The man was now on his way to make his other report, and on his way to a bitter destiny. Harald focused on his eye-screen again, and ran through a recording of this most recent meeting with Alun. There was plenty there he could use, plenty he could change, distort and edit together. Afterwards he checked the time, then speed-read another five reports. He moved on to check the programs he had made to track events. Franorl was now in position off from Corisanthe Main, and the party of Combine observers was aboard Desert Wind. And any moment now…Harald observed the com icon light in the corner of his screen, initiated it and read the expected text summons from Admiral Carnasus. He stared at it for a long moment, then abruptly gave his response before wiping the summons, and then opening a secure com channel. He observed a white and sickly face, framed by black hair, turning towards him.

"Are you still ready, Cheanil?" he asked.

"I am still ready," she replied.

"Stay ready. Your time comes within the hour."

Yishna—leaves Corisanthe Main

A vision arose in her mind of steel hearts beating in darkness, the spaces between them crammed with folded layer-upon-layer of reality, programs chewing through the folds like metallised bugs and long segmented worms, and the feeling of being smothered inside this mass…Yishna woke with panic heavy in her chest and lay motionless on her sweat-soaked mattress. Every clink or distant sound caused this panic to surge sickeningly. Slowly a feeling tingled in her legs, a restlessness. She had to move them but felt frightened to do so. She fought against it, slowly overcoming the paralysis. But moving her legs didn't seem to help. Carefully she reached out and put on the light, then lay there gasping, for even the bright sunny glow did not dispel the inner darkness, rather seemed thinly layered over it. Abruptly she sat up, swung her legs to one side of her sleeping mat and stood up.

The same nightmare had been recurring in every period of sleep for some time, so that she had now become afraid to close her eyes. Trying to stay awake did not help, since even then the nightmare eventually crawled into her conscious mind, or otherwise loomed at the periphery of her perception. Drugged sleep merely held it off for a little while, then it returned with redoubled force. Trying to remain rational, she analysed her condition, but the fear that she knew precisely its source caused her to veer away from making any conclusions.

Standing leadenly in her room within Corisanthe Main, it took Yishna some minutes to notice the flashing icon on her touch-screen. She keyed it and found a summons from Director Gneiss, but timed for an hour ago. Though dreading this summons, now that it had come she felt relieved. Still dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, she moved quickly out into the corridor and strode woodenly towards the Director's office. Seeing OCTs and researchers bustling about around her offered a welcome distraction from the shadows. Finally she came to stand before the curtain drawn across his office entrance, and there lost her impetus. After a moment Gneiss himself drew the curtain aside. She tried to tell herself that he must have been on his way out, but knew deep inside that he had somehow sensed her presence.

"Yishna," he looked her up and down, "come in." He gestured her over to his divan, then sat down beside her, peering at her intently, the spoked wheels of his irises seeming almost on the point of revolving. "You know why you're here?"

"I think so," she managed, though she felt his question contained several perilous levels of meaning.

"Can you explain?"

Stay at the surface. Don't go any deeper…it's dark down there. Why was she here in his office now, not why did she exist.

"I just can't seem to…" Yishna could not go on. The nightmares had started after she interfered with the emergency protocols, and from then on she had felt her condition steadily worsening, until, over the last year it seemed all she could manage was to drag herself to a convenient research unit. But, once there, she had discovered nothing new, and often found herself just staring at the screens for hours. She knew that no psychologist could have helped. How could she explain to them her fear that the territory of her mind had been invaded? How could she now tell Gneiss? Or did he already know?

"You need a break. When was the last time you left Main?"

Entirely unexpected. She looked at him in puzzlement. Leave Corisanthe Main?

Gneiss leaned back. "I have recommended you for a position outside the station. You'll still be working for me, but must report directly to the Oversight Committee. We need somebody of your…potential, in at the ground level."

What was he talking about?

He continued flatly, "We don't know when this individual is going to arrive but we definitely need an established Combine representative in this matter."

"Representative?"

"We need a representative in place when this Polity Consul Assessor arrives."

"Oh." She recollected hearing something about that, but could not summon any emotional response. Gazing down at her grubby clothing and the dirt under her fingernails, she said, "I'm a mess." The words seemed to cause a moment of disconnection, a lessening of the intensity between them. The moment became almost humanised.

"Do you think I don't understand?" Gneiss stood, paced over to his workstation and picked up a console. "It gets to some people. Dalepan said you were sensitive to it."

"To what?"

He gestured about him with the console he held. "All of it: bleed-over, the oppressive claustrophobic atmosphere, the downright strangeness…Stand up now."

Yishna got up, realising with some disgust that she had not washed her hair for longer than she cared to think about.

"Yishna Strone, you will be the Orbital Combine representative designated to meet the Consul Assessor when he arrives. Get yourself cleaned up and your belongings packed. You leave on the next shuttle heading over to Corisanthe II, and from there you will take the next landing craft groundside, where you will be taken to meet Chairman Abel Duras."

"But why?" Yishna could not understand why he had chosen her. Surely he, as well as many others, must consider her a burnout.

"I have every confidence in you, and I know the power of your mind. It goes away, you know, once you are back in the real world." He seemed almost wistful, his strange eyes gazing beyond Yishna to some other place or state of being.

He was right. Aboard the shuttle, as it headed for Corisanthe II, Yishna felt as if she was pulling out into sunlight from underneath some bleak shadow. And in her mind suddenly flashed an image of Gneiss, black and toad-like, with Corisanthe Main clutching him like a fist.