Peacekeeper Intelligence was always interested in bright people.

He trained with others like him, but only himself and his friend Keinosuke graduated to counterintelligence, thanks to their abilities in analysing surveilled behaviour patterns. Their first joint mission of importance had been against the Siganthian embassy; soon, everything the opposition cell was learning consisted of material devised by Fulgor’s peacekeepers.

Daniel also found time for twelve auxiliary careers - he was a Luculentus, after all. The least kudos but a whimsical satisfaction attached to his poetry. Perhaps he was least successful in his relationships with Luculentae.

Lately, his netSprites had been working on new determinants of suspect behaviour. One of the possible targets was an ecologist called Greg Ranulph, whose behaviour patterns might be consistent with conspiracy - betraying interest in Lucis Multi’s security, hiring equipment off Skein that might be used for infiltrating secure systems. Daniel was keeping the investigation wholly private, because he was testing new algorithms that might prove wrong.

Using the quickglass glider had been a whim. He had been too sedentary of late, and he was curious as to why Ranulph spent so much time on the Stargonier estate. From the owner’s viewpoint, an ecologist was required to work on symbiosis between DNA- and ZNA-based lifeforms, the native ZNA being a triplet of cooperating substances, not a single compound.

But some of Ranulph’s trips to the estate had been flagged as furtive, and possibly suspicious, by Daniel’s netSprites.

For now, he was enjoying the gliding.

High above the grounds of Mansion Stargonier, he gazed down, simultaneously noting in Skein that the owner’s name was now Rafaella, a legal amendment. Still, here he was in a quickglass glider, so who was he to challenge whimsy? She could call herself anything she—

From a patio below, a tiny figure - surely the Luculenta in question - was looking up at him. Perhaps he should initiate comms.

But then low-level messages - such as he had never experienced since training - flared through his awareness.

<<microcode subsurface breach>>

<<danger danger danger>>

<<interface tunnelling exception>>

<<violation is maximal>>

He needed to react.

<<fightbackfightbackfightback>>

And then he realized—

Vampire code!

—was ravening through his deep defences, a monstrous violation, but his plexweb was swinging into action, because such code existed a century ago and femtoscopic inoculation had been laid down inside him, but the code was fast and evolving new stratagems, while he did everything he could to hold it back.

A challenge, on her first kill!

Rashella’s plexweb fought to enhance the vampire code inside her. Deep within were factory-marrows and ecologies of code entities containing ware-organs, cells, components, and finally objects, all goal-directed and adaptive. Her thoughtware was on the offensive.

Her target’s name was Daniel Deighton - she now knew - and his defences were fast, peacekeeper-fast, their battle accelerating on a timescale of femtoseconds. Their thoughtware warriors combined the rigour of symbolic logic with the power of evolution, in a blindingly swift arms race. Then a 303rd generation descendant of Rafael de la Vega’s original code burst through the latest versions of Daniel’s defences.

Got you.

Vampire code ravened through barriers, spread like wildfire down paranerve channels, tearing and ripping, copying and plundering, taking the quantum state of Daniel’s mind and copying it back to Rafaella’s cache, to the waiting, hungry buffer, heisenberging the original brain-plus-plexweb into oblivion.

Daniel’s mouth opened to scream. Then he slumped inside the quickglass cockpit.

Nothing human was here now, only dead meat, already beginning its slide into biochemical chaos, the dissolution from pattern to randomness, the transition known as death.

Rafaella clenched her fists, thrumming with victory, her vampire code - already improved - shining in her awareness, the conqueror in a battle that had last four hundred and two milliseconds.

You’re the first, dearest Daniel.

Overhead, the quickglass glider, with its carrion cargo that no longer cared, continued its flight.

FOURTEEN

EARTH, 1926 AD

Migraines, and the hints of memories of dreams. For the past week or longer, Gavriela had been finding it hard to focus during lectures. Or perhaps that was partly due to Lucas Krause’s habit of sitting near her, his intent look so compelling.

Today, as Professor Hartmann wrote on the blackboard, her mind drifted from thoughts of electrons and current flow, remembering the strangest thing, a being of crystal who could move and talk and—

‘Fräulein Wolf?’

‘Um, excuse me, Herr Professor.’

‘And your explanation, please?’

His diagram showed a curving track of varying width. Inside the chalked track were small circles containing minus signs - electrons, obviously - while off to one side was an equation, I = dq/dt, defining electric current as the rate of flow of charge.

‘Er . . .’ She struggled to reconstruct his half-heard original question. ‘You want to know how current can be constant everywhere in a circuit, even with a twisted wire, squeezing electrons closer together in tight turns, farther apart elsewhere. ’

‘So you heard what I asked, but I have not yet heard your answer.’

There were rueful looks around her - sympathy from her fellow students, none of whom looked to have a solution. But when she stared back at the diagram, it came to life inside her mind, a moving picture of jostling pearls inside a curved pipe, and the answer felt so obvious, but she could not put it into words.

She gestured with her hands.

‘The closer the electrons get the more they, um, push against each other - inverse-square repulsion - so they have to spread out. It balances the curvature exactly, and the, um, well . . . It’s obvious, isn’t it? But I just can’t, um . . .’

Then Professor Hartmann did an unusual thing.

He gave a broad, happy smile.

‘So you are a physicist, Fräulein Wolf. You feel exactly what’s going on. All we need do is add some conversational skills - a minor matter - and you will do very well. Excellent.’

Lucas winked at her.

Afterwards, she went off to study by herself, but every few minutes she found herself looking up from her book, and seeing not the library but a transparent woman whose name was Kenna, while other tangled images fell through her awareness, too fast to interpret.

In the evening, she went to play cards with Petra, Inge and Elke. It was Elke’s apartment, and she owned a card table covered with green baize. Their stakes were matchsticks, and often they would place all the cards face-down, suspending the game in order to chat.

‘Are they giving you a hard time, Gavi?’ asked Petra. ‘I mean the professors.’

‘Oh, no. Today Professor Hartmann picked on me, but he knew that I knew the answer, while no one else did. At least I think he knew. He’s quite a sweet old man.’

‘Picking on you is sweet, huh? Well, good for you.’

‘And there’s no boy in class distracting you?’ asked Elke.

‘Um . . .’

‘Tell us his name,’ said Inge. ‘And how he’s hurt you.’

‘Hurt me? What do you mean?’

‘You’ve not been yourself.’ Petra patted her hand. ‘We’ve noticed, haven’t we, girls?’