“You’re being too nice to me, Tatty. I did want something from you. But I can see I’m not going to get it.” Chan reached out as though to touch Tatty’s greasy hair, then drew back his hand. “I guess Kubo told you that Mondrian is alive. But now I see how you feel about him — ”

“Alive? What are you talking about? He’s dead.”

“Yes and no. Technically, he’s alive.”

“How can he be dead, and alive?”

“We did it to him. I did it to him. He would have destroyed the ship, and everyone on board it. I had to reach in and pull the abort sequence out of his mind, but it was buried deep. I went in all the way, and exploded everything that kept the mind pool out. There’s not much left. What there is can’t communicate. Maybe there’s something that could be reached, but to do that you would need to — ”

“No! You bastard, you’re as bad as Mondrian. Worse!” She reached out at him with hands like talons. “I know what you’re thinking. I know why you came to see me.”

“I only wanted to — ”

“Liar! You only know what the Stimulator did to you, you have no idea what it did to me. I don’t know now you have the nerve to come here.”

“I’m sorry. Kubo Flammarion told me to talk to you, and I guess I was ready to try anything. I’ll go now.”

Chan went into the cramped hall and waited for the outer door to open.

“You are going to Ceres?” Tatty had followed him.

“Farther than that.”

“To the stars again?”

“No. I’m going to a place in the solar system that makes Horus look like Paradise.”

’There’s no such place. There can’t be.”

“Believe me. Our quarantine has been set up in the Sargasso Dump. The Morgan Construct is there, held in stasis. It’s my team’s job to try to make it sane.”

“But where is Mondrian?”

“He’s in the same place. If he is still Mondrian. Would it make you more likely to help, if I said that whatever is living now in the Sargasso Dump is not Esro Mondrian?”

“No, it would not. It would make me … I don’t know.”

Tatty stood, eyes blinking. “Damn him, damn him, damn him,” she said suddenly. “Wait here.”

She disappeared into the cramped interior of the apartment and was gone for a long time. When she returned her hair was washed and brushed, she was wearing a clean dress of pale green, and carefully-applied makeup hid the Paradox stigmata and the dark rings around her eyes. She was still raddled and pathetically emaciated, but her back was straight.

Chan wanted to offer a compliment. The words stuck in his throat. “You need to put on some weight,” he said at last. “Tatty, I won’t lie to you. I have to say one other thing. There will be no Paradox supply in the Sargasso Dump. Kubo Flammarion is there now, and he says it’s torture without it.”

“Kubo doesn’t know about torture. But we know it, Chan. You and I, we can count the ways.” Tatty took his arm. “Come on.”

“I’ll help you, Tatty.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You can’t help me, and I don’t think I can help you. Or anybody. Just promise me one thing.”

“Name it.”

“The Paradox is going to wear off in a couple of hours. Just make sure I’m not on Earth when it happens.”

Chapter 41

“Captain,” said Phoebe Willard. “You just don’t understand.”

“Mmm.” Kubo Flammarion reached down, well below camera level, and scratched at his crotch in mystification. “I guess you’re right.”

On that, he was not lying. He stared at the scene sent back to Ceres through the local Link, and he didn’t understand. The Sargasso Dump was supposed to be a huge open part of space, in which drifted assorted junk of all kinds. That’s exactly what it looked like.

“But you don’t have to stay there, you know,” he went on. “You can come back anytime.”

“Not until I know what happened.” Phoebe’s expression when she glanced around her was not so different from his. Some irritation, but mostly simple puzzlement. “The loss has to be explained.”

“I know, all that equipment. But with the other Construct available — ”

“To hell with the equipment, and to hell with M-29, or whatever the new one calls itself. I’m talking about the guards.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kubo had seen a lot of those guards, when they were originally being shipped out to the Sargasso Dump. Not much of a loss, in his opinion. “Yeah. The guards.”

“Captain Kubo Flammarion, you great meathead, you’ve got no idea. Something amazing had been happening here, something wonderful, improvements in people who were never expected to improve. That’s what I care about. I feel sure M-26A was involved, but I can’t explain how. If only we could find them.”

“We found out where they Linked to, if that helps at all.”

“Nobody told me that! If you know where they are, why isn’t somebody going after them?”

well, we don’t know where they are, see, only where they Linked to. They went to one of the probes, right out on the Perimeter, and they held the link open long enough to take tons of stuff from the Dump with them — supplies, and construction equipment, and both reserve drives, and trash we still haven’t managed to inventory as missing. But when one of our people from Boundary Security went after them, all she found was an empty probe. The Link unit is still there, and it works fine, but it’s in the middle of a quintuple stellar system. There are forty planets and a hundred thousand planetoids within five billion kilometers. Our investigator wasn’t equipped for that sort of search, so she had to Link home again.”

“We have to go back.”

“Tell that to the Stellar Group ambassadors. Without a link, M-26A and the guards can’t go anywhere. They’re stuck somewhere in that stellar system, safe in cold storage. As far as the ambassadors are concerned they can stay there until more urgent problems are solved. like, how to handle the mind pools. They scare everybody rigid, a lot worse than M-26A. Anyway, why do you need M-26A? You could work with M-29. Chan and Leah are right on your doorstep, and you’ll soon have better work facilities. We’re shipping new stuff, living quarters and everything. That’s already happening.”

Kubo did not add that the living raw material of Phoebe’s study would also be replaced, and that was already happening, too. Only two days earlier a frightful act of sabotage, high in the Venus Superdome, had provided three new recruits for Sargasso.

“The policy that Commander Brachis set up for staffing the Dump is still going on,” he continued, “even without him.”

He glanced uneasily over his shoulder. A meeting with Dougal MacDougal was due in a few minutes, and despite friendly prompting from Lotos Sheldrake, that prospect made him nervous. With Mondrian and Brachis gone, Kubo was having greatness thrust upon him. He did not like it at all.

“Anything else you need, Doctor Willard?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Right then.” Kubo stared at her again, this time with a different expression. He dropped his voice. “Would you give Princess Tatiana a message from me? Tell her there’s a little package on its way to her in the next shipment. She’ll know what that means.”

And so do I. I don’t know if you’re her friend or her enemy. You’re an idiot, Kubo, you could get caught. But you’re a kind man.”

“Nah.” He wriggled in embarrassment. “Just killing me and the Princess that much faster.” He reached out to cut their connection, then hesitated. “I don’t suppose there’s any, well, progress, is there, on the other?’

“Some days I think there is, some days I’m sure there isn’t. I’ll call you if there’s any real change.”

“Ah. Do that for me.” Kubo sighed, shook his head, and was gone.

Phoebe Willard sighed too, and again gazed around her. When she had first visited the Dump, the Sargasso facilities had seemed primitive and spartan beyond belief. But the replacement quarters, the prefabs that had been shipped in after the originals had vanished with the guards and M-26A, made those originals seem like luxury apartments.