Eight paths led outward.
Six were fixed maser; two of them were lasercable, routed to some other dataspace inside the small satellite Trent inhabited. No aimable maser; a single aiming maser, anywhere along the line of his flight, would have given him the option of beamcasting the record of his conversation with Denice directly back to Halfway. Half the System would have intercepted it, but properly encoded it would have been no great danger.
And at least his body would have known what had transpired with Denice.
There were no good options; Trent disguised himself, sent ghosts out into the Net through all eight available channels. Two ghosts were terminated instantly, and a third shortly after. Five channels left, and reports from the ghosts he had sent out along his back trail were not good: web angels would be on him within instants.
He had insufficient cycles to create true copies of himself; by the time a single clone had been twinned, the web angels would have destroyed him.
For the barest instant Trent knew despair.
The web angels were very close now.
He chose a channel at random out of the remaining five, and leapt upward.
Into eternity.
I think I napped for a bit.
When I awoke again I found Trent standing motionless at the great window, watching the empty field of stars. He stood unnaturally still, turned slightly away from me, for so long I wondered if he had fallen asleep on his feet; you can do that in low gee.
"Come on," Trent whispered in a loud, harsh voice; the voice of a wizard prophesying. "Come on, you can do it." The moment the words were uttered Trent jerked as though he'd touched a live wire, shivered for a moment, and then shook his head. "Damn. Oh, damn."
"Trent?"
He did not look at me, spoke very slowly indeed. "Neil. I'd--forgotten you were here. You should go get some sleep. You'll need it tomorrow."
"What happened?"
"I lost myself inside a tiny little talk-to-me satellite. Damn thing must have been forty years old. Crappy hardware like that shouldn't be allowed on the Net."
"Oh." I didn't even know what losing yourself consisted of, but it felt as though something more were required. I said, "I'm very sorry."
Trent said distantly, "It's okay." He looked out the great viewport, eyes unfocused, and if I live to be a hundred I doubt I will ever again see such naked pain on a human face, with clown paint or otherwise. He looked for all the world like someone was grinding glass down onto the surface of his heart.
I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut.
When at length Trent turned to me his features were curiously empty. "Sorry about that. Ships heading toward the Chandler Estate, Reb ships probably. A woman I haven't seen in seven years is in trouble over there. We talked all night." I did not think I imagined what he said as he left: "I wonder what she said."
* * *
58.
They ran through empty hallways to the garage. One of Chandler's young servants met them on their way, wearing a p-suit and carrying another pair. The man handed one p-suit to Denice, the other to Robert, and vanished off down a side corridor.
Dvan was in the garage, already in his p-suit, helmet hooked loosely at his hip. He walked slowly around the shell of the semiballistic, checking for something, Denice was not certain what.
She spoke while squirming into her p-suit. "Who is it?"
Dvan's voice boomed from the other side of the semiballistic. "Hard to say. Six ships, not Space Force, not PKF. They're going to have a fight to remember, getting through Estate defenses, but if they're armed the way I'd have armed them, they--"
A rumble, the sound of distant thunder on a summer night, reached them. Dvan came back around the body of the semiballistic. "They will," Dvan finished. "Warhead," he added. "And close to the house, lass, or we'd not have heard it."
"Where are we going?"
Dvan shrugged. "Elsewhere." He placed one gloved hand against the semiballistic's airlock doorpad. "If--"
Denice's ears popped. A brief violent wind stormed around her, and then suddenly, as though of its own volition, the bulk of the semiballistic lifted itself free of the deck, tumbled gently and majestically to its side, away from the three of them, and plowed into the hull of the house. The shock of impact knocked Denice from her feet, down to the spinning hull.
It was abruptly difficult to breathe. Robert was ten meters away from her, shouting something strangely silent, pointing, and Denice looked upward
at stars.
Space Force, Denice thought clearly, has not recovered the laser cannon. Nothing but an X-laser cannon could have sliced away a corner of the house.
There was no air in her lungs.
For the first time in her life, Denice was struck by the conviction, I'm going to die. First step; put the helmet on. It was still in her hand, but she hadn't practiced with it enough; she fumbled and dropped it. Another section of the house came free, glowing brilliant white at the edges, where the X-laser had touched it. Denice picked the helmet up, tried to put it on backward while red dots danced in front of her eyes. She realized her mistake, corrected it, got the helmet on in the correct direction. Her eyes stung and abruptly she could not see, not anything--
Huge hands grasped her, an arm went around her chest, and the helmet settled into place around her with the gentlest of clicks.
Air rushed in on her. With the air came a vast pain in her lungs, and then cramps; she doubled over on herself, curled herself up around a pain so great she could not imagine what it might be. She blinked, again and again, blinked the blood away from her eyes--
The white glare of the explosion dazzled her, even through the film of blood; then her faceplate went black. The wave front, when it touched her, was no more than a gentle push.
Stars wheeled by over her head, and then the sun, then Earth, and then stars again.
She did not know how long the airplant in her suit was good for.
It hardly mattered; she did not know how long she had been floating, completely alone, in the depths of space.
The only thing she was certain of was that she was going to die, and probably soon.
After a while the air in her suit got uncomfortably stuffy.
She could see Halfway, if she bothered to pay attention when it swung by. It did not look particularly interesting; noodles, she had heard somebody call it once. Pretty close.
The bright spark of a spacecraft's rockets appeared, now and again, in the area near her. They were, she thought, searching for her. She doubted they would find her; it would be difficult, in the midst of all the other debris from the Chandler Estate, to find anything so small as a person.
The spark grew brighter as Denice's vision faded. She wondered if they would get here in time.
* * *
59.
Nobody--I mean nobody--cared.
Space Force had taken control of Halfway? It was fine by them.
Trent was right. Halfers accepted the story as given; most of them, busy monitoring the Net for news about the real story, Space Force's attempt to recover the laser cannon, simply didn't care that, instead of the usual Halfway Security, they had Space Force today, and maybe tomorrow. Most didn't even ask, and the few who did ask accepted the story they were given without apparent question.
To the homebrews, downsiders are downsiders, regardless.
The rebels, mostly Japanese according to the reports on the Boards, were acquitting themselves much better than anybody had guessed; they'd repulsed two waves of Elite already. At least half the orbital cannon were under control of rebel forces. Reports of dead Elite were unconfirmed, but a pair of NewsBoard reporters claimed to have seen at least one.
We kept our heads down. Toward lunchtime a disturbance flared up out on the Edge; I took a pair of Trent's SpaceFarers with me and went myself. We didn't even have to crack heads; the simple fact that the Chief had shown up with a pair in Space Force blues, rather than one of the standard patrols, shocked them
into something like sobriety. I lectured them briefly, snakechained the one who had started the trouble to the bar--a two-hour snake--and got out of there.
We were not far from my home; I told my SpaceFarers where I wanted to go, and why. They called it in. I heard Trent's voice, saying "Go ahead," and the SpaceFarer nodded to me.
I didn't take much. Forty thousand CU, in hard Collective gold, from the safe. If Jay had known I'd been stockpiling it, he'd probably have made me some damn lecture about paranoia.
It all fit very neatly in one smallish briefcase. Downside it would be extremely heavy; now I just had to be careful how I moved it.
I was ready to leave when I remembered one of the things I'd heard about Trent the Uncatchable; he was a coffee junkie. Seven years he'd been out in the Belt; Earth-grown coffee is damn rare out there. I had just under a kilo of S&W Columbian in the stasis field; about half a kilo of Jamaican Blue. I bagged them both, and went from room to room, simply looking at everything, committing my home to memory.
When I was done I turned out all the lights, and left the house unlocked.
I never saw it again.
That evening, after dinner, Trent and I sat and drank coffee together. He had an appointment with Shell for later that evening; she wanted to take another shot at convincing him to help her take down the Net. I knew why he'd agreed to go, and it had nothing to do with the Net.
He was still wearing his clown uniform--he was almost the only one who was; most of the rest of his people, except for the one really big clown who I suspected was Trent's bodyguard, had changed into Space Force fatigues. He wore a laser rifle slung across his back. I felt vaguely disoriented by it all; not detached, but as though I moved through a world filled with so many fascinating, brightly colored things that I would never have time to understand them all.
Somewhere around my second and Trent's fifth cup of coffee I said, "What are you going to do with Marc?"
Trent seemed mildly surprised I'd asked. "Keep him confined until I leave. Why?"
"He must have known you were coming."
"Oh, of course," Trent conceded. "He didn't know it was me, mind you, just that some SpaceFarers were going to show. But I don't trust the man. I've got five million CU on my head; quite aside from the Credit, it's occurred to him by now that giving the PKF my head would help him keep his job." Trent paused, added, "Anyway, after we're gone, it gives him a much better alibi if he spent all his time in jail."
"I'm not coming with you."
Trent nodded, little white roses bobbing up and down with the movement of his cheeks. "Didn't think so. Your boss has a yacht in Bay D12. I'll have it moved over to Lock Nine, and you can leave when we do. I'll program it for you if you like."
"I would; wrestling a HuskySled is about the limits of my competence. Can you have it drop me outside of Levittown, Pennsylvania?"
Trent paused. "Ah. Your home town. Sure. If you get chased, I'll send you in like a meteor. You'll get very hot, and the yacht won't ever lift again; but you'll make ground a good fifteen minutes ahead of any pursuit you might pick up. If you don't get pursued, which is possible given how confused things are outside right now, the yacht will drop gently, and you can park it wherever you like."
I nodded. "Thanks."
"No problem. I wish you well."
"Mind if I ask you a question?"
Trent said, "Why am I here?"
"No, I understand that. Protecting the Net. But why did Eddore want you here?"
Trent nodded. "Look at his options. He wants to retain power. To do that, he needs martial law. For that he needs a rebellion. So he has to make rebellion look attractive to the Rebs and Claw, while not allowing them any real chance at success. The Rebs think they need the Net to go down; if they think they can't send the Net down, they don't rise. Clear so far?"
His voice had the timbre of a trained singer; I felt that I could lose myself in the sound of his voice, in the gentle wash of the words.
"Neil?"
"Uh--yes. Clear so far."
"So the Rebs have to believe that they have a real shot at taking the Net down. If Eddore goes to Space Force or the PKF, asks them to provide security for the Relay Station, the Rebs will know about it; there are Reb and Claw sympathizers in both organizations. So he needs a third party to protect the Net, someone capable of protecting the Net without the rebels being aware of it. That's us. We're here to protect the Relay Station, until July the Fourth."
Trent's features grew sharp in front of me, the tiny veins in his eyes bright red against the blue-white sclera. His clown outfit was made of cotton, of a very fine cross-hatch weave; his buttons were wood, painted by hand with tiny white roses. I blinked hard. "But--why not tell the Rebs what you're doing? Why let this hit them unawares?"
His voice echoed when he spoke. "They can't win, Neil. The faster they lose, the better it is for everyone, including them. If they drag this thing out, it's that much longer before things return to normal, that much longer before Obodi is dead and we can start to rebuild."
I don't know how I knew this, but suddenly I did. "It bothers you," I said slowly, "that they've put a bounty on his head that's greater than yours."
"Did he walk through a wall? I don't think so," Trent said conclusively.
"It does bother you."
Trent eyed me with clear appraisal. "You don't miss much."
"You'll never know." The brown of his eyes was the color of old oak. A voice that was not mine was speaking to Trent, and I strained to make out the words. "I am the living eyes of Kayell'no, the Name Storyteller; chosen for my location, for my nearness to the center of events. I watch; I learn; I observe. In his own person Kayell'no will never know you, and this pains him." The voice paused, grew more distant as it said, "Pains me."
Trent rose from the desk, took a step back. The laser rifle swung free, came around on me. "Corona? Are you all right?"
I'm fine, I was going to say to him; who the hell are you talking to?
But something prevented me; and then the world spun around me and went away.
My avatar shuddered, slumped in his chair with his eyes still open. Trent took a step back, bringing the laser rifle up to bear on my avatar's motionless form.
I let Neil's eyes close, and sat in the darkness, in the hard, stiff chair, and familiarized myself with the mechanism of the meat.
When I opened his eyes, Trent had moved the desk to the side, and nothing separated the two of us; Trent squatted two and half meters away from me, back to the huge window, balanced easily on the balls of his feet; the muzzle of his laser rifle stared me directly in the face. I gathered Neil's feet under me, pushed him to a standing position; Trent moved with me, glided sideways, keeping the rifle on me, but did not interfere as I pushed the chair Corona sat in backward, put more space between myself and Trent and Trent's laser.
If the historical record concerning Trent was correct, the laser probably wasn't loaded. But history lies a lot; I would not risk Neil's life on it.
Trent said, "Are you all right?"
I said, "I am the Name Storyteller."
He lifted an eloquent eyebrow. "Ah."
"I wish to tell you a story, Trent the Uncatchable."
"Uh, I'm a little short on time here, actually. Got to see a girl about a rebellion."
I grinned at him, trying it out. Corona's muscles were unfamiliar to me; like most of my avatars, I rarely use him, rarely have need. There are few enough places in the Continuing Time I cannot go in my own person.
The immediate vicinity of Trent the Uncatchable, in the year 2076 Gregorian, happens to be one of them.
"It will be said of you, Trent the Uncatchable, in years to come when you are not to be found in the Continuing Time, that you were the living incarnation of God, of the Creator of all things, of that which sent the Envoy among the Serathin."
I saw Trent start to say something, hesitate. I think what he said then was not what he had started to say. "They say something like that
now, you know. It's a joke, because the PKF keeps telling people I walked through a wall. I'm really just a thief." He paused, added softly, "A great thief, it's true."
"In time to come, what is perhaps now a joke will cease to be so. Once there was a thief, and the thief was God. That is the first line in the Exodus Bible, Trent; a thousand years from now, after only the Zaradin Church itself, the Church of His Return will be the largest human religion in the known Continuing Time."
"The what time?"
"May I tell you a story, Trent?"
He backed another two steps away from me, muzzle of the laser never wavering from my face, stood with his back to the door, and withdrew a snakechain from within the bulky clown's vest. He threw it to me. "Put it on, snake your right wrist to the arm of the chair." I sat down again, did as he instructed, and when I was done he said softly, "Go ahead. You have five minutes."
I did not waste my time. I calmed Corona, quieted the vague, unformed fears my takeover had left within him, and began.
Before I was, to tell this story; before Camber was, to Play it; before the explosion that began the long cycles of the Great Wheel's existence, the Envoy of Balance ventured forth to match itself against the Chaotic beings called Serathin.
There in the gray maelstrom of spaceless, timeless Chaos, a tremendous battle raged.
Of that battle's beginning and middle I can tell you nothing. Time has no meaning in this context, and the language I am constrained to use with you is insufficient: for a period longer than the Great Wheel has existed, or is likely to, the Envoy of Balance and the Serathin remained locked together in combat, a combat in which neither side was able to triumph. But eventually the battle did end, and at its end the Envoy of Balance, known ever after as the Chained One, had been bound upon a shining Wheel.
Perhaps the Serathin had time to admire their handiwork; they were such beings as would have done so, given the chance. And perhaps they did not; what is certain is that the Chained One, bound upon the Wheel, had one weapon left to itself, and used it.
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