<<You are unlike, so good.>>

<<No beginning, though we have not met.>>

Sharp sniffed, his eyes widening. Perhaps he was going to attempt a reply, but with a grinding noise the Zajinet recommenced its motion and lumbered off, following its sulphurous companion.

‘They are strange creatures,’ Rekka said.

‘No,’ came the reply from Sharp’s chest speaker.

Poliakov raised his eyebrows.

‘Their cognitive structures,’ he said, ‘evince macroscopic quantum superposition. All known sentients from any world are composite minds, multiple overlapping personalities; but the Zajinets embody the concept in a more literal way. They rarely broadcast anything other than four simultaneous messages, hardly ever comprehensible.’

Poliakov could work on speaking more clearly himself, in Rekka’s opinion. Sharp did not reply.

Then Rekka’s infostrand-bracelet beeped.

‘McStuart here. Please come to conference room 21-A, Rekka.’

‘Shit.’

Beside her, Sharp emitted a peppermint odour, his analogue of a human chuckle.

‘Right away.’ She thumbed her bracelet, ending comms. ‘Sorry, Sharp. Dr Poliakov, you’ll look after my friend, won’t you?’

‘Of course. Sharp, I am very pleased to meet you.’

‘You smell sincere,’ said Sharp. ‘Thank you.’

Poliakov’s smile was open-mouthed, his eyes wide and shining.

Rekka grinned, clapped Sharp on the arm, then went off to face the bureaucrats.

After the debriefing, Rekka went to the refectory. It was a long, low-ceilinged canteen bouncing with the energy of conversation from some two hundred engineers, scientists and support staff. A thin man came loping towards her, smiling wide, opening his arms.

‘Hey, you.’

‘Simon. My God, Simon.’

They kissed to applause from nearby tables.

‘Get a room,’ called someone. ‘Oh, you already have.’

Rekka pulled back. ‘Is that Gwillem?’

‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’

‘Someone should be.’

Gwillem was heavier than Simon, bearded and with thicker hair on top, but you could tell they were brothers. He came up and clasped his bearish arms around both Rekka and Simon, just for a second.

‘You, dear Rekka, are the talk of Desert One right now.’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Simon. ‘On account of the confidential mission she’s just completed.’

‘It’s not confidential, it’s just not been made public yet.’ Gwillem gestured at a table. ‘Come and sit with us, both of you.’

Mary Stelanko was there, but no sign of her partner Amber.

‘I’ll get you some food.’ Simon held out a chair for Rekka. ‘The usual preferences?’

‘Sure.’ Rekka settled on the chair.

‘You okay?’ Mary asked.

‘The debrief went as well as expected. Unfortunately.’

‘So are you grounded?’ Gwillem raised his fork. ‘Excuse me while I carry on stuffing my face. Got to make sure my food’s digested by sixteen hundred.’

‘Probably, and what’s at sixteen hundred?’

‘Aiki demo.’ Gwillem nodded to Mary. ‘Kinda thing your sweetheart does, right?’

‘Did. A long time ago.’

‘Well, I kinda gather it’s out of fashion.’

Both aikido and Feldenkrais movement had been part of Pilot training since the first voyages into mu-space; but in the early days, things had been different, the sacrifices awful. Some seventeen per cent of Pilots now were natural born, their eyes black-on-black, requiring no surgery to survive in that other continuum; and that percentage kept increasing. Pilots like Mary’s partner would eventually retire - three or four decades hence, in Amber’s case.

The current training curriculum was under critical review.

‘So,’ said Mary. ‘You’re probably grounded?’

‘McStuart was ambiguous about the future.’

‘But clear about his present mood?’

‘You got it, exactly. How was your debriefing, anyway? They can’t blame you for my actions.’

‘They can try, but it’ll backfire on them if they do.’

‘Son of a bitch,’ said Gwillem.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Top table. Look who’s here.’

Rekka and Mary looked past Simon, who was approaching with a tray, to the far table where men and women in business suits were sat. And one white-haired man in particular.

‘Professor Jiang-Shen,’ said Mary. ‘That bastard.’

Rekka shook her head.

‘What?’ asked Gwillem.

‘You know about my biological parents.’

‘Er, yes. I remember the story, not that you can remember that far back, since you were a baby.’

‘It was the Changeling Plague that got my father. That’s why my mother tried to kill me in the Suttee Pavilion. Along with herself.’

‘I forgot that part. Sorry.’

‘What part?’ Simon put a veggie biryani in front of Rekka, the same in his own place, and sat. ‘Am I missing something good?’

‘Something bad.’ Gwillem nodded to the top table.

‘Ah. No one ever proved it was his biotech that got loose.’

‘Nor will they, while he’s so useful to us.’

‘Good point.’

Mary had been eating with her eyes closed, slowly.

‘The food’s so good,’ she said. ‘So where’s Professor-? Ah, I see him. And the two special guests.’

‘You’re up to date on the gossip already?’ Rekka looked at her infostrand-bracelet, considered going online, then shrugged. ‘So who are the special guests?’

‘Those two.’ Simon pointed. ‘With the near-identical features. ’

A man and a woman, aged somewhere between twenty and forty, with flawless skin and black hair, the man wearing a goatee. They smiled with charisma, the centre of everyone’s focus.

‘Brother and sister?’

‘Cousins, in fact. The Higashionnas, Japanese-Brazilian, from Rio. UN senators, and real superstars.’

‘Hence my dramatic and exciting aiki demo for the VIPs,’ said Gwillem. ‘Which you’ll all be attending?’

‘Haven’t you got a lab to work in?’ asked Simon.

‘And haven’t you got a management cubicle to do no work in at all?’

‘Huh. Sixteen hundred hours?’

‘Right.’

‘I’ll be there. Rekka?’

‘If I can’t get in to see my special friend,’ said Rekka, ‘then I might come along.’

‘Special?’ said Gwillem.

‘Handsomely endowed.’ Mary spread her arms wide. ‘I mean like this big.’

Simon held his fork underhand, and waved it back and forth between Mary and Rekka.

‘You better be talking about antlers.’

‘What else is there?’ asked Rekka.

‘You don’t remember?’

‘Certainly not.’

At four p.m., Rekka was sitting on a bleacher seat with Sharp on her right, Simon to her left. Poliakov sat the other side of Sharp. On blue mats in the sports hall centre, some thirty people in white pyjama-like jackets and what looked like black ankle-length skirts were rolling and rehearsing footwork, warming up. Some carried blunt wooden daggers.

‘Where’s Gwillem?’ said Rekka.

‘There.’ Simon’s arm encircled her. ‘See?’

‘Oh, yeah. How come you never took up this kind of stuff?’

‘I wasn’t the one who got bullied in school.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘His growth spurt came late, and there was something about his middle name that got people taunting him, once they learned it.’

‘Guillaume?’

‘Which you can pronounce two ways, one of which the kids found funny.’

‘Strange thing to latch on to.’

‘Yeah . . . He turned out all right though, didn’t he?’

Rekka leaned her weight into him, feeling the slender muscles beneath, so different from the massive fur-covered alien on her right. Then she noticed two things: Sharp was very still, nostrils wide; and Poliakov was leaning backwards, avoiding Sharp’s bulk, so he could talk to her across Sharp’s back.

‘You are a bad person, Rekka Chandri.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You spent considerable time with our friend, and he does not make you whimper with desire at his will, does he? Unlike poor Claudia and Justine in the lab.’