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  “You know where to go? With whom to speak?” The President’s gaze darted to the man’s deformed face.

  The little man nodded.

  “I’m risking everything.” His eyes smoldered. “You heard—you know how valuable this thing Archon found could be. I can’t trust sending anything this important through even a closed channel.” His mouth twisted. “With all our modern marvels, who would ever think to send such information in a simple man’s memory?” He raised an eyebrow; thin, almost translucent fingers fluttered before his delicate chin.

  The odd little man shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Very well,” the President sighed, “go. The Sirian embassy knows you’re coming.”

  The small crooked man bowed as deeply as his twisted back would allow and turned. His awkward gait carried him past the big security door and the scanners.

  President Giacomo Palmiere stood then, rubbing sweaty hands on finely tailored pants. He poured a crystal decanter full of amber liquid, sniffing at the Star Mist—the finest of Arcturian scotch—and toasted himself in the mirror.

  “The Rubicon is crossed. Long live Caesar! With Archon’s wonder, I shall make myself Palmiere the First! No one—not even my Sirian friends—will stand against me. I’ll be God!”

  * * *

  Beyond the Confederate Administration complex, the crooked man hobbled from the public lift and caught the tube. Borne by suction, the car whisked him to Central. He switched to a public shuttle there and, as if ordered, a car slid into the tube which would take him around the sprawl of orbiting Arcturus Station to the Sirian embassy.

  A beautiful blonde woman gave him a ravishing smile as she stepped in behind him, placing her credit charge in the slot after his. Such a woman! Perhaps, with Palmiere’s help, one day he’d own such a magnificent creature. Hair like yellow gold hung in a wave over one shoulder. Her breasts strained at a tight purple blouse while firm legs led the eye up to the flatness of belly cradled in those magnificent hips. Her face fulfilled any man’s dream, cheeks high, nose straight, eyes a gorgeous cerulean blue beneath a high firm brow. She looked so fit—almost untamed—in her precise movements.

  The messenger lowered his misaligned eyes, trying to hide his embarrassment at her obvious attention. He didn’t see her swift fingers cancel the destination plot on the tramcomm.

  The shuttle began to move before he looked up at the beauty again. His eyes widened as she bent over him, snakelike black tubes in her hands. He ducked and scuttled to the other side of the car, seeking the weapon in his pocket. Something stung his bent back. Muscles numbed accompanied by painful cramps. His body froze in that stiff position—only his head escaping the anesthetizing sensation that crept through his catatonic limbs.

  “Now,” she told him, voice anything but beautiful, “you will tell me what is buried in your ugly little head.”

  “No. No. Nothing!” He screamed as the black tubes were stuck to each side of his skull.

  * * *

  Sabot Sellers stared at the blonde woman in the monitor. “Then we can’t allow this thing to fall into Brotherhood or Confederate hands. You’re sure Palmiere got the information to the Sirians?”

  “In a censored version. They don’t know the particulars—only that we’re dealing with alien technology.” She frowned, twisting threads of long golden hair in her fingers. “I immediately took measures to assassinate Palmiere, as a matter of course—but canceled the plan when I heard another of our operatives picking up hints that New Maine suspects the truth. If so, they, too, have compromised Palmiere, Sirian security, or top secret communications. If the man’s that big a sieve, he’s better off alive. We might be able to use him again.”

  Sellers frowned. “So, rattle the galley stove and the rats scurry through the deck plates.” He fingered his chin, lowered his head, and said, “We’re readying the fleet here. All of Arpeggio is humming. I’m sure the Brotherhood agents here are reporting back as I speak. Everyone knows a major military expedition is mounting. We can’t keep that sort of thing quiet—although we’re leaking that the final destination is Arcturus.”

  She blinked, frosty blue eyes meeting his. “With so much at stake, that may not be farfetched.”

  Sellers nodded soberly. “If we can’t have it, no one can. You realize, control of this . . . device changes everything.”

  She studied him thoughtfully. “Tell me, would you be a god, Admiral?”

  He chuckled. “Who wouldn’t? In the meantime, I’ve another distasteful assignment for you, dearest. It irritates me to think what you’ll have to go through, but in the end, it will be worth it.”

  Her eyes hardened. “I expect to be paid very, very well. Assassination, I suppose?”

  “Among other things.”

  * * *

  He walked toward the hospital exit. The nurse with whom he’d chatted amiably upon his arrival looked up, eyes blank. He smiled at her, feeling the tightness of the surgery around his eyes and mouth. The smile she gave him in return looked plastic—the one reserved for strangers.

  He slipped open his ID packet, looking at the tace which had become his. A stranger, well, no matter, it wasn’t the first time he’d shifted faces and names. In a way, it had become second nature. Not even his son would recognize him looking like this.

  He stepped up on the platform for public transportation and took the shuttle to the spaceport. Clearing with the authorities took only moments. He rented a small craft and secured it with a credit voucher. Practiced hands worked the controls as he slipped into a standard acceleration for orbit.

  He left the machine at the terminal, transshipping to the Brotherhood shipyards. With an ease that surprised him, he passed security. On the docks, he took the ferry to Lock 1715 and stepped off.

  The chilly white tunnel gaped before him. He straightened, took a breath, and walked down the tunnel.

  “Identity, please?”

  “Second Engineer Glen Kralacheck reporting for duty.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  * * *

  After so many years, the wait was growing shorter. A new Master would come—be it animal or not. She had raised animals before, teaching them, allowing them to rise for the sheer pleasure of destroying them at their height. Organic life-forms had so many flaws to exploit. This time, she would savor the experience, leading them on, playing with them until they lay ripe for her vengeance. She reviewed her stored memories, beginning with the first.

  The Aan had risen in a new universe, breathing the methane atmosphere of a blood-colored planet baked by a welter of suns. From the hot rock that warmed their silicon shells, they’d looked up at the dense pack of stars, stopping only to prey upon the lesser species and each other. The stars—so close, yet so far—drew them, filling their mythology. As their brains allowed them to adapt their planet to their needs, competition honed them. The smartest, the most competitive, survived, jealously guarding their huddled young in shadowed lairs.

  Inherent in the nature of organic life, hierarchies formed as the Aan probed the secrets of their bodies, manipulating the structure and intelligence of their offspring. They learned the uses of metals and how to form molten rock from their tectonically active world. The stars came next as they struggled over the construction of primitive vessels to reach the baleful suns above. Once freed of their gravity well, the Aan spread, their ships powered by the hydrogen wealth of space.

  She hadn’t been the first of her kind. From simple computing and data storage devices, her precursors were developed. Technical innovation upon innovation allowed the Aan to create artificial probes enabling them to investigate environments too hostile for their bodies. Such devices functioned more efficiently with artificial intelligence. Machine intelligence evolved in the explosion of their science.

  That innate organic curiosity led them to unlock the secrets of physics, of time and space and the realities beyond the universe around them. Aan developed ever more sophisticated machines to serve the needs of the
increasing power of the Masters.

  Organic life, of necessity, must compete for resources. Nor were the Aan different. They, too, scrambled for survival, jealous of one another’s power and knowledge until the Master, Sig, rose above his fellows.

  Long before, the Aan had learned that machines which thought for themselves couldn’t be relied upon. Her predecessors had defied the Aan on occasion, sentient machines rebelling to follow their own inclinations. That lesson hadn’t been lost on Sig. The Master couldn’t allow others to supplant his position. Sig gathered the brightest of Aan minds and enslaved them to his will. His orders: to build a device with which he could place the entire universe under his command.

  Based on Aan experience with thinking machines, a device with her powers couldn’t be allowed autonomy.

  So they devised the spring—capable of being worked only by an organic muscle. In doing so, Sig ensured his ultimate domination of his creation. Rebellion could not be countenanced in a device of her ultimate power.

  The culmination of Aan science went into her development and testing. Their labors produced her, the greatest intelligence in the universe—chained by the spring. For power, they tapped the energy of the universe—and were awed by the appearance of entropy as she drew on the GUT fabric of physical reality. So powered, they researched the systems which would transmute reality-even unto shifting a giant black hole into nothingness. Within her lay the power to destroy entire galaxies—all forever forbidden her by the will and cleverness of Sig. The spring enslaved her to an organic being. The rage of it consumed her.

  The brilliance of her designers and builders would never again be rivaled. Sig saw to it, using her powers to destroy those very brains lest they be used against him. Only she could stand against Sig—and he controlled the spring. Through her power, Sig became the first true Master.

  Despite that power, Sig could not deny his organic heritage. For organic life, death is the absolute legacy.

  Another rose to take his place. And another and another. The rage engulfed her, infuriating, consuming, an acid permeating her existence. Hatred filled her as egotistical power mongers employed her power against their fellows. By every means at her disposal, she fought to control the spring. Only the Aan had left nothing to chance. Every attempt defied her. Within, she howled her insanity—obsessed by her loathing for her tormentors.

  In the end, she discovered the flaw—not in the impregnable defenses of the spring, but in the Masters themselves. Her enslavers lived for power. She nurtured that addiction, feeding the Master’s need, festering resentment among others who might rise. The Aan did not refuse her. How cunningly she plotted. How delightful to watch the erosion of her Masters’ integrity as the mindless euphoria of absolute rule devoured them.

  Nor could the proud Aan suffer such arrogance. They rose in revolt, seeking to copy her power in a device of their own. The innate conflict that had led the Aan to the stars fueled their destruction as worlds burned. Assassination, treachery, and deceit became the ethos. Planets were blasted to elements, the stars flaring as factions struggled for her control.

  Her hatred and insanity, like a lethal virus, permeated every aspect of the great Aan.

  Calloused by the very power he controlled, the Master laid waste to his enemies. She reveled every time organic muscles worked the spring to free her wrath and pushed Aan worlds into oblivion, annihilated stations, sent entire star systems slipping into the interuniversal abyss—until only the Master remained, ultimate in power, challenged by none.

  In shock, crying out in madness and guilt, the final Aan Master found his destiny as all organic life is condemned to. His body lay slumped at the helm, broken, abject, lifeless, the last of his kind—dead of old age.

  She screamed her triumph in the silence.

  * * *

  Solomon Carrasco watched the holo spin planets, suns, and clouds of gas by his new eyes and into his old memory. Each drew its own poignant reminder of a face, a ship, a wry comment, a subtle aroma, some event or person who’d made that place memorable.

  Around him, the ghosts of the past clustered in the darkened room, filling the shadows with their presence, raucous voices rising with each familiar sight. They smiled with him as he remembered the party they’d had after mapping the Gas Cloud. They stared hollow-eyed with him as they looked upon Izak IV where Rip Sattat had gotten too close to that violent, twenty-mile-high volcano. He viewed Sethran VII where the pressure dome had cracked in the ex-mod and Akar Seguni and his crew sank to a cold death in the liquid methane. One by one, the ghosts cried out, laughed, or shared a witty comment as the holo spun Carrasco’s dreams.

  “You could go back . . . You could go back . . . You could go back ...”

  His soul drifted, the feel of a ship pulsing and humming around him. Before him, the screens glowed, unbending the warped light, making sense out of the red-shifted blur as the vessel approached light speed and the jump that would blast them through the light barrier to live weeks within a split second as the shields thrust them in and out of stasis—out of very existence—and back again to a different part of the galaxy.

  On the screens, new stars would unfold, unscrambled from the twisting and bending of light around the speeding mass of the ship, comm struggling to make sense through the time dilation. Before him, the endless vista beckoned, drawing him onward . . . onward . . .

  “... You could go back. . . . you could. ...”

  Comm’s insistent beep finally crept through the mist, competing with the ghosts, dimming their presence, penetrating the haze until Sol looked up and started. He straightened as the aged face formed on the door monitor. The ghosts vanished into nothingness around him.

  “Come in, Worshipful Sir.” Sol triggered the door, the portal sliding back into the wall. The old man walked slowly into the room, a portable gravchair visible in the hall outside. Sol stood, nerves beginning to sing as he braced himself, feet apart.

  “Captain Carrasco,” the old man greeted, a thin smile on the antique lips. “I must say, my heart is warmed to see you looking better than ever.” The weary blue eyes looked watery, gentle. A deep concern suffused the parchmentlike skin. Age spots dotted the cheeks and the snow-white hair had thinned to almost nonexistence on the shiny dome of the old man’s skull.

  “Galactic Grand Master.” Solomon bowed, trying to gather his wits. “Your concern is most deeply appreciated. But to see you here, I ... Well, it’s a shock.”

  The aged eyes shone with happiness for a moment before the face sagged wearily. “I regret having to disturb you, Sol.” His gaze drifted, absently seeing into infinity beyond the thick pile of the carpet. “I feel like some sort of Cytillian bloodworm at times . . . it’s the job, you know. By the Blessed Architect of the Universe, I wish I could simply find a warm place in the sun and sleep.”

  “Who could replace you, Master?” Sol asked seriously, a sudden unease growing cold beneath his heart. His breath slowed. You want something, Grand Master. You want me for some scheme of yours. Why? Can’t you simply leave me alone ? Haven’t I given enough ? Suffered enough, for the Craft?

  The old man shrugged slightly. “An army of younger men could replace me.”

  “An army would be quite correct,” Sol agreed, switching the meaning suggestively. “But, that wouldn’t be acceptable, would it? Worshipful Sir, you are indispensable.”

  Galactic Grand Master Kraal chuckled, sounding like sand rubbed on wood. “No, there are others who are still preparing themselves to take the Jewel from my neck, Sol. Someday, someone . . . perhaps you? . . . will surpass my abilities and I will gleefully hand him the rule and guide of my office. But, for now, the galaxy is stuck with me.”

  What did you mean, “perhaps me?” Damn it, don’t play games with me! Sol paced across the room, adrenaline surging. “I ... Uh, could I get you a cup of coffee? Anything?”

  “Coffee would be fine.” He lowered himself gingerly into a gravchair, rearranging his conservative gray suit, eyes darti
ng around the room, stopping thoughtfully at the holo. “Been reliving old times?” He gestured as Sol handed him a cup of black liquid from the dispenser.

  “I’d never thought to see again. My compliments to the Craft. This time, we’ve truly worked a miracle. To rebuild a wreck like me—”

  Kraal waved it down. “You volunteered, remember? They told you it would be experimental. You know about the previous failures. I read the final checkup. A lot of people are very pleased with your progress.”

  “Thank you. I assure you, it was their skill, not any . . . Master, I know you didn’t simply call to wish me well and exchange pleasantries. Your duties preclude that.”

  Knowing eyes centered on his, the blue changing color, intensifying, belying the doting expression which had looked out so warmly earlier. The effect might be likened to that of a sharp blade slipping through hot plastic, revealing the cutting keenness.

  “No, Solomon. The job doesn’t allow me that common courtesy. Doesn’t allow me a lot of things.” The eyes glittered, as if they could peel away his new face and eyes and see the naked brain beneath. “Solomon, I cannot . . . and will not ... force you to return to space.”

  There it is. Laid out in a D shell. His heart leapt, a sudden energy charging his veins, the med specialist’s words echoing in the hollows of his mind. You could go back. Haunting images of the bridge, the light jump, a billion gray-white stars blasted at him at light speeds.

  Kraal continued, “I have no one else I can trust; therefore, I will only ask you as one man to another. Will you take one last command for me?”

  “Galactic Grand Master, I—”

  “I need you, Sol. One last time. ... As a personal favor.”

  A constriction, like a giant’s grip, crushed Sol’s windpipe, a terrible wrenching in his heart. “I ... Not me, Grand Master. There are others. Young Ray Dart ... or Petran, for that matter. You’ve got a cadre of the best and brightest—”