‘I’m not leaving you, Admiral.’

‘Must . . .’

Finger, about to tighten.

Everything dropped from his perception except that knuckle, about to squeeze.

‘Aaah! Fuck!’ she cried out.

A golden explosion took place inside her eyes, yet no energy burst forth. Max had never heard of such a thing. His last new experience before dying?

Still she had not fired.

‘Max.’ Smoke rose from her eyeballs. ‘I’m neurally wired. Get the fuck out of here.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Now. It’s an order. Whether I fire the graser or not’ - her eyes were opaque grey, burned out, but she could still target him - ‘it’s going to explode. You’ve ten seconds at most.’

He made the emergency control gesture.

‘Drop the weapon. We’ll both go.’

Behind him, a whirlpool of yellow nothingness grew: his escape.

‘I can’t control the hand, Max.’

‘No—’

‘Quick. Go!’

She fired as he leapt into the yellow.

He fell through layers of reality.

Someone will pay.

Max accepted the danger of his job. But someone had used Admiral Adrienne Kaltberg as an assassination tool, and that deserved punishment. In a city-world with fractal time, pain could be made to last forever.

She would be dead by now. Clearly part of her mind - part of her brain - understood what had been done to her. It was easy to set a graser for self-destruction, and the explosion would be devastating - would have been devastating, for it had surely occurred.

Bastards.

Whoever they were, he would find them and bring punishment on their heads.

Admiral, you were the best.

Ironically, his office was thoroughly shielded and armoured. It would have served to contain the explosion; but everything and everyone inside would have been annihilated. He wondered how long it would take Internal Security to break in.

And whether they would think that he had perished along with Admiral Kaltberg.

That would be a help.

He came out into a long cavernous space that looked as if it stretched forever - which was geometrically true. Bulbous pillars in all directions, glowing, illuminated the soft, endless, grey-blue floor and ceiling.

There were food stashes all over - he had planned his emergency routes with care, over many years - but no devices existed here to help him. That was part of what kept this entire infinite subspace off the grid, undetectable from the rest of Labyrinth.

And that was why the only way to reach any of his exit points was on foot. None was closer than a three-day walk from here.

The Med Centre. That would be a good one.

By exiting outside Ascension Annexe, he would be into public areas where enemies might hesitate to move; but the Med Centre would have access to emergency systems. He could mobilize people he trusted.

Because the enemy, whoever they were, clearly included people with the highest level of security clearance, able to plan a killing inside the heart of the intelligence service.

So, the Med Centre it was.

‘Here we go,’ he said aloud, to an entire reality inhabited only by him. ‘Might as well start now.’

It would take seven, maybe eight days to reach the exit point he had decided on.

Reading subtle rune-like markings on the pillars - his own secret code - he headed in the chosen direction. Perhaps twenty minutes into the journey, he stopped.

‘My God, Admiral. How did you do it?’

For he had worked out the meaning behind her actions, and could not imagine doing it himself. Such discipline and courage were beyond him.

The neural wiring had been active and adaptive, reinforcing itself as it worked, predominantly inside the right hemisphere of her brain. Thinking back, it was obvious.

Every intelligence officer learned to read minutiae. In everyday conversation, often a person’s left hand will make subtle gestures that either reinforce or give the lie to the words that the person is speaking. It happens all the time, yet so few people notice.

But, though the admiral’s left hemisphere could utter words, it had not been enough to quell the cross-brain compulsion from the implanted neural ‘wiring’ - a femtoviral targetted infection.

Not until she had directed her inductive energy inwards, burning out the corpus callosum in her own brain, severing the bridge that linked her two cerebral hemispheres.

And then she had fought, herself against herself inside her mind, giving him time to escape.

Admiral Kaltberg. She deserved to be remembered with honour; just as her enemies deserved to experience eternal pain.

Now he had two reasons to keep on going.

THIRTY-THREE

EARTH, 1930-1939 A.D.

One afternoon on Bahnhofstrasse, Gavriela was walking with Florian Horst, the big ex-soldier who had been in her class that first day, helping Herr Professor Möller use the big wire basket as a Faraday cage. Like Gavriela, he was working on his doctorate; and they were deep into discussion of the new Rutherford results when someone called Gavriela’s name.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Florian, these are old friends of mine.’

Petra, Elke and Inge were smiling, waiting to be introduced. Elke blushed when she shook Florian’s hand.

‘You’ve known Gavriela for a long time?’ asked Florian.

‘Since her first week here.’

‘Well, that’s how long I’ve known her.’

‘So,’ said Petra, ‘do you know any juicy scandal about Fräulein Wolf that we don’t?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then we’ll just have to tell you all her secrets.’

‘Oh, please.’ Gavriela was smiling.

‘You’re not the one who’s going to Denmark, are you?’ asked Elke.

‘Ah, no.’ Florian shrugged his heavy shoulders. ‘That would be Lucas Krause.’

‘I see,’ said Elke, smiling.

Petra, Inge and Gavriela exchanged looks. Lucas was the one with the offer to join the Bohr Institute; he was also the one whose eyes captivated Gavriela, but who shied away from any hint of intimate conversation.

‘I believe I know you, sir,’ said Elke.

‘Fräulein?’

‘There was a strongman competition in a beer hall, during the autumn festival. Lifting the stones and anvils.’

‘Ah.’ Florian grinned. ‘That could be.’

‘Herr Horst used to be a soldier,’ Gavriela said.

‘I adore the military,’ said Elke.

‘But I’m only a physicist now.’

‘So you can explain to me how big the solar system is?’

‘And the entire universe, which we call the Milky Way.’

‘Gavriela was talking about the galaxy, but I didn’t understand.’

‘Galaxy and universe are the same thing,’ said Florian. ‘The Milky Way is just our perspective on the rest of the galaxy-universe. We’re right out on the edge, you know.’

‘Near the end of everything?’

‘That’s exactly right.’

Elke shivered.

‘And it’s also the reason,’ Florian went on, ‘that we need careful management of the peace, because we’re a fragile species on the only known inhabited world, orbiting around the only star that is known to have planets.’

The awe on Elke’s face bore little relation to the mild interest she showed in Gavriela’s physics. Among themselves, the others would later decide this marked the moment Elke fell in love.

‘We were about to go to a café,’ said Petra, for Elke’s sake. ‘Please join us.’

‘I’d be delighted.’

Once installed at a table, they chose cakes and ordered coffee. While they were waiting, Petra put a tiny silver box on the table.

‘Anybody need a pick-me-up?’

‘What is it?’

‘Something that Sigmund Freud recommends’ - Petra nodded towards Gavriela - ‘as a way of clearing the mind of neurotic malaise, a positivity tonic.’

‘You mean cocaine,’ said Florian. ‘I hear it has some unfortunate drawbacks.’