"I'm sure you'll be more capable of rectifying our mistake."

"What do you want me to do about Aaron? He's still down on the planet's surface."

"Is there any sign of Inigo?"

"Darling, the sensors can barely make out continents. I've no idea what's going on down there."

"Do as you see fit."

"I thought this was all critical to your plans."

"If Troblum exposes us to ANA, there will be no plans; there probably won't be an Advancer Faction anymore."

"The strong always survive. That's evolution."

"Paula Myo is the representative ANA is sending to collect Troblum."

"Oh, Marius, you're too kind to me. Really."

It should have been tempting. He was alone in a small starship with three amazingly fit men who probably would have been honored to got to bed with him. Oscar had been delighted when Tomansio had introduced his team. Liatris McPeierl was his lieutenant, a lot quieter than Tomansio, with a broad mouth that could flash a smile that was wickedly attractive. He would handle the technical aspects of the mission, Tomansio had said, including their armaments. Gazing at the pile of big cases on the regrav sled that followed Liatris about, Oscar had his first moment of doubt; he did not want to resort to violence, though he was realistic enough to know that it wasn't his decision. Cheriton McOnna had been brought in to help because of his experience with the gaiafield; there was nothing about confluence nest operations that he didn't know, Tomansio had claimed. Oscar was slightly surprised by Cheriton's characteristics. They were almost Higher: He had altered his ears to simple circle craters, his nose was wide and flat, and his eyes were sparkling purple globes like multifaceted insect lenses. His bald skull had two low ridges reaching back from his eyebrows over his cranium to merge together at the nape of his neck.

"Multimacrocellular enrichment," he explained. "And a hell of a lot of customized gaiamotes." To prove it, he spun out a vision of some concert. For a moment Oscar was transported to a natural amphitheater, lost in a sea of people under a wild starry sky. On the stage far away, a pianist performed by himself, his soulful tune making Oscar sway in sympathy.

"Wow." Oscar blinked, taking a half step back as the vision cleared. He'd almost been about to sing along; the song was familiar somehow-just not quite right.

"I composed it in your honor," Cheriton said. "I remember you told Wilson Kime you liked old movies."

Now Oscar remembered. "That's right. 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' yeah?" He took care to reduce his gaiamotes' reception level. Cheriton had produced a very strong emission. It made Oscar wonder if the gaiafield actually could be used in a harmful way.

"Yes."

The last member of the team was Beckia McKratz, whose gaiafield giveaway made it very clear that she would like to bed him. She was equal to Anja in the beauty stakes, minus all the neurotic hang-ups. Oscar wasn't interested, not even on that first morning when he had stumbled out of his tiny sleep cabin to find all four of them in the main lounge stripped to the waist and performing some strenuous ni-tng exercise. They moved in perfect synchronization, arms and legs rising gracefully to stick out in odd directions, limbs flexing, eyes closed, breathing deeply. From their gaiafield emanations, their minds seemed to be hibernating.

Aliens teleported into human bodies, carefully examining what they could do.

It was all very different from Oscar's wake-up routine, which normally involved a lot of coffee and accessing the most trashy unisphere gossip shows he could find. That was the whole nonattraction problem. All that devotion to perfection and strength did not seem to leave them much time to be actually human. It was a big turnoff.

So he crept around the edge of the lounge to the culinary unit, snagged a large cup of coffee and a plate of buttered croissants, and sat quietly in a corner munching away as he watched the strange slow-motion ballet.

They came to rest position and took one last breath in unison before opening their eyes and smiling.

"Good morning, Oscar," Tomansio said.

Oscar slurped down some more coffee. That morning routine also included no conversation until his third cup. The culinary unit was suddenly busy churning out plates with large portions of bacon and eggs with toast.

"Something wrong?" Liatris asked.

Oscar realized he was staring at the man as he ate. "Sorry. I assumed you'd all be vegetarians."

They all exchanged an amused glance. "Why?"

"When we were flying the Carbon Goose across Half Way, I remember the Cat kicking up a big fuss about the onboard food. She refused to eat anything produced and processed on a Big15 planet." His companions' amusement evaporated. To Oscar it was as though he had been transformed into some kind of guru, steeped in wisdom.

"You did talk to her, then?" Beckia asked.

"Not much. It was almost as if she was bored with us. And I still don't get why you idolize her the way you do."

"We're realistic about her," Cheriton said. "But she accomplished so much."

"She killed a lot of people."

"As did you, Oscar," Tomansio chided.

"Not deliberately. Not for enjoyment."

"The whole Starflyer War happened because humanity was weak. Our strength had been sapped away by centuries of liberalism. Not anymore. The External worlds have the self-belief to strike out for themselves against the Central worlds. That's thanks to Far Away's leadership by example. And the Knights Guardian are the political force behind Far Away. Politicians don't ignore strength anymore. It is celebrated on hundreds of worlds in a myriad of forms."

That was the trouble with history, Oscar thought: Once the distance had grown long enough, any event could be seen favorably. The true horror faded with time, and ignorance replaced it. "I lived through those times. The Commonwealth was strong enough to prevail. Without the strength we showed then, you wouldn't be alive today to complain about us and debate what might have been."

"We don't want to offend you, Oscar."

Oscar downed the last of his coffee and told the culinary unit to produce more. "So sensibilities aren't a weakness, then?"

Liatris laughed. "No. Respect and civility are high points of civilization. As much as personal independence and kindness. Strength comes in many guises, including laying down your life to give the human race its chance to survive. If the Knights Guardians have one regret, it is that your name is not as famous and revered as the others from your era."

"Holy crap," Oscar muttered, and collected his coffee. He knew his face was red. My era! "All right," he said as he sank back onto the chair that the lounge extruded for him. "I can see we're going to have fun times debating history and politics for the rest of the mission. In the meantime, we do have a very clear objective. My plan is quite a simple one, and I'd like some input from you as we shake it down into something workable. You guys are the experts in this field and this era. So for what it's worth, there are several ANA factions extremely keen to find this poor old Second Dreamer, not to mention Living Dream, which has a very clear-cut agenda for him. Between them they have colossal resources which we can't hope to equal, so what I propose is that we jump on their bandwagon and let them do the hard work. We should position ourselves to snatch him as soon as they locate him."

"I like it," Tomansio said. "The simpler it is, the better."

"Which just leaves us with mere details," Oscar said. "Everyone seems to think the Second Dreamer is on Viotia. We'll be there in another seven hours."

"Impressive flight time," Cheriton said drily. "I've never been in an ultradrive ship before."

Oscar ignored the jibe. Tomansio had never asked who was employing Oscar, but the ship was a huge giveaway. "Tomansio, how do we go about infiltrating the Living Dream operation there?"

"Direct insertion. We'll hack their smartcore's personnel files and assign Cheriton to the search operation. He's savvy enough to pass as a dream master, right?"

"No problem," Cheriton said. He sighed. "Reprofiling for me, then." He ran a hand along one of his skull ridges.

"I'll make you look almost human," Beckia assured him.

Cheriton blew her a kiss. "Living Dream has been altering confluence nests all across the General Commonwealth to try and get a fix on his location," he said. "It must be costing them a fortune, which is a good indicator of how desperate they are. It's not a terribly accurate method, but once they narrow it down to a single nest, they'll know the district at least."

"How does that help?" Beckia asked. "A nest's gaiafield can cover a big area. If it's in a city, it can include millions."

"If it were me, I'd surround the area with specialist nests and dream masters and try and triangulate the dream's origin."

"So we can be in the general area just like them," Oscar said. "Then it's all a matter of speed."

"The factions will be running similar snatch operations," Tomansio said. "We'll be up against their agents as well as Living Dream."

Oscar picked up on how enthused the Knights Guardian were by that prospect. "The faction agents will have biononic weapon enrichments, won't they?"

"I hope so," Tomansio said.

"You can match that?" Oscar asked nervously.

"Only one way to find out."

It was a gentle valley carpeted by long dark grass that rippled in giant waves as the breeze from the mountains gusted down. There was a house nestled in a shallow dip in the ground, a lovely old place whose walls were all crumbling stone quarried out of the nearby hills. An overhanging thatch roof gave it a delightful unity with nature. Its interior was a technology completely at odds with its outward appearance, with replicators providing him with any physical requirement. T-sphere interstices provided his family with an interesting internal topology and any extra space they might want.

He stood facing it, holding his bamboo staff vertically in front of him, torso bare to the air and legs clad in simple black cotton dirukku pants. He was shutting down biononic field functions; attuning his perception to sight, sound, and sensation alone, feeling his surroundings. Nesting cobra: the foundation of self. He moved into sharp eagle and then twisted fast, assuming jumping cheetah. A breath. Opponent moving behind. Bring the bamboo down and sweep: the tiger's claw. Spin jump as a coiled dragon. One arm bent into Spartan shield. Lunge: striking angel. Drop the staff and pull both curving daggers from their sheaths. Bend at the knees into woken phoenix.

A vibration in the air. Heavy feet crushing tender stalks of grass. He raised his head to see a line of black armored figures marching toward him. Long flames billowed from vents in their helmets as they roared their battle call. His breathing quickened as he tightened his grip on the daggers. The smell of charred meat rolled across the grassland. Aaron gagged on the terrible stench. Coughing violently, he sat up on the couch in the ground crawler's cabin.

"Shit," he sputtered, then coughed again, fighting for breath and doubling up. Exovision medical displays showed him his biononics assuming command of his lungs and airway, overriding his body's struggling autonomic functions. He wheezed down a long breath and shook his head as the artificial organelles stabilized him.

Corrie-Lyn was gazing at him from her couch on the other side of the cabin. She had drawn her knees up under her chin and had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. For some reason she made him feel guilty. "What?" he snapped, all caffeine-deprived bad temper.

"I don't know," she said. "Those warriors represent being trapped, I think. But they came to you outside your home. You were unable to escape what you are, what you had grown into."

"Oh, give me a break," he growled, and tried to swing his feet off the couch. His blanket was wrapped around his legs. He pulled it off in an angry jerk.

Corrie-Lyn responded with a hurt scowl. "They could also be a representation of paranoia," she said with brittle dignity.

"Fuck off." He told the culinary unit to brew some herbal tea. To purge the soul. "Look," he said with a sigh. "Someone has seriously screwed with my brain. I'm bound to have nightmares. Just leave it, okay."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"I am what I am. And I like it."

"But you don't know who you are."

"I told you: Drop this." He settled into one of the two forward seats and stared out of the thick windscreen slit. The ground crawler was lumbering forward, rocking about as if they were riding an ocean swell. Outside, the weather had not changed for the whole trip: a thin drizzle of ice particles blown along at high speed. High overhead, the dark underbelly of the cloud blanket seethed relentlessly, flickering with sheet lightning. They were traversing a drab landscape where flood streams had gouged out deep sharp gullies. Broad headlight beams slithered over the dunes of filthy snow that migrated across the permafrost. Occasionally the surface of iron-hard soil was distended by some ruins or stumps. Otherwise there was nothing to break the monotony.

Corrie-Lyn climbed off the couch without a word and went back to the little washroom compartment at the rear of the oblong cabin. She managed to slam the worn aluminum door.

Aaron rubbed his face, dismayed by how he had handled the situation. Something in his dreams was eating away at his composure. He hated to think that she was right, that his subconscious somehow had squirreled away a few precious true memories. The personality he had now was simple and straightforward, uncluttered by extraneous attachments or sentimentality. He didn't want to lose that, not ever.

By way of apology, he started entering a whole load of instructions into the culinary unit. Thirty minutes later, when Corrie-Lyn emerged, her breakfast was waiting for her on a small table. She pouted at it.

"The crawler's net reckons we're about ninety minutes from the camp," he said. "I thought you'd want to fortify yourself before we reached them."

Corrie-Lyn was silent for a moment, then nodded in acknowledgment at the peace offering and sat at the table. "Has anyone been in contact?"

"From the camp? No." They'd talked to someone called Ericilla the previous night, telling her their estimated arrival time. She had seemed interested, though she had laughed at the idea of any of her colleagues being an abandoned lover. "If you knew any of my teammates you'd know you're wasting your time. Romantic they're not."

"We're still connected to the beacon network," Aaron said, sipping another herbal tea. "Nobody is owning up yet."

"What do we do if he's not there?"

Aaron resisted the impulse to look her up and down again. When she came out of the washroom, she'd changed into a pair of black trousers and a light green sweater with a V-neck. Her hair was washed and springy. No cosmetic scales were on her face, but her complexion glowed. Clearly she was ready for her chance to reignite some of the old passion should he be there. She had kept her gaiamotes closed fairly tight since leaving Kajaani, but the occasional lapse had allowed Aaron to sense a lot of anticipation fermenting in her mind.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "Time isn't in our favor."

"And if he is there? What if he doesn't want to be hauled back to Ellezelin?"

Just for an instant something stirred Aaron's mind: certainty. He did know what was going to happen afterward. The knowledge was all there waiting for him, ready for the moment. "I'll just tell him what I have to. After that, it'll be up to him."

Corrie-Lyn gave him a mildly doubtful stare before tucking in to her first bacon sandwich.

Camp, Aaron decided, was a rather grand description for the place where the team working in the Olhava province had set themselves up. A couple of ground crawlers were parked next to each other in the lee of some rugged foothills. Malmetal shelters had expanded out of their rear sections to provide the team with larger accommodation. But that was all.

Aaron parked a few meters away, and they pulled on their bulky surface suits. Once his bubble helmet had sealed, Aaron went into the tiny airlock and waited for the outside door to slide aside. He was hit immediately by the wind. Ice fragments swirled around him. He walked carefully down the ramp, holding the handrail tight. The wind was squally, but he could stand upright. There were enhancer systems built into the suit for when the storms really hit. The suit's main purpose was to protect him from the radiation.

Although there wasn't too much physical effort involved, he wished he had nudged their ground crawler closer to those of the team. It took nearly three minutes to cover the small gap and clamber into a decontamination airlock on the side of one of the shelters. Corrie-Lyn was grunting and cursing her way along behind him.

Ericilla, a short woman with a fringe of brown hair flecked with gray, was waiting for them in the closet-size suit room. She smirked as Corrie-Lyn wriggled out of her surface suit, licking her lips in merriment. "No man is worth this," she announced.

"He is," Corrie-Lyn assured her.

Aaron already had extended his field scan function, probing the whole camp. He had detected four people, including Ericilla. None of them was Higher.

Ericilla beckoned. "Come and meet the boys."

Vilitar and Cytus were waiting for them, standing in the middle of the shelter's cluttered lounge like an army of two on detention parade. Nerina, Vilitar's husband, gave Corrie-Lyn a wary look.

"Oh, shit," Corrie-Lyn said despondently.

Nerina poked Vilitar in the chest. "Well, that lets you off."

The two men relaxed, grinning sheepishly. Aaron sensed the tension drain away. Suddenly everyone was smiling and happy to see them.

"I thought there were five in your team," Aaron said.

"Earl is down in the dig," Ericilla said. "The sensorbots picked up a promising signal last night. He said that was more important than, well..." The way she left it hanging told them she was on Earl's side.

"I'd like to see him, please," Corrie-Lyn said.

"Why not?" Ericilla said. "You've come this far."

It was another trip outside. The entrance to the dig was on the other side of the shelters, a simple metal cube housing a small fusion generator and several power cells. An angled force field protected it from Hanko's venomous elements. There was a decontamination airlock to keep the radioactive air out so that the team's equipment could work without suffering contamination and degradation. Big filter units filled the rest of the entrance kube, maintaining the clean atmosphere. The temperature inside was still cold enough to keep the permafrost frozen. Aaron and Corrie-Lyn kept their helmets on.

Excavationbots had dug a passage down at forty-five degrees, hacking crude steps into the rocky ground. Thick blue air hoses were strung along the roof, clustered around a half-meter extraction tube that buzzed as it propelled grains of frozen mud along to be dumped on a pile half a kilometer away. Polyphoto strips hanging off the cables cast a slightly greenish glow. Aaron trod carefully as they went down. The solid ground around him blocked any detailed field scan.

The bottom of the crude stairs must have been seven meters below ground level. Ericilla explained that they'd cut into a lake bed that had filled with sediment during the postattack monsoons. There were several people from the surrounding area who had never made it to Anagaska.

The passage opened out into a chamber ten meters wide and three high, supported by force fields. Discarded arm-length bots were strewn over the floor with power cables snaking around them. A couple of hologram projectors filled it with a pervasive sparkly monochrome light. Ice crystals glinted in the sediment contained behind the force field.