V. Gomenzi (Third in the Fleet Quintet)

PART ONE: THE GARDEN OF TRUTH

CHAPTER ONE

When Vincent Gomenzi was sixteen years old, he left Earth, hoping never to go back. He wished he might never see the shores of Dirt again. Vincent Gomenzi was going to be his swansong as a mindwalker.

Strapping himself into a shuttle bucket that did not promise with much confidence to reach the official drop-off point outside the solar system, a wave of déjà vu passed through him. It was a familiar ripple. It could have been the same shuttle. It could have been the same piped music. It could be the same traffic jam, the same space-debris collectors, the same protestors from Mars, blocking the trade routes. It was the same Earth. He had left so many times that he couldn’t tell one departure from another. Only the name on his of-age off-world trans-Sigma-validated passport changed. The name, the face, the date of birth. That he was Vincent Gomenzi was all that was different. He was still the same mindwalker with the same desire: to mindwalk humanity until it fell to its knees.

On an outward-bound shuttle, on the highway bypassing the sun, S*90DBL as recorded on the Grand Council database, he looked around for his first victim. An air hostess. A passenger. It didn’t matter. They didn’t have to be pretty. They didn’t have to be special. They only had to be discreet. The shuttle powered down as it joined the queue. The air hostesses whipped out their trolleys as the engines shut off, one by one. Vincent thought he felt the thrusters hiss. Drop-off into alter-space was imminent. He would be officially out of Earth space and all of Sigma would lie before him, waiting to be devoured. A hostess stopped at his seat, body bound tight in a shiny satin jump-suit, her hairdo buoyant from another era.

Would you like anything to drink, sir?

He reached out towards her, barely brushing her mind as she stood waiting with the drinks trolley, when the wide, black, gaping maw of the vortex opened in his face and he lost his tenuous hold on her. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. When he did, it was with a desperate clutch at filtered shuttle air. The air hostess looked with distaste at his pallor and his scars and the cold, blue trembling fingers that clutched the armrests. Just another T-junkie, she thought, erroneously. Straight off the street and fresh from a knife fight.

She moved on, serving the next passenger. Vincent was left grappling with the truth he had already discovered on Earth, a truth he couldn’t face. He couldn’t mindwalk. Even the lightest, briefest brush and he was falling once again into the terrible vortex that had lain behind the single door. It was into the vortex that his brother had pushed him, while he had lain bleeding on the floor, a knife at his throat. It was from the vortex that he had thought he would never return and when he had, it had been to find the knife poised over his heart, the hand that gripped the hilt intent on murder.

He touched his forehead and found it wet with sweat. He only had to think about mindwalking and he was wrecked. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking and asked the air hostess for a glass of water. She glared at him but he didn’t flinch. He took the glass from her and she moved on, trilling with expert vacuity at a fat man with growths on his face. Vincent had just taken his first sip when the shuttle bucket dropped into alter-space. No warning was given because no warning was necessary. The ship was not entering some kind of spatial distortion that enhanced speed, nor did time dilate. No wormholes were involved and space did not fold itself. Theories proposed that the space alternate to normal space, if normal space was the one in which the cosmos resided, was another dimension. It was not. It was not removed from normal space. It was the same space but from a different point of view. For Vincent, alter-space was Fleet space and until now, for him, it had not hurt.

Space travel for humanity was an unperfected science. Attempts to cure the headaches that afflicted alter-space travellers were unconventional and subject to fashion. Very few of them worked and if they did, the breakthroughs were short-lived. On the Earth-E/M.1.platform express, passengers began to tap what looked like sticking plasters attached to their temples. Once Vincent had laughed at their drugs. Now he couldn’t breathe. Pain reached down into his bones and the glass he was holding broke suddenly, crushed between his fingers. Another air hostess, eyes glazed with this week’s fashionable mind-numbing pain-suppressant for long-term alter-space mega-distance travellers, helped to mop up the water spilt.

There wasn’t much blood but she made a big deal out of bandaging his hand, keeping her eyes averted at all times. Her fear, through the veil of drugs, could not be hidden from Vincent. It was the scars that unnerved her. Fresh and raw, they carved his face so that all the beauty of his childhood was irreparably damaged. She tried not to touch the scars on his hands as if they were somehow loathsome. He thought of telling her how he had got them but then she would go away and he would be alone again with the darkness that clawed at him.

I’m sorry, he said.

It’s only a glass, she said, kindness faked. She took the broken pieces away without looking again into his face.

Within hours, most of those suffering from headaches had begun to recover. The agony eased for all except Vincent. By the time they reached the first stop, a space platform orbiting a Lomensii system at an oblique angle, his pain was so severe that the mean air hostess, who thought he was a junkie, had to concede that his symptoms were unlike the usual T-withdrawal. The shuttle was booked to rendezvous with a liner heading out to one of the more minor of Garanthal’s colony system. Docking at the platform, Vincent never made it.

On the space platform, alighting during the refuel, he cancelled his one-way ticket to an exceptionally under-developed Garanthal colony world where he had thought to hide, and had his bag fetched out of the hold. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. The pain had lifted but he couldn’t face it again. He couldn’t go back into alter-space. Neither could he stay on the platform. He was sixteen, from Dirtball, had a face and body full of scars he preferred not to explain, no education, no training, no current life experience of Sigma at all. Everything he knew came from prior incarnations and nothing could prepare him for a life without mindwalking.

He ventured away from the port, taking alleyways through structures until it felt as if he was in a machine city. It was not a place where anyone could live. On the outskirts of the platform, where the security cameras were fried and the warehouses abandoned, he climbed a disused tower to reach a chain-railed segment of balcony. Dropping his bag, he gripped the rail and looked down. A thousand floors below him, at a disorientating angle, he watched spaceships drifting in. The air was thin. Somewhere near him there was a leak. He was offered death by asphyxiation or a fall that would leave his body pulped. He wanted neither. There was no point. Once dead, he would have to shift back to Dirtball and demand another body from Tang. Except this time, he had no money. He hadn’t yet built up any credit. And Tang would not want him back after the trouble he had caused.

With a new body, nothing would change. He would still be a mindwalker. He would still hunger for the minds of others. He could still want to devour them, using physical intimacy to get close enough to take whatever experience he could find. And still, he would not be able to function. The memory of the vortex would never leave him. It could not be ignored. The consequences of his actions, in an era so far removed from the exponentially growing Sigma Sector that perception of it was of something fantastic, were devastating. He’d had no idea. He had never known. Until a year ago, the memory had been blocked.

Why? Why now?

The slash marks on his knuckles showed white. Below him, the dirt-shuttle from Earth moved out to meet the Garanthal liner. The sounds of the platform reached him, workmen and dockers, maintenance men and passport personnel. Tannoys and tickets. Clanks and hisses.

Hey, kid.

Startled, Vincent let go of the railing and for a second he reeled, falling uncontrollably out his body. He tasted all the delicious personal injuries the workman had sustained over the course of his career, but an enormous hand caught his arm and he retreated, pulling back into his body, like a tortoise in its shell.

You shouldn’t be up here. It’s out of bounds. The workman was about a foot shorter than Vincent and at least three feet wider. What did you think you were going to do? Jump?

No, said Vincent. I wasn’t going to jump.

CHAPTER TWO

Jenna Lloyd held a gun to the head of Admiral Grote, the Vice President of Nigel. Above the cloud cover, bombs mushroomed and fighter ships rocketed back into near-space. Dislodged satellites caught in the blast wave fell burning into the blue. The space station was on fire. Its long central shaft showed red on pick-up screens as internal flames ate up life support. Ninety-seven fighter planes hammered their guns at the approaching fleet from Tirenn. As wars went, it was small and hopeless. The News Channel, had it still been operating, might have predicted that hostilities would be over in two days.

In a bunker below the World Council, a distant boom reached Grote and the woman who had once been his personal assistant. Grote didn’t move or respond. He didn’t blink. He listened to Es’s destructive forces without quite believing it was true.

Full scale war will not be established! he had screamed at the News Channel cameras. But that had been hours ago. The cameras were gone. So was his planet. His beloved Nigel. He had raged at his surviving government, churning out all the speeches he’d had planned for the day he was inaugurated as Nigel’s President. That day was close. He was sure of it. Despite the war, he would prevail. Nigel’s promise would burn bright again.

But no one had listened. The cameras hadn’t listened. The Council members hadn’t listened. Only Jenna had seemed willing to stay behind, her eyes fixed on him with an expression he couldn’t fathom, not because she was mysterious and difficult, but because he’d never really had any idea what anyone thought or felt. Nor had he considered it worthwhile knowing. Her black gaze was a little blacker than he might have expected and he wished now that he had after all suspected something. He might have avoided being tied to a cheap hardback chair, his best dress-shirt soaked with sweat, his favourite uniform jacket with all its medals tossed disrespectfully on the floor and the personal guard, who had once accompanied him everywhere, standing traitorous outside the door. Imprisoned in his own bunker. It was the last straw. He let Jenna know exactly what he thought of her treachery and betrayal, reminding her vociferously that he had promoted her publicly to the position of World Council agent, entrusting her with secrets that he’d thought only he had known. He reminded her of his rights, of his status, of his wealth and power, of the punishment she would procure if she continued this act of treason. Nine years of loyalty she had given him. Who had turned her head? Who had stolen her allegiance? What gave her the right to do this? What had he done? He was the goddamn Vice President. What did she mean she had run the office when the details escaped him? What details? And why did she keep going on and on about the mindwalker? The mindwalker was out of action. The problem was solved. And Nigel was not being obliterated. It goddamn was not.

The gun barrel felt very cold when it touched his skin. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so hard. But then he hadn’t expected Jenna’s face to turn so cold, so without feeling that it was like that robot doll, the one they called Belinda Vee. Except that Jenna had none of its beauty.

I really am quite remarkably tired of your histrionics, said Jenna Lloyd.

Some of Grote’s bluff confidence faded slightly. But only slightly. Her voice was cold and mean, but he wasn’t dead yet.

I don’t want to have to listen to anything you have to say for another moment longer, she continued. It’s time you kept your fat mouth shut and listened to someone else for a change. It’s time you understood just what it is you have done. There are nuclear bombs raining down on this planet, bombs which were only made possible through your greed and inestimable stupidity. In less than a day, you have obliterated a world. In less than a day, you have annihilated a population. You have committed genocide on the grandest scale. You have destroyed every ounce of potential Nigel might have had as a leader in the Sigma Sector. Nigel is never going to be reclassified as a major planet. Just yesterday we were still an important Lomensii colony strategically placed on the Delphian border, the only colony to support a thriving spaceport so large that every vehicle between Garanthal and Delph stopped by for repairs. This is what we had.

She rammed the gun tighter between his eyes and brought her face an inch closer.

We could have been a player and you destroyed it all. I will see to it personally that when you die, you will not be placed in hardwood coffin and your body will not be shuttled out to the sun and it will not be fired into the flames to burn in glory.

A moment passed before Admiral Grote could formulate a reply.

I can’t tell you what I don’t know.

Jenna’s trigger finger twitched.

I didn’t make the bombs, said Grote and the quaver of desperation in his voice frightened him more than the gun. He tried to recede from its proximity to his brain but there was a wall behind him. Another millimetre wasn’t going to save his life.

You mined the Atomite-1, said Jenna. You stockpiled half and transported the rest to Tirenn. You got General Es to sell it on the blackest market in all Sigma.

It was Es that made the bombs.

You hid ninety-seven fighter planes from the World Council.

Es has warships.

Es was a traitor and a rebel. You gave him the means to destroy Nigel.

Grote tried to fight the desperation with rhetoric. Nigel will never be destroyed. This bunker can withstand any onslaught.

Jenna considered ramming the gun into Grote’s mouth in the hope that it might make him think more clearly. While you hide in your bunker, the rest of the planet is being fried. There are millions out there dying. These are your people that you have sentenced to death.

I didn’t start the goddamn war, shouted Grote. I don’t goddamn think you can blame this war on me.

I goddamn think I can and I will. You tricked the public into thinking the President was assassinated by Es. You had it broadcast on the News Channel. Your phone call to Belinda Pritty was logged. I’m going to make sure all of Sigma knows what you have done.

You have to get off Nigel first.

Jenna shifted her position but didn’t let the gun slip. Grote was right. His manipulative powers may have deserted him and he may have lost all his bluff and bull. He may even have lost his mind, but he could still think a mean thought.

Take the gun out of my face, Jenna, he said. We’re safe in the bunker.

Where’s Waughmaker?

He’s dead. He wasn’t even pretending not to lie.

I’ve got Sub A level clearance, said Jenna. I saw the passenger list. There was no peace mission. Where is the President?

Jenna caught a glimpse of her own anger and saw that it could spin out of control. She did not want to lose control, not when she finally had Grote exactly where she wanted him. She wished the people of Nigel could see Grote hiding like a coward in his bunker, the News Channel filming his last hours. But it was likely that no one on Nigel cared about the fate of their Vice President. Or the World Council. Most of Nigel was dead. The rest soon would be. They had no use for a government that had betrayed them. So she tried a different tack.

Are your wife and children safe?

Admiral Grote did not willingly speak of his family. It was reported that they did not exist. Jenna herself had never met them.

Is that a threat?

Would they care if you died?

Why do you want to see Waughmaker?

Jenna considered telling the truth. If she did, she hoped it would act as an incentive for Grote to do the same. He spotted a connection between mindwalkers and the Fleet. I want to know what it is.

She would have said more but Grote had begun to guffaw.

Is that what this is about? He made a show of straining at the ropes that kept his wrists and ankles bound. Is this still about Gomenzi? He was blackmailing prominent government figures –

You mean he was blackmailing you, something he might not have done had you not had any secrets from the World Council.

I thought you had finished going on at me about the A-1.

Gomenzi would not have been a threat, whether he was a mindwalker or not, if you had not had given him the power to blackmail you. He mindwalked our computer network, a feat not mentioned by any of my off-world contacts. He could have been extraordinarily useful to us.

Are you going to shoot me because I started the war or had Gomenzi neutralised?

I’m going to shoot you because you have the brains of a lemur.

Admiral Grote tried to remember what exactly a lemur was.

This isn’t about you anymore, Vice President, sir, said Jenna, using more sarcasm than she had intended. This is about the consequences of your actions. Nigel has set loose on Sigma a mindwalker occupying a top range electronic body, one that can’t be destroyed or differentiated from the real thing. I want to get it back. I want to know the real story. I want to know the truth about the Fleet.

And you think Waughmaker can help you?

He spoke to the prophet of Garanthal.

Grote laughed again. It made the desperation recede.

Where’s the President, Mr Grote?

Didn’t you see the news? Es shot him down.

Do you honestly believe that everyone is as stupid as you are?

She dropped the gun and took a step back. Despite the claustrophobic underground heat, she still managed to maintain her cool, unruffled look. Her hair was as smooth as a helmet, her face white and matt like chalk. Her blouse had yet to crumple and her jacket buttons were all still done.

It’s fortunate I’ve got bigger fish to fry, she said. There are more important things in the galaxy than an escaped mindwalker.

She raised the gun again and Grote found looking down the wrong end of a barrel more disconcerting than having it shoved into his face.

You can’t get to him.

Tell me anyway.

He’s probably been bombed to death.

Then I’ll put his remains into a metal casket and bury it in consecrated ground.

Grote considered his options. He considered his negotiation tactics. He tried to recall the contents of the file he must have on Jenna Lloyd. No one got to work for him without gratitude for secrets kept. But the file was empty. He had nothing on her. There was nothing he could use.

He’s in a nursing home, west of the capital city. Daffillodil Park.

Jenna pulled the gun out of Grote’s face and his sagging flesh recovered some of its muscle tone. He stretched his neck out of his shirt collar and rolled his shoulders.

You put him in a lunatic asylum, said Jenna.

For good reason, said Grote. He intended joining SPIT.

To further his investigations of the Fleet? He would have been better off selling his body to them.

Is that what it’s all about?

There’s no certainty. The Fleet are difficult to investigate.

Have you tried?

If he could keep her talking, then she might change her mind about killing him. She might even undo his bonds. He was looking forward to snapping her scrawny, middle-aged neck. Instead, she glanced at her watch and seemed to think that it was much later than she’d thought.

Yes, I’ve tried, she said.

The Fleet are the real enemy, Jenna.

It was working. He could see her mouth tighten as she tried to suppress a smile and the gun was loose in her fingers, as if she had forgotten it.

Today, she said, you are the enemy of Nigel.

She raised the gun once again and Grote knew he had lost.

Jenna, this is murder.

Actually, it’s called tyrannicide.

She pulled the trigger with a confidence she didn’t feel. The report surprised her. She hadn’t expected it to be quite so loud. Perhaps it was the bunker’s exceptionally thick walls. She waited until her ears had stopped ringing, then turned away from the dead body sagging in its chair, saved from falling to the floor only by its bonds. This wasn’t how she wanted to remember him, a hole in his forehead and his brains blown out the back of his skull. She didn’t want to remember him at all.

She tucked her gun away against her hip, under her jacket, and unlocked the door. Pulling it open involved monumental effort due to its weight and the awkward way it slid across the uneven surface of the cement floor, but finally the cold, dank air relieved her nostrils of the stink of Grote’s fear. A flash of emergency lighting illuminated the darkness. In the eerie light, her white face looked like that of a ghoul. She slid her hands into her jacket pockets and glanced at a guard on duty.

Did you hear anything?

The guard didn’t blink. No, ma’am.

Your support for a free Nigel has been noted.

She turned and marched smartly down the passage, her back straight, her court shoes tip-tapping swiftly into the darkness.

Uh, ma’am? called the other guard, youth and fear in his voice. What should we do with the body?

Burn it, he thought she said. He blinked in the darkness. Jenna Lloyd, VP’s PA and World Council agent, turned at the end of the tunnel. Her silhouette showed the angles of her hair and the points of her shoes. There could be no doubt that this was the woman who was running Nigel. Or what was left of it.

P-pardon, ma’am?

Take it to the dumper out back and burn it.

A layer of dust and grit loosened itself from the ceiling and drifted down like sifted flour. The guards watched the end of the tunnel for ten minutes before they were sure she was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

In the Garden of Truth, the Angel of Deadly Enlightenment drifted slowly between the trees, waiting, as it always did, without impatience or trepidation, for the next soul seeking entrance. It listened for the forlorn bell that hung at the gate, the sound of which reached the angel no matter how far it drifted into the woods. From the tone of the bell itself, the angel could determine the spiritual welfare of the entrant. The joyful rang the bell with enthusiasm, the morose could hardly bring themselves to ring it at all, so that the sound at the gate was a dull clunk, a metallic thud, not a tinkle of laughter.

But long before the bell was rung, the angel could sense an entrant’s approach. And since all who lived would eventually pass through the Garden of Truth, it could sense their approach even before death. All around the garden lay the world of the living and in it lived those who did not know of the garden, or if they did, may not have believed in its existence. Those that did were not afraid. Those that did show fear were not afraid of the garden itself, but of the angel’s decision.

From the woods, it wandered into the rose garden, long beds that curved towards the gate. The roses were in full bloom. Their scent was eternal, like the night sky under which the blossoms opened. Daybreak was always a whisper away but it never came. The pre-dawn hush was permanent. It was always dark in the Garden of Truth and the angel was always alone. None but the footprints of the angel disturbed the dew on the grass. Those who came through the gate did not stay for long. Nor did the angel seek their companionship.

The angel did not long for the land of the living. It had no desire to move among the people of the world. It did not perceive itself to be lonely. It did not perceive itself to be anything at all. It walked the paths between the rose beds and touched petals soft as silk. It gloried in their rich, vibrant colours. The reds were luscious, the yellows lovely. There were pinks in every shade, delicately translucent, blushed with gold, edged with crimson. The angel crushed a rose in its hand and let the petals fall bruised to the grass. They brushed its feet like whispers.

The roses were a secret. Even those who believed in the Garden of Truth couldn’t imagine what it looked like. Those who passed through it could not recall it to describe it. Various religions depicted it with trees and streams, a sunny place with fertile fields, or formal bedding arrangements like those found in royal establishments. Children drew their own backyards when they tried to depict that of Truth. No one knew about the roses and the woods, where the trees were old and majestic and the air always cool and fresh.

The angel walked through the roses and slid between the trees until it came to rest under an ancient oak. It touched the bark and felt its roughness. In some places, the bark was worn smooth, as if it had been touched again and again, over the course of a thousand years. The angel knew that its touch alone had worn down the bark but it could not recall ever having seen the tree before. For the angel, it was always Now in the garden. There was no past and it did not dwell on possible futures. There was only waiting for the dead, then the decision and the utter, utter bliss when it was made.

The angel had a body that resembled those of the living, in that it was as flesh, but from its shoulders grew wings with a wingspan so magnificent they inspired awe when they were spread. In the pale darkness, they were silvery, sometimes luminescent. The angel’s skin was pale and like silver, giving it an other-worldly look. It was neither male nor female but in the major religions of the world it was regarded as male. Patriarchal societies could not consider that a woman should tell them where to go after death.

From under the oak, the angel detected an entrant detach itself from the hubbub of the world and begin its slow, reluctant approach to the garden gates. The entrant did not know of the garden. It had believed there was no life after death. It had not expected to rise up from its deathbed and see lying there the body it had once occupied, now a corpse, a thing of flesh without meaning or animation. When it saw the black gates loom out of a dimension ethereal, it experienced a moment of familiarity. It was sure it had seen before these gold-trimmed black gates and the beautiful rose garden that lay in darkness beyond. The entrant soul thought it must have visited this place once in life, but it could not recall having done so. It was sure it had never seen it until now. But it remained familiar, a pre-life experience. It did not understand. It reached out to ring the bell that hung there and in the forlorn notes, the angel heard the question: Have I been here before?

Welcome, said the angel. The gates swung open without assistance. You may enter if you wish.

Do I have a choice?

You do.

What should become of me if I choose not to enter?

You will remain for all eternity in the dimension ethereal that lies outside the garden.

The entrant turned to look. It could see nothing. The darkness lay like a mist beyond the gates. Are there others there?

Yes.

Why can I not see them?

They are dead.

The souls of the dead?

No, dead souls. More dead than the death of flesh. Immortality discarded.

If I stayed out here, would I know I was no longer immortal?

No. You would be nothing. You would know nothingness.

Would I be aware that I knew nothingness?

Yes.

This seemed to be a terrible fate. Awareness of nothingness had to be worse than nothingness itself. Surely nothing in the garden itself could be as terrible as that kind of awareness. The entrant could not know what lay in its future. It had had no religious preparation. It was too late to think that perhaps it should have done.

It walked forward onto the cool, damp grass and the gates swung shut noiselessly. The angel walked beside it, but made no effort to guide the entrant. It was aware that others were coming, that a war was being fought somewhere and the count of souls would increase rapidly in the coming hours, but the angel was confident that they would not arrive before it had decided the fate of the new entrant. The entrant came to a halt in the middle of the rose garden, as if amazed by the size of it and the colours and perfume. It looked off into the woods and the angel understood its puzzlement. There was no explaining the design of Truth.

What is it that I am supposed to do here? asked the entrant.

You are to give me your life, said the angel.

But I’m already dead.

You are to give me the life you have lived. In order to decide, I have to experience all you have done.

How do you do that?

The angel spread its wings and lifted its hands.

Come closer, it said.

Wait. What is it that you have to decide?

Where it is you go next.

Why do I have to go anywhere? Why can’t I stay here?

The Garden of Truth is not a place where you can stay. It is not a place. It is a concept. It is what it is: it is where the truth of your life is revealed.

For what purpose? I don’t understand.

You should have read the scriptures.

But I wasn’t a religious man. I was raised to believe in the power of self, self-will, to overcome my weaknesses and not neglect my strengths. Are you saying that everyone comes here, no matter what religion they are? No matter what?

Yes.

Then why don’t we know?

Some choose not to know. This will not hurt.

What are you going to do?

The angel touched the entrant’s head with hands that shone silver under the night sky. The stars seemed to be reflected in its skin. The hush in the garden became a little more breathless. The scent of the roses became a little more cloying. The entrant did not think it was afraid but it became conscious of the angel as a being of glory and wondered if there were people in the world, like itself, that had not known. For how few was the garden a secret? For how many was the angel’s existence a comfort, rather than a horror to be endured?

The entrant felt the ground fall out from beneath it, as if the garden had vanished altogether and for a moment it experienced the nothingness the angel had mentioned. Thinking it had been ejected into the awful dimension outside the gate, it prepared itself to scream. Then it blinked. The roses trembled in a breeze. The woodland leaves rustled. The angel’s wings that had surrounded the entrant drew back and folded themselves neatly. They were so long, they trailed on the ground.

It’s done, said the angel. I’ve seen your life.

It handed the entrant a feather.

You will return, it said.

The feather was so light the entrant could not grasp it and it drifted down to the grass. Thinking it must have some significance, it bent over to retrieve it. When it straightened, the angel was on the other side of the garden, drifting into the trees, as if it was done.

Wait! called the entrant. What do you mean? Return where? Must I leave the garden?

Yes, said the angel and the entrant jumped. Once again, the angel was right beside it. The entrant glanced at the woods nervously. Time and space could not have any function in the garden. I suggest you prepare yourself a little better next time. I don’t want to have to always answer your questions.

What are you saying? That I’ve been here before? That I’m to come back again?

But the angel didn’t answer. It had drifted off again. The entrant saw only a glimpse of a feathered wing as it disappeared between the trees. It glanced down at the feather it held in its hand and wondered what it was supposed to do. It considered that the angel may be right, that it should prepare itself a little more next time, but that meant it was coming back. And it could only come back to the Garden of Truth if it died again. And it could only die again if it had a body, a new body, flesh as it was born.

Oh, no, said the entrant.

This was the Truth. Only no one knew it. It heard a baby scream, a tiny, shrill, weak sound, like a kitten. It felt a crushing pain in its skull and then spotlights burning into its eye sockets. It heard the clang of a bell, urgent and distant, a sound it would seek to unravel all its life, as it sought meaning in death.

The angel answered the bell. It was the first of the war victims, a man who had spent his life praying to the god he thought would send the angel to him at death. Fully prepared for the angel’s ministrations, he did not argue or question the angel’s hunger to embrace him with its wings and take from him all the experiences of his life, so that all he had done, right up to the moment the bullet had found him on a sand dune, was forgotten. The man wanted only the future. The past no longer mattered. His future, he believed, lay with the god to whom he had so fervently prayed in life.

The angel reeled with the fervour of the man’s life experiences. It had not expected quite this much excitement, though it had hoped. It was always filled with hope. In every entrant lay hope. Having lived every moment of the man’s life, awareness of the garden returned. The man was at its feet, on the wet grass, praying. For a moment the angel thought the man was praying to it, and was flattered. But the prayers were directed to the man’s god. They were prayers of thanks.

Nice touch, said the angel. You’d swear I’d almost thought of it myself.

The man broke off praying and looked up into the angel’s face.

Dear God, he said. Please, dear God.

You will return, said the angel.

And it was gone, leaving the man to grope with the horror of assumption. The angel could not bear to witness it. But then, it was not supposed to remember any prior assumptions. It was not supposed to remember any prior entrants. It was not supposed to have any memories before this moment, before Now. The angel touched the old oak tree on a worn-down patch of bark and saw itself a hundred million times before, standing here, doing the same thing.

Fuck, the angel whispered into the quiet dark. It’s not working.

CHAPTER FOUR

A thin, bright winter’s sun shone on the temple steps of the Church of Spiritual Intranscendental Transference. Later a second sun would rise, making up for its lack of heat by contributing a second shadow. Traxis had a third sun, but it was too far away to be of any consequence at all. A moderate colony world, Traxis was the first Lomensii planetary stop outside the Earth and Martian systems, with the result it attracted a lot of migrant workers from both and was the scene of persistent race wars. In a number of provinces, a type of police state had risen, with curfews, electronic passes, banning orders and general movement restricted to well-lit areas in the sunless seasons. Most of the laws did not apply to the locals. Their lives were encumbered by them, but the race wars were something that happened on television, not on the streets.

During the colonisation era, cities had sprung up in the cold, dry areas of the planet. There were no countries but governments were conducted from a series of capital cities, imaginatively numbered according to their position on the grid. Culture developed from a desire to be as different as possible from other Lomensii worlds. The Traxian language was the youngest in the Sigma Sector and the most difficult to learn. Schooling was primarily in language development. Anyone wishing to apply for Traxian citizenship had to be fluent and have basic literacy, but wasn’t required to write the language correctly. Phonetic spelling was accepted. It wasn’t expected of any foreigner to understand the fine nuances of triphthongs.

Capital 2 was slang for one of the larger Traxian cities, where the streets were wider, the buildings were older and the sky was bluer in winter because of the way the winds came down from the north pole. It was also the only Traxian city to house a SPIT church. It had once been a temple glorifying the gods of a different religion, one that had failed or been abandoned, perhaps by the gods themselves. It was the only SPIT church Vincent Gomenzi could remember seeing housed in a temple. It was built high off the main street, with a series of steps leading up to the huge, ornately carved doors. Pillars surrounded it and the roof was a wide, shallow dome that showed bright concrete white in the sunshine.

There were no shops in the area, no businesses, no residences. The surrounding buildings were all low rise but enormous, taking up entire blocks. They might have been halls or lodges or schools with their formal gates and their small windows. All were built in the same concrete white that looked deceptively clean in the sunshine. There was no one about. Somewhere nearby, children’s voices could be heard, echoing in the stillness, their voices lifting up from behind the walls of a school. Across the street from the SPIT church, a strange building stood derelict. Its low domed roof was similar to the temple but there were no walls and no steps, only pillars. A whole forest of pillars held up the roof. It was impossible to tell what the building’s function had once been. It was dark in the shadows, and cold. Sunshine failed to penetrate the dank and littered interior. The pillars were full of graffiti, mostly Martian slogans in misspelt Traxian, and one section was cordoned off with a danger sign that had fallen down.

Vincent had arrived on Traxis after a succession of increasingly short lurches across Sigma space from the Earth-E/M.1.platform. Too shattered to continue, he had stayed, another Dirtball migrant, restraining himself so hard he thought he was going to break. His existence was an emptiness that could not be filled. He could not experience anything. He could not be shaped by what he saw around him. Circumstances did not alter him. To live life, he had to live the lives of others, trawling through their memories for pleasure, taking from extreme moments of pain and suffering the emotions he needed to pass as normal. He could manufacture emotions from the memories he had gathered in prior incarnations. But they were old. He had worn them out, going over them again and again. He needed new experiences. He needed new air to breath.

But he could not mindwalk. And because he could not, he could hardly live. He took with him wherever he went the emptiness inside him, at the core of which lay the terrible vortex. He dreamed of it at night, waking from nightmares in a sweat and a shout dying hoarse in his throat. He would turn to the wall and question the dark. How was he supposed to live? He thought he would go insane. He was holding himself together with string but it was string that was constantly fraying and every time he thought it about to snap, he would get drunk. Inebriation was a distraction and his existence became squalid. He got into fights with Traxians so rough they made his scars look cosmetic. He was constantly moving on and moving out. He thought he was going to die on Traxis until he got to Capital 2. He was twenty-one and had nowhere to go.

In the purposeless building across the street from the SPIT temple, he watched from behind a cracked and broken pillar. It was freezing in the shadows. His coat collar was up and he had smoked half a pack of cigarettes during his vigil. An occasional car went by, slowly, as if there was a fuel crisis, but always on the other side of the road and always looking small as it travelled alone along the empty lanes. Once his eyes lifted to a plane crossing the sky. It looked peculiarly white against the bright blue and for a moment it disappeared behind the high temple walls. When it reappeared, it was still going in the same direction. It made no sound. Winter light reached his eyes and they looked unnaturally bright, almost like polished silver. But then the plane was gone and the light was gone and his eyes were once again flat and grey.

He had been watching the church for weeks. He had no interest in the SPIT religion or any other. Instinct had kept him away from the Church of Spiritual Intranscendental Transference. As far as he could make out, instinct kept most mindwalkers away from SPIT. But there were rumours. He had heard these rumours in a variety of past lives. In less orthodox, more evangelical SPIT churches, mindwalkers were revered. That they were mindwalkers was not known. He thought it had to be a dumb mindwalker not to guess the churches were a trap. Vincent did not think the churches knew they were a trap. He couldn’t give a reason for his own formulation. He had no proof. He had no direct experience of SPIT. But SPIT was a religion based on doctrines drawn up by the Fleet and anything to do with the Fleet had to be regarded with suspicion.

He was not watching the church because of the Fleet connection. He was watching out for the mindwalker. At the bottom of a whiskey glass, he might have admitted to having the same fatal attraction to her that he’d had to Victor. Lighting another cigarette, leaning on a pillar, in the cold of a bright day, he would have denied it. He told himself he only wanted to see the mindwalker’s method. He wanted to observe its cunning. He wanted to witness a congregation that had lost its way. He wanted to experience the stupidity of a mindwalker attracted by the adulation of a wholly unenlightened SPIT church. Whoever it was must lack serious intellectual capacity. Low-rent mindwalkers were like weak copies. They had all the function and none of the content. There was no art in the detail. There was no pride.

He smoked his cigarette and watched a SPIT priest climb the steps to the temple door, wearing the usual white robes, a coat that was too short, shoes that were inadequate and an incongruously fake fur hat. He hunched into the hat as he rang the buzzer and after a long spell, one of the enormous doors opened a crack. His relief was obvious. Ten minutes after the priest’s arrival, the mindwalker was due to make an entrance. Her movements could be regulated like a clock. She always arrived on foot, appearing on the north side of the temple and acting as if she knew she was being watched. Her face she kept covered, as if to hide it from the street cameras. She was rigid with paranoia.

There was no doubt that she was a mindwalker. It was like recognising a piece of himself pasted on someone else. He could see it, not like an aura or some kind of spiritual shade or colouring, but as something that in Fleet space would be considered a proof of reality. In space that was not Fleet space, the artificial universe, it was as obvious to him as racial difference. Against the glaring back light of the cosmos, mindwalkers were sharp black shadows. The Traxian mindwalker was conspicuously glamorous for someone who didn’t want to be seen. The coat she wore was floor-length and fur-lined, hanging open even as the wind tore down the empty street. Her boots had precipitous heels and toes that ended in points. Her skirt was minuscule. Every item was coloured a shade of white that lay somewhere between ice and cream. Her hair, when Vincent caught a glimpse of it under her hood, was also white. It was hard to judge her age.

Fifteen minutes passed and Vincent realised uneasily she was late. On the sidewalk, a group of small school children were being led by their teacher, possibly to a nearby museum. He took a step back behind a pillar, hoping that he hadn’t been seen. His obsession with the white mindwalker was a poor substitute for the real thing. He had to stop watching her. He had to leave her alone. He didn’t want to get involved. It was her trap. Let the church deal with her. He reached for his pack of cigarettes and made the decision to get off Traxis before it was too late.

Do you have a light?

His heart burst into his throat and he dropped the pack on her pointed white boots. As he bent to reach it, a shrill scream of panic blasted through his mind. But then he straightened up and looked her in the eye.

Sure, he said.

She was not beautiful and no longer young, but she was striking. Her face was sharp with angles and cheekbones, her eyebrows dark and demonic, black wings that arched above eyes of the coldest green. She was smiling at Vincent but looked as if she might want to devour him. Her hood was down and her hair hung in a white profusion down her back, heavily backcombed. She had cultivated an alien look, one that was off-key with Traxian fashions, but then mindwalkers were alien. They did not belong to the human race.

Vincent held up his lighter and she guided the flame, her skin on his burning him.

Were you waiting for someone? Vincent didn’t answer. Were you waiting for me?

He glanced at the SPIT church, thinking to mislead her. It worked. She sucked at her cigarette and smiled through the smoke.

Did you want to go in? Were you afraid? She leaned in closer. I could always take you in as my guest. You might even find salvation.

The school children turned the corner, disappearing one by one. Their voices faded away. The street returned to its unnatural quiet.

You don’t say much, said the mindwalker.

My Traxian isn’t very good.

He was giving her the exact information she wanted. He wasn’t local and he hadn’t been there that long. He was perfect prey.

New in town?

She had switched to a commonly used Delphian dialect.

Yes, said Vincent. Very.

She was halfway out her body already, hungry for him. Her style was obvious. She was going to seduce him and climb into his mind while she thought he wasn’t looking. She clearly had no idea what she was dealing with. She thought he was fresh off the boat. Her hand dripping with long white talons, she touched his face, her fingers brushing the scars.

So much beauty destroyed. Did you do this?

Why would I?

An enemy?

Perhaps.

Are you on the run?

Something like that.

He wanted to stop her. He wanted to push her aside. He needed to get away. It wasn’t that he was afraid she might try to mindwalk him, or that he thought she would succeed at it, but because he couldn’t resist her. He was as hungry for her as she was for him. A mindwalker mind, a cool pool of mercurial bliss. Only once before had he experienced it and had become so addicted to it that it had destroyed him. He tried to pull away from her, retreating from the cool hand caressing his face, but she grabbed his coat collar. Taking a last drag on her cigarette, she flicked it aside. Her lips were an inch from his face. Her breath was hot and smoky.

Did you do something bad? she breathed.

Violence was flooding his veins. He couldn’t hold himself back.

That depends, he said, through his teeth.

On what?

On what you define as bad.

She laughed, throwing her head back, her body brushing lightly against his. She was dying to dive in. But so was he. He felt sick with desire. The temptation was unbearable.

That would be me, she said. Her eyes seemed to see right through him, but it was just an act. It was unbelievable that she didn’t know what he was. I’m all bad.

Is that right.

You can’t begin to imagine.

He kissed her roughly and in response, she pressed her body hard against his.

Fuck. He pulled away. Fuck, I can’t do this.

His eyes were brilliant. He had come alive. He was way out of his skull and moments from dipping into her. She was equally close. Her eyes were livid green.

What are you afraid of? she hissed. You want this. I know you do. You’re so fucking hot and horny.

All the little strings were snapping. If he couldn’t mindwalk her, he was going to end up hurting her as he fought to restrain himself.

You want this, she said again.

He tried to shift away. I don’t.

She was venomous. Do you think I’m going to let you get away?

But her anger, like her sexuality, was also manufactured. It was just a tool. Vincent knew them all. His heart was hammering. His eyes gleamed. He felt a rush of violence through his body. He touched her throat, feeling it pulse.

Yes, she breathed, tilting her head back and exposing the long length of her neck. See how easy it is?

All this so that you could get fucked up against a wall?

Yes, she whispered. Yes, now.

He grabbed her and twisted her, kissing her again, slamming her into the pillar, devouring her, a hand reaching up under her tiny skirt to find her skin cold and exposed. She was wearing no underwear and was shaved clean and smooth. His fingers found her hot and wet and she moaned against his mouth. There was no going back. He pulled up one of her legs by the thigh and penetrated her deftly. The spiked heel of her boot dug into his thigh. She clung to him tightly. There was no chance of her falling. With one hand, he braced himself against the pillar wall and to stop himself from crying out, he bit her throat, resisting, always resisting, holding back, not reaching, not tasting, no corridor, no entry. But the more he resisted, the more he wanted her. Then the vortex loomed. He thought he was going to pass out from the pain but she didn’t notice. She lunged into his mind. She smashed and grabbed at the same moment that she began to climax. He heard her shriek, first with pleasure, then with horror so that she was fighting him off while her body was still locked to his.

With shock, she shot back into her body, but the retreat was too swift and she reeled. He held her up until he had finished, his hands in her hair, his mouth on hers so that she wouldn’t shriek again. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and she sagged against the pillar, a hand clawing at the graffiti. She was back in her body, the mindwalk badly aborted. Vincent stepped away from her and she slid down onto the floor, pulling her knees together and wrapping her coat tightly across her cleavage. She couldn’t get up. Watching her, Vincent lit a cigarette and handed it to her. There was blood on her throat.

You’re a fucking mindwalker, she spat. Why didn’t you tell me? Who the fuck are you?

Do you want my name or my number?

I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.

You didn’t tell me either.

You knew.

Yes.

How could you know?

How could you not?

Fuck, she said. Bad rush.

She put her head on her knees, then tried to get to her feet, lacking any grace. But Vincent was on her, his hands at her throat. She kicked and struggled and tried to pull his hands away, then tried to scratch out his eyes. They were terrifying, so bright that even while she tried to catch a breath, any breath, she had to wonder who he was, a mindwalker that didn’t mindwalk but killed instead. She was still fighting him when her body expired. It took her a moment to realise she had separated from it. Vincent had released his hold on her but she couldn’t get the body to move.

You stupid fuck, I don’t have enough funds to procure another body.

She thought she saw a tear run down his face but it couldn’t be. If he was a mindwalker, he wouldn’t cry.

I really liked that body, she said forlornly, but she had no choice. She had to shift back to Earth. There was nowhere else to go.

Vincent stood up and wiped his face. Was this it? Was this what he was going to do with the rest of his life? Kill all the mindwalkers because he couldn’t mindwalk? But then he would have to kill himself too and he couldn’t do that because he was already dead. He turned to go. His passport was in his pocket. His open ticket was still valid. In an hour, he could be off Traxis. He stepped past the body, past a pillar, and saw one of the school children, who had detached itself from the school party and stood watching Vincent, with the same interest it might have had watching the race wars on television.

CHAPTER FIVE

There was nothing left of Daffillodil Park. There was nothing much left of Nigel’s capital city. Jenna Lloyd hovered over the debris of human life in Grote’s personal helicopter. That General Es had stopped sending nuclear missiles from near-space must mean that he thought he had won. What was it, Jenna wondered, that Es thought he could have won? Nigel was uninhabitable. Its livelihood was obliterated. Even the sub-food domes had been destroyed. As an industrial colony world, it was wiped off the map. Worse still, no one from Sigma would be able to reach it.

Jenna got the pilot to circle over the city, a hand over her mouth as if to hold in disbelief. Nigel’s capital lay in silent decimation. The planet’s vast cloud systems had obscured targets and reduced flash burns, but the destruction was still appalling. Jenna hadn’t expected it to be quite so thoroughly flattened. She couldn’t imagine how much worse it could have