Harper sat at his bench and seemed asleep, but his eyes opened as I spoke and I realized he was jacked into the ship's computer. He held up a hand to bid me wait, and disconnected himself. "Had to check on how Rommie's reprogramming was going, from the inside. No problems. What's up?"

I repeated my question. He shook his head.

"That can wait. What happened on the station?"

"Someone armed with synthskin attempted to silence Dylan permanently."

Harper shuddered. "Ew. Oh, I hate that. Is he okay?"

"Trance has him."

He nodded. "Good." His fingers toyed with the computer jack, and he looked everywhere but at me.

I decided to chance saying what I was thinking. "Did you happen to visit the Street of Silk and Incense, down at the station?" He jumped. "That's not an accusation, Seamus."

"Well, yeah. I did."

"Did you enjoy yourself?" I asked. The pleasures to be found in that street are almost incomparable, if one has the wit to ask for them. "I have always found the third house to the left to be a particularly good choice."

"I didn't have enough thrones for that; I went to the next one. The House of Tapestries, with the tobine awning."

"Also an excellent choice." I relaxed, smiling a little. "Did you think it would bother me if you sought pleasure elsewhere than in my bed? We are each other's shieldbrothers, not each other's captors."

Harper shrugged. "I wasn't sure. I mean, I may be damaged and all, but I didn't want to screw things up on my side of things the way they were on yours, so to speak."

Damaged. I had never spoken that word aloud to him, though it was true that he and his ancestors had endured more years on the failing Earth and he on the Maru than would have been safe. My mind shifted and I thought I knew where his thoughts lay.

"Did I ever mention that the Juarez brothers are so unintelligent that they have others clean their weapons for them? Nothing they say is worth warm spit, for they certainly are not." I shook my head. "In fact, were it not for their forearm spines, I would wonder if they were actually Nietzschians at all."

"It wasn't them," he said quickly. "It was one of the other patrons at the House of Tapestries. You know, the usual stuff, guy looking down his nose at the dirtcrawler. He made comments in front of the staff there." His head came up and he looked at me. "I made sure I gave the ladies nothing to complain about."

"Seamus, Seamus. I would not consider your abilities to be 'nothing to complain about'. The House of Tapestries is fortunate that you visited; you probably taught at least one of their staff several techniques that none of them knew before."

Those who worked on the Street of Silk and Incense were there freely, as their vocation honored any of several regional deities. I had even run across some who had knowledge of the Sylphidian mysteries, whom I had visited in the past when I felt particularly nostalgic. They charged what the market would bear, but beyond their own needs they donated generously to any down-and- out spacer who came along. I had been the recipient of their kindness more than once when I was younger.

"Well, yeah. I mean, I was partying. First time in ages I've even felt that well, so I had to go pay my respects to the ladies."

"I hope they appreciated it."

He nodded, much more happily. "And then, as I was about to leave, I heard someone talking with a heavy Shaperian accent, only a few words." Anxiety replaced happiness. "I didn't know the words, so I wrote them down phonetically and looked them up after I got back here." He handed me a pad. "Is it what I think it is?"

I was not a classical linguist; although I learned six languages at one time or another, and portions of several more, my knowledge was primarily pragmatic as it assisted me as a mercenary. Shaperian, linguistically connected to classical Vedran, was one I had only skimmed, as I had never been hired to work for or against the Shaperans and they had produced neither great literature nor valuable art that could be stolen. They were small-time merchants who trafficked in low-quality reproductions of other people's goods, but because of this they peddled their goods everywhere, and wormed their way through the back door into every planet and station they could find.

As I stared at the pad, willing the nonsensical sounds he'd transcribed to become sensible words, the symbols took shape as fragmentary words: Morajan, dark moon, locusts, eating fire.

It was too familiar; I'd heard those words and more in the marketplace, as part of the information I'd purchased. "It's a quotation, but it's misquoted. Have you run this past Rommie?"

Harper shook his head. "I wanted you to see it first. Something tells me there's more going on than a literary society."

I handed him back the pad, and he touched the 'translation' key. Andromeda shimmered into visibility nearby. "This is a section of the fourth book of Mertu, as translated by Sikander A'urigas of Chiyo. It is a fragment of the seventh stanza in the poetic form known as bittete:

  'Dark moon grasps
  stars, in the time of Morajan.
  Locusts flutter to earth

  Call forth dreams
  call visions, call Mertu's seers
  but forget the past.

  Old dreams only
  blind you to reality's bite
  in Morajan's realm

  Soon they come
  soon, eating fire and storm
  when night descends...'"

Harper's face reflected the horror that must have shown on my own. "Andromeda, who or what are Mertu and Morajan?" Harper asked warily.

Andromeda said, "Mertu is the legendary prophet of the pre-Shaperan society known as the Arisiani. He -- or she, it's hard to tell -- is said to have predicted the future in ten thousand verses. Only a portion of Mertu's work has been translated, and the various translations disagree with one another about any meanings that may be found there."

"Are the predictions accurate?" I asked.

The embodiment of the ship's intelligence tilted her head to one side, considering. "For the translated sections, there is a correlation of approximately sixty-five percent, depending on the reliability of the translation, with a five percent margin for error. Nobody has actually studied all of it, Tyr."

"Sixty-five percent." Harper's face paled. I pushed him toward a stool and he sat down hard. "With error, sixty to seventy percent. That's way too close for comfort."

"How is Dylan? Is he awake?" I asked. Harper's eyes locked with mine, and he nodded, slowly.

"Trance has finished healing him in the med deck. I believe he's relaxing right now," Andromeda said. "Should I tell him you're coming?"

"Yes, and send him a copy of what you've shown us." Harper said.

"And the time of Morajan?" I asked.

"The Arisiani version of the Old Norse term Ragnarok, the end of the world."

Harper and I ran all the way to med deck.

As our philosophers observed long ago, religions act as a drug that first enchants people and then enthralls them. However, those who lead any religion are seldom enthralled; administrators and businesspeople tend toward practical pragmatism, regardless of their nominal faith.

One must beware of the leader who believes in what he has been taught, and who will blindly work to bring his reality to fruition. If the religion's myths and legends teach of peace and plenty, such leaders are usually harmless. However, if the legends speak of conquest, one must either find ways to bend them to one's advantage or remove oneself from their path in order to survive.

The only real weapon against unthinking, ignorant adherence to idiotic predictions is truth, which is ignored so often as to be ineffective. Secondary weapons, such as bombs, are useful only if every adherent to the belief is destroyed, as well as all record of the prophecies -- but these create their own unpleasant side-effects, such as martyrs and saints.

History has shown that manipulating the outcomes of predictions is a thankless endeavor, especially when chance is against the result. However, low-probability events often follow their own rules, which have little to do with the laws of chance. I would not have bet on the probability that an apparently dead Commonwealth battle cruiser, floating inert near the rim of a black hole, would become my residence or that its captain would have survived three centuries of suspended time. Nor would I ever have chanced money on the idea that an unenhanced human could be cured of a Magog infestation by any means whatever.

"You're sure the speakers were Shaperans?" Dylan said. He ran his fingertips over the pad as if by smearing the words he could change them. Of course he could not even do that, as they were electronically generated.

Harper nodded. "I got a look through the door as I was leaving. I didn't want to stay around."

"I don't blame you," he said.

"Dylan." I needed his attention. "Isn't it clear enough for you? The Shaperans are in league with the Magog, calling down their own version of the end of the world. You're not going to get anywhere here. Almost everyone on the crew has been attacked since we've been here."

"I'm aware of that." Dylan's mouth set in an unhappy line. "But do the Enochians know this? I have to give them a chance to clean their own house. I can't just write off millions of people."

"Might I suggest that you bring the rest of the discussion here, instead of going to the station?" Rommie proposed.

"That would be safer for us," Beka agreed, "though I'm not sure we want to give them the impression that we find Denali unsafe."

"Even when it is unsafe?" Harper put in.

"I'll think about it." Dylan said. "Rommie, let me have everything you've got on relevant Mertu prophecies and Arisiani history, including known Magog attacks. This could be just a literary allusion to something that happened in the past."

"Similar to the early Christian Apocalypse of John, which was written during a time of war and occupation? Possibly." I considered the notion unlikely, but worth examination.

"Tyr, I didn't think you believed in religion," Beka said.

My eyes strayed past her toward Trance, who was busy putting away the tools she'd used to work on Dylan. "Knowledge and belief are not the same."

"I'm going to get some sleep; long day tomorrow," Harper said, adding softly, "Do you want me to leave the light on?"

"Rest wherever it will do you the most good," I told him. "I'm tired, but too awake. I'll be in after a while."

His glance touched me as if it were a kiss. He walked toward my quarters. I waited until he was around the corner and moved toward the hydroponics gardens. Trance always went there after she had been doing medical work; she said she found it restful.

I sat under her Eden pear tree and waited. She saw me as she entered, and her eyes widened.

"Tyr, are we out of fresh fruit already? I'll pick you a pear, if you like." She reached toward a branch. I would almost be willing to bet that the branch leaned down to her to offer its fruit, but I was not in the mood to analyze odd behavior in plants.

"I've been wondering something," I said, accepting the pear she handed me. "Why were you afraid this morning, when the wireheads attacked? They were large, but I've noticed that the size of other beings never frightens you. You've confronted fighters twice their size and forced them to back away. You've faced me down. Why now?"

She sat next to me, and bit into her own pear. "They could see me."

I raised an eyebrow and chewed the juicy fruit. "So? I'm seeing you now."

"Are you?" Her eyes looked darker than usual. "You see the surface of me, just as I see the surface of you. Tell me what you see."

"It's been a long day, Trance. I'm not really in the mood for the philosophical." But she continued to challenge me with her stare, so I added, "I see someone who comes from no planet or people I've ever known, who understands plants and philosophy, and who has an uncanny ability to ride the winds of fortune."

"That's good. You see a lot." She leaned on one arm. "When I look at you, I see someone who's so strong and so capable, and who really wants to make things better even if he has to justify it with his people's philosophy in order to think he's doing the right thing." Her voice softened. "I also see someone who was a frightened boy watching his family slaughtered by people they'd trusted, and his only home destroyed forever. I see a wild runaway, and a former slave as well as a warrior ... and a lover. You live many lives at once, Tyr Anasazi. Am I mistaken?"

"You're not mistaken." I put the half-eaten fruit aside. "Let me ask the question another way: what did they see in you that I do not see?"

"Do you really want me to show you? You have to promise not to tell anyone, especially Dylan." She put her fingers to my lips to stop my words until I nodded agreement. "It's really important that he doesn't know, ever. Do you promise, formally?"

"I give you the word of Tyr Anasazi, out of Victoria by Barbarossa, that I will not speak to Dylan of whatever transpires here, my lady. Will that do?" I said quietly, beneath her touch.

She nodded. "Look at me."

At first I saw no difference from one moment to the next -- and then I realized that I was seeing the herb garden through her body. She had not become transparent, like glass, but translucent, as if a brilliant light were shining out of her in all directions. The brilliance that shone from her body felt warm and inviting, but I knew, somehow, that I dared not touch it or I would be lost.

"It's just me, Tyr," Trance said. "That's all they saw."

"There is more?"

She nodded, and the light within her body changed, so that I could see what appeared to be the shapes of galaxies and nebulae as if they moved within her. When she pushed her hair out of her face, I saw through her hand something small and delicate, shining, almost in the shape of a human ribcage, near what appeared to be a feathery spindle ...

The Andromeda herself, circling Denali Station.

Before I could speak or even think, she was her usual self again, the little purple girl who made plants grow and came back from death as if it were nothing unusual, who could tell which planet Dylan was imprisoned on because it looked pretty and who always, always was in the right place at the right time whether anyone realized it or not.

I closed my eyes. The loss of that lovely light felt like a blow from a club. "What are you?" I whispered.

"Something your people don't believe in."

"You know," I said slowly, "I think I can believe that." It felt as if I could see her with my eyes shut, but for my own peace of mind I opened them.

She sighed, slumping against the tree. "Usually people see what they want to see, so it's not hard to just be someone from another place that nobody's heard of yet. And everyone knows that people on drugs see things that don't exist, so they're no problem. But wireheads seem to get past that too easily."

"Do they know what kind of deity you are?"

"Tyr, I don't even know how to answer that question. I am what I am. What else can I say?"

My mind tried to capture everything at once. "So they see you as what they want to see, am I right?"

Trance nodded. "And this time, they wanted to make me their own Magog god, to fend off the one that's coming in the worldship."

"They are allied with Magog, aren't they?"

"The Shaperans are, but not the Enochians." She rubbed her eyes with her hands, briefly, and sighed. "I know there's a perfect possible solution out there for this, but I can't see it."

I pushed myself to my feet. "You know, this is a new experience. I don't know what to say to you. I don't know whether to ask for a blessing on my endeavors or a curse on my enemies. I don't even know if you want anything from me, or what I would do if you did."

"Oh, Tyr." Trance's eyes filled with tears even as she smiled, heartbreak in her expression. "You don't have to say or do anything you wouldn't have done before. You shine with your own brightness, and that blesses your work. Your enemies are already accursed by their hatred; I don't have to do anything to make that happen. And all I want from you is that you not tell anyone else what I've shown you."

"Do any of them know?" It was possible. I had come late to the Maru, years after Beka and Harper had met Trance.

"Harper knows, a little. He found records in the All Systems Library. I asked him not to say anything, and he hasn't."

"Blessed is he who has not seen but who has believed," I quoted, and she smiled more widely. "I don't know if I can believe in you, but I do believe the evidence of my senses."

"I'm not asking you to believe in anything, except in what Dylan is trying to do, and I leave that to your good sense." She came to her feet and eyed me speculatively. "You're thinking of something, aren't you?"

I nodded. "Harper said he'd slept with you. I was just wondering what it was like to make love to a deity."

Trance put her hand on my arm. "You can find out if you want." Her voice teased me, reminding me of my youngest sister's voice when she wanted me to search for where she had hidden a treat. "But I think you know, from the one you already worship on your knees."

I felt the blush wash over me; I couldn't help it.

"Love is still love, no matter what, Tyr, and it's always divine even in the most unexpected circumstances." She reached up on tiptoe to kiss me softly, warmly, and walked away, her tail waving to me as she left.

Nietzsche's god died centuries ago. Did that mean the demise of every immortal deity, because a mortal man proclaimed it so?

I found it difficult to come to grips with the concept of a deity as anything more than someone else's myth. True, she had neither confirmed nor denied anything, nor had she asked for my belief. She had not required me to change my behavior, only requested that I support Dylan's project -- which I already did, since remaining alive and unmolested by Magog was definitely in my long-term interest.

If I had gone with her, to her bed, I would have violated no rules or laws. For my Jaguar wives, she would not have counted; for Harper, it would not have mattered. Yet I hesitated, and I wondered, later, if I should have gone. One is seldom invited to share the bed of someone more enhanced than any Nietzschian could dream of being -- at any rate, none of us have come back from the dead, which she has accomplished at least twice that I know of.

I don't know why I hesitated. Perhaps it was the feeling, as her warm light washed over me, that if I were to touch the source of that light I would be changed so utterly that Tyr Anasazi would no longer exist. I was not ready for that.

But as I went back to my bed, finally tired, I felt grateful that she was aboard the Andromeda and working on the same side as Dylan.

Harper was asleep when I arrived. He murmured something low in his throat as I lifted the covers, and reached over to hold me as soon as I lay down. I slid into sleep thinking of what Trance had said, and of what she had not said at all.

In the morning, Dylan informed the Enochians that he was gravely concerned about the safety of his crew, and about the lack of seriousness with which the Enochians apparently took their security precautions. In a measured, judicial voice, he described for them the attacks on Trance and Harper, on Rommie and on myself, and ended by asking why, when they were attempting to negotiate a defense against Magog, Magog had been seen in the Street of Traders the previous day. At that point he showed them what Rommie had seen -- for that section of her cybernetic mind had been unaffected by the disruptor chip.

Harper, hidden from the view of the communications array, mouthed "stuffy bastard" at me as Dylan spoke. I maintained my severe expression while I was in communications range; fortunately, I had discovered long ago that my efforts to suppress humor often resulted in what others considered a truly ferocious scowl.

The Enochians, pale hands waving in front of pink-striped faces, stammered and apologized at length, as the Shaperans watched, whispering among themselves. Dylan let this continue for a few minutes, then told them he saw no need for further negotiations, since he doubted that good faith was involved on their part. He let the Enochians persuade him to commit to one more meeting, this one to be aboard Andromeda, using our security instead of theirs, and set it for the next day.

As soon as Beka cut the signal, Dylan turned to us. "Opinions, people?"

"They're lying through their teeth," Beka said, turning from her control panel. "Do we have any idea what the Shaperans were saying, behind each other's backs?"

"Something about preparing for the day to come." Rommie frowned. "That sounds uncomfortably similar to several lines in the Mertu books."

Dylan nodded. "I thought so, too. Harper?"

"We're back in shape here, no problem with security. I've put a little something extra on the personal translators they'll be wearing, so that even if they take off the equipment we can still track them." Harper nodded, his mouth a serious line. "No way am I going to let them pull any more little tricks on Andromeda."

"Good. Tyr?"

"If you have no objection, since we are not hosting the meeting until tomorrow, I'd like to return to the station this afternoon for reconnaissance." I paused briefly before adding, "With Beka, if you can spare her."

Dylan nodded. "Be careful. I don't want to lose either of you."

"Oh, Dylan, it's so nice to know that you care," Beka mocked, but with a smile on her face. "Any time you're ready, Tyr."

I nodded to Harper, who followed us into the hall. "I'm not all that happy about this, you two," he said. "Our track record down there isn't the best."

"Don't I know it," Beka muttered. "What did you have in mind?"

"Actually," I turned from Harper to Beka, "I thought it was time for Napoleon Rastafarian and his lady to tour Denali Station on a little shopping spree."

"Whoo-ee! This is going to be fun." Beka tilted her head, visually measuring me. "I know I can disguise myself in a dozen ways you haven't even seen yet, but what are we going to do with you?"

"I've had a few ideas," I told her, and as I described what I'd been considering both of them burst into laughter and then outdid each other by suggesting alternatives and improvements to my ideas. As one, we headed toward Beka's quarters in the Maru, where she had kept a supply of less-than-reputable clothing and equipment.

Three hours later, Harper dropped us off in a different sector of the port than any we had used before, and we wandered into town, the effete Napoleon Rastafarian and his delicate and spoiled lady, Clothilde SittingBull.

"Stop mincing," Beka told me in an undertone. "You look more femme than I do."

"Wasn't that the idea?" I whispered back. "These trousers are too tight."

"Don't complain. From the looks I'm getting, I'd bet there's a lot of jealousy out there because I get to play with your very nicely wrapped package."

I snorted, then tittered, just to balance the impression I was making. After all, it was not every day that I wandered through a spaceport with my skin lightened and my hair carefully refashioned into the semblance of a tall wig -- though I'd wager any amount that most wigs did not contain half as many throwing knives artfully hidden among the hairpins, not to mention the omnidirectional microphones and vid cameras beaming information back directly to Andromeda. Nothing could be done to disguise my physique, but a change of boots, and a loose-sleeved shirt provided a hint of clumsy movement and disguised my gauntlets and forearm spikes. A vulgar amount of jewelry -- all genuine, as far as I could tell, and taken from Beka's emergency stash -- completed the effect.

If anything, Beka outmatched me, her skin tinted darker than my normal shade, her hair a smoky deep cobalt to match her eyes, and her clothing a dozen layers of fluttering silk that gave the impression that she might, perhaps, be as dangerous as a small untrained puppy if it were not for the foot-long force knife she wore casually on her belt.

We blended into the market as if we were nothing special, and I suppose we were. Beka tiptoed over to the leather-workers' booth and exclaimed over the reptile jacket as if it were the first one she'd ever seen, while I stood in the road, making rude comments about her taste and stooping to dust the dirt of the road off my chartreuse boots.

"Hey, tone it down," Harper said into my ear from the courier boat we'd come in, which waited for us off the station. "I'm laughing too hard to steer."

"Oh, my dear Clothilde," I said to Beka, "I do believe I see something truly fascinating in the next street. Would you care to accompany me?"

"Nappy, darling, I'd be so delighted," she said, tossing a thousand-crown cloud lizard belt over her shoulder as if it were fake and ignoring the merchant's anxious dash to keep it from the muddy ground. "Isn't this just the most fascinating market?"

And as we made our ridiculous way through the market, pausing at various places on every street, the station security bots ignored our progress completely. We could have been murals on the tent walls for all the notice they took of us.

I kept myself alert, under the light tenor patter I affected, and saw what I hoped I would not see: in three places, reddish brown fur on arms, moving in such a way that I could not find the wearer's face to check its identity. Beka noted them too; and annoyed two shopkeepers by asking specifically for "one of those rusty bhaer-fur coats, my dear, so fashionable down in the Lower Magellanic Cloud, oh, you have no idea ..."

As she blathered, I glanced behind us. The Juarez brothers were talking with the Shaperans in a kaffeshop two blocks away, while behind the kaffeshop I could finally see the full length of one of those fur coats -- on its original wearer.

Under normal circumstances nobody but one Magog can identify another Magog; they were as like one another as walnuts from one of Trance's trees. But I had fought Magog face to face, and had lived on the same ship with one for more than a year. I knew that face, and it was troublingly familiar. If Rev were not here, someone must have gone to the considerable trouble of cloning him, or else of training other Magog in polite manners.

The mere thought of a trainable Magog chilled me to the core. I caught Beka's attention, and we headed gradually back to where we could meet Harper and the courier boat.

"What's the hurry?" Beka said, annoyed, as we moved away from the market. "I agree, you saw three Rev Bems; that's enough to upset any of us."

"Yes. It is." I reached into a pocket and handed her the medal I'd found in the marketplace the day before, the one-of-a-kind medal that had been created for Rev Bem by his teacher when he embraced the Way. The chain from which it had hung was gone, and the ring that attached it to the chain had been twisted aside and hammered back into place. "I think your Rev is no more, and we're seeing his clones."

Beka took one look at the medal, gripped it tightly in her fist, and said nothing more until we reached the privacy of the Maru. Once aboard, she turned on me, anger and pain in her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I had to be certain." I said. "I'm sorry."

"Certain of what?" Harper cocked his head to the side, watching up. "Beka. What is it?"

She held out her clenched fist, and when his hand opened beneath it she laid the medal gently on his palm. "Rev's gone."

"You're sure?" His eyes went back and forth between us, and his shoulders slumped. "You're going to have to tell Dylan."

"I know." Beka was crying, silently. Harper put an arm around her shoulders. "There's no way we can get out of this meeting tomorrow, is there?"

"I think not." I leaned down to take off the absurd boots that Beka had insisted on, too low and uncomfortable for proper fighting gear. From the top of the left boot I brought another scrap of fur, like the one I'd seen the night before; this one had come from the mud between tents where the Street of Traders met the Street of Silk and Incense, near the kaffeshop. "I believe this should be checked against the genetic record of Rev aboard the Andromeda."

Rommie verified the scrap of fur as identical to Rev Bem's DNA. She traced the last transmission from him, and found that it had a faulty address of origination. When she inquired at the Wayist gathering, she learned that Rev Bem had left there more than two months earlier for a second Wayist convocation -- shortly after he had said what a miracle it was that Harper had survived for so long. They had assumed Rev Bem had found his way back to us, and until then had been unconcerned that they had not heard from him although he had promised to report back to them on the convocation's theological discussions. Whatever had happened to him since then we could only conjecture, but with the damaged medallion in Beka's hand, we knew he had not survived.

Dylan's face was set in granite. Trance was curled up crying in a corner of the observation deck, behind a large-leafed plant. Beka had managed to wipe her tears, though her eyes still welled and overflowed without warning, but for the most part she had subsumed her grief into anger, as had Harper, who had simply stormed out to one of his workshops to be alone.

"They're not going to get away with this, Dylan." While she paced the deck, her hair changed colors as fast as the nanobots could flicker through the spectrum, all but throwing sparks off its waving ends. "You're not going to make an alliance with these people, are you? I won't work with anyone who was involved in killing Rev."

"We can't just abandon the Enochians," Dylan argued. "We have to tell them about what the Shaperans are doing."

"Fine. Do it from here. Don't even let those traitors aboard," Beka snapped.

"Considering the number of places and peoples the Shaperans trade with, sir, I think it would be wise for us to notify our other allies as well," I said, in as neutral a tone as possible.

I would not mourn Rev Bem to the degree that Harper and Trance would. There had been times when I had been frankly wearied by his insistent harping on the syncretistic Way. However, he had worked with us and fought for Harper's life as I had -- and provided the means to keep Harper alive until our unexpected remedy occurred -- and I would not deny that.

Dylan caught my eye and nodded. "Go ahead. Contact Charlemagne and tell him what we've discovered. Rommie, contact the other allies and inform them as well."

I composed and sent a diplomatic message for my wives' brother.

Charlemagne's response was pithy, witty and suitable savage. Within the day we had a report back from him, a summary of information culled from the Shaperans whom his fighters had interrogated, across the galaxy. From the tenor of his message, I was certain that none of the Shaperans who had provided the information would be peddling second-rate home decorations any longer.

Yes, the Shaperans had entered an alliance with the Magog, in which they would receive preference (translation: they would be eaten last) in return for information on troop movements, migrations and suitably rich planets for pillaging.

And yes, as we had suspected, the Shaperans admitted to seeking out and slaying the only known peaceable Wayist member of the Magog, in order to quick-clone him and use his clones as spies and messengers. They felt safe from molestation, since it appeared that a genetic accident had contributed to Rev Bem's ability to react peacefully to provocation. More than that, they enjoyed the thought of having a 'pet' safe Magog to do with as they pleased. When word of this reached us, Harper shut himself into Workshop Five for three days, not even leaving for food. Trance went lavender with shock. Beka let loose a spate of swearing and cursing that even I could not have surpassed.

Dylan, so angry he could not trust himself to speak, went to the observation deck and paced for two hours straight, then returned to the bridge where I had kept watch in his absence. He faced down the Enochians and forced them to choose their allies. The Enochians, apparently shaken to the core by their nearness to the double-dealing Shaperans, signed Dylan's pact to fight the Magog and agreed to outfit and refit any ships of any allied group as their share of the battle, since they had no actual warriors other than their automated security force. Before they were allowed to receive their share of the antibody, they expelled the remaining Shaperans and closed any Shaperan-related businesses on the promenade or the market. As the Shaperans left, I noticed a handful of Kazov tactical fighters following them; it appeared that the Kazov were serving as fighter escorts rather than preying on the Shaperans.

It was just another thing to mention to Charlemagne. He was pleased to receive the news, as it gave him even more of a reason to show no mercy to any Kazov his men encountered.

And we went to the next planet, and the next, and the space station after that, working with Dylan to collect as many more allies against the Magog as possible before they reached the nearer edge of known space. Between us, Dylan and I put an orphaned boy on a throne in Ne'Holland and made as much of a man of him as we could before his coronation, so that he would know when to use might and when to use guile, and when to use neither or both. His new parliament's first motion approved an alliance with the renewed Commonwealth and against the Magog; the second invited several Perseid scholars and scientists to visit to update the planetary library and oversee improvements to the university -- and to the military's technology.

We gained a little, each time, for our cause, but I saw the strain on the faces of the crew from repeating the message we brought. We found people in peace-loving societies and were forced to harden them, to show them what they faced, and in turn to face their shock and anger and fear, and finally gain their assent to alliance. In any time or place this would be a triumph, this dizzying forced progression that we pursued through the galaxies, hoping to gain time to stave off the darkness. But each time we left a new ally that had been made to see how its paradise would soon be devastated, Dylan looked a little older, a little more grim.

Considering how expert my people were at war, it appears odd now that there were few if any ritualized ways of expressing grief. Or, perhaps it was that we never arrived at only one ritual. Each pride had its own practices, its own public memorials, but private expressions were unmodified by any sort of expectation.

Of course one grieved, publicly or privately, with dignity -- and dignity, in our case, could be stretched to cover anything from silent tears to a full-blown rage at the fates. It was not unusual for someone whose family or shieldmate had been killed to take a vow to slay the killer -- our vows were made to the leader of the pride, if public -- or to bring about the killer's downfall in other ways. Feuds were common in early times, though they decreased over the years as the low survival rate made them impractical for a future-minded people. Duels were less common, more often employed when for one reason or another there appeared to be no other way to bring balance or justice to a situation.

From what I saw, most of the others were turning their grief, for whatever reason, into fuel to sustain them as we forged on to build the alliance. But the fuel was running out. Anger and pain only take one so far along the road before they either dissipate or fragment the one who bears them. We needed a time of renewal, in some form. By the time we signed up the twentieth world, I would have been willing to sponsor and stage a full-scale orgy, complete with the entire staff of the Street of Silk and Incense, could I have afforded them, if only it would have lifted the emotional miasma that had fallen upon the ship.

None of us smiled much, any more, for any reason. Harper, in my bed, seldom told stories or made jokes. We came to each other seeking refuge from the storm around us, unable to relax in any other way. Often, afterward, I would feel the silent tears running down his cheeks, and know that all I could do was to hold him and give him my presence. He would have to come to terms with the way the world he knew had changed in his own time. It seemed that a shadow had fallen across him that even my most tender loving could not dissipate.

Beka, of course, attempted to take everything in stride as a professional challenge, but her relationship with Dylan was suffering; it was obvious in the way they behaved around one another, never quite allowing themselves the faintest touch on each other's arm. In better times they had flirted casually across the bridge; now they did their work, and the lines in Dylan's face grew deeper. When I saw Beka watching Dylan without a smile in her eyes, and noticed silver streaking her hair that was not put there by her nanobots, I knew that as a group we were coming to the end of the time when we would be effective at all, and soon would be unable to defend ourselves from despair -- the one killer that would defeat us more quickly than the Magog.

I heard Trance talking to her plants, but even she was quieter. I dared not ask her if a perfect harmonious future were still possible, or how we might come to find it. If she knew of one, she would certainly have told us.

And then we needed to meet with Charlemagne again -- not to mention our wives -- to discuss strategy. The Magog worldship had been sighted, ravaging uncharted worlds on the outer edge of a spiral galaxy in a direct line to the Commonwealth. We could wait no longer.

This time Dylan offered the Andromeda as the host ship. He asked Rommie to outfit guest quarters for as many Nietzschians as might come aboard, and set aside special suites of rooms for his wives and mine, and for Charlemagne and his bodyguards.

Rommie oversaw the work with her usual efficiency; she consulted Beka and Trance concerning matters of taste, and left the work to the A.I.s. Beka appeared to take professionally, rather than personally, the advent of Dylan's battle brides and mine, and followed to the letter the custom of outfitting their quarters equally well.

I had no idea of how to discuss my own family obligations with Harper, but I knew I must do it. I owed it to him, just as I owed it to him to be honest with my wives about his place in my life.

"They're coming tomorrow, aren't they?" Harper whispered in the dark.

"Yes." I kissed his shoulder and neck. "You need not leave unless you wish it."

"Will you be here?"

"Sometimes. It will depend on what I find when I see them." It had been many months, after all.

"Oh."

"I may have ritual obligations as well, to my children." I rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling. "There is a naming ceremony, in which the father officially claims the children."

"What happens if they are not claimed?" His voice was tentative, full of memory.

"The father is discarded. We love our children, Seamus."

"That's good. Not that I want you discarded, but it's good for the kids. They have to have someone who cares about them."

I remembered my father's deep-voiced presence and his warm hands as he moved my arms into the right position during a martial arts lesson. "Believe me, we care. Our lives have come at too high a cost not to care. Most women would rather abandon the father than the child, once it is born."

"Ah."

He understood, as I knew he would. It was always the woman's choice, as it should be, for the child was hers first and the father's only after that, although we traced both matrilineal and patrilineal inheritance.

"Will I meet any of them? I mean, not as one of the crew, but as me?"

"I don't know." Charlemagne, of course, knew of Harper's place in my life; he could hardly feign ignorance, considering his care to obtain a sample of antibody untouched by Trance. His attitude appeared to combine polite disdain with tolerance of a sort; I did not think he would stoop to the casual cruelty his bride Elssbett had shown during her visit here.

Would I even have seen that as cruelty and not simply as a recognition of the way things were in the Nietzschian worldview if I had not been working with these people for so long?

"I suspect that you may be asked to play host to Charlemagne's brother and his bodyguard, perhaps, on tours of the armaments." I rolled back to my side to put an arm around him. "Need I mention that you should never tell any of them everything?"

"Tyr, I don't even tell you everything."

"A wise choice. Do not stray from that course." My fingers measured the hard bone under his jawline. "What I do not know, they cannot pry from me, should they wish it."

His hand slid under my hair to cup the back of my head. "What are you not telling me, Tyr?" His voice was barely twenty centimeters from my ear. "Are you going to take over the ship for them? Because if there's any chance I'm going to end up as somebody's plaything, I'd like to know about it ahead of time. I want a clear path to the escape pods and airlock."

"You are no one's toy, Seamus, not even mine." I kissed him fiercely, pulling him on top of me. "We are under treaty peace; if anyone makes trouble, I'll be the first to show him a tour of space vacuum."

"You can't control everything, Tyr. You know that." He straddled me, playing with the ends of my hair, pulling it across under my throat as if to choke me. "I could kill you here."

"You could try," I agreed. "I don't think you'd do it."

"Not unless you asked me." His face was sober. "And it would have to be worse than on the worldship."

"Fair enough." I reached for him, for another turn at play, but he forestalled me by lying forward on his arms.

"Tell me something." The urgency in his voice stopped my hands. "If there is any reason, any reason at all, that I should not trust you while they're here, find some way to tell me. I don't know what Nietzschian politics are from the inside; I don't know what's going to happen." He smoothed my hair back from my face. "And I know that sometimes you play with appearances. You want it to look as if you're selling us out, because that's how you keep from doing it. You've done that a lot."

My heart warmed with pride. He truly knew me.

"If something happens, I want time to get Trance off the ship."

I nodded, knowing his hands would feel my assent.

"Do I warn Dylan or not?"

"Do what seems best to you," I whispered. "I'll work around it."

"Don't trust them, Tyr, even if they're your family."

"I only trust one person," I tried to pull him up so I could taste him, but he fought me playfully, and we tumbled on the broad bed, entwined as equals.
 

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