CHAPTER TWENTY

COOL AIR WASHED over Hayden's face. For a second he reveled in that, drawing in deep breaths and running his hands over his sweat-stained scalp. Then he turned to Aubri.

"She's not been shot." Carrier was already there, turning her over in midair like something he was inspecting at market. He was right, there was no blood.

Was it the assassin-bug she carried inside her? Had Aubri crossed some invisible line, or begun to say something that had triggered it? For a moment Hayden was sure that such a thing had happened, and that she was dead.

Then Carrier put his hand on her forehead. "Hot. Her pulse is a bit fast. She's not sweating; looks like she fainted from the heat."

Aubri coughed weakly and opened her eyes. "Oh, my head," she murmured. She looked around herself in confusion. "How did we get back to—oh." She pawed at the air, seeking something to hold on to. Hayden put out his hand and she took it, oriented herself upright with respect to the two men. "We're in Candesce."

"And we have a schedule to keep." Venera was waiting impatiently at a nearby doorway. The military bike hung in the air next to her, popping and pinging as it cooled. Hayden counted bullet holes as he pulled Aubri past it; there were at least twenty. A glance told him that the fuel tanks hadn't been punctured, but he wasn't sure about the burners or fan.

"Come on," said Venera. "Mahallan, are you awake enough to do your job?"

"Yes yes," said Aubri peevishly. But Carrier shook his head.

"She needs water and cold compresses," he said. "We don't want her making mistakes at a crucial moment."

Venera drew an ornate watch out of her silk tunic. "We have an hour," she said. "And I'm grudging you that."

They went to explore. It was easy for Hayden to tow Aubri, who seemed feverish and vague; if they'd been under gravity she might not have been able to walk.

"Familiar enough design," Venera said as they moved down a bright, white-walled corridor. The interior of what Aubri had called the visitor's center was divided into numerous chambers and corridors, but only in a loose sort of way by walls and floors that generally did not quite meet. Instead of the enclosed boxes one found under gravity, here were rectangles of pastel-colored material that were suspended in midair to suggest rooms and floors without limiting mobility. In many places you could slip over or under a "wall" into the next room, or glide through a gap in the floor into a room "below." Electric lights in many colors floated here and there, casting shadows that softened the edges of the space. This sort of plan war common in freefall houses and public institutions—but in those places you could always see the ropes or wires that kept the rectangles in place. Hayden could see no means of support for this place walls.

The rooms were in turn subdivided by screens into different functional areas: eating and cooking alcoves, entertainment centers, even shadowed nooks for sleeping. It didn't take them long to find fresh cold water for Aubri. She splashed it over herself and began to look more alert.

"This place could house hundreds," said Carrier. "Are you sure no one ever comes here? It all looks a bit too well kept."

Aubri laughed. "After maintaining the suns of Candesce, taking care of this place must be light work."

"But light work for whom?"

"For what, you mean. Nothing we're likely to meet while we're here, Carrier. Nothing human."

He looked uneasy. "It's too empty in here. I don't like it."

Hayden searched the cupboards for something to help Aubri. To his surprise he found them well stocked, but the packages and boxes were lettered in an unfamiliar language.

Aubri was shrugging off any more help anyway. "I'm feeling better, Venera. Let's do what we came to do." She glided out of the kitchen alcove and slid through the loop of a large couch sling in the living area next door.

Venera frowned at Aubri. "Well then, what are you waiting for? Where's the… bridge, command center, or what have you?"

Aubri gestured at a blank picture frame that took up much of the ceiling. "It's wherever you want it to be, Venera. Watch." She spoke several words in a language Hayden had never heard before, and the picture frame swirled with sudden inner light. Then it seemed to open like a door or window, and Hayden found himself staring into the gleaming interior of Candesce.

Lit by some magical un-light, Candesce's interior teemed with motion like the little creatures Hayden had seen once when he looked through a teacher's microscope. The suns themselves resembled diatoms, spiky and iridescent; though they were quiescent, all around them things like metal flowers were opening. Their petals fanned like the hands of mannered dancers, hundreds of feet wide, to reveal complex buds of machinery that must have hibernated in tungsten cocoons during the day's heat. Bright things poured out of them like seeds from a pod—or bikes from a hangar.

Other things were moving too—long spindly gantries delicately picked crystalline cylinders out of the air and stuck them together end to end. Hayden glimpsed more machinery inside th cylinders.

"What are they doing?" he asked.

"Repairing," said Aubri in a distracted tone. "Rebuilding. Don't look at anything too closely, you could break it."

Hayden sent her a worried glance; he noticed Carrier squinting at her as well. But she looked more alert and lucid than she had a few minutes ago. Hayden decided to let her strange comment go.

"There!" Aubri pointed. Hayden squinted, and saw two catamarans peeling away from the awakening machinery. The Gehellen had been unable to follow their quarry into the Sun of Suns, and were giving up the chase. Maybe they intended to wait for morning outside Candesce's unnerving heart. Well, they would face that possibility when it came.

He turned his attention back to the unfurling non-life of Candesce. Hayden was looking for something, and after a few minutes he spotted it. One of the salvage ships from the principalities was nosing cautiously into the zone of mechanical activity. It flew a flag he'd never seen before, but he ignored that and its strange lines and watched where it was going.

"Well?" Venera was asking impatiently. "Where are the controls Mahallan? Hadn't you better get started?"

"Shush, Venera," said Aubri. "I've already started."

Hayden had heard that all the suns in Virga made use of discarded components of Candesce. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see, but was still surprised when the principality ship swung in close to one of the big translucent cylinders as it was being hoisted near a sun. Some complex exchange had just taken place between the cylinder and one of the flowers; a door had opened in the crystal and swarms of metal insects swirled between it and the "flower." Now another hatch opened in the tesselated side of the sun, and another exchange began.

As it did, the hangar doors of the principality ship flew open and men in sargasso suits—star shapes at this distance—flung them-selves into the stream of packages. They wrestled something away from its insectile courier; he could have sworn he'd seen the arcs and bands of that device before, in the half-constructed heart of his parents' new sun.

But wouldn.''t the metal bugs object? It seemed suicidal folly to try to steal from them. He waited for the swarm to turn and attack the men. After a long moment it began to happen: the remaining drones let go of their cargoes and turned toward the humans, who seemed oblivious to the threat.

Get away, get away, he willed them, even as the steel insects opened their claws and flung themselves at the men.

"Hayden, whatever you're doing, stop it," said Aubri. She was waving her hand in front of his eyes.