Tol Karden gestured. ‘I’d like to show you this.’

Beside him, a moving holo-within-the-holo opened. Squinting, Clara could see Susannah’s image inside the new holo-volume, next to an opened med-drone, talking to the female occupant who was sitting up. Two other personnel stood off to one side, observing Susannah Blaydon.

As she talked to Petra Helsen.

‘No.’ Susannah Blaydon shook her head. ‘That’s not me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tol Karden’s voice held just the right tone: questioning without accusation. ‘Not you?’

‘That’ – pointing with a shaking finger – ‘is the woman we were told to look out for. But I never saw her. That … That’s not me in the image.’

‘It looks like you.’

‘But it can’t be me. I’d have remembered, wouldn’t I?’

Arlene turned round to Garber.

‘Immediate assessment, Colonel. She’s telling the truth, same as the others.’

Michio nodded, still watching the interrogation.

‘That’s not good,’ said Garber.

In the holo-within-the-holo, Helsen finished talking to Susannah Blaydon, then lay back down, delta-band across her forehead. The med-drone closed up as Blaydon stepped away, ready to process the next refugee.

‘Sophisticated mindbending,’ said Clara.

‘And now she’s loose on Molsin,’ said Garber. ‘Shit.’

Was that concern for a vulnerable planet or his own career? He had been instrumental in setting up the vetting procedure.

‘All right.’ Garber was summoning a fastpath. ‘I’ve seen enough. You stay here, on the off chance something interesting develops.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Clara.

As Garber disappeared, Arlene dropped Clara a wink.

‘Lovely man,’ she said.

EIGHTEEN

THE WORLD, 5563 AD

Harij stood in the doorway of the special classroom, teal-green patches of sadness shifting across his otherwise silver skin. All eight of the special pupils, shiny with concentration, rocked back and forth in time to the count, Ilara among them.

**Whorl one whorl three whorl five whorl seven whorl eleven whorl thirteen.**

The flux of their ritualistic counting formed a headache-inducing beat. They could go on like this from nightbreak to sunrise if the teacher allowed them to. Why his sister had been born like this while he was what people called normal, he had no idea. He believed Ilara cared for him in her own way, while he loved her more than their parents could manage.

This was midnight break and he was allowed out of school. He should eat – his desk contained a woven basket of fresh sweetfungus bread – but instead he went out through the side exit, and headed for the grey scree slope at the far end of the cavern, beyond the shell houses of their little town. Always, the outside drew him.

Vortices from deep within the rock tugged at his senses, but he climbed on and came out onto the familiar wide ledge. No one else was around. He had the landscape to himself: the mesa beyond the canyon, the distant aurora, and the silver-black filigree globe of Magnus high in the sky.

A trio of mating triblades hurtled past, swooping into the canyon. Motes of no-thought drifted peaceably. Harij sat down, his back against the rockface, opening himself up the sights and flux of midnight, everything peaceful and—

There.

He had to check twice, but he was right: far across the mesa, a lone robed figure was walking. Strong gait, upright and – even from here it seemed so – both courageous and open to all that was around, sensitive and determined. The second such figure he had seen within nine nights.

**I want to be like that.**

It was a private thought, and he kept the flux inside him, not allowing it to escape and drift away.

**Just like that.**

The distant Seeker passed behind a tooth-shaped outcrop, and beyond Harij’s perception.

Rather differently to the way he felt about Ilara, he was more than half in love with Mistress Ahn, his teacher. Occasionally he wondered if the rest of the class had similar thoughts; if so, they kept them tightly curled inside their heads.

They spent the next session resonating one of his favourite story crystals, [[The Strongest Dreamlode]], though it was not the lonely Seeker that the other children identified with, but the girl he saved. After the short break that followed, several of the bolder boys came up to Mistress Ahn before she called the class to order.

**Lintral saw tri-blades mating, miss!**

This was the kind of cheek that could cause Mother Zil-Grania, the head of school, to bring out her nastiest cane: the thin one with the heavy polarization that left weals for nights afterwards, and memories of pain that lasted longer still. But Mistress Ahn was different, which was why the boys dared so much. Still, Harij held his breath until she answered.

**But when you grow up, you’ll mate with only one other sex. Isn’t that right?**

The boys turned away, embarrassed orange patches showing on their foreheads. Mistress Ahn grinned, highlights shifting like liquid on her flawless silver skin.

Harij had no name for the desire inside him.

Later, he would fail to work out why this was the night, the point when his decision crystallized. Over a hundred nights had passed since the time the class discovered his dream of becoming a Seeker, after Vitril (so aloof, the swot) had led them in imagining [[My Family]] and Harij’s emotions had diverged and unravelled, picked up by even the least sensitive of his classmates.

Then, they had mocked him, their flux bouncing back and forth around the room, and he had run into the corridor. But Mistress Ahn’s rage had frightened everyone; and when he crept back to his desk, no one had even dared to glance at him.

Tonight, as he paused beside the spin-coils that kept the fungal farms productive, he looked back at the school where Ilara and her special classmates remained, and decided that everything had to change.

**I’ll get you out of there.**

He would save his sister from the town that failed to love her.

**I promise you.**

However dangerous the journey might be.

NINETEEN

MOLSIN, 2603 AD

The medic’s perfume was wonderful. Roger inhaled his way to wakefulness.

‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘We’ve scrubbed your lungs out, and you’re going to be fine.’

‘Ugh.’

‘Try not to run too hard for a couple of days. And you might want to lay off the adventure sports, but that’s just my personal prejudice.’

Roger could not sit up. As he tried, the bed morphed, sinking and giving way to absorb the motion, leaving him nothing to press against.

‘Sorry,’ added the medic. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. You being an offworlder without control of– But look, your tu-ring appears to have access. You can use it to alter the bed.’

‘I just want to sit up.’

‘Here. This is all you need.’

She looked at the bed and it reconfigured, gently pushing up behind his back.

‘Thank you,’ said Roger.

The bed stopped shifting. He was in a private room, coloured lustrous green and icing-white.

‘Someone wants to chat with you, Pilot. A police officer.’ Again she smiled. ‘Just stay sitting as you are. I’ll come back later to check you out of here, OK?’

‘Er, OK.’

The wall melted open, allowing her to step out and Tannier to enter.

‘You’re back on Barbour.’ Tannier waited as the doorway flowed shut. ‘She looks nice, your medic. What’s her name?’

‘I don’t … If she told me, it was when I was only half awake.’ Roger thought back. ‘It seems as if I’ve been in and out of sleep.’

‘More than likely.’

‘I was drifting in the sky. Did someone spot me?’

It was a redundant question, but his mind was still coming online.