That'll teach me; you can't be more direct to my face than that. She was pleased with the way she kept her reaction in check: no startled expression, no giveaway body language-squaring the shoulders, straightening the back. In effect she was telling him she could hold her own against him any day. "I accept," she said as if it were some kind of request to review financial statements.

"I knew I was right about you," he said.

"In what way?"

"You know yourself; you know what you want. That's always dangerous."

"To whom?"

"To everyone else. That's what makes you so desirable."

"Win-win, then," she mocked.

The Alexis Denken slid comfortably into the big airlock at the base of the Raiel dome stalk. Behind it, the stars vanished as the wall materialized again. Paula stood up, pulled wrinkles out of her suit jacket self-consciously, and straightened her spine. The High Angel teleported her into Qatux's private chamber. Raiel homes traditionally were split into three sections: public, residence, and private. One had to be a very good friend indeed to be invited beyond the public. The circular chamber had a pale blue floor, and in keeping with tradition, the ceiling was invisible somewhere overhead. Around her, silver and gray walls rippled as if water were flowing down them, yet there was no sound, no dampness in the air. Beyond the cavorting surface, images of planetscapes and strange galaxies writhed insubstantially. However, one image remained firm and clear: a human face that Paula knew only too well.

She inclined her head to the big alien who occupied the center of the chamber.

"Paula, I rejoice that you are here."

"It's been a long time, Qatux. How are you?"

"I am well. If I were a human, I would be fit."

"I am glad."

"I have risen to the High Angel's fifth echelon."

"How many are there?"

"Five."

Paula laughed. She had forgotten Qatux's sly humor. "So you're the captain, then."

"I have that honor."

"Congratulations."

"And you, Paula; do you continue to prosper?"

"I continue to be very busy. For me that's about the same thing."

"That is to be expected. There are few of your species who remain in their bodies for as long as you have."

"It's also why I'm here. I need information."

"Just like the good old days. How intriguing."

Paula cocked her head to one side as she regarded the big alien. That phrase was slightly out of kilter. Qatux's eye clusters remained steady on her. Long ago it never would have been so bold as to tease her. But then long ago it had been something of a wreck, until the Far Away mission had come along. Of course, she had been very different then, too. "The starship Alini has just visited the Raiel dome. Can you tell me if these people were on board?" Her u-shadow retrieved image files for Aaron and Corrie-Lyn.

"They were," Qatux whispered.

"What did they want?"

"I believe their mission was confidential."

She gave her old friend a shrewd glance, not liking the conclusions she was drawing. "It was you who saw them, wasn't it?"

"Yes." The bottom set of tentacle limbs shivered slightly, the Raiel equivalent of a blush.

"Qatux, did you review Inigo's memories?"

"I did."

"Why?" she asked, genuinely concerned. "I thought that had stopped centuries ago. Tiger..." she could not finish. Her gaze was drawn to the face suspended behind the wall. Tiger Pansy's silly carefree grin looked hauntingly back at her, obviously captured at a moment when the woman had been blissfully happy.

"I know," the Raiel whispered. "It is not a return to my addiction, I assure you. There would be few Raiel indeed who could refuse the opportunity of experiencing Inigo's mind. He dreams the Void, Paula. The Void! That evil enigma bedevils us to a degree which humans will never appreciate."

"All right." Paula ran her hand back through her hair, making an effort to ignore the uncomfortable personal side effects the case was kicking up. "Inigo's memorycell was stolen from a clinic on Anagaska. Why did you help Aaron?"

"I did not know the memories were stolen. He arrived in an ultradrive starship. It was intimated that he was a representative of ANA: Governance. In truth, he never confirmed that. I am sorry. I believe I was had. How stupid; me of all Raiel. The deception was quite simple."

"Don't beat yourself up over it. Happens to the best of us. So what did he want to know?"

"He asked me to guess where Inigo might be."

"Clever man, which is curious in itself. There aren't many humans who knew of your little problem. One of them must have joined up with a faction. So what did you tell him?"

"I guessed Inigo might be on Hanko."

"Hanko? But it's just a radioactive ruin." She stopped, examining the idea. "But Earth aside, it is his ethnic birthworld. Still, an odd choice."

"Are you aware he was born Higher?"

"No, I was not! That has never been on any file. Are you sure?"

Qatux's biggest tentacles waved in agitation. "I am forty years of his early life, Paula. Through me you are talking to the young Inigo."

"If ANA: Governance and I didn't know, then its pretty certain very few other people did, either. That changes his whole profile. No wonder nobody could ever find him. As a Higher he has much greater personal resources."

"Will you go after Aaron and Corrie-Lyn?"

"I'm not sure. I hadn't envisaged Aaron being so close to finding Inigo. But even if he is on Hanko, it'll take Aaron awhile to actually track him down. I need to consult with ANA: Governance on this. Thank you for helping, Qatux."

"You are welcome, Paula. Always."

She was on the verge of asking to be teleported back to her ship, but she hesitated. "What do the Raiel think of the Pilgrimage?"

"That it is incredibly foolish. Opening the Dyson Alpha barrier was one thing, but this takes your obduracy to a whole new level. Why does ANA: Governance allow it?"

Paula sighed. "I have no idea. Humans always want to test their boundaries; it's an instinctive thing."

"It is a stupid thing."

"We're not as old as you. We don't have specieswide wisdom, let alone responsibility."

"Higher humans do."

"The tenet of universal responsibility is the root of their culture, but as individuals they have a long way to go. And as for ANA, it's like the intellectual equivalent of primordial ooze in there. Who knows what's going to come wiggling out triumphantly at the end of the day? I'm beginning to doubt ANA: Governance's ability to keep order."

"Are you serious?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "This whole event has me badly troubled. There are too many people playing with catastrophic unknowns. Part of me, the old part that worships order, wants to shut down the entire Pilgrimage project. It's obviously a monstrous folly. Yet the liberal side of me agrees that these people have a right to seek happiness, especially when nothing in the Commonwealth appeals to them. It's indicative of our cultural heritage that we cannot provide a home for everyone."

"But Paula, their 'right' to seek the solution of perfection in the Void will endanger the rest of the galaxy. That right cannot be permitted."

"Quite. And yet we don't have conclusive proof that the Void will respond the way you claim."

Qatux was silent, as if startled. "You doubt us, Paula?"

"Humans need to know things for themselves. It is our nature, Qatux."

"I understand that. I am sorry for you."

"We're being too melancholy. I give you my word I'm working to try to sort out this mess."

"As always you are honorable. I hope you succeed. I would not like to see our two species fall into conflict."

"We won't."

The High Angel teleported Paula back into the cabin of the Alexis Denken. As in all modern starships, the cabin could provide her with every physical necessity, like a hotel room with a particularly bad view. She ordered a plain chair and took her guitar out of the storage locker. Music was something she had come to late in life. As her genetically ordained compulsions were erased slowly, she found her cultural horizons expanding. Art was a whole area she could never quite appreciate; she was always looking for rationalist explanation in every work. Literature was a lot more satisfactory; stories had a point, a resolution. Not that there were many books released into the unisphere these days; current writers tended to produce outlines and scripts for sensory dramas. But the classics were enjoyable enough; the only genre she tended to shy away from was crime and thrillers. Poetry she ignored as an absurd irrelevance. Music, though, had something for every mood, every place. She took a great deal of pleasure from it, listening to everything from orchestral arrangements to singer-songwriters, jazz to gaianature tonality, choral to starsphere dance. The Alexis Denken often would streak between star systems reverberating to the sounds of Rachmaninoff or Pink Floyd or Deeley KTC.

Paula sat back and started to pluck a few chords at random, then gradually dropped into Johnny Cash's "The Wanderer." She did not try to sing; there were some limits in life one just had to accept. Instead the smartcore projected the Man in Black into the cabin, and he started to croon along to her melody.

The song helped her think.

She knew she should be heading straight for Orakum or even Hanko, but she was feeling a lot more troubled by Qatux's last comment than she ought to have been. It seemed as though this whole Pilgrimage situation was designed to disrupt her judgment and objectivity.

That, or I'm just getting lonely and uncertain in my old age.

Paula finished strumming. The Man in Black gave her a forlorn look, and she waved her hand dismissively. The smartcore canceled the projection.

Her u-shadow opened a link to Kazimir, someone who did have empathy for her position.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

"I'm at the High Angel. Aaron gave Inigo's memorycell to Qatux. Someone knew about our friend's predilection."

"Did Qatux review it?"

"Oh, yes. Qatux told Aaron that Inigo was probably hiding out on Hanko."

"Interesting. Presumably that's where the Artful Dodger, aka the Alini, is heading?"

"Yes."

"Another ultradrive ship arrived in system just before the Artful Dodger departed. The navy commander at High Angel said it stood off in the cometary belt and left in hot pursuit."

"Does every faction have ultradrive ships?" she asked indignantly. "Justine caught the Delivery Man using a Hawking m-sink on Arevalo."

"So she told me. I consider it significant that the factions are openly using such technology. This whole Pilgrimage event could well be the trigger for an irreversible culture split within the human race."

"Whose side will you take?"

"The navy was created by ANA to protect humans from stronger, hostile aliens. That is what it will continue to do until I am removed from my position. If ANA chooses to leave the physical universe, I will stay behind and ensure that whatever sections of us remain continue to receive that protection. Is that a side, do you think?"

"No. But it's certainly a plan."

"Are you going after Aaron?"

"Not immediately. Can you provide some protection for Hanko and Inigo if he's there?"

"I will observe and advise you of developments, but you know the navy cannot intervene directly in the internal affairs of Commonwealth citizens. Despite the scale of the problem, that's what this is."

Paula was thrown by the answer. She was expecting Kazimir to be a lot more helpful. "A thousand years ago I stuck to the rules, too. No good comes of it. You need to bend a little, Kazimir."

"You and other representatives exist so I don't have to. You handle the gray areas, while I deal in black and white."

"There's no such thing."

"Nonetheless, I operate within a set of rules that I will not break."

"I understand. Just do what you can, please."

"Of course."

The Artful Dodger dropped out of hyperspace five thousand kilometers above Hanko's equator. Sensors examined the surrounding environment, bringing up several amber warning symbols and even a couple of red ones. The local star had an abnormally large number of sunspots chasing across its surface, producing a dangerously thick solar wind. Below the starship's metallic purple hull, a global cloud blanket reflected the star's sharp white glow back into space, its uniform glare broken only by the vast aural streamers that lashed across the stratosphere. Above the atmosphere monstrous arches of violet fluorescence soared far beyond geosynchronous orbit, engorged Van Allen radiation belts that choked the planet with a hurricane of high-energy particles. The Artful Dodger's hull sparked with a corposant discharge as it slid across into a high inclination orbit.

"Welcome to hell," Aaron muttered as he monitored the images from outside. The ship began to probe through the clouds with high-resolution hysradar sweeps, standard radar, magnoscan, quantum signature receptors, and electromagnetic sensors, revealing the lay of the frozen land underneath. Several com-beacon signals appeared on the emerging cartography, the only indication of activity on this bygone world. They broadcast the official channels of the Restoration team, asking all arriving ships to make contact.

Corrie-Lyn watched the images in the portal with a mournful face as the starship flew around and around the planet, building up a detailed survey of the surface. Twelve hundred years after the Prime attack, glaciers still were advancing out of the polar regions. "I can't believe Inigo was ever attracted to this place," she said.

"You heard Qatux; he enjoyed the idea of an ancestral homeworld."

"Even if he came here, he'd take one look and leave. There's nothing here."

"There are Restoration teams down there, even today," Aaron said, waving at the little scarlet lights dotted across the map. The beacons acted as crude relays across continents, the only communication net on the planet.

"That's got to be the biggest lost cause in the galaxy," she said.