She touched Ulfr’s shoulder with her right hand.

—We are not enemies, brother.

Ulfr swung towards her and came to standing.

—To the main hall, then.

There, the conference table was missing, while their ornate chairs stood in a row, raised high. Kenna, in the centre, was seated highest, her hands upon the chair-arms, her attention fully upon Ulfr. But what startled Gavriela was the crystalline figure sitting next to Kenna: huge, broad-shouldered, with spreading transparent antlers. Other differences included double-thumbed hands and – though it was hard to tell with bodies of living crystal – what might have been horizontally slitted eyes.

—This is Sharp.

Kenna addressed them while focused on Ulfr. She continued:

—He is one of us, my sister and brothers, as you can see.

Ulfr’s chest expanded as if inhaling, though they were in vacuum.

—His smell is not new, yet we meet for the first time.

Kenna’s tone was calm and not defensive.

—Our bonding and communication had to evolve differently. Yet we all reach the same place.

Ulfr shrugged his shoulders as if readying to fight.

—So we have demons on our council now?

—Sharp is no demon.

Then Sharp broadcast his first words, and they were redolent with awareness and courage. Gavriela felt her spine straightening.

—I fight alongside you, my human brother, against demonkind.

Kenna stood up.

—Sharp has proven himself in sacrifice, brave Ulfr, brave Wolf. He will not turn against us.

Ulfr’s lips pulled back, and his teeth were like fangs of ice, of diamond.

—And you think I will?

Kenna raised her arms.

—I did not say that. Some things require testing, that is all.

Tiny scarlet dots flickered across Ulfr’s transparent skin.

—What is this?

Sharp, too, stood up, taller even than Kenna. He tilted his head back, chest expanding, much as Ulfr’s had earlier.

—He is not tainted.

Ulfr took a step forward. Gavriela shifted, not sure what she should do.

—What?

—Troubled, but yet untainted.

Then Ulfr whirled, and two swords were in his hands. Gavriela’s left hand was holding nothing. Roger, off-balanced but only in Lunar gravity, had plenty of time to take a half step and not fall. Ulfr looked at them all, snarling, then threw the swords aside. They tumbled end over end before striking the floor without sound, bouncing before settling.

—No. Damn you, Kenna. Damn you to Niflheim.

His crystalline body underwent slow collapse, joint by joint and limb by limb, slumping to a mound upon the flagstones. Roger looked up at Kenna.

—You did that?

— No, he severed his own connection.

—Severed …?

Gavriela tried to read Kenna’s face. Had she made her first mistake as leader? Emotion swirled inside those eyes, but when Kenna replied her words were definite and sure.

—You’re not slaves or conscripts. If this is a dream, it is one that does not trap you.

Roger’s answer was a surprise.

—Good Sharp, you have helped me in my distant past, so thank you. But Ulfr, too, has saved both me and Gavi. I’m talking about resonance, and the way it …

Kenna interrupted.

—We understand. But in the Council, to be anything other than single-minded is to be a tool of the enemy. I cannot expect you to understand that at this time.

Gavriela looked at Roger; he was looking at her. They were drawn to this place – this time – as much by what they felt for each other as whatever Kenna-driven technique enabled it to happen. What if they had been misled, mistaking teamwork for purity of purpose, camaraderie for enlightened conviction?

—Roger, you know what I feel for you.

—Dear Gavi, of course, because it’s mutual.

They understood each other: perhaps the price they paid for being here was too high.

Kenna stepped down towards them.

—No. You are required in the Council.

Gavriela dared to face her.

—That was what we thought. But perhaps we cannot trust our intuitions, not in this environment that you control. How do these bodies even function, anyway?

She looked down at her crystalline body. Even on her first awakening, she had felt natural in this form. How could that have been? What manipulation had prevented a natural human hysteria?

—Do not ask for explanations.

—Why not, Kenna? Why not?

—Because the answers are dangerous. The act of forming an answer can itself be deadly.

—To whom? To you?

Gavriela felt Roger standing at her shoulder, supporting her. Meanwhile the newcomer, Sharp, remained where he was. In Gavriela’s peripheral vision, Ulfr’s form remained slumped on the floor.

Kenna turned away. For a moment, sapphire sparks coursed through her. Then she was clear once more, and turning back to them.

—This is not the first Ragnarok Council.

Even Sharp made a movement at this, perhaps an involuntary surprise reaction. Gavriela felt Roger take her hand as he asked:

—If we’re the second, what happened to the others?

Kenna paused for the duration of an inhalation, though her torso did not move.

—They perished in paradox.

Her words were resonant with overtones of sorrow, undertones of emptiness, as she continued:

—I will not allow you to fall that way.

Then she gestured with both hands, and Roger’s eyes turned up half a second before Gavriela felt reality pull away, dropping her back through hundreds of millennia to the nothingness of sleep.

FORTY-EIGHT

EARTH, 2147 AD

Six weeks into Rekka’s new role in Singapore, she was still waiting for Simon to give her the date of his moving here, of his relocation from Arizona. Instead, the daily calls had become weekly, their manner increasingly tightened, even stilted. Perhaps it was just that Rekka suspected UN Intelligence might be eavesdropping.

Here, so long as she avoided Google Li, work remained compelling: the challenges of strengthening the mutual linguistic understanding with Bittersweet, working with colleagues like Randolf who proved to be very smart, and even conducting occasional short conversations with the six male Haxigoji who seemed to be here as Bittersweet’s bodyguard more than anything.

But Google had dropped further hints that Rekka should pressure Mary Stelanko, back in DistribOne, to spill the beans regarding Amber Hawke’s location. The threat of decommissioning Amber’s ship had been repeated in various ways. To be a Pilot, blind in this world and without a chance of returning to mu-space, was surely not the life that Amber wanted. But neither, it seemed, did she want to hand over baby Jared, natural-born Pilot, or even tell UNSA of the boy’s existence.

They’re not spying on me. I’m being paranoid.

More precisely, maybe someone was eavesdropping on her communications, but if so, the operation would be amateurish, contrived perhaps by Google herself. If UN Intelligence really wanted to track down a missing Pilot, they surely had the resources to do so.

Halfway through a Wednesday morning’s session in the xeno facility, cramps caught Rekka’s mid-section, and her arms began to tremble. The disconnection was the strangest and most frightening thing: the vibration of her limbs had nothing to do with her, would not stop at her mental command.

‘Rekka—?’ called someone, probably Xin.

‘It’s OK.’ Randolf, his pale bearded face a blur, was beside her. ‘Here, sit down.’

The chair he guided her into was stiff with newness, smelling of new-grown upholstery straight from the vat. Her shaking grew worse.