Slavers had come to Zardof, a backwater mining planet circling a backwater star.
Suddenly, Black was inside the scene, in his own body as a child. He grabbed his father"s sleeve as he got up to leave the house. Just fetching some wood, son. We need food, too," his father said.
His father disentangled his son"s small hands, smiling as he did so. He ruffied the boy"s hair.
His mother put a hand on his arm, pulled him to her, and hugged him. Black, the older, real Black, was shocked at the touch. No, not at the touch, at the gesture itself, or what lay behind it. Love.
Strange, unbearable feelings made Black squirm. He felt as if he were suffocating from these old unfamiliar senses, from trying to stifle forgotten sentiments and push them back in a box.
He knew, without knowing how, that his adult self wasweepmg.
Then he was in a doctor"s office. Judging by the view from the window, he was on Lykis Integer with the doctor he had killed soon after retiring Agent Luton. The doctor who had had the temerity to suggest he was a sociopath.
Black relived this scenario, an event far closer to his present than the previous sequence, with odd misgivings, as if he had rediscovered guilt.
Then the whole scene lurched again and he was in a different place. He knew what it was at once. The future. Or one possible future.
The galaxy was in flames. And he, Black, was the grand arsonist.
He *awoke" strapped down on a surgical table. Two men and two women, wearing surgical gowns, gazed down at him. Hi-tech medical devices hummed and pinged in the background.
The man closest to him smiled.
*Welcome back, Maximus," he said.
*Who are you?" Black"s voice was a raspy croak.
*I"m the doctor. Berski Kobol."
Black registered the name. A descendant of the great inventor. *What have you done to me?"
*Oh, we just performed some minor surgery. On your brain."
Feeling a deep chill inside him, Black stared.
*What do you mean?"
*We put something in your brain." Black swallowed. *What?"
*You could think of it as a tiny jump-gate. Nano scale."
*That"s not possible."
*Oh, I a.s.sure you it is."
Black had to fight back panic. *Why?"
*You will find out in due course."
*What does it do?"
*You will discover this, Maximus, along with much else."
*When?"
*When you need to."
*You sound like the frigging Envoy," Black said, struggling to get free.
*The Envoy belongs to a caretaker species. His role is not unlike our own."
*Caretaker species? I don"t understand."
*They are caretakers of time."
*Time. You mean the future?"
*That and much else. But in any case there are many futures, Maximus. You of all people should know that."
*The maze. What was it?"
*You."
And with that he was back in Government House, en route to the northwest corner, and not even a nanosecond had pa.s.sed.
BROWN had won. At least, it looked that way. But Anneke wasn"t sure. Something was wrong, she could sense it. Brown hadn"t been the same since he"d come back from Government House. As if having won the battle for Dyson"s Drop, he had nevertheless lost. Anneke couldn"t work it out.
But she had problems of her own to deal with.
Exfoliation was one of them. This was the term used to describe the process by which a full metal jacket starts to revert, which meant her masquerade as Jinks h.e.l.ler was coming to an end. Full metal jackets, being total conversions, are - ultimately - rejected more thoroughly by the body than normal renovations, which can be topped up from time to time. But the clock was ticking on this one.
And just when she was getting used to being a man.
They were still one week out from Kanto Kantoris, however. And Anneke did not know if she could hold it together that long.
The problem had arisen because they"d spent more time on Dyson"s Drop than she"d expected. Mopping-up operations had taken two weeks, as small pockets of resistance held out, despite the general call put out by the Dyson executive board. With an equanimity that Anneke found suspect, they had conceded all military and corporate terms of surrender and deeded control of Dyson Enterprises to Nathaniel Brown, CEO of Quesada.
And then there were other delays. The attack had shut down the galactic jump-gate system for three days. This was not only catastrophic, but an economic disaster. The insurance corporations were screaming and threatening to default on millions of claims.
Brown, with characteristic flourish, gave everybody one week"s free travel as compensation. This mollified most and the insurance people crept back to their lairs, sulking, grudgingly paying out on the most diehard claims.
But in all this time, Nathaniel Brown had barely left his cabin.
Anneke, as h.e.l.ler, had had one briefing with him before he became a recluse. He started off by thanking her for her work. Nearby, almost hovering over him, was the Envoy, bristling with an odd energy.
*You recovered your squad members, the ones teleported away?" Brown asked almost at once.
Like he cares, thought Anneke. She nodded. *Yes, sir. They were being held as enemy combatants."
*They weren"t mistreated?"
*No, sir.Just spooked, that"s all."
Brown murmured under his breath what sounded suspiciously like, *I know the feeling," but Anneke wasn"t sure she"d heard correctly.
*You know we"re shipping out again in a few days?"
*Yes, sir. May I ask the destination?"
Brown shook his head. *That"s under wraps for now, Captain, but you"ll know soon enough. And I daresay we"ll be needing your skills once more."
*My pleasure, sir."
*That"ll be all." Anneke headed to the door, but Brown stopped her dead. *Oh, Captain, by the way, that was an impressive stunt you pulled. Not exactly in the book. Tell me. Where did you learn to use a collapsing deflector field as a shock absorber?"
*My father, sir. He was an asteroid miner, near Aldebaran. Got into some tight situations in his time. I remembered him telling me this story once, how he blew out the fields by accident. Saved his life."
*And yours."
*Yes, sir. Mine and my squad"s."
*Thank you, Captain. You may go."
That night, Anneke woke in excruciating pain, unable to move, barely able to breathe. She voice activated the light, and focused on the face of her bedside clock. Using an ancient meditation, she slowly brought the pain under control. When she eventually got up to fetch a gla.s.s of cool water she noted something odd.
When she checked, she was proved right. She was one centimetre taller than when she had gone to bed. The full metal jacket was exfoliating.
It would be slow at first. Tiny changes, almost imperceptible.
Then it would s...o...b..ll. The pain would also increase. But she had pain inhibitors for that and would take a quick course of neuronosis, a neurological biochemical hypnosis.
But that wouldn"t stop the changes from escalating. She had about two weeks until she began losing chunks of body ma.s.s, started growing noticeably taller, and started producing b.r.e.a.s.t.s - the kind that stuck out on the body of a man. And she would be trapped on a s.p.a.ceship with nowhere to flee ...
Great. Could it get any worse?
It could.
After their intense near-death experience in the c.o.c.kpit of the Chastiry, Yosira had become even more romantically interested in Jinks h.e.l.ler - saviour of the day.
And Anneke, for all her wealth of experience in dealing with would-be lovers, was at a complete loss. The problem was that they didn"t speak the same language.
For instance, when Anneke said no, Yosira thought she meant yes. And when Anneke said never, Yosira heard maybe.
Hoping Yosira just liked a challenge, Anneke considered trying some reverse psychology. But she was afraid to go down that path.
Interestingly, Yosira seemed to be taking on the aggressive courtship role of a male. Maybe she was picking up on Anneke"s feminine pheromones. She realised she"d have to mention that problem to Arturo Ramid some day; maybe she could get a partial refund on her full metal jacket.
Either way, it didn"t help Anneke, who spent as much time avoiding Yosira as she did working out how not to get caught and killed in the short term.
By the time they were nearing their destination, Anneke was in real trouble. On both scores.
She"d grown a full three centimetres, which she handled by leaking a rumour that Jinks h.e.l.ler had a problem about his height and was wearing lifts. Embarra.s.sing, sure, but better than being dead. Her hair and skin colour were also changing and her body ma.s.s was realigning itself, some of it to her chest region.
So she diligently coloured her hair and touched up her skin pigmentation. As for her increasing perkiness, she resorted to old-fashioned wrapping and a thick tunic.
The other problems weren"t as easily dealt with.
Training exercises for the upcoming mission were inevitable. Jinks h.e.l.ler could not get out of them without a doctor"s certificate and she definitely could not go to the ship"s medic.
Some exercises required stripping down to skivvies. Indeed, a lot of the guys just wore shorts. Anneke had reached the point in her transformation where she could no longer do that without giving the game away. So once again she had to wrap a thin layer of film around her chest, flattening her burgeoning b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and wear a loose training tunic, the kind that didn"t have big gaps under the arms.
*Forget to do your laundry, Captain?" asked Coign, good-humouredly when Anneke arrived wearing the training tunic. All the others were wearing loose singlets or going topless, including some females - there were few social taboos about nudity.
*That"s right, Coign. Washed everything with my pink frilly knickers - now everything"s the same colour. You want to borrow something?"
Coign laughed and moved on to ragging someone else. This time Anneke was okay, but Yosira gave her an odd look.
Later in the mess hall, Yosira dropped into the vacant seat next to Anneke and hit b.u.t.tons on the autochef Plates of steaming food slid from the chute. Yosira peeled back wrappers and inhaled the aromas deeply.
*Nothing like chow time, huh, Captain? I mean, when you"re hungry, you have to eat, right? That"s just natural, isn"t it?"
Anneke rolled her eyes internally. Spare me from heavy innuendo, she thought, though not unkindly. She liked and admired Sergeant Yosira. She just didn"t like and admire her in that way.
Shovelling food into her mouth, Anneke mumbled a reply.
*You want to play a round of hardball later? I have a court booked."
*Love to," said Anneke. *But I have to finish another tactical simulation report."
Yosira cursed beneath her breath. *How do they expect you to do your job if they won"t tell us where we"re going? That"s just plain crazy."
Anneke sucked at her teeth. *Ours is but to do and die."
*That"s an old quote, isn"t it?"
Anneke nodded. *I think so. Not exactly sure what it means, though. Old army slang talk, I reckon."
*You know a lot of stuff like that. Funny, you never talked like that the first time we met."
*I was drunk, remember?"
*Oh, yeah." Yosira spooned in food, chewed and swallowed. *You know you look different these days? I"d swear you"re growing. And losing weight at the same time. You okay? Maybe you should see the medic."
*I"m fine," said Anneke. just a bit stressed. You know, I was catapulted into this job pretty suddenly. Don"t want to screw up like Argus did."
Yosira nodded. It was the sort of explanation everyone bought. Quesada wasn"t a bad bunch to work for, but the n.o.blesse oblige of command could be gruelling and unforgiving; the Company did not tolerate mistakes. Indeed, since Brown had become CEO, there tended to be nasty consequences attached to screw-ups.
Anneke made some excuses, finished her meal in double time, and returned to her quarters. Thank G.o.d she qualified for her own cabin. If not, this whole charade would have been over days ago.