the unseen police capsules.

The niling sponges sucked down the energy that the capsules pumped into them. Theoretically, the niling effect could absorb billions of kilowatt-hours before reaching the saturation point. Aaron had programmed in a limit. When the police weapons pumped their internal levels to that limit, the absorption effect reversed.

Five huge explosions blossomed high over the forest, sending out massive clashing pressure waves. The police capsules could not be damaged by the blast; their force fields were far too strong for that. But the wave fronts sent them tumbling through the night sky, spinning and flailing out beyond the edge of the forest as the regrav drives fought to counter the force. Down below, trees tumbled before the bedlam as if they were no stronger than paper, crashing into one another to create a domino effect radiating out from the five blast centers.

A blizzard of splinters and gravel snatched Aaron off the ground and sent him twirling five meters to bounce badly. Amazingly, he was still holding the memorycell as he found himself flat on his back, gazing up into a sky beset with an intricate webbing of lambent ion streamers.

"Corrie-Lyn," he called desperately.

Above him, the pretty sky was dimming to infinite black. There were no stars to be seen as the darkness engulfed him.

Inigo's Fourth Dream AFTER BREAKING CAMP just after dawn, the caravan was on the road for three hours before it finally topped the last ridge and the coastal plain tipped into view. Edeard smiled down on it with an adrenaline burst of enthusiasm. With nearly a year spent traveling he finally was looking at his future. Riding on the ge-horse beside him, Salrana squealed happily and clapped her hands. Several pigs in the back of O'lrany's cart grunted at the sudden noise.

Edeard ordered his ge-horse to stop. The caravan pushed on inexorably, wagon after wagon rolling down the stony road. Directly ahead of him the foothills of the Donsori Mountains fell away sharply to the awesome Iguru plain below. It stretched away for mile after long mile: a flat expanse of rich farmland, almost all of which was under cultivation, its surface marked out in huge regular fields filled with verdant crops. A massive grid of ditches fed into wide, shallow rivers delineated by protective earthen embankments. Forests tended to sprawl around the lower slopes of the odd little volcanic cones that broke the plain's uniformity. As far as he could see, there was no pattern to the steep knolls. They were dotted purely at random.

It was a strange geography, completely different from the rugged surrounding terrain. He shrugged at the oddity and squinted toward the eastern horizon. Part imagination, part horizon haze, the Lyot Sea was just visible as a gray line.

No need to imagine the city, though. Makkathran bestrode the horizon like a sun-washed pearl. At first he was disappointed by how small it was, but then he began to appreciate the distance involved.

"Quite something, isn't it?" Barkus said as he rode his aged ge-horse level with Edeard.

"Yes, sir," Edeard said. Additional comment seemed superfluous. "How far away are we?"

"It'll take at least another half a day for us to get down to the plain; this last stretch of road down the mountains is tricky. We'll make camp at Clipsham, the first decent-size town on the Iguru. Then it'll be near enough another day to reach Makkathran itself." He nodded pleasantly and urged his ge-horse onward.

Almost two days away. Edeard stared, entranced at the capital city, allegedly the only true city on Querencia. The caravan had visited some fabulous towns on their route, large conurbations with wealthy populations; several had parks bigger than Ashwell. At the time he had thought them grand, sure that nothing could actually be larger. Lady, what a bumpkin I am.

"Doubts here of all places?" Salrana asked. "Those are some very melancholy thoughts you've got growing in your head there."

"Just humbled," he told her.

Her thoughts sparkled with amusement, producing a teasing smile. "Thinking of Franlee?"

"Not for months," he answered with high dignity.

Salrana laughed wickedly.

He had met Franlee in Plax, a provincial capital on the other side of the Ulfsen Mountains. A spree of bad luck on the road, including broken wheels and sick animals, as well as unusually early autumn storms meant the caravan was late reaching Plax. As a consequence, they had been snowed in for over six weeks. That was when he had met Franlee, an Eggshaper Guild apprentice and his first real love affair. They had spent most of the awful cold weather together either in bed or exploring the town's cheaper taverns. The Eggshaper Guild's Master had recognized his talent, offering him a senior apprenticeship with the promise of journeyman status in a year. He had been this close to staying.

But in the end his last promise to Akeem gave him a stronger direction. Leaving had been so painful, he had been sullen and withdrawn for weeks as the caravan lumbered slowly along the snowy Ulfsen valleys. A misery to live with, the rest of the caravan had grumbled. It took the remainder of winter and putting the Ulfsens between himself and Plax before he recovered. That and Roseillin, in one of the mountain villages. And Dalice. And...well, several more girls between there and here.

"Look at it," he said earnestly. "We did the right thing."

Salrana tipped her head back, half closing her eyes against the bright morning light. "Forget the city," she said. "I've never seen so much sky."

When he glanced up, he understood what she meant. Their high vantage point gave them a view into the azure infinity that roofed the plain. Small bright clouds scudded far overhead, wisps so tenuous that they were almost sapphire themselves. They seemed to twist as they traced long arcs above the Iguru before hitting the mountain thermals, where they expanded and darkened. The wind above the city always blows in from the sea, he remembered Akeem saying, and when it turns around, watch out. "What's that smell?" he asked, puzzled. The air was fresh, zingy almost, yet somehow tainted at the same time.

There was laughter from the wagon that rolled past. "You backward village boy!" Olcus, the driver, mocked. "That's the smell of the sea."

Edeard dropped his gaze back down to the horizon. He'd never seen the sea before. In truth, from this distance it did not look like much: a gray-blue smudge line. He supposed it would become more interesting and impressive as they drew nearer. "Thank you, old man," he called back, and supplied a fast hand gesture. By now he was on good terms with just about every family in the caravan. Abandoning them in Makkathran was going to be at least as hard as leaving Plax.

"Come on," Salrana said. She ordered her ge-horse forward. After a moment Edeard followed suit.

"I was talking to Magrith at breakfast," Salrana said. "She told me this road was the same one Rah traveled on when he led his shipmates out of the strife that followed their landing on Querencia. He would have seen the city for the first time from this very spot."

"Wonder what he made of the Iguru," Edeard muttered.