"I'll let that go for the moment. Constable Edeard claims you perceived him in there."

"I did," she replied confidently. "I sensed him appear in the back. We'd been worried when we lost track of him."

"You sensed his mind. There's a big difference between a radiant source of thoughts and inert material, is there not?"

"Yes, of course."

Master Cherix patted the jacket he wore under his black robe. "In one pocket I have a length of gold wire. In another pocket I have an equal length of steel wire. Which is which, Constable?"

Edeard concentrated his farsight on the lawyer. Sure enough, there was some kind of dense line of matter in each pocket, but there was no way to tell the nature of either one.

Kanseen looked straight ahead. "I don't know."

"You don't know. Yet there is only five feet of clear air between us. So can you really say with certainty you perceived my client picking up gold wire when he was on the other side of fifteen yards of solid mass?"

"No."

"Thank you, Constable. No more questions."

It came down to an argument between two lawyers. Edeard found himself grinding his teeth as it was presented as his word against Arminel's.

"Acting suspiciously," Master Vosbol ticked off on his fingers. "Gaining entry to a storeroom behind two locked doors. Seen by a constable of impeccable character stealing gold wire. Attacking that same constable. My lords, the evidence is overwhelming. They came to the storeroom with the express intent of theft, a theft which was valiantly thwarted by these fine constables at great personal danger to themselves."

"Circumstantial evidence only," Master Cherix pronounced. "Facts twisted by the prosecution to support a speculated sequence of events. A country boy alone in an underground city storeroom full of smoke and flame. Confused by the strange environment and regrettably unreliable, his claims unsupported by his own squadmates and friends. My clients do not deny being in the storeroom, responding to the fire as any responsible citizen would. The prosecution has offered no proof whatsoever that they ever touched the gold wire. I would draw my lords' attention to the precedent of Makkathran versus Leaney; hearsay is inadmissible."

"Objection," Master Vosbol barked. "This is testimony by a city official, not hearsay."

"Unsubstantiated testimony," Master Cherix countered, "must be accepted as having equal weight to my clients' account of events."

The judges deliberated for eight minutes. "Insufficient evidence," the Mayor's Counsel announced. "Case dismissed." He banged his gavel on the bench.

Edeard's head dropped into his hands. He absolutely could not believe what he'd just heard. "Lady, no," he gasped.

The defendants were cheering, slapping each other jubilantly. Edeard was disgusted to see Masters Vosbol and Cherix shake hands.

"It happens," Captain Ronark said gravely. "You did a perfect job; nobody could do better. I'm proud of you. But this is the way it is in Makkathran these days."

"Thank you, sir," Dinlay and Macsen murmured sullenly.

Ronark flashed them all an anxious expression, debating with himself whether he should say more. "This will be useful to you," he said. "I can imagine what you think of it right now, but next time you'll know what to do, how to be extra careful in gathering evidence, and we'll nail that little bastard good and proper." He nodded at Chae and walked down to talk with Master Vosbol.

"Buy you all a drink," Chae said. "I know how bad this hurts, believe me. I've had smart-ass lawyers get scum off on worse charges than this."

"A double of something illegally strong," Macsen said. The others nodded in grudging agreement. They looked at Edeard.

"Sure," he said.

Arminel saluted him with two fingers to his forehead. His smile was gloating.

Edeard quashed his impulse to dive across the court and smash his fist into the man's face. Instead he winked back. "Be seeing you," he whispered.

THE UNISPHERE had never been a homogeneous system, nor was it designed in accordance with logical principles. That was quite ironic considering the purely digital medium it dealt with. Instead it had grown and expanded in irregular spurts to accommodate the commercial and civil demands placed on it by a proliferating interstellar civilization. By definition, the unisphere was nothing more than the interface protocols between all the planetary cyberspheres, and they were incredibly diverse. Almost every hardware technology the human race had developed was still in operation across the Greater Commonwealth worlds, from old-fashioned macroarrays running Restricted Intelligence (RI) programs, to semiorganic kubes, quantum wire blocks, smartneural webs, and photonic crystals, all the way up to ANA, which technically was just another routing junction. The interstellar linkages were equally varied, with the Central Commonwealth worlds still using their original zero-width wormholes, whereas the External worlds used a combination of zero-width and hyperspace modulation. Transdimensional channels were becoming more common, especially among the latest generation of External worlds. Starships also were able to link in provided that they were in range of a star system's spacewatch network.

The massive gulf between technologies and capacities within the unisphere meant that the management software had swollen over the centuries to accommodate every new advance and application. With effectively infinite storage capacity, the upgrades, adapters, retrocryptors, and interpreters had accumulated like binary onion layers around each node. They had the ability to communicate with every other chunk of hardware to come online since the end of the twenty-first century, but with such a complex procedure dealing with every interface, the problem of security increased proportionally. It was relatively easy for a specialist e-head to incorporate siphoning and echoclone routines quietly amid centuries' worth of augmentation files. The problem was one that all the users got around by using their own encryption.

However, to decrypt a secure message, the receiver had to be in possession of the appropriate key. Ultrasecure keys never were sent via the unisphere; they were exchanged physically in advance, a common method for financial transactions. A less secure method was for a user's u-shadow to dispatch a key by using one route and then call on another. Given the phenomenal number of randomly designated routes available within the unisphere, most of the people who even considered it regarded that as sufficient. It would, after all, require a colossal amount of computing power to monitor every route established to a specific address code for a key and then follow up by intercepting the message.

Of course, that assumption had been made in the early centuries, prior to ANA. For any individual downloaded into ANA, access to that quantity of processing capacity was an everyday occurrence. The Advancer Faction routinely ran a scan of all messages to ANA: Governance to check if any of its own activities had been noticed and reported.

When the faction's monitor routine detected a starship TD connection established to Wohlen's spacewatch network downloading a key fragment to ANA: Governance's security division, an alert was flagged. Over the next two point three seconds, the remaining seven key fragments arrived via routes from seven different planets, and the monitor acknowledged that someone was trying to establish a very secure link. There was nothing too out of the ordinary in that; it was the security division, after all. However, all eight planets were within twenty-five light-years of the Advancer Faction's secret manufacturing station. That bumped the alert up to grade one.

Three seconds later, Ilanthe's elevated mentality was observing the secure call itself, placed through the ninth planet, Loznica, which was seventeen light-years from the station.

"Yes, Troblum?" ANA: Governance asked.

"I need to see someone. Someone special."

"I will be happy to facilitate any request in relation to Commonwealth security. Could you please be more specific?"

"I work for the Advancer Faction. Make that worked. I have information, very important information, concerning their activities."

"I will be happy to receive your data."

"No. I don't trust you. Not anymore. Parts of you are bad. I don't know how far the contamination has spread."

"I can assure you that ANA: Governance retains its integrity both in structural essence and morally."

"Like you'd say different. I can't even be sure if I'm talking to ANA: Governance."

"Skepticism is healthy providing it does not escalate into paranoia. So given you don't trust me, what can I do for you?"

"I'm entitled to be paranoid after what I've seen."

"What have you seen?"

"Not you. I'll tell Paula Myo. She's the only person left that I trust. Route this call to her."

"I will ask if she will be willing to listen to you."

Fifteen seconds later, Paula Myo came online. "What do you want?" she asked.

"There's something you need to know. Something you'll understand."

"Then tell me."

"I need to be certain it's you. Where are you?"

"In space."

"Can you get to Sholapur?"

"Why would I want to?"

"I'll tell you everything I know about their plans for fusion, all the hardware they've built, all the people involved. All that, if you'll just listen to me. You have to listen; you're the only person left who'll deal with it."

"With what?"

"Come to Sholapur."

"Very well. I can be there in five days."

"Don't stealth your starship. I'll contact you."

The connection ended.

As ANA and its abilities were to the unisphere, so there were hierarchal levels within ANA. Discrete levels of ability surreptitiously established by a few of the humans who had founded ANA, abilities only they could utilize. They could not corrupt ANA: Governance or use the navy warships for their own ends. That magnitude of intervention would be easily detectable. But there was a back door into several of ANA's communication sections, allowing them to watch the watchers without the kind of effort the Advancers had to make to get the same intelligence. And as they had gotten there first, they also had observed the Advancers and other factions spread their monitors into the unisphere nodes as their campaigns and reach grew. They knew which messages the Advancers intercepted.

"Ilanthe is going to go apeshit over that kind of betrayal," Gore said.

"At least we know Troblum is still alive," Nelson replied.

"Yeah, for the next five seconds."

"Until he gets to Sholapur at the very least. And never ever underestimate Paula."

"I don't. If anyone can collect him in one piece, she can."

"So we might just be able to sit back and relax if Paula does bring back information on what the Advancers are up to. Hardware, Troblum said. That has to be the planet-shifting FTL engine."

"Maybe so," Gore said. "But he was offering that as a bribe to make sure Paula listened to something else, something big and scary enough to get him really worried. Now, what the fuck could that be?"

Marius sprinted down the corridor. It was not something the universe got to see very often. With his Higher field functions reinforcing his body, the speed was phenomenal. Malmetal doors had to roll aside very quickly or face complete disintegration. His dark toga suit flapped about in the slipstream, for once ruining the eerie gliding effect he always portrayed. Marius did not care about appearance right now. He was furious.

Ilanthe's brief call had been very unsettling. He'd never failed her before. The implications were terrible, as she had managed to explain in remarkably few words. He only wished he had time to make Troblum suffer for his crime.

He streaked through the three-way junction that put him in sector 7-B-5. Some idiot technician was walking down the middle of the corridor, going back to her suite after a long shift. Marius charged past her, clipping her arm, which broke instantly from the impact. She was spun around, slamming into the wall. She screamed as she crumpled to the floor.

The door to Troblum's suite was dead ahead, locked as of two minutes ago with Marius's own nine-level certificate to prevent the little shit from leaving. The suite's internal sensors showed Troblum sitting at a table slurping his way disgustingly through a late-night "snack."

Marius began to slow as his u-shadow unlocked the door. It expanded as he arrived, and he coasted through. Troblum's head lifted, crumbs of a burger dropping from the corner of his mouth. Despite bulging cheeks, he still managed a startled expression.

A disrupter pulse slammed into him, producing a ghost-green phosphorescent flare in the suite's air. Marius followed it up immediately with a jelly gun shot. He would obliterate the memorycell in a few seconds; that would leave just Troblum's secure store back on Arevalo.

Instead of disintegrating into a collapsing globule of gore, Troblum simply popped like a soap bubble. A rivulet of metal dust spewed out from the wall behind the table where the jelly gun shot had hit. Marius froze in shock, his field scan functions sweeping the room. It had not been Troblum. No biological matter was in the room. His eyes found a half-melted electronic module on the seat, ruined by the disrupter blast.

A solido projector.

Marius was perfectly still as he stared at it.

"What happened?" Neskia asked as she strode into the suite. Her long neck curved so that her head could see around Marius.

"It would appear Troblum isn't quite the fat fool I'd taken him for."

"We'll find him. It won't take long. This station isn't that big."

Marius whipped around, the wide irises in his green eyes narrowing to minute intimidating slits. "Where's his ship?" he demanded.

"Sitting in the airlock," she replied calmly. "Nobody enters or leaves without my authorization."

"It better be," Marius spit.

"Every centimeter of this station is covered by some sensor or other. We'll find him."

Marius's u-shadow ordered the smartcore to show him the airlock. The Mellanie's Redemption was sitting passively at the center of the large white chamber. Visually it was there; the airlock radar produced a return from the hull. The umbilical management programs reported a steady drain of housekeeping power through the cables plugged into its base. He queried the ship's smartcore. There was no response.

Marius and Neskia stared at each other. "Shit!"

Four minutes later they walked into the airlock. Marius glowered at the long cone-shaped ship with its stupid curving tail fins. His field scan swept out. It was an illusion produced by a small module on the airlock floor. He smashed a disrupter pulse into the solido projector, and the starship image shivered, shrinking down to a beautiful, naked young girl with blond hair that hung halfway down her back. "Oh, Howard," she moaned sensually, running her hands up her body. "Do that again."

Marius let out an incoherent cry and shot the projector again. It burst into smoldering fragments, and the girl vanished.

"How in Ozzie's name did he do that?" Neskia said. There was a hint of admiration in her voice. "He must have flown right past the defense cruisers as well. They never even saw him."

Marius took a moment to compose himself. "Troblum helped design and build the defense cruisers. Either he infiltrated their smartcores back then or he knows a method of circumventing their sensor systems."

"He compromised the station smartcore, too. It should never have let Mellanie's Redemption out."

"Indeed," Marius said. "You will find the corruption and purge it. This operation must not suffer any further compromise."

"It was not me who compromised this station," she said with equal chill. "You brought him here."

"You had twenty years to discover the bugs he planted. That you failed is unforgivable."

"Don't try to play the blame game with me. This is your foul-up, and I will make that very clear to Ilanthe."

Marius turned on a heel and walked back to the airlock chamber's entrance. His dark toga suit adjusted itself around him, once more giving off a narrow black shimmer that concealed his feet. He glided with serpentine poise down the corridor toward the airlock chamber that contained his own starship.

His u-shadow opened a secure link to the Cat's ship.

"It's so nice to be popular again," she said.

"We have a problem. I want you to find Troblum. Eliminate that shit from this universe. In fact, I want him erased from all of history."

"That sounds personal, Marius, dear. Always a bad thing. Messes with your judgment."

"He's heading for Sholapur. In five days' time he will meet with an ANA representative there and explain what we have been doing. His ship has some kind of advanced stealth ability we didn't know about."

"Gave you the slip, huh?"