‘Love to.’

That night, Gavriela sat up in bed, reading her borrowed copy of The White Company, the slipcover worn grey and disintegrating at the edges. Whenever she paused, her thoughts would shift to Professor Challenger, then to the real Professor Möller whose leonine mane and clear gaze had been the personification of that fictitious scientist-hero; and she hoped that he remained safe in Zürich, though in the long term, in the face of the thousand-year Reich, neutrality had to be an ephemeral dream.

A photograph slipped out. Its edges were wave-like in the way special mementoes often were. Gavriela had occasionally wondered whether they were cut with sinusoidally edged scissors or something else, but never pursued it. The man in the picture wore dark naval uniform, aiming a long-jawed grin at the camera.

On the back, inscribed in careful copperplate, were these part-faded words:

From your Jaunty Jack,

Love always.

14th Sept. 1940

She stared at it for a long time, then put book and photo aside, switched off the light, and lay back, wondering if it had always been like this: years of peaceful idyll that no one appreciated at the time, interwoven with periods of desperation when violence and contingency ruled life and death, and certainty was vanished from the world.

THIRTY-ONE

LUNA, 502022 AD

Gavriela woke in her pliable, crystalline body, stretched in a way her older organic self could not have imagined, and rolled off the bier, onto her feet. The familiar vacuum was a comfort. The wall-mounted weapons tempted her, but she walked past them into the main hall.

Roger and Kenna were manipulating a many-dimensioned maze of silver lines that floated above the conference table. Trick perspectives and something more granted it an exotic, impossible architecture. Here and there, points radiated five, six … up to nine straight lines that shimmered like this: each pair of lines appeared to form a right angle, no matter which pair she focused on, so that after a time, the mutual orthogonality appeared to spread, to be a natural feature of all the lines simultaneously.

A refracted spectrum slid across Kenna’s smile.

—You can see why we need Roger.

Gavriela put her hand on Roger’s shoulder.

—I knew there had to be a reason.

—Thanks, Gavi. I love you too.

The complex image, had it been topological and not geometric – graph rather than shape – would have matched some long-gone memory, some resonance from Gavriela’s past. It resembled …

—What’s the importance of computation, Kenna?

—In what we do? Nothing and everything.

—It seems I knew … Was I at some kind of nexus? The people I met were key, weren’t they? Not just pioneers, but important in the course of human—

Kenna held up a glimmering hand.

—You were in a closed profession where everyone knew everyone else. Don’t speculate beyond that.

—But I was at the beginning of—

—Yes, and that is why speculation is so dangerous. The wrong information surfacing to your conscious mind back then would be disastrous.

Gavriela waved at the surrounding hall.

—To all of this?

—No, to you. The universe is more robust.

Roger, with a series of control gestures, collapsed the silvery graph into a fist-sized ball, then to a bright point which he twisted out of existence.

—So what now?

Kenna touched them both on the upper arm.

—Why don’t you take a walk out on the surface, both of you?

A walk with Roger on the surface of the moon. There was nothing that Gavriela wanted more; but Roger gave a crystalline frown.

—Are you trying to get rid of us, Kenna?

She could as easily have banished them back to unconsciousness, but Roger was right: Kenna had some purpose in mind.

—Our newest member is about to arrive. You two can come back and meet him, but it would be best if I greet him alone on waking.

Gavriela looked at Roger, at the minute interplay of light behind his transparent face.

—Let’s take that walk.

The pain of a thousand blades coming down, the intricate agony of slivers cut from him, reducing him, with no way to deaden the torture because sharing his full, untainted self was all, the reason for putting himself in death’s way. It ached, it hurt, it burned across millennia—

Sharp pulled himself awake.

—Greetings, good Sharp.

Oceans of agony ebbed, pulling back until he could function once more, though his memory of pain was permanent. Rolling his eyes, he saw his antlers had become like glass, sculpted transparency, while the rest of him … He held up his clear hands, bending all four thumbs, wondering why he was not afraid.

When he sat up, the crystalline being in front of him had her mouth curved in the first expression he had learned from Rekka: smiling, the human counterpart of sweetbloom-scented humour.

—You’re not a human.

—No, good Sharp. But I am friend and ally to them, as I am to you.

—Truth.

There was no air in this place, but the resonance of scent still operated, and there was no tinge of falsehood in Kenna’s communication.

—I died.

—You did, and most courageously, my friend.

She held out one hand. Little taller than the humans Sharp had known, she barely came up to his chest. He took her hand in his, and allowed her to lead him out of the chamber, along a corridor where he had to bow his head to pass beneath each archway, taking care not to scrape his antlers, finally to come out on a balcony that overlooked a sere, grey landscape beneath a black, star-decorated sky.

Two small figures walked there, hand in hand.

—Humans?

—And friends. They spend periods of time here. For now, they sleep for long periods also, while they live their ordinary lives.

Stars refracted in his antlers as he shook his head.

—And will I sleep as well?

—No, Sharp. You and I remain awake.

He stared at the distant human pair.

—For ever?

—At least until the final days.

The landscape looked timeless, static for eternity.

But that was illusion.

THIRTY-TWO

MOLSIN, 2603 AD

Celebration exploded throughout Deltaville: streamers and holobursts in the halls and thoroughfares, fountains flowing with goldenmead shandy and indigoberry beer, exotic jantrasta confections free for the taking from extruded quickglass tables; and everywhere the pounding music, spontaneous dancing, and couples in corners engaged in snogging.

Beside Roger, Rhianna Chiang said: ‘It’s a madhouse full of fun, don’t you think?’

‘Sure.’

Tannier looked no happier than Roger: hard-faced, checking the crowd and surroundings, mapping the geometry of ambush.

‘Plush clothes do not a partygoer make,’ said Rhianna. ‘Lighten up, why don’t you? I’m going to chat to Faubourg.’

As she made her way over to the famous fop, Roger stretched up to ask Tannier, ‘You think she knows?’

‘That we’re here on business? It doesn’t matter. Once we’re on camera, she’ll make sure it all goes the way it should. That’s what professional socialites do.’

‘You don’t like her, then.’

‘I’ve met her kind, put it that way.’

It seemed to Roger, from the manner in which officials and others had acted on their arrival in Deltaville, that being a celebrity meant everybody wanted something, if only to be seen with you. Why anyone would seek such a parasite-ridden existence, he had no idea.