"Dear Lord," Julia gazed at the alien. "This is it, the sentient microbe cluster?"

"No, unfortunately. The thought-processing organism is only stage one. That's where the real trouble starts. These aliens have the ability to control their own genetic heritage, they can consciously switch individual genes on and off. Christ knows where that ability comes from. Whoever heard of instant evolution?"

"I am protean by nature," said the Hexaëmeron. "Internal cellular modification to fulfil a specific function requirement is inherent, what I am."

"Yeah, right," Royan said. "Anyway, this was the chamber where the microbes went critical. After that, the Hexaëmeron started to grow entirely new types of cells for itself, and shifted its consciousness into them. That's what you're looking at now, a protean entity capable of fashioning itself to operate in any environment.

"I thought the disseminator plant was mutating at first, some kind of transgenic process with the microbes infecting the landcoral; which actually was a pretty good guess. You get that in really complex bioware sometimes; chromosome deletion or translocation, the growth pattern is distorted out of recognition. That's why I rigged up the gamma mines, as a last resort. Christ, alien cells with an exponential growth rate, who knows what it would have ended up as. A cancer the size of an arcology eating its way down Hyde Cavern. I could just see me trying to explain that away to you, Snowy. I was trying to track down the nature of the mutation so it could be isolated when the bugger went for me."

"You would have destroyed me," the Hexaëmeron said impassively.

"Maybe," said Royan. "But not straight away. I want to learn, to understand. Barbarians destroy without reason. We might not be as far along the evolutionary scale as you, but I'd like to think we're above that."

"What do you mean, it went for you?" Greg asked.

"Exactly what you see, Greg. Every protean cell this new consciousness had produced coagulated together like God's own amoeba, and swallowed me whole. It was going to crush me into a pulp and digest me, use me as food for new protean cells."

Greg gave Julia a quick glance. She had turned pale, staring up at Royan's shaded face. Waves of guilt and revulsion were punishing her mind. The idea was making him feel pretty queasy as well.

"So how did you stop it?" Rick asked.

"Hey, you're talking to Son, you know," Royan said with his old swagger. "I was one of the best flicking hotrods that ever plugged into the circuit back home. When the Hexaëmeron pulled its Jonah stunt, I glitched its command procedures. See, any sentient entity, however freaky, functions in the same fashion: observation, analysis, response. Intelligence is the processing of data, that means networks and routines.

"Which in turn means it can be disrupted with the right sort of disinformation. With 'ware it's easy, viruses have been around as long as integrated circuits. Organic brains are a little trickier to break; high-frequency light can induce epilepsy, but that's crude; psychics use eidolonics to corrupt memories and perception directly; the military have developed a whole range of disorientation techniques. It was just a question of finding something appropriate.

"The Hexaëmeron was processing data in a homogeneous cellular array, halfway between a bioware processor and a neural network. I loaded in my glitch virus, and stopped the cells which were attacking me dead in their tracks. Then I substituted my own management routines and took control. Trouble was, I didn't get all of the cells in time. The main Hexaëmeron consciousness saw what I was doing, and isolated all the cells I'd usurped, cut them straight out of its command procedure. So now I control the cells directly around me; I've organized them into a life-support mechanism, feeding me nutrients and oxygen, siphoning out piss and carbon dioxide. But the Hexaëmeron retains its integrity throughout the other cells, those are the ones surrounding mine. What we've got here is a very delicately balanced stand-off."

"Which you hope we can break," Greg said. He'd been studying the Hexaëmeron, it would be easy enough to kill with the rip guns; the trick would be extracting Royan alive. Maybe they could set the Tokarev lasers to longburn, char the outer layer of cells away. He wondered how the Hexaëmeron would react if they started doing that.

"You have already broken our stasis," said the Hexaëmeron. "As we intended you to."

"Summoned," Julia murmured. "You said we were summoned."

"You and Clifford Jepson," said the Hexaëmeron. "That is correct. Our situation outline is a simple one: Royan can still trigger the gamma mines, destroying all life in this chamber, and I retain the capacity to physically ingest the cells under his authority. Neither of us is capable of dominating the other. Mutual suicide is all we can achieve by ourselves. Clearly, this cannot be allowed to continue."

"Clearly," Julia said.

"We came to an arrangement," Royan said. "Each of us would call someone who would terminate the stand-off in our respective favour. I chose you, and used Charlotte Fielder to deliver my warning message."

"How did you find her?" Greg asked.

"I'm still plugged in to New London's datanet," Royan said. "So I knew who was up here, and of course she's listed in Event Horizon's security files as one of Baronski's girls. Simple cross-referencing gave me her name."

"If you're plugged into the asteroid's datanet, then why didn't you just phone us, for Christ's sake?" Greg demanded.

"I will not permit that," the Hexaëmeron said. "I will not allow my existence to be compromised prior to negotiations. Humans have a dangerously xenophobic nature; your leadership would find it difficult to resist public pressure concerning me. If Royan had tried to open a direct communication link with his allies, then I would have been forced to initiate my consumption routine."

"And if that happened, I'd have no choice but to use the gamma mines," said Royan. "What we needed was a throw of the dice, a method of breaking the stand-off which gave us an equal chance of coming out trumps. Logically, such a stand-off had to be interrupted by an external factor. So we gave each other one opportunity to call for help. A sharp game, but the only one in town. I believed in you, Snowy, I knew you'd come hunting as soon as you received the flower. The Hexaëmeron thought Clifford Jepson would have the edge—which makes it quite a judge of human character; Victor's file on Clifford isn't very complimentary, a real lowlife. Talbot Lombard was given the atomic structuring data, and promised more tonight. If Jepson's people had arrived before you, the Hexaëmeron would have made a deal with them."

"But you said atomic structuring technology doesn't exist," Greg said.

"No, it doesn't, not in hardware form. The equations make sense, but they're just a thought experiment, problematical: what could be done if a strong nuclear force generator did exist. It was a lure, the mythical dragon's hoard. Designed to be irresistible to the right sort of mind. Clifford Jepson would do anything to get the generator data, and that includes setting the Hexaëmeron free. It was love against greed. The two human fundamentals. I trusted to love, Snowy."

"Why not simply let it go?" Rick asked. "Are you so xenophobic?"

"The Hexaëmeron should have called for you, Rick," Royan said. "Trusting and naïve. There's nothing people can't solve by sitting round a table and talking rationally. Right, Rick? I can't let it go. There's the third stage to consider."

"The flower," Greg said automatically.

"That's right," Royan said. "The Hexaëmeron can edit its own genes, decide which toroid sequences to activate. Do you understand now, Rick? Why I call it the Hexaëmeron? The reason the alien gene sphere is so large in comparison to terrestrial DNA is because the shells contain the genetic codes for over six thousand different species—plants, insects, animals, sentient creatures. Survivors of life's endgame. The Hexaëmeron is an intermediate stage, an artificial midwife.