FELIKS ABDULOV TO ANNOUNCE RETIREMENT.

Shipping magnate plans to spend more time with his family.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

CARDS ON THE TABLE.

The Ameline raced for clear space. Hooked into its systems, Kat experienced the burn of its fusion motors as a fire in her gut. She lived for moments like these. She savoured the gunpowder tang of the vacuum, shivered at every stray molecule of hydrogen that brushed the hull, and gloried in the prickling caress of starlight on her skin. Her eyes blazed with calculations. Deep in her ribcage, she sensed the building quantum energies in the purple coils of the jump engines. They fluttered like adrenalin. They felt like freedom. Only the urgency of their mission dampened her wild exhilaration. Beside her, the ship's mind capered like an eager hunting dog. Twelve light years ahead, their home star blazed like a target.

From the bridge, she heard Victor say, "Come on, let's go."

For a moment, she didn't reply. Then she reluctantly disengaged from the ship and reeled her perceptions back into the confines of her skull.

"I'm not jumping until we reach the JZ," she said with a dry mouth. "We're going to be asking a lot from these engines, and I don't want to put them under any more strain that absolutely necessary."

Victor looked frustrated. "But we're losing time."

"We're losing a couple of hours. With luck, we'll still catch the Tristero before it docks."

She glanced at the screens. Behind them, grasping fingers of red cloud reached to smother Djatt's stricken face. The planet looked like an orange caught in a tremendous fist. Lightning crackled in its tormented troposphere, visible as pink flashes beneath the cloud. The scale was hard to grasp. From here, the planet looked about the size of a football, the enveloping cloud a red blanket. She couldn't see where the edges of The Recollection ended; they just became fuzzier and more diffuse, until they melted into the background blackness of space.

> No pursuit, the ship informed her. She hadn't expected any.

> Fifty minutes until we reach safe jump distance.

Kat looked over at Victor. His brows were drawn together and his mouth set in a hard line. He was leaning forward against his safety straps, as if willing the ship to move faster. His hands and face were still grimed with dirt and sweat, which made the wrinkles on his forehead much more obvious. His chin was unshaven, the bristles patched with clumps of white hairs. She could smell the staleness of his clothes, and see that his eyes were sunken and bruised-looking after three sleepless nights running with the survivors on the surface of Djatt.

"You should rest," she told him.

He glared at her.

"There's no time."

"We've got the best part of an hour."

She unbuckled her own straps and climbed to her feet, ducking her head to avoid the overhead screens.

"Come on," she said. "Let's at least get you cleaned up."

She led him down the ladder to the passenger lounge, and into her cabin, where she switched on the shower.

"Get in there," she said. "I'll find you some clothes."

Ten minutes later, they sat facing each other on her bunk. Victor's cheeks were pink and scrubbed-looking, his chin smooth. She'd found him some spare overalls and fleece-lined socks with rubber grips on the soles. She'd even rustled up some food, in the form of emergency glucose tablets. Since his outburst on the bridge, neither of them had mentioned the baby.

"Here you are." She handed him the tablets to chew on.

"Thanks." His eyes were still tired and bagged, bloodshot at the edges.

"How old are you?" she asked suddenly.

Victor unwrapped one of the glucose tablets and popped it hungrily into his mouth.

"You've never asked me that before," he said.

"Well, I'm asking now."

He crunched the tablet between his teeth and swallowed, then started to unwrap another.

"Do you mean my physical age or my chronological age?"

Kat shrugged. "Either. Both."

Victor chewed and swallowed the second tablet. He scratched the bridge of his nose with the index finger of his right hand, as if pushing goggles into place.

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm in my early sixties," he said. "Sixty-five or sixty-six, somewhere around there. It's hard to keep track with all this travelling. But if you want my real, historical age, I was born on Earth in 1985, which I guess makes me around four hundred and fifty years old."

Kat sat back.

"1985?" It sounded like a date from ancient history, almost mythical.

Victor smiled with one side of his mouth.

"Yes," he said.

Kat looked him up and down. This man she'd loved and hated, this man she'd thought she knew; she realised now that he was a stranger to her. There was so much about him that she didn't know.

"So," she said. "What happened? You must have come through the arch network?"

Victor nodded.

"I was one of the first. I used to be a journalist. I was on my way to cover a story. One minute I was on an escalator in the Tube station, heading down to the platform, and the next-blam!-I was lying in a desert, with bits of broken stairs crashing down around me." He rubbed his nose again. "I didn't know where I was, or what had happened to me."

Kat leaned forward and put a hand on his arm. She could feel the vibration of the engines through the mattress. "It must've been a terrible shock," she said.

Victor put his hand over hers. "There were a few of us there. Most went back through the arch, but three of us decided to go on, to see where the other arches led."

"Why didn't you turn back?"

Victor raked his fingers back through his thinning hair. "I was angry and jealous," he said. "I'd had a fight with my brother. My wife was leaving me. I didn't think I had anything to go back for." He paused, sucking his lower lip. His eyes shone in the overhead light. "I guess they're both dead now."

Kat watched him stand and walk to the mirror. He said, "Later, I found my way to Strauli. I was half-dead of hunger by then, but I managed to talk my way onto a spaceship crew. I did a handful of trips, and then I met you." He broke a third glucose tablet in two and popped one of the halves into his mouth. "And the rest, as they say, is history."

Kat climbed off the bed. She wanted to put her arms around him.

"Oh, Victor," she said.

His reflection met her eyes in the mirror: a tired old man, far from home.

"And there's one more thing," he said.

"What?"

"My name's not Victor, its Verne. Short for Vernon. Vernon Rico. I changed it when I realised I couldn't go back." He shrugged. "I just signed the ship's papers as Victor Luciano. No-one cared. I needed to make a clean break from the past, to put it all behind me."

He dropped his chin to his chest. Watching him, Kat couldn't think of anything to say. He'd always been reticent about his past, but she'd never anticipated anything like this. All interstellar traders were running from something. Why else would they subject themselves to the temporal and physical isolation of space travel? Running was part of the job. But it was usually from something understandable. Maybe they had gambling debts. Maybe they'd embezzled the company pension fund, or killed a man in a bar brawl. Or maybe they were simply bored and restless. Sometimes it was easier to sign on as a member of a starship crew than to stay and face whatever had gone wrong in your life. But whatever the reasons that drove those men and women to life aboard a trading ship, Kat doubted many carried secrets even half as big as Victor's.

Not Victor, she corrected herself. Verne.

She scratched her head. She didn't know whether to feel anger or pity. She looked around her cabin, seeing it through the eyes of a stranger: the discarded underwear half-kicked under the bunk; the photos of Strauli beaches taped to the bulkhead, ripped from travel magazines; and the knick-knacks and curios bought from street traders, flea markets and antique dealers on a dozen different worlds. She reached out and picked up a cheap metal statue of the Eiffel Tower. It was only a few centimeters tall and sharp at the tip. It felt like a dart in her hand, with four splayed, sweeping legs like the fins of an antiquated rocket.

A few clothes and some tat. It wasn't much to show for four years of pain and loneliness.

"Now, I've got to ask you something," Victor said.

Kat put the statue back on the shelf.

"Is it about the baby?"

He turned to face her. Despite the glucose tablets, he looked ready to drop.

"Yes."

"What do you want to know?"

He took a deep breath.

"Is it mine?"

Kat blinked. She felt her face flush. "Of course it's yours, Victor. Of course it is. Who the fucking hell else's would it be?"

Victor held his palms up in a placatory gesture. "I'm sorry. I had to ask."

Kat looked away, jaw clenched.

"Only, you know, I always wanted kids," Victor said. "I always did." He sounded regretful. "I even asked my wife about it once, but she was seeing someone else and then I fell into that arch..."

Kat closed her eyes.

"Then why'd you walk out on me?"

She heard him shuffle uncomfortably. The rubber grips on the soles of his socks squeaked on the metal deck.

"Honestly?"

She opened her eyes.

"Yes."

Victor cleared his throat. "I guess I was angry," he said. "After what happened with Alice, I didn't want to trust anyone in that way again. And then I met you, and I thought you were different. But then you got rid of our baby without even telling me you were going to do it."

He lowered himself shakily to sit on the edge of the bunk.

"I'd wanted kids so long," he said. "I felt betrayed. I couldn't take it." Tears were rolling freely down his face. Kat felt a lump in her own throat.

"Oh shit, Vic," she said, voice hoarse. "We really fucked up good, didn't we?"

He laughed in spite of himself.

"The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

Their eyes met. Neither wanted to be the first to look away.

Then the ship interrupted, its voice cutting through the silence between them.

> We're in the DZ. If we're going to jump, we should do it now.

Kat stiffened. She knew that what she was about to say amounted to a death sentence for the millions of people living on Inakpa, unaware of the contagion racing toward them; but what choice did she have? She couldn't abandon her home, her family, her unborn child. And if she didn't stop The Recollection at Strauli Quay, who knew how many more millions would die?

They had to jump, and it had to be now. Without taking her eyes from Victor, she said: "Do it."

And in an actinic flash of light, they did.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

DOWNPORT HUSTLE.

The city turned out to be every bit as hospitable as Ed had hoped when seeing it for the first time, through the canvas flap of the military half-track that had brought him and Alice to the hostel. The city's name was Bekleme, and although it wasn't the largest city on the planet Strauli, it was still an important hub for the transport of freight and personnel to and from the orbital docks. The Downport, which was what the Bekleme locals called the tangle of runways at the edge of town, spread out over a large swathe of land to the south of the city. Shuttles came and went at every hour of the day and night. Trucks hissed their hydraulic brakes. Arc lamps kept the loading areas bright. And all around the perimeter of the port, hotels and bars had sprung up, providing ample opportunity for both cheap accommodation and gainful employment.

After asking around for a few evenings, Ed got a job tending bar in a budget-price chain hotel overlooking the main runway. He'd spent enough time in pubs to be able to find his way around a bar. He could pour a beer and mix a gin and tonic. Being so close to the runway, the optics on the wall clinked and shook when the big cargo shuttles launched. The rooms upstairs were clean and basic, and all exactly alike. There was just space to undress and climb into bed, which was all that the customers needed. The clientele were strictly transitory, few ever staying more than one night. They were all on their way somewhere else. Half were waiting for a flight up to the Quay, the others had just come down.