Greybeard’s smartmiasma glitters deliberately, reminding them of the threat. Then he looks at the inner bulkhead to address the Zajinets, and raises his fist, emphasising the tu-ring.
‘Detonation in thirty seconds.’
‘No!’ shouts Carl.
Greybeard turns and runs at the transparent hull which, liquefying, allows him to pass through and tumble into space. There is only one chance for Carl and that is to follow, sprinting hard before the hull can harden, throwing himself through – wetness sliding across his skin – and then stars are whirling as he tumbles over and over, trying to sight Greybeard – there – but the bastard is out of sight again because Carl’s tumbling is chaotic, so hard to orient himself to—
A blaze of light marks the Zajinets’ exit from realspace. The ship is gone.
Oh, you stupid bastards.
Thinking they could break the quantum entanglement by entering mu-space while Greybeard’s tu-ring remains in this continuum.
Haven’t you heard of a deadman switch?
Whatever Greybeard rigged up, it will have detonated the instant the Zajinet vessel entered mu-space.
Issue the command.
It is the voice of panic inside his head.
No. Too soon.
Panic because he cannot breathe and soon his blood will boil. His eyes are already bleeding, hence his stinging vision while the most magnificent sight of his life in realspace shies everywhere: the centre of the galaxy, where a billion suns are gathered.
There it is, the thing that had to be here: some kind of craft taking the figure of Greybeard aboard.
Wait.
Such an ache in his desperate lungs.
Can’t—
Just wait.
Tumbling still.
Going?
It is hard to tell, with his smeared vision, whether the vessel is moving away.
Yes.
A flare and a spurt of motion, and it accelerates away, leaving him.
In the void, tumbling and dying.
Now?
It is a vast relief.
Yes, now.
He presses his tu-ring and it commands the quickglass, in emergency mode, to spread fast across his body. From the band around his waist, inside his clothes, it extends across everything, including his eyes – he has to fight against reflex to keep them open – and into his open mouth, forcing its way down into his lungs, painful and hard, or at least it feels that way – shit – and the pain increases – shit shit shit – before something wonderful happens and suddenly he feels euphoric.
Oxygen entering his bloodstream.
Fantastic.
Soon the hypoxia fades, but the euphoria remains, because he is floating in magnificence.
How many have seen what I’m seeing?
Well, more than one might expect, given that Greybeard had allies here: allies possessed of at least one ship and probably more, perhaps even permanent stations, and you had to wonder how they got here without assistance from Pilots. Were Zajinets involved?
Given their reaction to Greybeard, maybe not.
Pilots, then.
Helping . . . whatever it was that manipulated Greybeard.
Tumbling still, but breathing and surviving.
Help me.
He understood the artificial link that Greybeard formed between his tu-ring and the Zajinet: that understanding had been immediate because of that other link, the one that Pilots did not talk about (other than perhaps the Shipless, who knew only theory, never the reality), the bond between Pilot and ship. They never discussed it because they did not need to. They knew how beautifully lucky they were.
Come now.
Knowing she has heard him.
Come to me, my love.
And is even now, black and scarlet-edged and powerful, soaring through golden space to reach him.
I love you.
Twenty-five thousand lightyears and transition between universes are not enough to keep them apart, and never will be.
Oh, my love.
Soon enough, she will come for him.
And they will be together, as they are meant to be.
As they will always be.
]]]
When Roger disengaged from the memory sequence, his face was chill, with cold tracks down his cheekbones left by evap-orating tears.
I’ll do my best, Dad.
To be half the man his father was: still his only real ambition, more than enough for a lifetime’s work. Now, though, he was in realspace, with more immediate tasks to attend to.
‘Vachss Station Control to Pilot. Are you status green?’
He wiped the back of his hand across his face.
‘Pilot to Vachss Station Control. Status green, and commencing approach now, if you’re willing.’
‘Approach approved. We’ll pour some daistral ready, Pilot.’
Roger smiled.
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
He immersed himself back in wonderful conjunction with his ship, and together, slowly, they moved towards the orbital, concentrating on the work, fulfilled by it. Worrying about Jed Goran and the legal niceties could wait: just manoeuvring to a docking-port was enough to occupy ship-and-Roger.
Call it Zen and the art of Piloting.
‘Contact made, Pilot. Welcome to Vachss Station.’
‘Thank you, Control.’
He sighed as he slipped out of conjunction trance.
Time to deal with people.
TWENTY-TWO
EARTH, 1956 AD
His daughter’s outburst kept coming back to him: ‘You’re a monster.’
Not yet seventeen, yet so sure of herself, so willing to judge him.
Though she barely suspected the things he had done.
‘Du bist ein Ungeheuer,’ had been Ursula’s exact words, and while she was in fact his stepdaughter and he was in truth a psychopath, according to the diagnostics described in KGB-approved psychology texts, Dmitri Shtemenko was hurt by her accusation. At least to the extent that he understood how words might wound an ordinary person.
‘I haven’t killed anyone for years,’ he had told her.
It had been the wrong thing to say, but he had been distracted by the details of Ilse’s funeral, the senior colleagues he would have to talk to and the opportunities that might be presented. Such tactical thinking separated him from the weak-minded, and he was normally efficient in hiding it; at the same time, he did have regret at Ilse’s passing.
There would be a certain emptiness in his life, at least until he filled it.
It was in going through her mother’s things, poking around the old shambling house they lived in – surrounded by fields, far from the tenements of the proles – that Ursula had stumbled upon the trail to the garden shed, the boxes buried beneath unused spades and forks, and sprung open the box containing finger bones. Another girl – he still could not think of her as a woman – might not have recognised the withered human digits, but Ursula was interested in both painting and biology, anatomy the intersection of the disciplines, and knew exactly what they were.
He should have denied ownership, of course.
Once before, during the Great Patriotic War, he had thrown away his little souvenirs before setting sail for Japan. For a long time he had felt little need to indulge himself, forcing himself to leave all evidence behind on those occasions when he gave in to overwhelming urge. Eventually, though, he had felt settled enough to return occasionally to his old ways.
‘Give the box to me,’ he had commanded. ‘And say nothing of this. Do you understand, Ursula?’