He kept his hold on her, incredibly strong, despite his wound. "Is it? Why?"

"You know why."

"I love you, Inggres."

Her loins were melting. She longed to give in, ached for their physical merging. It seemed as if she had wanted nothing so badly in all her life. But of course it was a lie, and she caught herself at it, hauled herself back from the brink. Still the incredible pull of his s.e.xuality sought to seduce her; but she had her wits about her again, she knew right from wrong. Absolutely.

"I just nursed you back to health. What you are feeling is natural, but it is not real."

"You are wrong. I know what I feel."

"I doubt that you do. Not at this moment, anyway."

His gaze slid away from her. "How can you know that?"

"You and First Mother are bound together."

"She cannot love me. She will not confide in me."

"Nawatir, has it not occurred to you that it is precisely because she does love you that she does not confide in you?""That makes no sense."

"Oh, but it does. Consider that she is First Mother, consider further that she is a seer. They say that all seers go mad eventually. Do you know why? Because no one-not even Ramahan-are strong enough to hold inside them all the skeins that might evolve into the future. Think, Nawatir! If you see that something will happen in the future, you must always doubt your actions in the present. If you take action, will it prevent that future? Will it cause it? And if you take another action, what then? What if you take no action at all? You see? It is enough to drive even the best minds mad. That is her fate. She cannot change the fact that she is a seer, though for years she tried to deny it. But she can protect you from it."

"I do not want to be protected."

"You cannot know that. I doubt that you even fully believe it. It is your male ego, Nawatir, that has prevented you from seeing it. You felt hurt by her act of kindness and generosity. I think you owe her an apology."

He let go of her, lay back on the bedding. Stared up at the ceiling.

"Is that the way it is, truly?"

Her heart broke for him, and for herself.

There were four possible ways to get rid of Sornnn SaTrryn, none of them easy. Raan Tallus had been months formulating plans, paring the possibilities, calculating odds, and honing those that remained.

Moving precipitously against the SaTrryn was not a viable option for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he was Prime Factor. Another was that he was a favorite of the regent, judging by the amount of time the two had spent together recently. They had even, according to Raan Tallus'

information, traveled to the Korrush together several times. It was one thing to engineer the murder of a Bashkir who toiled in virtual anonymity as Hadinnn SaTrryn had, quite another to do the same with someone in the glare of the public eye.

Which was why it was taking him so long to move against the son, why today he was spending his solitude at the villa double- and triple-checking his plan of choice. He was not a Bashkir to leave anything to chance, prided himself on preparing for every eventuality before putting his plans into motion. So it had been with Hadinnn SaTrryn. He rubbed his eyes, put his holopad aside. He had been at it since before dawn and was now in need of a break. Time for a long, bracing ride along the black cliffs.

Advancing on the cthauros pen, he saw Nem, his head held high, stamping his foreleg. He looked around, put his hand up to shield his eyes, searching for the source of Nem's agitation. Seeing no one, he lapsed into deep thought and considered once again how, through the sheer force of his genius, he had turned the past on its ear. He had proved wrong those who believed in determinism. It had been his misfortune not to be born Ashera, further to be born a Tallus. His father had been a minor Bashkir in every sense of the word, content to be a functionary in the regent's court, content to simper in the shadows others cast, doing their bidding. How he had sired a consummate risk-taker, a child of high ambition, was anyone's guess. Many was the time Raan Tallus harbored the suspicion that he was not his father's child at all. Fantasy or no, the notion made him happy, and so he kept it close to him like an heirloom to admire.

What he wanted, then, from a very early age, was to be Ashera. Since he was not, he contrived to inveigle his way into the heart of the Ashera empire. And when Eleusis Ashera became regent he saw his opening. He had already studied Eleusis and so made the new regent aware1 in as many ways as possible how well he understood him. That was Eleusis' weakness. He saw what Raan Tallus contrived for him to see: that the two of them vibrated to the same exact pitch, and that he responded to blindly, in a rare instance ignoring Giyan's wise counsel. For it was true that Eleusis, like all Ashera, was inherently lonely.

The Ashera's success and lofty status was mostly to blame, for while the head of the other Bashkir families outwardly respected the Ashera, their jealousy and envy inwardly seethed.

Eleusis took to Raan Tallus as a trusted friend. Why wouldn't he? Raan Tallus was scrupulous never to let him see his other face. The grasping, covetous, treacherous face that no amount of charm or realtalent could hide from Giyan.

And now Raan Tallus had all that he had wished for. If not Ashera in name, then in fact. Until the day Ashera arrived from another swarm, he ran the empire. And each day he drew the cords of power more tightly around him. Nothing, no one would interfere with this acc.u.mulation. He had sacrificed everything, dedicated his life to the Ashera. Who deserved this reward better than he?

Fueled by his self-righteous ruminations, he arrived in high spirits at the cthauros pen. Yes, he thought, swinging open the fence, the best decision he ever made was to use Ashera coins to buy this villa.

Coming out here like clockwork once a week allowed him to think clearly and formulate tactics, for he had no doubt that running a Bashkir empire was like being in a war. Being first in, last out, taking and holding the high ground, maintaining a high degree of maneuverability, knowing the compet.i.tion's strengths, weaknesses, tendencies, and how to use them as weapons-the acc.u.mulation of such knowledge would serve any Khagggun general well on the field of battle.

He led Nem out of the pen, swung the fence shut. Grasping the cthauros' mane, he leapt astride the great six-legged beast, headed out for his ride. The thundering hooves, the rhythmic gait exhilarated him.

He did not return to the villa until twilight. By then he was dusty and tired and ready for something to eat.

But first a swim to stretch out cramped muscles, to get the blood flowing freely, to rid himself of small aches and pains piled up by the tension of everyday life. The air was still, breathless, the distant sea a ruffled coat of fleece. A seabird lifted from its cliffside nest. A black sail, two, Sarakkon on the long voyage home.

He spent time brushing Nem's coat, feeding the cthauros, speaking to them as if they were his children. He cared more about them than he did most V'ornn. They were incapable of disappointing or betraying him.

At last, he took his swim. He had deliberately put it off in order to allow the antic.i.p.ation to build, to better savor the quick, breathtaking transition from the dusty heat of his ride to the cool silkiness of the water. As he walked across the porphyry terrace he watched the last of the sunlight chop itself to tiny scimitars. He picked up his pace, shedding his clothes as he went. Naked, he dived into the stone pool. It was deep and dark, perfectly round. The water, very cold, very bracing, struck him like a blow, snapped his drowsing mind back into full awareness. The water closed over him, chilling him, cleansing him. He dived so deep that at the apex of his arc he could almost touch the bottom with his outstretched hand.

Then he turned up, heading for the evening. A good meal, a crackling fire to balance out the spring chill.

Rippling shadows lay upon the surface, making hypnotic patterns. There was a fire in his lungs, growing, a kind of pleasurable ache as he felt another kind of antic.i.p.ation, of drawing a cool breath of the coming night deep inside him.

Up he shot, but near the surface something slammed into the top of his skull. His upward momentum ceased at once, his limbs pinwheeled as he was turned upside down. Half-stunned, he struck out for what he a.s.sumed was the surface, but he had become disoriented. Another blow to his head finished the job. He lay spread-eagled in the pool, blinking, trying to gather his thoughts which seemed to explode in his head like a string of flashes. He tried to reach for one, failed. Opened his mouth, swallowed water, and immediately began to choke.

Dimly, he was aware that he was not alone in the pool. He reached out instinctively for help, received another blow to the head in reply. He blinked, tried to focus. Was that Sornnn SaTrryn? Surely not! He must be hallucinating.

His lungs were on fire. He had to breathe, but he could not. He had to reach the surface. He kicked, his legs moving powerfully. He should have shot to the surface, but he was not moving at all.

He flailed out stupidly, his fists encountering another body. It was then that he realized what was happening, realized that Sornnn SaTrryn was not only in the pool with him but was responsible for keeping him under.

I have to breathe!

Froth trailed upward from his grimly tightened lips. His fingers sought purchase, to hook the SaTrryn's mouth, gouge his eyes. There were flashes of blackness now, a certain numbness in parts of his body.

Turbid water full of treacherous currents, forests of bubbles. He thought of all his meticulously laid plans,the sleepless nights lost to the minutiae of his scheming, thought of Hadinnn SaTrryn waxen, stiff, lifeless.

Coming to pay his respects to the family, taking the measure of Sornnn SaTrryn, gauging how difficult it would be to take him down. Flashed on the absurdity of it. What was the point of planning anything when this could happen? A starless night staring at him with a black-crow's face. How much time had pa.s.sed?

Raan Tallus took one last desperate lunge at his a.s.sailant. Inhaled.

32

Crown of Creation

Gul Aluf, wrapped in her black traveling cloak, stood in the attic of the ramshackle kashiggen known as FIREFLY. In her arms lay Kurgan, more dead than alive. When he had failed to respond to his Summons she had used the signal from his ok.u.m-mmon to trace him.

She had found him hanging upside down from one of the ceiling rafters. Below him, a turquoise pool of blood, indigo at its drying edges. She observed the raw bruises, contusions, lacerations. Three cracked ribs moved beneath her probing fingertips. She had little curiosity about who had done this to him, she only cared whether he lived or died. That, it seemed, would be up to her.

She took him through the grimy window she had kicked in, up onto the roof, then piled him into her hovercraft, climbed in herself, and took off, heading to the Temple of Mnemonics. There, she took Kurgan directly to her lab-orb, the Crown of Creation.

In a way, she thought as she stripped him and hooked him into the alifanon, a surgical net, it was a lucky stroke that she found him near death. That way, she did not have to waste time forcibly subduing him, for she had been clandestinely observing him long enough and knew enough about him to be certain that he would fight her every step of the way. She drove water-based cortical leads into his temples, the base of his neck. Nith Batox.x.x had affected him in many ways, not the least of which was the unexpected consequence that made Stogggul Kurgan unafraid of Gyrgon. That was a dangerous trait in any V'ornn, but especially in a regent. Eleusis Ashera, too, had in his own way defied Gyrgon law by studying the Kundalan, taking for his mistress a Ra-mahan priestess, identifying with them. That was why the Comradeship had sanctioned Nith Batox.x.x's pet.i.tion for his demise. What was it about Kundala, she wondered as she attached more leads to the soft place just beneath his sternum, the base of his spine, on either side of his groin, that caused V'ornn to go native? Her attempts to return to intimacy with Nith Sahor were partially driven by the need to have this vexing enigma unraveled. But part of her knew that he would never trust her, never divulge the answer to even one question for which she sought an answer.

It was with reluctance and a certain sense of agitation that she had informed Nith Immmon of her decision via the Comradeship central neural net. He took it well, gave only a token argument, went off as she instructed him to find Nith Einon.

She returned to the work at hand. When she had Kurgan completely hooked up, she closed her eyes, bringing up on her mental screen the image of his brain. She examined the spot to which Nith Sahor had been pointing. The ativar. The most primitive section of the V'ornn brain, smaller in Gyrgon than in any other caste. Well, almost all Gyrgon. Not her, not Nith Batox.x.x. And certainly not Nith Sahor. They all had genetically heightened ativar. What was most curious to her, she thought as she brought up a holoimage of Kurgan's brain on her own screen, was how differently each of them reacted to having an abnormally large ativar.

Of course she had given one to Nith Batox.x.x, and she had no doubt that part of her attraction to Nith Sahor had to do with the consequences of his heightened ativar. She did not know how she had gotten hers, suspected that it was a simple matter of a genetic mutation. What a heightened ativar did was to make you stronger, smarter, better than those around you. Size, she had discovered, had nothing to do with it, else why would Gyrgon, the dominant caste, have smaller ativar than other V'ornn. But it was a terribly tricky thing to do deliberately, hence the spectacular failure of Stogggul Terrettt.

She filled the alifanon with amniotic fluid until Kurgan was completely covered. Then she went to work on his skull, her nails extruded, turned to photon scalpels to pare away skin, all the layers beneath to the bare bone, a beautiful thing. While the fluid soaked into him she began to devise the skein of thecortical net she would implant in him. It would, of course, have its root in his ativar, so she worked backward, starting from there. It did not take her long. This was her work, after all. She was a gifted Gul.

It was not strictly a scientific process. There was much about it that responded to intuition, which was why only Guls were designated Breeders. Save for Nith Sahor and possibly his father, she knew of no Gyrgon who showed the slightest degree of intuition.

From her point of view, the trouble with Nith Sahor was that she simply did not understand him. What did he want? She could never guess. He did not think like a V'ornn, much less a Gyrgon. Often he acted like a Kundalan. That was particularly disturbing because of his heightened ativar. So far as she knew, his, like hers, was a genetic mutation. There was no doubt that he understood the Kundalan better than any V'ornn. What was his almost mystical link to them? And, in any case, where was the virtue in that?

Could he be insane like Stogggul Terrettt? Would she be able to convince anyone else of that? Once, she had been certain she could control him, even up to the moment of their reunion at the museum. Then she saw that he had the power, if not to defeat her, then to resist her. Even Nith Einon did not have that. She had searched long and hard for a way to bind him to her. It took giving him back his life to make him an ally.

She finished the skein of the neural net and was bending over to begin attaching it to Kurgan's nervous system when she saw the odd scar in the hollow of his throat. Taking up one of her instruments, she directed a photon beam at it. A raw patch appeared and immediately new unblemished skin began to knit itself over the wound. But even before it was fully healed, the scar returned. Gul Aluf peered at it, touched it. It was impossible, but true. The scar was permanent, beyond even her capabilities to heal.

What could possibly have made it?

She shrugged, returned her attention to fitting the neural net, always a tricky undertaking. Nervous systems did not like being invaded, let alone being tampered with. Her wings unfolded, and she placed the end of one, where the membrane was thinnest, between Kurgan's bared skull and the neural net she had constructed. A Gul's wings were not only for flying. The membrane allowed the neural net to imprint itself on the skull, ensuring that the complex nervous system that ran beneath would become used to the interface without being disturbed.

Her mind kept coming back to Nith Sahor. It was axiomatic that what you could not control you had to kill. She wondered whether it would come to that. She knew it would not be easy for her to kill him, either emotionally or in actuality. She had to admit that she bore an uncommon affinity toward him not only because of his power, his intellect, but because at her core he frightened her. She was like a child who adores being swung upside down because the fear it produces is exhilarating. For she had to admit that these days not much else exhilarated her. Truth be known, she detested being in this backwater, had protested vehemently when her swarm had decided to investigate Kundala. And so it rankled her all the more that Nith Sahor should be so besotted with the place, causing her to consider madness as an explanation. And if he was in fact mad, then he would have to die. Insanity in Gyrgon could not be tolerated; the other castes must never know. Even Nith Einon would have to agree with that.

Time, as Guls said, to build the more perfect beast. She lifted her wing, removing the membrane.

Then, slowly, almost reverentially, she placed the neural net onto the skull. It sat there for but a moment.

She trained a photon beam on it, and there arose the scents of clove and burnt musk. Slowly the neural net began to embed itself into the bone. Settling there, its tendrils attached themselves to the neural pathways, widening them, causing them to branch out, extend their reach through the brain, into the spinal cord, then into all areas of the body.

She stood upright. Now time to rest for both of them, for rea.s.sembling life was a most difficult and exacting task. Tomorrow at this time, or perhaps a few hours thereafter, Kurgan would regain consciousness as Nith. He would be Gyrgon just as Nith Batox.x.x had planned.

Long before the Centophennni set up their galactic spygla.s.s, Lethe had been inhabited by the Vogul. It was unclear why they had left Lethe, possibly the Centophennni had driven them away. In any case, theyhad left behind inordinately well preserved remnants of their civilization.

Their belief system was simple: they were born from a female and to a female they returned. Death came to them as the female that birthed them, taking them down a long tunnel into the Under-of-Things.

A primitive belief, to be sure, but one all the more powerful for that.

When Hannn Mennus went to sleep that night, surrounded by six Khagggun he had designated as his personal bodyguards, he dreamed that he was back on Lethe-dark, still, dead Lethe-taking the journey to Under-of-Things. Not a moment ago he had been standing on a crag, surrounded by what was left of his Khagggun. He was alone, unable to understand what had happened to them or to him.

Then he peered more closely, saw that they all had Iin Mennus' face. Everywhere he looked his brother's filmed eyes stared at him.

When Death arrived, a tall female whose face was shrouded in mist and shadow, he felt relieved, wanted to go with her, wanted to leave the silent accusation behind. She took him by the hand and began to lead him to Under-of-Things.

They seemed to be walking down a colossal sewer pipe, for they were slogging through a river of blood. He wrinkled his nose. It should have smelled, but it didn't. He had no faith in the female, but he followed her just the same. Why? He had never followed a female, including his mother, the memory of whom was as dim as the light in this sewer. The story went that he bit his mother's teat when she had tried to feed him. He had almost killed her being born-big for a baby, an empty promise, for he had failed to grow to the expected size. So he had spilled her blood twice, and now here she was, Death leading him down to the Under-of-Things.

He awoke with his hearts hammering and the overpowering need to spit. He rose, fully awake, signaled to his six guards, who though tired dared not even close their eyes for fear of being caught dozing. Leaving Pack-Commander Twaane in charge, he set out with his small band of guards for Axis Tyr. He no longer cared what his Khagggun would think of him. The dream had left an unpleasant taste in his mouth that no amount of spitting would get rid of.

They traveled swiftly and silently through the forest, over treed ridges, mossed swales, in a virtual straight line. So anxious was he to arrive in Axis Tyr that he ignored the difficulty of the terrain, pushing his cadre as he pushed himself. Not one word of complaint was uttered, but that did not stop their minds from working overtime. They no longer understood their commander; they wondered if they ever had.

Midway between midnight and dawn he called a halt. It was then that he realized that there were only five guards. He turned the heat seeker in his helm to maximum, but, apart from the odd small nocturnal mammal, there was nothing to pick up. He sent three of his Khagggun out in a basic triangle from their position. Only two returned. That left four guards and himself.

He thought seriously of going after the perpetrators, thought even more seriously of setting the forest aflame, making one gigantic pyre to burn them all, but the truth was he no longer cared. Also, it would greatly inconvenience him by forcing him to detour around it. So he urged the cadre onward at an even more urgent pace. His dream had made him desperate to reach Axis Tyr, to see his brother one last time.

To avenge his death. He took the lead, slashing the underbrush with his shock-sword, hacking away, hearing the high whine of the hyper-excited ions.

He heard a sound and, turning, saw one of his Khagggun drive the points of his shock-sword through another's armor. Shock froze him as a shadow emerged from the forest. The guard nearest Mennus leapt between him and the shadow. An ion cannon burst blew open his armor, and he fell, writhing. Mennus ducked and rolled along the pine straw. Drawing his own ion cannon, he fired wildly at the shadow, missed, saw tree limbs crashing down, sent it darting back through the gap between the trunks of a pair of Marre pine. At the same time, he saw another shadow, signaled to the one remaining Khagggun, who nodded and went after it. Then he turned and, without aiming, shot from the hip, clipping his own Khagggun, who was already bleeding like a stuck cor. By the time he kicked the corpse out of the way, there was nothing else to see.

There was a strong temptation to go after whoever was impersonating one of his Khagggun, but instinct honed to a knife edge told him that form of pursuit would be futile. Instead, he took to the trees, climbing through the densely needled branches of a Marre pine. He moved carefully from tree to treemore or less in the direction the shadow he had shot at had come from. It was also a temptation to move quickly, but again he restrained himself, crouching on a branch, completely still, even his eyes. Willing the enemy to come to him. Waiting. That was the hardest part for him. He was impatient to continue his journey, just as impatient to discover who it was clever enough to kill off his Khagggun. He was unused to Resistance having the firepower to inflict so much damage. Plus, and almost as worrisome, their tactics had completely changed. He had become conditioned to the ragtag way they approached the field of battle. Never any sense of an overall plan. Even within Resistance cells it always appeared to him that each individual made up his own mind how to act. It made them all the easier to kill once you found them.

This was something else altogether.

He saw movement below him and to the left. He put his shock-dagger between his teeth, but held himself back, waiting that extra moment to a.s.sure himself what he was seeing was not his own Khagggun.

Then he left his perch, leaping onto the back of the semi-crouched figure.

He landed on his knees, having knocked the wind out of the figure. It was dressed entirely in black, an interesting innovation, he thought, as he plunged the dagger into the spine, put one hand over the mouth, endured a painful bite, twisted the blade until the lips went slack.

He went tracking through the darkness, searching for more prey.

Nith Immmon unfolded his arms when Sahor approached Gul Aluf's lab-orb. He was standing in front of the access panel, which was sealed shut.

"I want to see her," Sahor said without preamble. "Impossible. She has left word-" "Are you her lackey now?"

"Just so you know." Nith Immmon refolded his arms. "There is currently a debate raging within the Comradeship whether or not to charge you with the murder of Nith Na.s.sam."

"Gul Aluf knows I did not murder him."

"Does she?" Nith Immmon showing his teeth.

"Ah," Sahor said. "I see how it is."

With no more than a whisper, the access panel to the lab-orb cycled open. Nith Immmon moved aside as Nith Einon stepped through into the corridor.

"I do not think you do, Sahor," Nith Einon said. "You are no longer welcome here."

Something inside Sahor went cold. "Father, what are you doing speaking in a Gul's voice?"

"I am speaking with the Voice of One, the voice of the Comradeship."

"The Comradeship has been fractured for too long for me to believe that."

"Believe what you will, Sahor. The imminent threat from the Cen-tophennni has united what was once split. There is once more a single Gyrgon voice."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sahor watched the small smile play across Nith Immmon's lips. So they had given Nith Einon everything he wanted. His body, re-formed, renewed, rejuvenated, and returned to him was only part of the price he had exacted from them. His return to power was the other part. The Comradeship spoke with his voice.