Gavriela smiled.

‘Really,’ she said.

Twenty miles into his prayer run, Kanazawa’s mind was as close to mu-shin, to no-mind, as he could achieve at his current level. The heavy straw sandals slapped at the stones of the winding path as he came out of the woods and onto a clear stretch of high wall overlooking the valley. Behind him rose the slopes of Mount Hiei, the clean lines of the temple buildings obscured by the mountain’s bulk.

He accelerated past a tiny pond into which water dripped from a bamboo pipe.

The world ripples.

The water is still.

Every stride of his run was a prayer of deep devotion, just as much as the ritual words recited at every shrine en route. His spiritual discipline was now twenty-seven miles of daily running in his gathered-up white robes, this being the thirteenth consecutive day. The paradox was this: in freeing his mind of thought, he was following a path that was his alone, not laid out for him by superiors in school then the Navy, not even by his parents. Even though the other monks followed the same rituals, it was different from the enforced uniformity of his earlier life.

It was his parents who had first shown him the mountain monks running their devotions, though they were arguably modernists: Father had been among the first volunteers to have the top-knot shorn. But Mother and Father had liked to watch the monks, as had so many others. Today, though, few spectators waited along on the route: times were different.

Something rippled among the treetops below.

No.

Something dark.

Let the thoughts go.

It was something he had glimpsed before: a symptom of his earlier wrongheaded life. But if anything the illusion was stronger now that he was following the spiritual path.

Keep to the path.

Yet reality was an illusion that the Buddha called maya, while his true path was not a physical route but something deeper. He would have thought it should lead away from darkness; but something told him he needed to descend towards it, the enemy. Pine needles and soft soil meant his approach was soundless. The thickness of the trees was enough, perhaps, to hide his robes.

‘—to you, Moscow is safe.’

‘Not thanks to me, but Dmitri. He’s off doing something else now.’

The voices were Russian, only just comprehensible.

‘And you’re the most important part of the network.’

Moving to catch sight of the men, Kanazawa understood his mistake. The darkness, twisting and rippling, had been something associated with the other gaijin of the pair, the two westerners he had spent time with – including the day he witnessed the dojo death that changed everything. One of those two gaijin was here; but it was the assistant, the judo man. Perhaps contaminated by his master, he showed touches of the darkness now. But it was the other, his contact, who manifested the greater abomination: twisting black, impossible perspectives.

My path is devotion.

He stepped out from the trees, still upslope from the two men.

‘What’s this? A monk?’

‘Looks like … I think I know him. Is that you, Kanazawa-san?’

Their faces were a blur, though they were only ten paces below him, maybe less.

‘But he’s like us. Like Dmitri.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Or maybe’ – the man pulled out a pistol – ‘I should say he’s our mirror image. He can see it but he does not hear. Does not feel.’

More words followed, but they were faint, as though pulled off into a great distance. Beyond the men, beyond the abrupt drop and far downslope, a mountain stream – perhaps the same one that fed a trickle into the pond above – shone white and fierce in its descent.

The way is peace.

And then he ran, as he was born to do, the discipline becoming him and he the discipline, hurtling downslope.

‘—him, you fool!’

Accelerating. Arms outstretched as if to embrace, and the impact against their torsos.

Yes.

The world ripples.

Taking them with him beyond the edge.

The water is still.

Into the inviting void.

In Gavriela’s dream, she spoke in vacuum to a man of living crystal.

—If you had a son, what would you call him?

—I’ve never thought about it, Gavi.

—Could you think about it now, for me?

Light refracted strangely through his features.

—I’d name him after my father, I guess.

The airless hall and moonscape melted away with the ending of the dream.

She had decided that today was the day. Mrs Wilson and Stafford accompanied her to register the birth. The registrar was too young for his brush moustache and round glasses. If he found the delay in registering to be procedurally lax, he did not reveal his thoughts. Instead, as Gavriela sat down in front of the mahogany desk, he asked: ‘And what is the baby’s name?’

Mrs Wilson craned her neck to look at Gavriela; even Stafford looked interested, intrigued not by the naming but the mystery: Gavriela had given no hints what it might be.

‘His name is Carl,’ she said. ‘Carl Woods.’

The registrar held his pen at the ready.

‘That’s a little … Teutonic, Mrs Woods.’

‘Spelt with a “c”,’ she said.

‘Hmm, well. If it’s good enough for the king’s bodyguard …’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘King Harold’s carls, don’t you know. Viking bodyguards to help him fight the Norse invasion. Then back down south to fight the Normans, of course. More Northmen, when it boils down to it.’

Stafford smiled. So did Mrs Wilson.

‘And the father?’

Thinking of Rosie’s fiancé, she said: ‘Jack Woods, deceased.’

‘Oh, I’m very sorry.’

There were a lot of widowed mothers these days, not to mention unmarried mothers assuming the guise of widowhood to avoid pariah status for themselves and their bastard children. In her case, Rupert could create a full fictitious biography, should it ever become necessary.

The registrar filled in the names, first and last, writing in a careful, clear script, making it final.

FIFTY-ONE

MU-SPACE, 2603 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

It did not begin as a hellflight, the pursuit, but that was how it ended: with Max-and-ship tearing along the most extreme of geodesics deep into golden void, while his nine pursuers pushed hard, one of them faltering at the edge of a crimson nebula, spinning away, all control lost. Max could not tell if recovery was possible. It was perhaps the first fatality.

I can’t lose them all.

The point was to keep the leaders with him, close enough so they believed his capture to be possible – so they would not give up – while ensuring he remained ahead of them and free.

Lightning spat past his hull.

Take me if you can.

Ship-and-Max screamed through a Koch cluster of black, infinitely branching stars, then twisted onto another geodesic, equally hard, the shift itself causing wrenching vibration, and another pursuer fell away.

Seven ships pursuing him.

Better.

He increased acceleration yet again.

Jed’s nerves were howling, a voice in his head screaming the question: why was he doing this? But Davey Golwyn was flying alongside even more recklessly, and the whole thing had become a challenge Jed could not set aside. Mulling things over was not an option: a lapse in concentration would mean losing the fugitive’s trace. It was a binary choice: follow or give up.

Another ship dropped out.

Six of us left.

If they caught Gould soon, it would be enough.

A discontinuity plane threw off all of their trajectories, a message flaring among the pursuers—

**I’m sorry**

—all of them suffering as they were reduced to five, their sanity as at risk as their hulls, with no time to wonder how an older Pilot could stay ahead of them, swinging through a sequence of appalling shifts and breaks, the most chaotic of hellflights—