

By the same author

Fiction

Bonewhite Light (SF short stories)

Malady / Therapy (short stories)

The Pioneer (novel)

Proximity (novel)

Extremis (novel)

All the Pieces Vols 1-9 (for children)

Non-fiction (medical)

Motives, emotions and memory

Spoken / unspoken

A face to meet the faces

A hand in the river

When windows become mirrors

From every angle

Why did that man receive CPR? An inquiry

Explore at www.philberrycreative.wordpress.com

Dedication

To Paula, on whose shelves I saw books containing undiscovered worlds.

Insensate

A novella

"It's lovely," I said to Governor Boka Mcrae, meaning it. "The way the houses cling to the mountain, how the settlement fills the bay, the curve of the sea road there. The crashing waves. It's picturesque, for a settlement." Fulsome perhaps, but I was genuinely struck by the settlement of Rushalyn, named after the planet on which it had been founded fifty years ago.

"We call it the Maleçon, the curved road," corrected Mcrae.

"And this really was the most hospitable site? Next to this great mountain?"

"The only possible site. The interior is impenetrable beyond a margin of 10 k. The rest of the coast is too jagged, battered by huge waves. This bay is relatively protected, though as you will see, we do get some weather. The decision to settle here was taken long before I arrived, of course."

"And how was it populated?"

Mcrae's lips contracted into a small o, as though he had detected a bad smell. This was a sensitive topic on the envelope, at the edge of our civilisation. There had been reports of people-smuggling from economically failed planets, press gangs in space ports, transports disabled and diverted on a one-way ticket. I had heard the reports, working as I did in centre, with a network of contacts across the five Ministerial planets.

Boka Mcrae's face was squared off at the chin and the temples. His grey hair was roughly cut, and very short, as though in conscious rejection of the superficial. His light blue suit had passed its best a decade ago, and was thinning at the bends. Even now, close to retirement, he regarded time spent on appearances as wasted. He answered my question;

"Volunteer pioneers. Third wave. Far as I'm aware." Nice caveat.

I looked at him carefully and waited for more. As a medical examiner, a centre official, I had status. The significance of my questions was not to be underestimated.

Mcrae did not fill the silence. I didn't have the energy at this early stage to enter a power game with him. That might come later, when I was recovered from the journey. Mcrae changed direction.

"When would you like to start your investigation Dr Isso?"

"Tomorrow will be fine. They're not going anywhere, are they? Remind me, how long are the days here?"

"Eighteen hours. We work seven. No-one lives more than fifteen minutes from their place of employment, so there is plenty of time for rest and recreation. There are no motorised land vehicles in Rushalyn. There are only two flying craft, and I'm afraid we cannot afford to loan you one for personal use. Hopefully, your investigations will not take you far."

All standard. Centre did not encourage freedom of movement off settler planets. Once you were here, you stayed. I had been dropped off by a shuttle from the system's nearest intersection, and was now as restricted as any other member of the population.

"I did see a dinghy with an outboard motor out on the water on my way in!" It was a joke. He didn't get it. "Guess I'll just have to adjust then."

He shrugged this off. My comfort was not his concern. The atmosphere was positively chilly now. I tried to warm it up.

"Where do you recommend I go for rest and recreation then, Governor?"

His lips softened, but did not commit to a smile. "Go down to the Maleçon, follow the noise and the lights. There are only two decent bars, you will discover which one suits you. The last supply ship came a month ago, so they are still well stocked. Just before the end of the quarter, the proprietors sometimes resort to home brew. It's not good, but I allow it." So, a sense of humour.

I left his office, wound my way down the mansion's exterior stairway (pausing to let the lowering, violet-rimmed sun warmed my cheek as I passed along the sea-facing sections) and reached the flight of countless steps that led down to one end of the Maleçon. This sealed road, used only by pedestrians and bicycles, extended in a graceful and uninterrupted arc around the bay. It linked the mountain on this side with a gentler rise on the other, the space between them forming a natural gateway that the world-builders had identified from their travel-beaten carrier fifty years ago.

Once a featureless, undulating cliff, this space was now flat and populated. Food silos stood tall at the back, like older children in a school photograph. White birds fell from their sheer sides into untroubled flight. In the middle distance lay rectangular processing plants and factories, their roofs pitched to tip the rain, many connected by covered gantries along which upright shadows moved, unhurried but business-like. At the periphery, in all directions except seaward, were modular accommodation blocks a maximum of four stories high. Their characteristic yellow shells – a common feature across the envelope – had been weathered by the seasons, the sills and edges tattooed by winds that carried grey dust from the mountain. Only the area by the Maleçon looked inviting. Here, orthogonal 'streets' gave way to more haphazard ways through the (fifty year-) 'old' quarter, with bars, restaurants (making the most of bland fare) and shops.

Once on the Maleçon, I realised that I was in no mood to drink. Instead I looked out at the advancing ranks of white-crested waves and watched as they destroyed themselves on the rocks. Directly below the Maleçon was a tumble of blocks carved from the mountain by the world-builders and placed there to dissipate the incessant, erosive force of the ocean. These immense, grey, numberless die had been dropped from a floating crane that would have put the whole bay into shadow. Block after block after block had fallen into place, until a satisfactory sea wall had taken shape.

For the first time that day, I had the space to think.

I was here was to investigate the death of five gentry. Two men and three women, struck down during high-end pursuits in the prime of their lives. Statistically, this rash of misfortune could be classed as a mini-epidemic. Being gentry, the deaths had skimmed a good proportion of this still nascent society's top echelon away over two busy months. The colony's hospital had done its best to provide answers, but the bodies still lay in the fridge, waiting for an expert to come from centre and draw conclusions.

Foul play had been excluded through routine checks. There were no blades sticking out, no blunt force fractures, and no motives beyond the usual jealousies of a contained society. Dr Iliana Murphy, a generalist who fulfilled many roles in Rushalyn's hospital (including pathologist), aided by the best importable technology, had run extended toxicology and xenobiologic tests. She had found nothing of concern. The deaths appeared natural, but the fact that they were clustered so unnaturally had caused her to signal centre.

*

Next day I entered Dr Murphy's office at the agreed, early hour. I had not yet adjusted, and was in a sour mood. She was in her late 30's and seemed pleased to see me. My presence appeared to halve the heavy sense of responsibility immediately.

Her back and shoulders were slightly rounded, giving her a studious air. I imagined she had worked hard at med school, that the knowledge had not come easily. Her brow had developed set lines, so in repose, or even when she smiled, there appeared to be an undercurrent of concern; for a patient, her own situation, the planet, or the galaxy as a whole, who knew? A serious person.

"Who do we start with?" I asked, skipping the pleasantries. Dr Murphy was ready, and pushed five folders across the desk. I touched each one in turn to illuminate an angled portrait, recorded in life. Quick sketches of their roles in the colony were provided by rolling text. They really were gentry. In chronological order of demise: Francis Kesse, deputy to the chief engineer of the water works; Summan Locke, director of organics (meat growing, mainly); Familian De Silva, senior rest and recreation coordinator (one of the most important people in the colony); Shazad Musa, retired head teacher, and Gordon O'Connor, Dr Murphy's predecessor as Chief of Medicine.

"What were they doing when they died?" I knew this already, of course. I just wanted to get her talking.

"Hunting. That's the sport of kings around here, but it costs." Sarcasm. An opinion. I was pleased.

"What do they hunt?"

"Magalunda."

"The indigenous lifeform?"

"Of course. They are bipeds, but they run on all fours and stand only to communicate... and copulate, apparently. Half our height, but fast, and strong. They were found roaming the interior by the first generation. An application was made to the centre by the early second gen - you must know this - to allow hunting. There had been a few settler deaths, well, abductions and presumed deaths. A first gen child, too. All this was well before I arrived. As per central philosophy, it was assumed by the first gen that the Magalunda had high-level intelligence, and culture, but further scrutiny revealed that they were primitive."

"If centre allowed hunting, they must have been convinced there was no culture to cultivate. None at all." I had not seen hunting anywhere else in the settled galaxy. I was surprised.

"You can find the permissions in the town hall if you need to see them, Dr Isso." Very cool, as though I doubted her honesty.

"I won't need to do that, Dr Murphy. Shall we start?"

Iliana was very happy to proceed; to share the details that she alone had dwelt on prior to my arrival.

"Francis Kesse. Chemical engineer, seconded to water desalination and purification two years ago. Second gen. Very senior, hence an income that permitted hunting. She was about a kilometre from the energy-well..."

"Energy-well?"

"That's how the colony is powered. There's a transducer at the bottom of a natural well, ten kilometres inland. The was the world-builders' first job. Gave them the power to cut the rocks and level the coast."

"Do Magalunda hunts always take place near the well?"

"I have no idea. No interest. It's a foul past time."

"Even if killing a Magalunda is the same as squashing a fly under your foot, neurologically speaking. According to centre, that is." She eyed me cautiously, as a likely provocateur.

"We both know that's probably not the case."

"OK. I agree. Let's get to it!"

She took me several floors down to pathology.

The surface of the autopsy table was highly polished black glass. Iliana activated it, and a perfect hologram of Francis Kesse flickered into position. There was no translucency; it appeared solid. We proceeded to dissection. I asked Iliana to start, and she was worldly enough to understand that I needed to assess her technique.

The blunt scalpel in her hand was linked so that the hologram responded to the blade like biological tissue. The field remained bloodless. When an organ or a section of skin was lifted away, she was able to drop it into an adjacent 'bin', where the specimen remained for us to retrieve and take a closer look later if required. The image before us comprised data derived from a deep scan performed out in the hunting ground. We saw Francis Kesse as she had been discovered.

"And your initial diagnosis was?"

"Cerebral aneurysm. I found a swelling at the base of the brain and some fresh blood around it. Typical subarachnoid haemorrhage. I thought nothing of it... as she was the first."

"But surely an aneurysm at risk of bursting would have been detected when she was health screened prior to arrival. They don't just develop out of nowhere."

"That was 28 years ago. If there was a weakness in one of the arteries, but no swelling, it could have expanded over time."

"Mmmm." But I let her continue.

She honed in on the major abdominal organs to show me that they were intact. We removed the heart together, as I was impatient, and held its weightless volume between us, peeling off the arteries and slicing them open to exclude any atheroma or blockage. Then we moved up through the neck and into the brain. Her scalpel removed the upper part of the skull noiselessly.

We looked down at the base of the brain, which Iliana tilted to face us. I traced the important arteries, and quickly saw the abnormal artery which, I agreed, looked to be the cause of death. There was a defect in it, about the diameter of a pencil lead. This was where the blood had leaked out, catastrophically. The chemist would have felt a sudden pain in the back of the head, but there would not have been enough time for this to evolve into terror before her basic life functions ceased.

"Okay. Agreed. Who's next?"

"Summan Locke."

"The meat grower."

"Yep."

"And they didn't know each other? Was there relationship between any of them?"

"Everybody knows each other here. There were rumours that Familian Da Silva was attached to Summan."

"Familian is, was, a woman?"

"No. A man. The R&R coordinator. He touched the lives of everyone."

Iliana touch a switch and the dissected remains of Francis Kesse disappeared, to be replaced by the pristine body of the male meat grower, Summan Locke.

"He's black," I said.

Iliana nodded, making it clear my observation added nothing to the analysis. I felt I had to explain. "It's just, near centre, the homogene trend..." By which I meant, our civilisation had largely abolished racial variation. The typical colour was mine, or Iliana's, plaster-grey, like a statue from the ancient world. To see this... this reminder of the variety once found in humankind, was remarkable. I brought by face closer to the hologram. There was a blue tinge to the black, a reflective property that I had not noted before in human skin.

"As you see, all are welcome here on Rushalyn!" Then Iliana bowed her head, scalpel in hand, and focussed on the task.

"And your diagnosis?" I asked.

"Aneurysm, cardiac. You'll see in a moment, but I found a left ventricular defect, almost a Takotsubo's."

Literally, the broken heart syndrome, a weakening of the usually thick and reliable heart muscle that can occur in response to a sudden emotional shock. I was genuinely interested to see it. Iliana quickly opened the chest cavity but I stepped in to dissect out the heart itself. As before, she understood; I could not trust her completely. I had to do this in case of some sleight of hand on her part. But she was right. There was a pouch of tissue sticking out of the left ventricle, and at its apex another pencil lead-sized hole through which his blood had leaked at terrific velocity. Unfortunately he would have lived for several minutes, suffering the knowledge that he was sure to die.

"Was he with anybody when this happened?"

"With the hunting party, but they were spread out and subsequent analysis showed that he was 700 metres away from his closest companion."

"And who was that?"

"I don't have a name I'm afraid. The police have all of that." The police! Oh God. I did not want to get entangled in whatever rag-tag arrangement of academy rejects centre had shuttled out here to keep the peace.

"Next."

Familian Da Silva, the homosexual R&R coordinator. Another aneurysm, this time in the aorta, which is the main artery coming directly out of the heart and running down the centre of the body, just over the spine. Again, a small defect through which his circulating blood volume had pumped in just a few minutes.

"You seeing a pattern?" I asked.

"They're all vascular deaths, of course." She looked at me witheringly. "Sudden breaches in an arterial wall. I thought the same, until number four."

"Let's see."

This one had died differently. Shazad Musa, retired school head. Female. An epileptic fit that had failed to pass naturally, during which involuntary spasms in the muscles of her chest wall had restricted the ability of her lungs to inflate. Her oxygen levels had fallen until she lost consciousness. The fit only stopped when the heart stopped and the brain ceased to function entirely. She suffocated, essentially.

"And she had no history of epilepsy?"

"Of course not, it would have been screened out she arrived."

"So what caused the sudden onset?"

"I couldn't find a structural defect. There was no underlying brain pathology, no trauma, she wasn't any new medication. She was borderline alcoholic, like many of the gentry, but not to the extent that she could have had a withdrawal fit."

"A genuine mystery then." I removed the brain and sliced it to look for gross pathology, knowing that a microscopic examination was required to rule out any sub-millimetre lesions.

And then onto number five. Less of a mystery. I could tell the cause of death before the scalpel had been applied. Gordon O'Connor had shot himself in the chest with his own hunting rifle.

"Don't go on Iliana. I think Dr O'Connor's case is self-explanatory."

"I performed a full autopsy first time round. And found nothing, save the obvious trauma. If you trust my findings, I agree, we don't need to go on."

"This feels like a different category to me, don't you agree? Breaks the pattern."

"Evidently." She looked both annoyed and amused. I was making a friend.

"How do I visit the hunting grounds?"

"You walk. It's not restricted."

"Is it safe?"

"As long as you don't get lost. And don't go too far in. And get back before sunset. I'll take you sometime."

*

To have avoided the bars on the Maleçon that evening, my second, would have been plain eccentric. I decided to do as I had been advised, to enter the social scene, but only after exploring the sea front.

At the far end of the Maleçon, away from the mountain, a stone quay extended out into the sea. It curved away gently, a fifth part of circle, designed, I presumed, to give shelter to sea-craft that were moored there. There were fat metal posts at intervals along it, where ropes could be tied. The light was dim, but I thought I could see two or three lengths in wide inverted arcs, but my position on the Maleçon meant that any craft floating on the water next to the quay were hidden. At the quay's far end was a circular tower, also made of granite. I tasted the air, assessed the wind (still mild), and decided to walk along it.

The quay was wide enough for five to walk abreast without having to jostle for space. I approached the first of the metal posts and was now able to see three craft moored in the pool of flat water where incoming waves were nullified by the curved, granite structure. They were old, sea-boats, designed for both water and air (including near space). They had been abandoned for decades, by their condition. At this time, with the tide out but on the turn, their hulls rested on black shale. The pull of the ropes had caused them to tilt. The electro-bonded wire from which most hulls were constructed, even fifty years ago, had begun to fray. Although designed to be rust-proof, fifty years of exposure to the various salts dissolved in Rushalyn's ocean had caused a reaction on the hulls. Geographic patches of yellow, purple and red covalence covered the lower parts. The largest craft had a sizeable hole in it. Interested, I peered down to assess its edges. I looked for scorched marks, but found none.

Later, these craft would float up with the tide, only to fall again when the nearest moon's influence had waned, settling on the same patch of shale at a slightly different angle. Until one day, perhaps a ten-thousand years hence, universal laws of chemistry, physics and entropy would win, causing the hulls to crumble entirely.

I walked to the end of the quay and studied the tower. Its wooden door was locked and immobile. On the lintel was an old religious symbol. I stepped back, alarmed. It seemed so out of place here, in this bastion of progress that owed so much to scientific endeavour. But that was me: atheist, cynical. I knew well that churches peppered the envelope regions, and that centre had no problem with it. Centre was above the psychology of faith. As long as the settlements thrived.

I returned to the Maleçon and followed the murmur of voice and revelry. Being essentially asocial, the thought of walking into a local venue and spending the evening there repulsed me. But it had to be done. I prepared myself, created a face to meet the faces.

My attention was drawn to one of the granite blocks below. There was a human figure. She wore a thin white cotton dress. It fluttered in the wind generated by the advancing waves. Her arms were held out horizontally, and her feet were only slightly apart; she stood in the form of a crucifix. Her head was steady. She looked out, facing the waves. A freak wave might have reached her, perhaps slapping her feet or curling a foamy tongue around her ankles... but she did not seem to be in immediate danger. Yet, if she slipped, she would surely fall down onto the block directly below, which lay at an angle. Its sharp and serrated edge (formed by the world builders' heavy laser, or rows of mini-charges) could cause serious injury.

I leaned over the waist-high wall and shouted down. She did not hear me. The air buffeting around her head, which caused wild movements of her shoulder length, light brown hair, must have filled her ears. I looked around to see if anybody else had spotted her. The Maleçon was empty. This was Rushalyn drinking time. I looked up towards the governor's mansion, and identified its lighted windows. There were no figures on the balcony. I wondered for a moment if I was being watched through binoculars, if this was a humanitarian test of some sort. And then I was climbing down, seeing how very large those blocks of mountain granite really were; up to ten metres square. Moving from one to the next required physical bravery. They had settled at angles, so the sides were in fact slopes down which I had to crawl, using dips and charge corrugations as handholds.

It took me 20 minutes to get down to the block on which the freezing and dangerously thin young woman stood, oblivious to me still. The sun had gone down an hour ago, during what my body clock still regarded as the middle of the afternoon. The moon was half-formed, but shed enough light to pierce her diaphanous clothing. I could make out the silhouette of her limbs. Yes, dangerously thin.

When I was just a few inches away from her she turned and stared at me as though I was a spectre. But she did not resist the demand that she follow me. I guided her to the edge of the block, but could not carry her up the slope of the next one. I needed her to do it for herself. And she did. She was compliant.

I had a definite feeling that this was not the first time she had been rescued.

*

"How is she?" I asked Iliana. We sat in her hospital office.

I knew her name now. Amanda Hacallef.

"She's sedated. I am very sorry you had to get involved. I thought we had it under control."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's a post cryo-insensate, severe. There are a few bad ones in every generation. She's the worst the settlement has ever seen."

"What is she doing? Standing out there in the elements just to feel something?"

"Exactly. They crave sensation. Their nerves are numb, and their emotions aren't much better. Socially, they find it difficult to integrate, and physically, if you check brainwaves while exposing them to various stimuli, the lines are pretty flat. They can move around, keep themselves alive with food and drink, but there's no real life as such. Periodically Amanda will take herself out onto a rock where she can be close as she can possibly be to raw energy. Most adapt. She never did."

"What's the story? How come she got selected? Mcrae told me the settlement was all volunteers. How come a cryo got in?"

"I don't have that information Stephen. That's all in central, you know that. I just help those who get here. All I know, all she says, is that she came from Banda. I hadn't heard of it. Perhaps you could access the files and find out. It might help me actually. It's not an option I've had, as her doctor... until now."

Iliana respected the rules. No-one was permitted to know what went before. Personal histories were sacrosanct. Criminals could be re-born in the colony. Tragedy or embarrassment could be cut away from an individual's timeline. All arrived with their own intrinsic qualities and energies, henceforth to rise as far as those abilities allowed.

Leaving the office, I glanced down at the desk, which was now empty. I remembered how Iliana had pushed across the five files of the sudden-death victims.

"The ones who died, did they have PCI?"

"Not to my knowledge. I have no idea if they were even in cryo."

"But if they were?"

She answered with a knowing, assertive look. We both knew she could not say. The medical histories of the dead remained confidential; if I, the big doctor sent from centre, wanted to know, I would have to provide a central warrant.

"I suppose it's possible that the need for thrills, Magalunda hunting for instance, could correlate to any residual PCI?" said Iliana, happy for the subject to remain active between us.

"Didn't you try to find out? Weren't you curious?"

"When I first met Amanda I looked into the literature, the experiences of other colonies, anything I could find in central's medical database. There are a few case reports, a few hints. But there is no neurological pathway to explain it. The association between cryo and PCI is still weak, scientifically speaking. And there is no evidence that it brings on physical illness. Perhaps, if we, or you, conclude that the five gentry where driven to it by residual PCI, I could write it up. You could help me. Murphy-Isso syndrome. It sounds good! My academic ambitions have not been so strong, stuck out here."

"You're not stuck anywhere Iliana. You're at the frontier, at the envelope of human civilisation, the leading edge. Don't do yourself down."

I had to say it. And I wondered, as I walked out of her office - what the hell what she doing in Rushalyn?

*

Cryo.

The chosen method for prolonged stasis. Safe, by all accounts, since they found a way to ensure vitrification – the transformation of biological fluids to a glass-like consistency without crystallisation (lethal to cells) during the freeze to -150 celsius. Initially used by the rich to halt the advance of illness, in the hope that when a cure was invented they could be thawed and saved. This fantasy did not come to fruition, except in a few, confined cases. The diseases that limited human life several hundred years ago still do now. Cancer, heart disease, degenerative brain disorders. Many were thawed after their contracts expired at C+ 100 or 150 years, only to be told that they were still going to die.

Cryo came to be used instead for long pauses – a way of partitioning a normal lifespan. In a way, it is like time-travel. You go into the tube, wake up fifty years hence, everything has changed. To you, it's an instant, but the galaxy has moved on. Your family and friends have also moved on of course. But those who choose to take a pause are usually quite capable of dealing with this.

I say 'safe', but over very prolonged periods there is subtle tissue degradation. You can't stay in a tank for half a millennium, just as you can't keep steak – farm or factory made – in the freezer too long without losing its essence. The essence of life being information; experience, memory... life's foundation, the mind-colour that drives our decisions and makes us who we are.

Now, on Rushalyn, I wondered – had these gentry taken a pause? Did they fancy a new life on a settlement that was not yet mature, a place in which to make a mark? And when they thawed, were they just a little different, not quite right?

*

Iliana led the way out of the settlement. We crossed a series of quaint stone bridges that the world-builders had laid down to jump the deep fissures cut by nature into the foothills of the mountain. Each stout arch was unique, as though the builder responsible for them had developed an architectural talent, hitherto repressed by the heavy work required in sculpting the harsh environment. The fissures were only a few metres wide, but looking down I could not judge their depth. The sides approached each other in darkness; a half a kilometre, perhaps.

The zone of fissures gave way to a sparse forest, where the trees' regimentation suggested that they had been planted to plan, in a grid – an uninspiring and aesthetically displeasing contrast to the bridges. As we cut across the grid, mathematically straight vistas of semi-mature Oak, Willow and Chestnut were revealed.

"You seem to know your way," I said, suggestively.

"The direction finder on my wrist is very clear. As I told you, I haven't been here before." She was emphatic, as though I had accused her of some part in a conspiracy.

"How much further?"

"Two hours, at this pace."

"For pleasure seekers, they must have been quite committed. Surely there were sports they could have enjoyed closer to home."

"Blood-hunting requires commitment." She really did hate it.

After the forest came undulating grassland. Through this ran a broad and lazy river a hundred metres wide. It was crossed by a rope bridge, reinforced by thumb-thick wire designed to last a millennium. Although the bridge was narrow and swayed to our shifting weight, there was no real danger.

We decided to rest on the other side, and to break into the rations that we had brought in our backpacks. Neither of us needed to eat, but the beauty of the river which the world-builders had carved into a gentle meander demanded that we pause and look back. It was a potentially romantic interlude.

"They did a good job. The builders. Remarkable really." I joked.

"It's a shame few of us get to see it. They must have assumed that the settlement would extend this far, to its banks. Imagine, a house overlooking this river."

"Why have you restricted yourself to the coast?"

"That's a question for Mcrae, and his predecessors. But my view - all of our work is there. Most of us have little more than our work. It looks like a mature settlement, but it is still young. Only a small number have time to pursue hobbies, like hunting for instance. That's why they are gentry."

"And holidays?"

"Holidays are for families, aren't they? We don't really have families."

The river was the last real effort at design. Beyond it the land was bleak and unmodified. I could easily imagine indigenous beasts roaming these parts, and became more alert. Iliana progressed cautiously at my side, no longer leading.

"How far?" I asked. Business-like, now.

"Five k."

"Should we skirt around a bit, rather than go straight for the energy-well?"

"If we spiral in it will take forever. I'm not picking up any activity." She glanced at her wrist. "And there's a rise about 1.5 k from the mine. We can take a view from there."

"Agreed."

At the top of the rise was a rudimentary wall, comprising chunks of stone about the size of a human head. Smaller pieces were wedged in the gaps. There was no cement. Only gravity kept the four rows on top of each other.

"Who built this?"

"The builders I guess, an early camp while they worked on the energy-well. Or hunters, but I don't see why. They're not allowed to stay out overnight."

"The Magalunda?"

Iliana arched an eyebrow, reacting to my provocation. "Who's to say?"

"Why be so coy?"

"Building a wall would suggest a level of sophistication that they are not supposed to possess, according to centre."

Iliana was taking out the binoculars. I watched her struggle with the leather pouch that hung from her belt. I noticed that her left hand was trembling as she fiddled with the buckle.

"You okay?"

"Fine." But embarrassed.

She turned quickly as the binoculars came up to her eyes. Then she rested the grey barrels on the darker grey of the granite wall top and focused on the entrance to the energy-well. I could see this with the naked eye. It was a wide fissure, with an unnaturally straight extension to one side where a cable ran up to the lip into the base of a yellow hut. The hut, a module moulded off-planet and carried in one piece to the site, was battered and bruised. There were holes in the yellow paint, and a few scorch marks.

"An elevator? Or a substation?" I asked.

"I'm really not sure. I haven't seen it before. An elevator, I guess. The power cables are subterranean, and the substations are in the settlement. Electricity cables would be much thicker than that anyway."

"Is there any advantage in going in close?"

"Fran Kesse died halfway between here and the energy-well. If you want to stand where she stood, we have to go on."

"Fran. You knew her well then. Before, she was Francis."

"Well enough. We'd had a few drinks."

Ilianas' left hand was shaking quite badly now.

*

John Bulstrode opened the door to his simple house which was situated halfway up the mountain, but on its landward side, looking over the very zones that Iliana and I had crossed on our way to the energy-well a day earlier.

His long retirement had added layers of hard fat to the muscular, world-building bulk; his thighs and haunches were immense. I followed the contour of his shoulders and back beneath the simple jacket. They strained the textile when he moved. His neck was corded, the overlying skin wrinkled and baked; when he turned his head, it looked like he might crack. It occurred to me that his job had entailed long hours bathed in the light of unknown local stars, whose radiation properties were little known. World-building had taken a toll.

"Hello Mr Bulstrode. My name is Dr Stephen Isso. Can we have a moment?" Friendly, but official. The coloured flecks in my collar told him where I came from. Centre. No mistaking that.

He moved to one side and let us in, but the way he kept his arm raised, the calloused palm resting on the side of the door, made his welcome less than warm. I did not want to be under that arm if it came down.

Iliana and I stood in the living room. I pretended to admire the view. Mist was rising over the forest, and I could not see the river.

"Beautiful," remarked Iliana. He nodded but made no sound. His eyes asked a question - what do you want with me?

"I hear you helped to build this world."

The few remaining grains of politesse within him were stirred, and he pointed down to the functional sofa. It was thinly cushioned, and its back met the seat in a rigid right angle. He sat in a more forgiving armchair near the entertainment unit, and he leaned forward, perched, alert to whatever tricks and traps centre had brought into his home.

"Yes, but I stayed behind. I wasn't well enough to travel back. This was my 12th world." I was pleasantly surprised by his loquacity. He had already given much away.

"I should tell you why I am here. I have been asked to help investigate the deaths of several prominent members of the community."

He nodded. He knew all about it, despite his lack of engagement with the settlement's day-to-day concerns. I continued,

"It seems they all died hunting Magalundas."

"Magalunda. That's the plural. Same as the singular."

"Apologies. Dr Murphy and I have been out to the hunting grounds, and new as I am to this colony, I couldn't help noticing how dominant the energy-well is in the landscape. That's why I came to talk to you, to understand."

"To understand how it works you mean."

"Yes, if it can be explained in terms that I can comprehend. I am not a physicist."

He smiled briefly, his thick skin breaking around the angles of his mouth. He knew that I was a scientist, and quite capable of understanding.

"We don't fully understand the energy-well, Dr Isso. When we came here we were told that there was a source of energy to tap, and the assumption was that it was geothermal. Our job was to lower a conversion unit into a large fissure - these had been identified on the far scans - and to turn heat into power for the colony."

"But that's not what you found."

"The energy was already flowing in a form that we could use. There is no conversion unit down there. All we had to do was lay cables from the depths of the well to the colony. It was a perfect energy source, no maintenance, no steam, no radiation, no storage requirements. The energy that comes into every building, factory and terminal in the colony is there for the taking."

"Did you go down there yourself?"

"Of course, we all did. Before I got ill."

"Ill? Infection? Food poisoning?"

"Neither. A few weeks into the project I grew breathless, too weak to work. I was useless by the end. There was no decent diagnostic equipment here, but the medic, not a proper doctor, made the diagnosis on a blood spot. He just put it in his machine, and the machine told him what was wrong. Leukaemia."

"And this was fifty years ago?"

"I know. I have surprised everyone. The medic gave me six months to live. I still have it, the leukaemia, as the good doctor here knows, but it's quiescent. I will probably die of something else, isn't that right Dr Murphy?"

Iliana held Bulstrode's eyes. I understood that she did not wish to be seen to give out any confidential information. Bulstrode looked out of the window briefly, and I made eye contact with Iliana. She closed her eyes briefly, and this was silent confirmation about the leukaemia.

"I am sorry to hear that Mr Bulstrode. What did you see down there?"

"A network of channels, containing a liquid that look like mercury... quicksilver. It wasn't mercury, of course. You couldn't scoop it up in your hands, even if you tried, which nobody did. We did get a robot to dip a pail in, but it came up empty. It was not a real liquid. The chief scientist managed to draw some of it into a portable mass spec, and the closest approximation he could make in the language of the physics was that they were streams of pure electrons. So we just dangled metal cables into it to see what happened. Electricity. Power. It was quite magical. It gave out electromagnetic waves in our optical range, so it looked silvery."

"Strange that I have visited many worlds along the envelope but have never heard of this energy source before."

"I am sure the appropriate department has been researching it, in centre." He had cut me, successfully. Above my pay-grade, and he knew it.

"Did you have any trouble with the Magalundas... Magalunda, sorry?"

"Yes. A few came to look at us. We tried to scare them away but they wouldn't move. So we had to shoot."

"You must have been terrified! Did you kill any?"

"Two."

"And did anybody else get ill, other than you?"

"Yes. It must all be in records."

"Tell us. It was a long time ago."

"Three died, out of twenty builders. That's not a bad ratio for this job. I count myself lucky just to have got leukaemia. One had a heart-attack down by the quicksilver. The chief, Benson Crite. Tough. Big smoker though, it was always coming. He collapsed and fell into channel. It was shallow, so only half of his body was submerged. When we dragged him out the portion that had gone under the surface wasn't there anymore. Dissolved, sliced. We hauled out half a body. No blood. A cold cut. Hence the reason we never dipped our hands in it. He's a legend now. All the settlers know his name."

"And the other two?"

"One of them ruptured something internal, in the ready-camp here on the coast. He just didn't get up one morning. Only 26, just a bit older than I was, a good worker."

"You were how old?"

"Sixteen. Minimum allowable." Making him 66 now. A strong, hard 66.

"And the third to die?"

"Paul. He lost his mind and killed himself. Which isn't unusual among world-builders. He'd worked on twenty worlds, he said. There is a strange, lonely, existential type of stress that builds up over the years. You make places fit for living, then move on to the next barren rock. The pay is good, it convinces you to stay away from home and family... just one more job... but in the end that separation takes its toll. If I'd been strong enough I would have called it a day after this anyeay. My family, they waited, but my wife is now dead and my children are dispersed through the galaxy." So much to say. Mr Bulstrode!

"Have they visited you... your children?" asked Iliana. Bulstrode shrugged, and looked back out of the window. The mist had lifted and I could see the edge of the river. He was not inclined to answer.

"You did a good job here Mr Bulstrode," I said gently. "I know much of what you do as world-builders is drawn up by the planners, but the details here are fine. The bridges. Was that you?"

He did not respond.

"Anyway, you made a good home for these people."

I wasn't expecting him to cry or give me a hug, but I meant what I said. The thick rind that his life of interplanetary travel and emotional isolation had formed was not going to open to my official words. He moved in a way that strongly suggested the interview had come to a natural end, and I agreed with him.

"Just one more thing Mr Bulstrode? The wall on the hill overlooking the energy-well. Was that your camp?"

He hesitated, his eyes cast up as though trying to visualise the structure I was referring to.

"Oh I know where you mean. Hunters, I think, to steady their guns. Disgusting."

Soon Iliana and I are walking down the mountainside back towards the Maleçon. I was happy to walk in silence.

"Strange," she said.

"What?"

"The only time he definitely lied was when you asked about the Magalunda."

I knew her well enough by now (after just three days) to trust her judgement, and nodded.

"That, and the wall."

When I returned to my quarters the edge of the dining table was pulsing slowly with a leaf-green light. I touched it to reveal the message and associated files that had been sent after a request to centre.

The files described how the planet had been identified, and what assessments had been made of a new colony's sustainability - background information that I had read only superficially before my departure. The strategic engineers were immediately attracted to the accessible flows of energy that were identified on far scans. It appeared that the connection between core and crust was unusually direct. However, the first humans to set foot on the planet were the world builders, so a massive commitment appeared to have been made by centre despite relatively poor quality data about the planet's precise geophysical properties. To send a gang of world-builders, with their gargantuan machinery, was a decision that required multiple sign-offs, so somebody high up must have felt very confident that the energy source could be tapped. A detailed analysis of what form this energy might take was absent.

In another file a brief description of indigenous life extended only as far as vegetation and insect life. There was no mention of Magalunda.

Behind the files was a response to an informal enquiry. After Iliana's description of Amanda Hacallef's PCI, I had messaged a professor of neuropsychiatry in the teaching hospital where I trained. She now replied with references that described the clinical features of Post-Cryo Insensate, or PCI. I learned that it did indeed affect individuals who were woken from cryo-sleep, and that there was an increased incidence of suicide associated with it, especially in the young. There did not appear to be a correlation between pre-cryo personality and post-cryo depression. It was postulated that structural changes occurred during cryopreservation that manifested as severe mood disorders following the thaw. Basic clinical advice was listed, but it what no different from that pertaining to usual mood disorders. A few case histories, written by psychiatrists on distant colonies, coloured the file, and I felt that Amanda's story would fit very well alongside these. The main emphasis was on prevention – a programme of careful and comprehensive counselling in the period immediately following thaw.

So, in the larger picture, Amanda Hacallef was not unusual. Nevertheless, I wanted to see her again.

*

Iliana understood. She led me to her room and introduced me. Amanda seemed to remember me, and smiled meekly.

In another context I might have diagnosed an eating disorder, the way her clavicles rose up, almost separating themselves from the taut skin that covered them. Her cheeks were concave and her eye sockets under-filled. The shadows within stole life from her dark brown irises, so that, from a distance of more than a metre, she came across as dull and uninterested in the world around her. Up close though, I saw the keen saccades as she took everything in, formulating her next attack on the system that had treated her so harshly.

She was in her own clothes, there was a packed case in the corner, and her bustling manner suggested that she was ready to be discharged. Iliana answered my unasked question, saying,

"Amanda is going home this evening Dr Isso. She has made a fantastic recovery."

"Will you be seeing her again Dr Murphy?"

"I don't specialise in mood disorders. One of my colleagues will follow up in a week, and Amanda has agreed to go back on an antidepressant for three months. We all agree, Amanda, myself, my colleague, that this episode did not represent a sincere attempt at self harm. It was just a severe case of recrudescent PCI, and she was yearning for stimulation. Isn't the right Amanda?"

She looked across from me to Iliana. I caught the scent of mutual understanding, as if they had rehearsed this version and agreed the plan for my benefit. I wasn't sure Iliana believed the story (that there had been no risk to life), but she had decided to keep her patient on-side, valuing the Amanda's continued trust in her over brutal honesty.

"I just needed to feel something Dr Isso. Something against my skin, something in my veins. The waves, the wind. I feel better now. Thank you for bringing me up from the rocks."

"That's all right Amanda. I'm just glad you're feeling better."

Iliana and I left the room. I was unsatisfied.

"You really don't think that was a suicide attempt?"

"She didn't do anything. She just stood there, from what you said."

"She was on the edge. I thought she was about to step forward into thin air and shatter herself against those rocks. I surprised you're so relaxed."

"She's not displaying any severe symptoms now. I can't section her, I can't keep her against her will."

"Who will look after her?"

"She has an adoptive family."

"Who? Why? What happened to her parents?"

"I can't say Stephen. That's all pre-arrival. But you can find out, from centre."

*

Iliana and I sat side-by-side in the pathology lab. On the screen in front of us was a projection of the blood film taken from John Bulstrode when he was first assessed by the medic who travelled with the gang of world-builders. The blood spot he had plugged into his diagnostic device was stored as an image and kept in Bulstrode's medical record. The speck of blood itself had been discarded. We focused on the white blood cells, an errant clone of which is the cause of leukaemia.

"I'm not seeing it," I said, straightforwardly.

"Neither of us is a haematologist Stephen. I think I trust the device, old as it was even then, more than our own amateur attempts to read this film."

"No, I mean it. I did some training in haem-oncology. These cells are normal."

"They may look normal, but if they are multiplying and clogging up the circulation... that's leukaemia."

"This film is not diagnostic, trust me. We need to see the genetic variations within the cells. Are they stored?"

"No. It was a basic device. There was no DNA or chromosomal analysis."

I sat back in my chair. I did not believe that John Bulstrode had leukaemia.

"We need some of his blood. Fresh. He said it was quiescent, but the genetic changes should still be there. We can easily test for them on a new blood spot."

"He doesn't have to give us any."

"Why wouldn't he? You're his doctor aren't you? You've been monitoring him all these years."

"There haven't been many visits while I've been in post. I looked over his case when I arrived, he used to visit regularly in the first decade, there was a nurse he saw. But he's been perfectly well since. I don't think testing him is justified. Or ethical. There is no reason to suspect him as part of the investigation... is there?" She recognized that she had overstepped. But she was probably right.

"You never challenged the diagnosis?" I retorted. "You just believed what was written in his record?"

"Why challenge it? I had no reason to think of him as a liar. He's not using sickness to remain off work, he's long retired, on a basic settler pension. There was nothing for him to gain."

I chose not to push it any further. But I was still not happy.

*

John Bulstrode rarely went out, I was told. But he did seem to have a relationship. I spent four nights looking out the window of a residential block nearly a kilometre away from his house, slightly further up the mountain and ten degrees seaward. The eye-line was satisfactory.

The block provided accommodation to recent arrivals while they settled into the colony and decided where to live permanently. The governor set an empty one aside for me without asking the reason why.

I kept myself awake with a local stimulant, and on the third night (my sixth on Rushalyn) I saw, through borrowed lenses, a female figure walk along the path to Bulstrode's front door. The visitor wore a hooded cape that swung just below her ankles and brushed the ground during her confident strides. She had clearly been here before.

My impression that she was female was quickly confirmed when Bulstrode opened the door, folded the cape's hood back and leaned forward to kiss her.

They went inside, various lights came on in the house, and an hour later they descended the mountain towards the Maleçon. Before I lost sight of them, where the zigzag path cut through high rock, I left the empty room and made my way down to the seafront behind them. I pressed forward through the light rain carried on a sea breeze, and spotted the couple taking an unhurried turn along the graceful promenade. Then, eschewing the main drag, they entered a street that ran perpendicularly to the Maleçon and I lost them. It did not matter; I had captured a reasonably well-lit picture of the woman, and my emotional sketch of John Bulstrode was now more complete.

From my flat a quick communication to centre told me that her name was Xanthe Bellaron, 62. She was a retired nurse. It was not difficult to infer that she had worked in the hospital when John Bulstrode visited with symptoms related to his (supposed) leukaemia.

*

I dined with Governor Mcrae, reluctantly. I did not like him, nor him me, but we had made the arrangement on the day of my arrival. After an hour of ever-diminishing small talk I decided to make the evening more productive.

"Everyone really does know each other here in Rushalyn, don't they?"

"There are probably only ever one or two degrees of separation, professionally, emotionally. That's life in a settlement. We are now 9000. When we are 50,000 perhaps there will be a more conventional network of relationships."

"Have you lived on the envelope before?"

"No. My administrative career was all around the centre - departments, ministries. This was supposed to be a gentle, preretirement role." He snickered.

"You must have known the ones who died pretty well. They were all senior."

"I did."

"Did you hunt with them?"

"I never thought it was seemly for the governor to go hunting."

"Were you saddened?"

"Yes. Some of them I truly valued."

"Which ones?"

"Well, I won't rank them, that would be coarse." A rebuke. "But Shazad, the headteacher, she was marvellous. She had given a lot."

"I find it hard to combine my idea of a teacher with that of a blood hunter."

"Perhaps you haven't seen enough of the galaxy, Dr Isso. There are violent instincts in all of us. And isn't it natural to gravitate towards the most exciting sports, if you can afford it, if it is presented as an elite pastime? I have no trouble understanding what drew them out to the hunting grounds. Although I said I had never considered it seemly for me to be there, I would dearly have liked to have a go."

"And you wouldn't feel squeamish about taking the life of another developed organism, a mammal that has children, and nurtures?"

"Well, that's hunting isn't it? And the fact that centre condones it suggests that they are not developed. Centre has all the ethnographic data."

We paused. I had pushed the conversation into uncomfortable territory. Now it was his turn to push me.

"Have you formed any conclusions yet, Dr Isso?"

"No."

"It's been a week and a half. Where will you investigate next?"

"I need to consolidate what I have learned. Dr Murphy has been very helpful, I haven't had to revise any of her medical assessments. Now I need to sit down and sift the facts."

"I understood from the Minister's first secretary that you would be here for 30 days. Do you think you can accomplish what you need to do in that time?" Clearly, he couldn't wait to see the back of me.

"That should be about right. I'll get there."

He showed no emotion. I wished that Iliana was with me, to tell me if he was lying.

*

I joined Iliana at a short queue for coffee in the hospital canteen. We took our cups to a corner table without exchanging a word, and before I had a chance to say what I needed to say, she surprised me with her frankness.

"Stephen, I need to say something. We get along well. I find you attractive. But if we have a relationship, it will ruin my life. I just needed to say that."

I was frozen in confusion. The reason I kept coming to see her was because I felt happy and grounded in her company. I liked the way her eyes sparkled with impudence, and I admired the way her mind worked. A charge, the potential for romance, hung in the air around us, and made being with her more interesting, even if I knew, rationally, that it could never lead anywhere. I had been happy to leave this reality unsaid. Her words sucked the energy from the air. I was deflated.

"I get it Iliana. That's the only sensible view to take, with someone like me."

"Will you ever settle Stephen?"

"On the envelope?" The disdain in my voice, which was accidental, came across as a lack of respect for her choice. She looked away, hurt. I followed up,

"Tell me Iliana, what are you doing here? I can see you in a major institution, in the centre, in one of the regional capitals. How did you get here?"

"That's the beauty of Rushalyn, Stephen. History does not exist. When will you realise that?"

*

I had seen the rocks during my final skim into Rushalyn. They stood in a loose line, seven of them, as though grown from seeds of stone thrown into the waves by a mythical giant after the planet's creation. The largest, not far from the shore, was the size of a gentry mansion. They diminished in sized, and the smallest, furthest from the shore, was no bigger than a hut. Between them were gaps through which the ocean split and roiled. In heavy weather waves mounted the rocks and covered them in creamy foam. Flying over them, I had fantasised about standing on one as water shattered, harmlessly all around me. A perfect Amanda Hacallef location, face to face with the elements!

Tonight, I arrived at the largest rock vicariously, through the lens of a drone. I had seconded it from the 'police', and had to spend half the morning tooling it back to functionality. Now it hovered a hundred metres behind John Bulstrode, who had just nudged the base of the third largest rock in his small, motorised boat. Through the same lens I had watched him push the boat out from a stony beach, accessible only by a horrifyingly steep path down the mountain, far from the settlement, way off to the right as one looked to shore.

He tied a rope to metal ring that someone, probably him, had pinned to the rock many years before. Then he jumped from the boat and landed with feet well apart, maintaining his balance on the craggy surface. My drone moved in an arc, soundlessly, its propulsion unit battling with the gusts, in order follow his progress round the base of the rock.

Using footholds and crevices that he seemed to know by heart, Bulstrode made his way to the other side, then began to climb. The drone had already revealed to me a jagged pocket in the rock's summit. He reached this feature and dropped down into it.

I instructed the drone, from the comfort of my flat, to descend. The light was not good enough for me to see what was going on in the pocket. As the drone came below 20 metres, and its filters clarified the image, I saw Bulstrode crouch before a metal box, about half a metre square. He raised the lid. A strong gust tipped the drone, and for a few seconds I lost the view. When it had been regained and stabilised, I saw that Bulstrode was now sitting down on the hard floor of this serendipitous, vertical cave with a bundle on his lap. I could see the back of his head clearly, the width of his shoulders, the powerful hands. And with those hands he peeled away the rough hessian and revealed the skeleton of a non-human child.

*

I asked to see Governor Mcrae in his office. He kept me waiting for half an hour, during which I vowed to do everything in my power could to discomfort his 'retirement' when I returned to centre. He looked up from the wide, polished wooden desk that I admired at our first meeting. It was made from oak, perhaps several.

"I have a favour to ask."

"Go ahead. I'm sure there isn't much that can be denied you, Dr Isso."

"I need to access a personal diary."

He reeled back. The sensitivity about personal information that allowed settlers to forget their pasts, and which inhibited Iliana from telling me too much about her patients' medical histories, also applied to private reflections. Many were in the habit of voicing them into the same microphones that received mundane housekeeping requests, for their words to be archived securely.

"That would cause a hell of a stink with the families of the dead, Dr Isso."

"They had families?"

"Hardly nuclear, mostly off-planet, but, you know, permissions would have to be sought."

"It's not actually the diary of a dead person that I'm after. Just one, a living settler."

"Who?"

"That's tricky. I can't tell you, in case it prejudices that person's future here. They may have no connection to the dead gentry."

"The request would have to go through centre."

"I have asked centre already." Impatience. And a premature version of the truth; my request had not yet left the planet. But I hated to be kept waiting by this bumptious man. "Centre is happy to give permission, but I need sign off at your end too. Two keys are required, if you like."

He didn't like this at all. Centre required him to make a decision, as the seat of authority on location. His gaze roamed the room, but there was nobody around to help. I kept the pressure on, with my steadfast silence.

In the end he assented, but the price was his deepening antipathy to me.

With the help of Rushalyn's data custodian I was able to access Xanthe Bellaron's diary in a private, impenetrable cubicle.

She was an average diarist. Her commentary began soon after she arrived, which was six years after the first colonists had settled. The early diaries contained lengthy, highly emotional and rather desperate reflections on her bewilderment and loneliness. She identified in herself a degree of numbness, and this was interesting for me to read given what I had learned about PCI. She found a way of stimulating her emotional centres, re-growing those nerves, by using her patients stories. She empathised actively, and discovered that this was a good way of reshaping her humanity. Without this, I wondered, she might well have gone the way of Amanda.

By virtue of her expertise and maturity, she was soon running a clinic in the hospital without significant supervision from the doctors. John Bulstrode was on her case list from the beginning, and became one of her regulars. She connected with him as she had with other patients, but the mutual understanding went deeper. On his fourth visit he broke down and began to tell her things about his life that no one else knew. She concluded, in her diary (dictated in the knowledge that no one would ever read it) that the low-grade leukaemia was not the main cause of his weakness, but that he was suffering from disconnection to all that he loved. He made reference to the drips of information that came through from his home planet, where his wife died after a long illness, and from which his four children then dispersed through the galaxy as they reached independence. His family had vanished.

On the sixth visit he told her something new. He described how he and the gang of world-builders had ascended the elevator up from the depths of the energy-well. When they reached the well's lip a group of Magalunda was staring back at them. Two of the world-builders reached for their weapons, powerful guns that hung from their belts however high or low the perceived risk. Two Magalunda were shot immediately. Slower than the others, less experienced, John Bulstrode reached for his own weapon. He fired into the retreating pack, and saw one of them fall. The other Magalunda dissolved into the landscape.

The world-builders walked forward as one, checking the flanks, covering the rear, until they reached the first two hairy, scorched bodies and felt for vital signs. Then they moved on to the third. John's fellows congratulated him as they walked. But when they reached the corpse with his lanugo brown hair and undeveloped musculature, they recognised it as a child. A kid Magalunda.

*

The five gentry deaths were natural, in my view. The suicide was an outlier, but if one categorised severe depression as an intrinsic illness that develops without deliberate external influence, one can argue that it is natural too. The others had involved degradation of biological tissue, causing catastrophes that could happen to anyone, at any time. But the fact that they were clustered suggested that something unnatural had occurred, hence my presence here. There remained a paradox, and I could not go home without explaining it. I had to find patterns where they did not appear to exist.

I plotted the locations of the bodies on a map thrown up into the air above the dining table in my quarters, and attached estimated times of death. In some cases the exact time of death was not known, but analysis of cellular decomposition, knowledge of the ambient temperature and collateral evidence regarding times of departure or last sightings, allowed the margins to be narrowed.

I was then able to add the paths that each hunter had taken. The lines showed circumspection, lateral diversions, the ranging movements of hunters listening out for prey or seeking a scent trail, then a change, to straight lines, harsh zigzags, purpose, haste... the pursuit. Then sudden death.

*

I sat in John Bulstrode's living room and watched dusk settle over the zone of fissures, erasing the dark marks that were lethal apertures into the planet's crust. Next, the geometric forest was obliterated, and then the broad river itself merged into the nightscape. When visibility was down to the immediate surroundings, and the room was in shadow, I heard the door open. Bulstrode had no idea I was there until he put the light on by twisting his hand in a certain direction.

"I am sorry to intrude Mr Bulstrode."

"But you have, anyway. So, everything is revealed to you Dr Isso. There are no secrets from centre. Did you enjoy my diaries?"

I laughed. "I haven't heard them Mr Bulstrode. I wouldn't dream of it. But I have made deductions."

"Ask away."

"Tell me, how did you feel after killing the kid Magalunda?"

He took a seat on the hard sofa. I was tempted to give him his own armchair, but I fancied the gradient in authority that my temporary possession represented.

"I felt death rushing up to meet me. I thought I was going to faint, vomit and die all at the same time. I fell to my knees, and had to be dragged away. I was crying for the kid, and for myself."

"Where were you taken?"

"Back to the modular camp, here on the coast."

"And you recovered."

"I felt better the next day. It was the emotion."

"But then you got seriously ill. The leukaemia."

"Yes, a few weeks later."

"I wonder... if you thought the Magalunda had some sort of hold over you. Some power."

"Retribution you mean."

"We know nothing about them. We assume we understand all of life, perhaps we are wrong."

"Perhaps there was retribution. Because the ones who killed the adults, they died."

"Really? The chief? The 26 year-old? Or Paul, by suicide? You didn't mention that they had killed Magalunda when we spoke before."

"You didn't ask."

"So who... who killed?"

"The chief, and Paul."

"Not the third?"

"No."

"It's almost as though they, and you, were cursed, isn't it John?"

"Is that going to be your conclusion Dr Isso? A curse?"

"I'm just thinking, if it was me here among the rocks, the mountains, the wind, the rain – I'd be forgiven for invoking the supernatural."

Bulstrode looked at me, waiting for me to make a point. He wasn't going to make it for me.

"I guess you're not the superstitious type then Mr Bulstrode? You don't go in for curses."

A little blood left his complexion. How far could I push this?

"No? Nothing, no-one is sacred, pure?" Come on John, do I need to draw a picture? I've seen you with the kid's skeleton.

"I'm an atheist Dr Isso. A good atheist. Like you, no? A desirable attribute when centre are recruiting. My beliefs are bound to science, and what can be proved. You don't build worlds on hunches or guesswork."

"Good. Very well Mr Bulstrode."

"Am I a suspect? You have a lot of questions."

"No. It's just... you have been here from the very beginning. You know so much."

"Good night Dr Isso."

*

I watched Amanda's home. She lived on the 3rd floor of a featureless residential stack well behind the Maleçon. Finding a look out post was not easy. I had to pay for a series of bad drinks over two evenings, from the start of happy hour to last orders. Knowing nobody, nobody interrupted me. I read papers, tapped a tablet, and swivelled my eyes to the stack's entrance every thirty seconds.

Towards the end of the second vigil, she appeared from her block at street level. I followed her through the back streets and across a brown-field area strewn with unfinished or prematurely decayed buildings. Beyond this, the edge of the fissured zone, less dramatic here away from the mountain gradient. She hurried across the stone bridges. I stayed way back. She never looked around.

The rope bridge was the hardest part; I needed to be close enough to see where she went as she came off it, but far away enough not to be noticed, despite the deep dark of night.

But of course, I knew where she was going.

Two hours later I crouched behind the granite wall, where Iliana and I had knelt with the binoculars. I felt isolated and missed her by my side. Amanda continued her deliberate progress towards the energy-well. The way she picked her path through the rocks suggested the ground was familiar to her. When she was a hundred metres away from the edge of the well, a humming sound drew my attention away, towards the back of the mountain behind us. A small craft was heading straight towards her. The purple glow of its down thrusters reflected off the nocturnal mist to create an aura. I could not see who was piloting it; the forward window was opaque.

Amanda heard the hum shortly after I did, and froze. She did not look surprised. Her physical attitude was identical to the one she had displayed when I approached her on the block. Here we go again; OK I give up; you win this time. She waited for the craft to land on the rough terrain. Three people emerged from its hatch, already at a run. They encircled her then guided her with insistent arms across the ground to the waiting craft. Then it hopped back to the settlement.

*

"I saw Amanda last night." I hoped to shock Iliana. The subtle game of 'I know that you know that I know' lasted less than a second. Her policy was to be absolutely transparent.

"How could that be Stephen? One of the retrieval teams fetched her from near the energy-well last night. She went wandering again."

"I know. I was watching. She walked straight towards it. How do you know?"

"I didn't know, until first thing morning. The retrieval team did. They have been asked to keep an eye on her, for obvious reasons. She's tagged."

"And you were informed this morning, when you got in?"

"Yes of course. She is one of my patients. She's here in hospital again."

Her transparency had put me on the back foot. The inevitable question followed;

"And what were you doing out there Stephen?"

"Our trip to the energy-well fascinated me. I needed to know more about it."

"In the middle of the night. Okaaay. And you think it might be relevant, to the... deaths?"

"The energy-well sits in the hunting grounds. All of the dead were close to it."

"For one reason. To find Magalunda. If they congregate around the well, then I suppose the hunters will too. That's the only connection I can think of."

"I wondered about some sort of radiation, causing a rapid weakening of biological tissues, arterial walls, neurones. Didn't an environmental factor enter your thoughts?"

"Yes, it did. But there is no radiation here, not that we have recognised as such. No alpha, beta or gamma rays..."

"But electrons surely. It is pure electricity down there, Bulstrode says."

"Not detectable up on the surface. Absolutely none. Nor through the settlement's power outlets. There is nothing."

"What about forces that we do not understand?"

She began to roll her eyes, but controlled herself. "But others have been out there Stephen. Not everybody dies. People have been there for longer too. Hundreds have hunted over the years..."

"And have you looked for historical clusters, unusual causes of death. I mean way back, twenty thirty, forty years."

"I have actually. Yes, lots of hunters have died, just as many non-hunters have died. But I have not found an association."

"You looked into the family histories of the recent five?"

"I can only scrutinise information that exists since their arrival, or their family's arrival, on Rushalyn. Deep ancestry is restricted, by incomer law."

"I'm sure we could apply to centre for permission to access family histories going back through several generations. It's highly relevant to the investigation."

"Be my guest. Try. But I don't think you'll get very far."

"Are there so many secrets, Iliana?"

She looked at me, as though I was naïve.

"Several of the dead were born here, so I knew about their parents. Summan Locke did have a history of heart failure in his family, and there was a vague neurological history in Shazad Musa's. Not epilepsy. A demyelinating disorder."

"Perhaps these illnesses were always coming? They were fated."

"Perhaps, Stephen. We all have to die."

Her gaze dropped, she studied her own hands for a moment, and turned away. The topic had depressed her.

*

"Why were you out there Amanda, near the well?"

"For the energy."

"What do you mean?"

"I remember hearing about the world-builders soon after I arrived here. My new family told me about Rushalyn's history. They talked about the quicksilver. About the man who fell in, the chief... Benson Crite. Down there, in the blocks, the stacks, the factories... he's a legend."

"You don't buy into all that?"

"No! But the quicksilver... the power, is what I need. Pure energy, to bring me back to life."

"Have you been there before?"

She did not want to answer. She glanced up to the ceiling, indicating paranoia about microphones or cameras. I nodded in fake complicity. Yes Amanda, you should be careful.

"Perhaps you can tell me another time."

"Why should I trust you?"

"I have a very open mind Amanda. I don't live here. I'm not here to judge you. But I want to understand more about people like you. About cryo."

"About PCI? They say we all have it, to some extent. All the cryos."

"Perhaps PCI gives you a perspective that others don't have."

"That's what they say about madness isn't it... mania, psychosis. It gives an access to creativity, original ideas. To genius! Are you trying to humour me doctor!"

"Perhaps, a little. I don't understand you Amanda. Do you understand you? You're not mad, that's obvious. Anything you say will help me to understand his place. That's it. That's all I want."

She looked away briefly, but I could tell she sensed my sincerity.

Then she reached for me. There was desperation in her expression that made me regret my decision to come here, to her cubicle. I looked around quickly, for witnesses. An accusation of unprofessional behaviour with a vulnerable patient would destroy my career. Her hand touched my shoulder, and I felt fingers curl into my deltoid muscle, through the thin shirt. The combination of touch and fear joined to pull me towards her. The rational part of my mind saw all the signs of instability, the need for recognition, for validation, for affection. And being so far away from home, and knowing that Iliana had drawn a firm line between us, I felt myself reciprocating. Amanda's face was an inch from mine. She began to speak,

"You haven't understood anything have you, Doctor." Then she turned away, viciously. "Why do you think I was sent here?" I had no answer, I was too far away from her mental position. I had read her completely wrong. "This is the frontier, yes, but what is a frontier but a social experiment. That's why I am here. Half dead, empty brained, no loss."

She lunged forward and forced a hard, loveless kiss onto my lips. As though she was giving me what I had asked for. But I had not asked. But my presence in her room, my failure to move away, my stupid error in not calling in a chaperone, my deep ambivalence, they were equivalent to a request. She was wiser than I. And I had fallen.

*

A message from Iliana.

\- None of the gentry arrived in cryo. All volunteers. I.M. -

*

She gave have me another chance.

Amanda, released, was standing in my kitchen. Her bony elbows were joined in a sharp 'v', pointing down, her forearms supporting a hot drink that she had prepared for herself before my arrival. The steam was still rising from the mug, and it hugged the sides of her face, the deep features that a year of decent nutrition might eventually soften and improve. I showed no surprise.

"What's it like, centre?" she began, as though resuming a conversation we had only started that morning.

"Not as impressive as you might think."

"I didn't think it was."

"But very different, to this."

"All tall buildings, flying cars and people busy organising the galaxy."

"It varies, across the five planets. The eight ministries are spread around, and each has changed its planet or hemi-planet to adopt a particular identity. My own, the Ministry of Longevity, is very green, lots of space, gardens, fresh air. Though I rarely leave the complex of buildings myself."

"I would love to see it. Your planet. What's it called."

"It doesn't have a name, not any more. What are your ambitions, Amanda?"

She pulled at a hank of hair, hard enough to make her head tilt. This appeared to help her think.

"I want to find out what happened to my family. That's my ambition."

"Where are they?"

"Nowhere. They're all dead. That's all I know."

"Tell me everything that do know." I moved her over to chair in the living area, and took a seat near at an unthreatening angle. I made sure the windows were opacified. Again, I was nervous for my reputation.

"My history, you mean? That's not really a thing, here on Rushalyn. Surely you know that Dr Isso?"

"I do. But you are free to tell me, if you want to."

"No, I mean... I can't. I don't know it. I know I am an orphan, but that is all. The cryo took my memory. They would have known that when they put me in. They made no provision for cognitive rehabilitation. For a year or two my childhood might have been unlocked, if I had received intensive therapy, but that was not arranged. Hence, I suppose, the PCI. I'm a mess Dr Isso. A mess, and dangerous."

"Dangerous to whom?"

"To anyone who gets too close."

"Have you got close to people on Rushalyn?"

"Ah! I see the fire in your eyes Dr Isso. Was I seeing Suman Lock, or Familian Da Silva, you mean? Or Fran Kesse, perhaps? Secrets! No. But you've got the point now Doctor. We can help each other."

"Tell me."

"I want my history back. My family on Banda, the events that led to my cryopreservation. Reasons. In return, you get the lowdown on the gentry."

"I would be taking on the risk in that deal Amanda."

She put the half empty mug on a low table and stood up. I regretted by flippancy. She saw my hand rise instinctively, to slow her down, prevent her departure.

"Yet it seems you have more to gain Doctor."

"Call me Stephen, Amanda. Please. I'm not your doctor."

"If you find out what I ask of you, you will be my doctor."

We smiled at each other, and the deal was made.

*

A projection of Vanessa Eo's apartment filled my quarter's broad seaward window. A visitor could have been forgiven for thinking the living space extended many metres further than was physically possible according to its external dimensions. Vanessa walked casually into view with a hand to one earlobe and sat on a revolving chair. Her short black hair shone, even across the immense distance to the ministerial planet on which she lived. She was dressed for a function, in a red dress.

"Ambassadors' dinner." She had read my question before I had even spoken.

"Which?"

"All of them!"

Vanessa worked in colonial planning and administration. Her models helped to form expansion policy. Rushalyn had been conceived before she was born (she was now 42), but of all my trusted contacts in centre, she was the one most likely to have access to the information I needed.

"Who's the host though. There must be a ringleader."

"Marsha Leggat, of Torgat Be. She's making a lot of noise about the quality of incomers. And she might have a point. Productivity is lower than we... than I... predicted."

"Oh. I hope it's not making your life difficult."

"I don't usually get it so wrong, so there must be a factor I didn't anticipate. Leggat thinks the incomers are fragile. We're meeting so she can let it all out..."

"So you can put a lid on it."

"So I can manage it."

"What do they make on Torgat Be?"

"Wire, basically."

"Wire. Like... very thin metal."

"It's what holds our craft together Stephen! Including the craft you travelled in. Someone's got to make this stuff. How can I help you?" She had said quite enough, even on a hermetic line.

"Well you look great. But yes. Help. It's about a fragile incomer actually."

Vanessa looked interested.

"I have a young lady, arrived on Rushalyn a few years ago. She's got severe PCI... post-"

"Yes I know what PCI is."

"And she says her amnesia is to blame."

"It isn't. It's biochemical. Purely an imbalance. They should have given her something for it. There are many drugs."

"Well nothing's worked for her. I caught her just about to throw herself into the sea."

"Who's running the place? What are they doing out there?"

"I wondered, Vanessa, if you could fill in a few gaps for me. Stuff I can't get through the usual channels I mean."

She leaned towards the screen, as though it would enhance our privacy.

"You mean back stories. No way. It's tightly regulated Stephen. The sanctity of incomers' histories is one of foundations of expansionist policy. A fresh start, no baggage, all that. I can't cut through those locks."

"But this is extreme Vanessa. She's a mess, and I don't think it's typical."

"Where did she come from?"

"Banda."

"Banda in Attun Nal?"

"I don't know the region, just the planet? I..." But mention of Attun Nal flushed cold under my skin.

"Attun Nal. You know At'Nal dominated three years of my life a decade back, don't you?"

"Why?" But I knew already. It was coming back. Attun Nal. At'Nal. All medical students had read about At'Nal.

"The plague, Stephen." She shook her head in exasperation at my lack of knowledge. "The 5th-wave plague."

*

I only knew about the 5th-wave plaque in terms of its biology and pathophysiology. The hundreds of individual planets affected were not listed in the textbooks, just the quadrant; At'Nal.

The disease itself had been described in exhaustive detail. It started as a zoonotic organism, a bacteria endemic to domestic animals, in which it caused a wasting disease through its effect on the intestinal mucosa. It cost a lot of middle-class settlers a lot of large veterinary bills, but was harmless to humans. Repeated interaction and genomic integration with a form of indigenous tree blight on one settler planet caused it to become pathological to humans. Unfortunately, the settler planet's raison d'etre was edible protein manufacture. The disease spread through the near galactic food chain over three years.

Its symptoms were very much the same – intestinal malabsorption, wasting, muscular weakness, and, in the latter stages, seizures caused my groups of organisms seeding into the brain tissue. At post-mortem the legacy of the blight, once confined to trees, was revealed in a brownish discolouration of the internal tissues. The latent period was a year, so by the time your doctor made the diagnosis, you were pretty far gone and the rest of your family had undoubtedly been exposed. There was no cure.

The 5th wave, a cohort of several million who embodied our civilisation's fifth major push for expansion, became a lost cause. The bare minimum in practical or economic aid was given. Centre made a calculation; long term prosperity depended on the success of the 1st through 4th waves, and resources were required for the 6th and the 7th. The 5th – well, imagine a failing village on a windswept continent, tens of thousands of years ago, looking west to fertile land and fields teeming with game and potential livestock. The elders divide the strongest, with their families, into five groups and send them off in different directions. They know that not all can succeed. Some will fall to the ground during harsh ice-storms; some will be taken by ferocious animals never imagined; some will succumb to disease. But some, perhaps only one group or family, will find a river where the soil is rich, a valley where the air stays warm, a forest that provides. And they will settle, build, propagate and farm. In this way civilisations are secured and legends born. The elders may not be remembered, but their decision, although hard, will be seen to have been sound.

Thus, centre's logic.

*

Vanessa came through for me a day later, but not in the way I had anticipated.

Again, my seaward window accommodated her surroundings, but this time it was her office that extended into the night air of Rushalyn. She wore the official uniform of the ministry in which she worked, and was not relaxed.

"You OK?" I asked.

"All good Stephen." She spoke loudly, clearly, but unnaturally, as though somebody else was in the room. I could see no one, but had no idea what was behind the transmitting device. She blinked, a shade too slowly. Then she nodded. Something was now understood between us.

"Regarding your informal request Stephen. I am afraid it cannot be satisfied."

Now, this was complicated. She was being observed, that was clear. Which meant she was under suspicion. Which meant that she had been caught doing something wrong. If the Ministry of Expansion knew that she had accessed an incomer's biography with the intention of sending it to me, she would probably be in detention by now. She must have thought fast on the spot and offered a less heinous explanation. That explanation must have involved me, hence the direct observation of this contact. I had to play along with what I thought her explanation was. I needed her to fill the time with words, to pepper the space between us with clues.

"That's a pity Vanessa. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you."

"Just a little. You must know the considerable sensitivity that exists around the welfare of incomers to the envelope regions. The growth of our civilisation depends on their good health and prosperity. So, your request for a survey of psychiatric morbidity experienced in Rushalyn and neighbouring planets, along with details of antecedent traumas, will have to incorporated into a formal study, with the usual permissions. It should probably come through the neuro-psyche faculty within your own Ministry of Longevity."

So that's what I had asked for! Vanessa paused. The play acting was rather overt, and suggested a lack of fear, or respect, for the observer. I played my part.

"I just wanted to complete a pilot study, before presenting a formal proposal. I retain a rather paranoid streak, academically speaking... you know what happens when others get the scent of a good study." I was keeping it light; like I had no idea there were watchers. "Before you know it someone in neuro-psyche will have taken the idea, written a proposal and won a fifty-year giga-grant. Perhaps that was naïve of me."

"A little. The area is relatively under-studied. So you have my ministry's support in developing a proposal. The subject is clearly relevant. But there can be no release of confidential information until it has gone through ethics. Case studies will have to suffice. As you know Stephen, these are not so highly regarded as large scale research, but individual subjects can prove very enlightening."

Her words were heavy with suggestion. I feared for her. She continued,

"Don't undervalue that method. Examine carefully any subjects you happen to encounter." Her words were laced with official finality. For this reason, I assumed, they were strangely chosen. The conversation was effectively over. If we wanted to chat freely, it would have to be another time.

"Thank you for looking into it Vanessa. I'll liaise with neuro-psyche. My publishing days are over, I should accept that."

She just stared back at me, having nothing more to say.

"Goodbye then Vanessa, until next time."

Vanessa's gazed lingered on the transmitting unit for a few moments. On me.

"Just to let you know Stephen. I am moving on."

"Oh. To what? Same ministry?"

Her eyes flicked up, to a space behind the transmitter.

"I don't know yet Stephen. Centre is a broad church. They will have something for me. Goodbye."

The office collapsed down to a point, then faded, leaving me with my own reflection; a dark haired man of average height and average build, whom central living had allowed to thicken slightly under the jaw and around the belt. Not bad, for mid-40's. But not perfect.

But Vanessa. I knew: she was ruined.

*

I touched the dining table and read a message.

\- New cryo coming in tomorrow. Thought you might like to see the process. Level 3, 0900. I.M. -

The cryo-tube stood in a dedicated, five metre square, white-tiled space. The ceiling was unusually high. A control unit in its base glowed on low power, its durable battery incognizant of the immense distance it had come. A silver table, not unlike those used for traditional autopsies, stood nearby. It was cushioned where the head would go, and was clearly intended for the living.

"Good. We're ready to start." said Iliana, barely acknowledging my arrival.

A robotic arm swung out of an alcove near the ceiling and dropped a complex looking attachment onto the tube's top hatch (at the foot end; I knew that the body within was head down, so that gravity favoured the seat of intellect and identity, preserving those pulpy tissues to the end, ensuring that the thaw occurred most gently there). The hatch recognised the attachment, and began to unscrew. When an inch of fine, gleaming thread was visible, a sudden release of vapour was accompanied by a hiss. Iliana began to act. The clock was ticking now.

The name on the tube, inscribed in inerasable metal plates top and bottom, read 'John Wesley'. I had no idea yet if he was fifteen, fifty or ninety-five. All I could do was watch.

The screw hatch was removed and placed onto the floor with painful deliberation by the robot. The arm then exchanged its unlocking device for soft graspers, engaging its 'wrist' in a niche where various extensions lay waiting. The graspers entered the top hole, located John Wesley's ankles, and lifted him out. To extract him, the robot had to lift the body its entire length, hence the exaggerated height of the room. I deduced (but was too nervous to discuss it with a harassed looking Iliana) that great pains were being taken to keep the head down, for the aforementioned reason. Then, at last, the poor boy (clearly post-adolescent, but still immature) was laid on the table, which automatically inclined itself to 45 degrees, keeping the feet high. The robot completed its now mundane task of replacing the hatch, but all my attention now on John Wesley.

Iliana got a venous line into the ante-cubital fossa at the elbow, then a femoral arterial line into the groin. I dared to ask,

"What are you doing?"

She didn't seem to mind talking as she worked.

"I've got to keep the core temp under control. It can't rise by more than 1 degree Celsius every six hours. And I need to infuse a sedating agent as his neurones begin to activate."

"How...?" but I realised it was enough to watch. She set up sterile canisters of cool plasma substitute, attached the arterial line to a monitor that provided continuous data on blood pressure, oxygen tension, hormonal balance, enzymatic activity, and neuronal wakening. Each read-out had a desirable range bounded by amber limits, and outlying danger thresholds in red.

I could see this process was a long commitment.

"What's the temp on arrival?"

"Minus 150, but we can rapidly come up to minus 20 or minus 15, then it's got to be slow from there on in."

"So he'll be ready in..."

"Do the math."

"Minus 15 to normothermia, that's 54 degrees... at 4 degrees a day... 12 or 13 days? Do you have to stay for it all?"

"No. He can be sent to the ICU when he's at plus fifteen to seventeen Celsius. I can probably hand over before that, at twelve. My team know how to treat the arrhythmias."

"And his mind?"

"This."

She knelt before the base of the cryo-tube and entered a combination. A cartridge was ejected into her hand, about the height of her palm and similar in area.

"What's that?"

"Everything John Wesley needs to become himself again."

"His mind?"

"No. Connexions, background, understanding. Family, if he has one. I hope he does. It's a packet of love, if you like."

"Messages, basically."

"More. More complex. A holistic narrative, built by the psychologist who supervised his induction. It's pretty standard. It seems to help."

She slid the cartridge into a slot on the wall and placed a button, the size of ancient dime, onto the parietal region of his skull. I had seen the pin that protruded from the button, and winced as she pushed it through the scalp and bone.

"The inner part sits in the dura and transmits. Don't do this at home Stephen. If you catch a scalp artery you'll bleed out in half an hour. Look, it's pretty boring after this. You might as well leave me to it. I'll let you know how he is in a week or so."

"When will he become aware, or talk?"

"Day 7 or 8, if we lighten the sedative. But I like them flat until low normothermia, 34.5 or 35. It's more comfortable."

"Do they all... make it?"

"Physically, yes. 100% in my hands. Mentally, as you know..." (she did not mention Amanda by name in front of the new patient, insentient though he was) "not everyone does well."

I left the room.

And made a decision: never to be frozen.

*

"How's the patient?" Eight days later. Too many days, passing without progress.

"Pretty good. He wants to start work already!"

"What as?"

"You don't generally get to know these things in advance, unless it's some sort of VIP deal – which it never is on Rushalyn – but he's a pastor! Just trained."

"The church on the quay. What an assignment! But he's keen, you say."

"Absolutely. I like him. He made a joke half an hour after I cut the sedation. I had to – his read-outs were all ahead of the curve. It was taking elephantine doses to keep him under. He's only nineteen."

"Why volunteer for a church on Rushalyn? What's his story?"

"That's between him and his psychologist. Perhaps he's a mass murderer, perhaps he lost a bet. All that is behind him."

"I knew the name rang a bell."

"John Wesley. What does it mean?"

"Wesley was a church leader on Earth. A sect."

"Never heard of him."

*

Little was seen of John Wesley around town. Iliana told me he was renovating the church's interior. I paid a visit. It was a gloriously sunny day. The textured sea glittered and hurt my door he shouted down from a room at the top.

"Come in. You'll have to give it a kick though."

A kick didn't quite do it, so I shouldered my way in. Stained glass windows on the seaward side, which I had not been able to see on my approach from the quay, flooded the interior with yellows, greens, reds and blues. A spiral stairway of packed granite invited me up. There were three levels; the first, at ground-level, was a space for worship, able to hold no more than ten or fifteen settlers if arranged in disciplined rows. The second contained the pastor's living quarters. The third, conical in shape like the roof above it, was a storage area and an effective look-out. Here there were small square windows in three positions; one looking out to sea, one looking parallel to the Maleçon towards the mountain on the other side of the bay, and one overseeing the settlement as it merged into the brown-field site and encircling zone of fissures.

"It's beautiful." I said, meaning it.

Adolescence had left its mark on John Wesley, roughening the skin, leaving needle-like marks where, a few years ago – or perhaps fifty - there must have been suppurating acne. The upside, I concluded, was that it gave the sufferer a worldly look. His self-esteem had weathered a sustained attack.

"Thank you," he replied.

"I am Dr Stephen Isso. I'm a medical examiner."

"I know."

"Dr Murphy mentioned you to me?"

"No. You were there when I was taken out of the tank."

"But... you were cold, you hadn't yet awoken."

His look became steely. "I guess everyone is different. I could hear everything. I could feel everything. I heard your voice, and when I hit the ward I asked an orderly who had been in the thawing room. She told me."

"I'm sorry. You must have been in pain."

"Indescribable actually. Until Dr Murphy started the infusion. That was balm."

I was shocked and disarmed. But I had business. I asked if we could speak on a lower floor, where I did not have to bend my neck. He agreed. There were chairs in the living quarters. I was distracted, again, by the view. A limitless sky.

"I think you have something for me John."

"I do. The trouble is I don't know what."

"It needs to be unlocked. The memory. How's the therapy going, by the way?"

"Routine. Not as interesting as you might think. Staged confrontation with whatever demons I encountered in my previous life. But I know who I am, how I got here."

"I have to ask, I'm curious. Why cryo?"

"I made a choice, when I was seventeen, the age of consent... that was twenty-five years ago. I heard the calling, I knew I needed to do more with my life... more than I could achieve on my home planet. Too close to centre, completely free of religion. Nothing, for someone like me."

"And your family?"

"They understood. In fact, my mother told me there was a church man in our family tree, several hundred years ago, before the 1st-wave. She supported me."

"And you waited in cryo for a suitable settlement."

"Yes. There was a church here, but no-one to care for it. A perfect fit, don't you think?"

His hand spiralled under the ceiling, and he laughed with the confidence of an older, more experienced man. I was pleased for him.

"I mean, what else is a young man to do in this crazy galaxy of ours?"

"Crazy how? Don't be afraid to express political views by the way. The Ministry of Longevity is blind to those."

"Rubbish. You are centre. You're involved. I arrived here with a burden. I remember her face, your friend."

"Vanessa Eo."

"That's right. She came to me a few days before I was despatched here."

"While you were under? How?"

"There is an interface. Feeds into the cartridge. It's supposed to allow a continuous accrual of context, if your family feels so inclined. Eo got in there. I recollect the colour of her words, the tone, the mood, but not the content. It's been crowded out by all the personal context. That, I suppose, is the downside of using the human mind as a carrier. Especially when it's coming out of cryo-trauma. I'm afraid you will have to wait until it comes back to me."

I didn't want to leave. I searched my own memory for a key word, some sequence imparted to me by Vanessa during the final conversation that would send John Wesley into an open fugue. But nothing came. He was holding back; he had the advantage here. The key was his trust in me. And I was a long way from gaining that.

Before taking my leave I gave him something to chew on; "By the way, Vanessa Eo made a significant sacrifice in visiting you John. Demotion, at the very least. Whatever you have needs to be shared. I may be centre, but centre is heterogeneous. A broad church, as Vanessa told me."
He watched me leave. I needed to do better than that.

*

It was inevitable that John Wesley and Amanda Hacaleff should come together. I found out when Iliana approached me on the Maleçon, while I was having a peaceful lunch. There was no wind. The quay and the church stood benignly to my right as I looked seaward. The mountain stood guard to my left. My bread was spread over some paper that I had laid on the low wall. I churlishly cursed the designers for failing to place benches here. The world-builders had left a marvellous foundation in the Maleçon, it could have been much enhanced by the first gen arrivals. Then I scolded myself; the first gen had interested in survival, growth, proving to the Ministry of Expansion that Rushalyn was viable. If not, if Rushalyn became a resource/money pit, they would be withdrawn, the settlers' investment in time, energy, in life, wasted.

Iliana put a hand on the edge of the paper, signalling her presence. I had been too deep in thought to notice her approach. Before reflecting on the absence of benches, I had been reflecting on the passing of time. Two and a half weeks now, and short weeks, given the contracted nature of these Rushalyn days.

"Stephen. We need to talk. I saw you here from the top of the hospital."

"Good to know I'm always visible."

"John Wesley has gone inland with Amanda Hacallef."

I looked to the invisible stars above in general chastisement.

"I thought she was under observation! Can't the retrieval guys fetch her?"

"There's no crime in having a picnic."

"That's what they're doing. Having a picnic? Where, exactly?"

"They are heading through the forest as we speak. I'm sincerely hoping they don't go beyond the grasslands."

"Shall we follow?" It was what Iliana wanted to hear. She was already heading for the streets that led to the brown-field area. I hurried after her, stuffing the bread into my mouth.

We caught up with them using Iliana's wrist piece. It was locked onto the bracelet that Amanda wore as part of her voluntary section. The apparent self-harm/suicide attempt, followed by the rushed retrieval from the vicinity of the energy-well, had fulfilled the criteria for a restriction in liberty. Governor Mcrae had signed it off, sensibly asking Iliana to downgrade the section from level 4 to level 3, giving the girl a sense of freedom, the physical ability to walk and meet where and whom she wished, but always with her precise location known to the medical team. The bracelet was preferred to a dermal chip because wearing it demonstrated acquiescence, and insight. (Psychiatric law was not my expertise, but Iliana explained that the highest level, 8, gave centre, represented by her, the legal right to place Amanda in a medically induced coma – for her own protection.)

We spotted them in the grasslands, two heads and two pairs of shoulders making progress through the chest high flora. We ducked down and parted a line through the grass using the wrist piece to guide us. The couple moved towards the rope bridge. If they crossed it, we agreed in muted voices, we would have to intervene.

"Can't you do anything to her through that bracelet?"

Iliana laughed. "No. That's level 6. Remote temporary incapacitation. I'd need an off-planet warrant for that. All we have today is the power of persuasion."

The wrist piece showed that they had started to cross the bridge. We hurried, but could not find a way to keep them in view while keeping ourselves hidden in the grass. In the end we knelt down a metre away from the edge of the grassland, where it sloped down to river bank, and used our outstretched arms to create narrow windows that swayed in the breeze. We saw the couple arrive at the bridge's mid-point. We looked at each other. This was the trigger we had agreed on. But John and Amanda now stopped. They looked over the side of the bridge. I had a horrible thought. Iliana saw the same image, and began to speak just as I was opening my mouth.

"Oh no! They wouldn't would they. How can she have..."

"Corrupted him?"

"So soon!"

"They're not. Look, they're just looking. And anyway..." I reached for reasons why they would not fulfil a hastily arranged suicide pact, "they brought a picnic!"

Iliana sighed with relief, then tensed up again. "It's a cover! She knows she's under surveillance."

"So what do we do, Dr Murphy?" I was trying to be light, but it came across as a direct transfer of responsibility. She was, after all, Amanda's doctor.

"I'm going. The risk of doing nothing is greater than the risk of losing her trust."

"I agree." Though to me, the risk of losing John Wesley's trust was even greater.

We ran out of the grassland and along the edge of the river bank. Iliana had a two metre head start, and I failed to catch up with her. As she scrambled up the hillock that the builders had formed to create a foundation for the bridgehead, I looked anxiously towards the young pair, in case they...

But John Wesley did not have suicide in mind. Alerted to Iliana's entry onto the bridge by the swaying that is caused, he stood in front of Amanda protectively. Iliana slowed down as she neared them, her confidence that they were not going to throw themselves over the side increasing. We had got it all wrong, but it was too late to worry about looking foolish.

"What the hell is going on?" demanded John, again speaking in a manner beyond his years. And his vocation. He looked over Iliana's shoulder at me, with plain dislike.

"We were worried," replied Iliana.

"You followed us."

"Amanda knows the score," I said, hoping to sound authoritative. "She is a suicide risk." Might as well use the word, I thought.

"Well I'm pleased to be able to tell you, Dr Isso, Dr Murphy, that Amanda is very safe. The bigger question is how you could think that I, a pastor, could be complicit in this apparent... suicidality."

This was a difficult question. I stepped in.

"We don't know you John. You've just got out of the tube. There is a high incidence of psychological morbidity... sometimes we have to assume the worst."

"Dr Isso, you are trying to sound like an expert, but I know you are not. Vanessa told me all about you..."

"Coming back is it John? The message."

"By degrees. You know nothing. You just go where the trouble is. So, in fearing the worst, you assume the worst, about people like me. About my stability... my faith. How could I allow a life to be taken?"

I could not stand this rubbish. "Come on Iliana. Let the young ones continue their picnic." I was angry. "But," turning back to them, raising my voice, "don't proceed across the bridge. If you do, I'll have a retrieval team down here in an instant. Understood?"

Iliana did not break rank with me. But neither did she agree. It didn't matter. I was centre. I was allowed to act like this. The kids turned back to the peaceful flow below them. I recognised the sulky cast of their expressions. I looked back at them once more, from the bank. Amanda raised her eyes, and met mine. There was a moment. It might have been gratitude, for it was evident that we at least cared. Then she looked down again. In my mind, at that moment, she was in his power. But on the way back it occurred to me that I had it all wrong.

*

"Is there a diagnostic test for PCI?" I asked Iliana.

"No. But there are strong indicators. Why? Do you doubt Amanda's diagnosis?"

"Not hers. John Wesley's."

"What? He's about the most well adjusted incomer I've seen. His cartridge was complete."

"You saw it?"

"No, of course not, it's private. But he's slotted straight into society, to work. You should see what he's done to the church."

"Mmmm. I'd rather not."

"You've developed an antipathy towards him, after the dressing down he gave you on the bridge. Come on. You're better than that."

"It wasn't pretty."

"You've got to get over your religion issues, Stephen."

"So what if I suggested he's got the worst PCI ever? That he's acting over it."

"I'd laugh. It's clearly untrue."

"So give me a test."

"Fine. It's not that hard, but it's potentially dangerous. DON'T do this."

"Trust me."

"Present the candidate with a moral dilemma. A thought-experiment. For visual and emotional immediacy, reference the candidate's own experiences. Imagine you are a first gen settler, one of the earliest. Having stabilized your environment, you have called centre and arranged for your fiancée, say, to be despatched. Her cryo-tube is dropped on an anti-grav pallet onto a newly cultivated field out back.

"But there was a delay in transit, the carrier had to divert around a union skirmish. Your fiancée's cyro-tube is running on the battery in its base, but that will run down in twelve hours. She will begin to thaw, but without the usual protections and precautions... those you have seen for yourself. She will die from cardiac arrest or suffer irreversible brain damage, and her tissues, having reached ambient temperature, will degrade over the coming weeks. It's simple. All you have to do is attach the tube to the power supply in your basic medical compound. But..."

"There's a power cut, right?"

"Yes. It's not likely here on Rushalyn, with our obvious... gift, but in an early settlement, perhaps. In fact it's quite likely. So, you have also been looking after three other recently arrived incomers, waiting for the habitation to be optimised before thawing them. Their tube batteries are over half full, no worries. But, to save your fiancée you will need to remove a battery from one of the three, and place it in her tube."

"That's a classic bind."

"The test is not the decision... but how you approach it? If you were being tested, what would you say?"

"I'd accept that I have an emotional investment here, and explore the gain and the pain both to myself, as her lover, and to the settlement's future. I would also compare the difference in allowing someone to die passively – someone who has suffered ill-fortune that was outside my power, with active killing, i.e. removing someone's life support. It's a horrible scenario. You are evil."

"Perhaps I am. I've got to say Stephen, your approach to the problem is a little cold. I might refer you for an evaluation based on that précis."

"And how would a patient with PCI approach it?"

"They would crumble in a heap, their thoughts would become totally disorganised. They would cry themselves into a stupor. Assuming they engaged with it, as opposed to running away or attacking the interviewer, the overload of emotional what ifs would come close to shutting them down."

"Wow. How could you present a scenario like that to John Wesley?" I asked.

"I don't want to. It's not necessary. In fact his counsellor has signed him off. He is sound."

Great. Good for John.

*

I came back to Xanthe Bellaron's diary. She had been here. She had nothing to hide from the secure microphones in the walls of her accommodation. The law protected her words. So naïve.

I played the audio files whenever I returned to my quarters, and trained myself to tolerate the largely tedious rendition of quotidian concerns. But the prosaic, bland colours (she was no poet) served to create a scene. I learned that she was always in demand. Dr O'Connor was happy for her to see new patients, to make diagnoses and formulate treatment plans. My attention narrowed on her descriptions – conscientiously anonymised – of recent arrivals. They were a sick lot. I paused her words, rewound, repeated, inserted date marks on the visual counterpart, dragged them off the files and superimposed them on a compressed time-line representing the history of Rushalyn. Fifty years. Periodic peaks in arrivals, many of whom, it seemed, had required medical attention. Not PCI. Physical problems. Some psychological stuff, sure – a bit of depression, the odd psychotic – but a mix. The spectrum of disease one might see anywhere in the human galaxy. Coming to Rushalyn.

Why?

Where from?

And how?

I shared those questions with Iliana. She knew nothing and could not help me. I knew who I had to ask. I remembered the offended pout to my question, my prescient question: 'And how was it populated?'

Did he know?

Of course he knew. Even if he wasn't responsible, he knew.

*

Day 25. My dining table pulsed with a different combination of colours. Red and black stripes, rotating around the perimeter. An official message that came with a monetary penalty if not accessed and acknowledged in a certain time frame. The speed at which the stripes coursed round the table told me I had another hour. My fault, for failing to link incoming messages to a standard wrist piece. (I had wanted to avoid wandering around Rushalyn with an accessory that identified me so clearly as an agent of centre.)

The message was brief. I was recalled. The investigation was being wound up. I had three days to finish up, hire a ride to the intersection and await the next official craft. It was signed by my immediate superior, surgeon-general Phoebe Grant. She could have delivered it herself, adding a softener. We knew each other well. She wasn't one to communicate via memos, it was not her style. Therefore, I concluded, this was not her decision.

The order stoked a natural tendency to insubordination. They didn't want answers – so I wanted them all the more. They wanted me in three days – I could stretch that to five, as long as there were no patrols in the area who could be sent down to arrest me. That, surely, was unlikely. To seize a medical examiner would cause ripples.

I planned my remaining time on Rushalyn. Although energised by the process of calculating the final moves, I made my way across the mountain's tidy paths with a heavy heart. The recall confirmed that I was causing trouble, both for myself, and for my contacts. I feared for Vanessa Eo's life.

*

She wore an expression I recognised. The mature nurse who knows more than most of the doctors she works under, who can see how things will go even before the tests have been run, and who has a genuine ability to care. These qualities were evident in the way she looked at others in the bar, understanding without speaking, and in the crows' feet that radiated from the corners of her eyes, evidence of a thousand supportive smiles.

I took a seat next to her. She knew who I was and why I had come. She nodded towards the door, and I followed her out. A cool breeze came off the sea, carrying the scents of the sea. We walked, Xanthe leading, through narrow, half-century old streets squeezed between first generation buildings.

"Where are we going?" I asked, trying to sound unflustered.

"The park."

"The park?"

It did not take long. The last street opened out into a small, but nicely arranged square. A quadrangle of grass surrounded by a cloister of trees, with a statue in the middle.

"Who is that?"

"The chief builder. Benson Crite."

Xanthe directed me to a bench. We sat next to each other in the dark, facing the statue which alone was illuminated by ground lights. It was uncomfortable, but this was her location, her choice.

"Xanthe. Tell me about the arrivals. Early on."

She smiled wryly. All she ever needed was to be asked. "They were coerced, I'm sure of it."

"They didn't want to come?"

"They didn't really care. They were ill, cryo was their last refuge."

"How did they get here?"

"I never could work it out. They had no idea. They had paid to be stored, and someone broke the contract."

"Didn't you report it?"

"I told Dr O'Connor. He wasn't interested. No one is interested in history here, Dr Isso. It's taboo. And he said, O'Conner - 'What can we do Xanthe? It's not our business. Incomers are vetted, centre signs every one off. We treat them if they are ill, how they got here is not our concern.' And he was right, wasn't he?"

"It's an understandable attitude."

We looked across the square in silence for a few moments. Occasional settlers crossed it or passed along one or two sides, flitting between the trees. Xanthe stirred again. She was taking it slow.

"Why do you think they were sent Dr Isso?"

"I have no idea."

"But you work for centre. You can find out."

"I don't have access..."

"Then why come here?"

"I'm here because of the gentry, the deaths."

"I know. But beyond that, something larger. Don't you agree there's something larger here, on Rushalyn?"

"Like what, Xanthe?"

"That we are an experiment. That's what I feel, have always felt."

"Life on the envelope is like that. That is the deal, if you like. A new start, the knowledge that you are one of the first, a part of history. Not all settlements are successful, we know that."

"Yes, if you make that deal. But the cryos I saw, I don't think they agreed. They just arrived."

I had nothing more say. She was full of conjecture, but empty of fact. Until,

"Dr Isso, they had no-one to care for them. The nominated families, they weren't interested, and there was no enforcement. The old governor didn't care. I was probably the only one who actually tried to get under the surface. And most of the time, there was nothing to find. All gone. That's cryo, I guess. You lose yourself. Their minds and memories were discarded, like the tubes they came in... thrown down the back of the mountain. Nobody cared."

"You did your best Xanthe."

For the for the first time she turned to look at me. "Dr Isso. Please, while you are here, or when you go back to centre, try to find out how they were sent."

I nodded, but I did not mean it. This wasn't my mission, and it wasn't my problem. I walked back with her across the old town, and through it to the other side of the settlement where she lived. My thanks, on the steps of the common entrance to her miserable accommodation block, were sincere. She had given me something. Now I knew where to look.

*

The discarded cryo-tanks had been cast down into a man-made depression in a face of the mountain that settlers did not visit. There were giant-sized steps in the depression, where world-builders had blasted out the sea-wall blocks. The tanks lay all in a jumble, upended, on their sides, dented and split by the force of their fall. Crawling over and among them looked to be too dangerous, due to the risk of slipping into the spaces between their smooth flanks. But they were still named; the characters had been stamped onto the metal plates with a sense of permanence.

"How can we ever find it?" asked Iliana, who stood at my side at the top of the depression.

"I know?"

"Go on."

"A drone. I have one. But we should do it at night. Someone will spot it."

We returned at midnight with my borrowed drone. Semi-autonomous, it threw a narrow beam of light over the cryo-tanks. Its view was transmitted to Iliana's hand-held. The drone's memory ensured that it moved from one tank to the next and did not repeat itself. It was two hours before I, who had taken the hand-held from Iliana so that she could rest her eyes, cried out. I recognised a name. The drone stayed put, tethered to the formation of characters the spelt 'Amanda Hacallef'. In this piece of junk she had been transported head down, eyes closed, tissues solidified, her nerves bitten by the frost that she had decided was necessary to preserve or extend her life.

"How do we get to it?" asked Iliana.

I peered over the edge. The drone was halfway down the stepped gradient.

"We'll need to lift it."

"That will mean asking for help. We can't do that. We must go down."

"We need a rope."

We agreed that I would make the descent the following night. Iliana would obtain the rope.

Time. Too much time.

The day that followed was not normal. For the first time on Rushalyn, I felt uneasy. As I walked the Maleçon and glanced down at the granite blocks, I thought of the cryo-tanks and their abandonment. The way they had been thrown down there revealed an expedient, lazy side to the settlement. Out of sight, out of mind. In an outpost for which minerals and electronic resources had a heightened value, why were they not recycled?

Embarrassment?

Adding to my unease was the sense that I was being followed, a quite unnecessary activity here where every action was restricted to the plateau of the bay, and access to any local data was recorded and sent up to the governor.

The smell of cryopreservative began to overpower me. Its petrol-blue traces remained on the granite surfaces and in the curves of broken tanks, many of which had been ruptured. I grew more nimble as I descended, getting used to the dynamic of my weight on the rope.

Amanda's tank lay on its side, intact. I saw the open top with a hinged hatch (a different model to John Wesley's) from which she would have been extracted feet first. I planted my own feet on the tank's side and tried to find my balance. Time had solidified its position among the other tubes, and there seemed to be little danger of it moving suddenly. I located the control unit in the base, with an analogue temperature arc and a series of now lifeless digital displays. Next to these was a slot – and yes! it contained a grey cartridge. Kneeling with thighs apart to give me stability, I leaned over and tried to release the cartridge. Without a code, and without internal power, it required simultaneous pressure on four releases, each flush with the surface. Half a decade of exposure to the elements had stiffened the mechanism.

"Send the drone back down would you?" I transmitted to Iliana via my wrist. It was soon humming at my shoulder. "Can you get it heat up these catches?"

"Point, I'll tell it what to do."

"But not the cartridge."

Way above me, she tapped out the instructions. The drone threw out a beam of infra-red which slowly expanded the housing and allowed me to push the releases with a piece of shirt over my hand to protect my fingertips. The cartridge popped out.

His face was clear. It filled most of the screen. Amanda had inherited his narrow nose and deep set eyes. The quality of the data was good, despite the case's corrosion.

\- Amanda. I know, as a parent, that I cannot control your reactions. You are independent now. My words will be filtered by a mind I helped to develop but cannot predict. You are your own woman, and no longer my child. But let me explain, so that you can understand... and make a good life, wherever you arrive.

Our sector has no future. Attun Nal is dying. Centre knows it, but has not yet admitted as much, at least not to its citizens. There is no growth. The plague limits expansion across the surface of each planet, and it is only a matter of time before Banda is afflicted. We haven't talked about it much at home, I have tried to avoid the subject, but there are rumours that it has come to Ascylus, a system three hops away. We trade with them, so it will come to us. When I made enquiries about moving, a year ago, well before it had skipped to Ascylus, I got nowhere. Bureaucratic inertia... conscious though. Centre are blocking. They know we're doomed.

So I decided, a year ago, that you must leave. There is a strict quarantine on all bio goods coming out of At'Nal, but I have found a route. The time is now. When the rumours about Ascylus are confirmed the net that is falling around us will be impenetrable. The time is now. Tomorrow you will go into cryo. I am sorry.

He turned away from the recording device. I strained to look past him, to the backdrop, the home in which Amanda had grown up. There were very few clues. Perhaps he had made this message in a utility room. That would make sense; away from her curious eyes. More likely, from the little I knew about adolescent girls, she was upstairs, shutting the world out. Speaking of which – would her mother get a look in here?

If you stay here Amanda, and the plague does not arrive, you will have a life, but it will have little meaning... by which I mean you may be personally fulfilled, happy even, but because At'Nal sector is doomed all that you achieve will be lost in a few generations. I cannot accept that. Your mother and I were pioneers, we came the Banda because we were proud to push the envelope. It is just bad luck that the blight has drawn a line under this little chapter of Dominion history. We thought we would part of a long story; in fact we will disappear into a footnote.

Amanda's father snapped himself out of self-justification mode. Back to practicalities.

You will come around in a different world, across the galaxy. It will be a newish settlement, one of four that I have shortlisted and secured guarantees on. They need young incomers. You will have a family. I hope they are good to you, but I cannot guarantee that. 3000fL will be transferred to them when they sign the papers, ring-fenced for post-cryo therapy. That, along with this bundle, with keep you grounded. You are deep Amanda – your mind needs to be nurtured. Once you have found a new equilibrium, you can make your own decisions. You can move away, come back to centre, stay near the edge, create a new line of pioneers, as your mother and I hoped to do. She would agree with me, I am sure, if she was here. I know she would.

You will hate me. That is unavoidable. I hate myself more. You will cut yourself off from my memory. I can take that, as a parent. I have done everything in my power to give you a good and meaningful life. You have always been strong, you will survive, you will find your way. If I am supremely fortunate, you will look upon my memory with affection.

I love you Amanda.

He reached forward to cut the recording.

I looked at Iliana, whose eyes had filmed over. Then, in anger, she exploded.

"They double-crossed him. Took the credits, dumped the can, didn't even retrieve the cartridge. It's sick!"

"And convenient. Nobody wants to know your background on Rushalyn. A perfect destination."

"For people smugglers you mean?"

"Perhaps. Who knows? It's a growth industry."

"This is my home you're talking about."

"Really, Iliana? You were once an incomer too."

She hated the inference, and we parted on cold terms.

*

Governor Boka Mcrae was emboldened. He must have received his own red and black-striped message that morning.

He strutted through the corridors of the hospital as though he owned the place. We moved to a small office that I had commandeered. The desk was covered in maps, notes and files. His visit was unexpected. He, and two assistants, had picked me up from the path lab where Iliana and I had been trying to better characterise John Bulstrode's leukaemia. The trio had the lab entered without permission. With gubernatorial prerogative he could access any room or building on Rushalyn.

We stood in the office. There were not enough chairs.

"Dr Isso. It has been three weeks. I am informed that the investigation has been terminated. Centre requires a report."

"The report will follow. I need time to write it."

"In a case like this, on the envelope, there are sensitivities. Centre feels that your interpretations need to be assessed in context, locally..."

So the circuit was complete. My clumsy attempt to access information through Vanessa had raised a flag, and centre no longer trusted my judgement. Mcrae had been asked to handle me.

"This is a medical investigation," I insisted.

"Was. It's finished."

"It's finished when I say it is. Like I said, it's medical, not political."

"That's not for us to say, is it? Perhaps you are too close to the details. Come on, give me something, something to send back up." A pragmatist. I saw a flash of sympathy.

"What do you want to know Mcrae?"

"Theories. Any final requests for assistance." What was this?

I looked at the two assistants.

"And you are?"

"They are police. Plain clothes. I thought it was time to involve them. You may have met. I believe you borrowed a drone from them."

"I... I didn't recognise you. Sorry." I shook their hands automatically. "How many of you are there, by the way?"

They did not appear to have authority to talk.

"Fifteen, Dr Isso. There isn't a great deal of policing required here, usually." said Mcrae.

"And who is your chief?" I knew this already. I just wanted one of them to say something. Again, Mcrae answered for them,

"That's me actually. The roles of police chief and governor are combined. They become separated when a settlement hits 25,000."

So the police were, in effect, a personal guard for the governor.

"And they are authorised to hear your interim conclusions."

"I'm not ready..."

"But we are Dr Isso."

I was cornered. The two police expanded their chests. Yes, I vaguely recognised them now. So, I embarked on a summary, an edited version. Mcrae was right; I needed resolution. In a few days the skies above Rushalyn would darken with the approach of a transport, come to take me off planet after my failure to catch or commandeer a shuttle to the intersection. But I did not have all the necessary information. A time–honoured approach in these circumstances was to kick the hornet's nest – an insect I had never seen but knew all about. It was time.

"The five died of natural causes. That is established, and I have not revised Dr Murphy's post-mortem findings. The focus of my investigation has been on why those natural events occurred in a temporal cluster." My use of technical words was intended to lose Mcrae, and the police, on the trail of thought. Mcrae would not have the humility to admit that he didn't understand.

"Temporal cluster... you mean they happened in a specific time-frame?" I misjudged him.

"Yes."

"And what is your theory as to why?"

"I think this case is less about time, and more about place. The hunting grounds. The energy-well." I had hoped for reaction, but saw nothing.

"How? The well has always been there."

"Consider this. Look at this map. The hunting grounds flow all around the well. The well is not the central point, the grounds extend far further inland, and do not have a real limit. Hunters go as far as they want. But generally, from what I have learned, the Magalunda tend to stay in this zone." I tapped the unfolded map with its cross-hatched area. I preferred this to the scrolling, elevated plan that the desk in my flat was capable of generating. Mcrae touched the paper, and I caught a gleam of pleasure in his eye, at the feel of it.

"You think the well has something to do with the deaths then?"

"I do. I think there is an environmental factor behind these deaths, arising from the well, and that cumulative exposure to it accelerated the natural deaths of the five."

Mcrae rubbed his nose and blinked. Then he shook his head.

"No. No, no, no Dr Isso! It doesn't make sense. I could have told you, if you had asked..." He looked at me with something like condescension, as though I was a duller than expected child. "They all started hunting at different times, their exposure was very different. Shazad Musa, for instance, she only started hunting a month before she died. Whereas as Familian Da Silva had been going out there for years, escorting groups in his R&R role. And Dr O'Connor, he'd been hunting for a good eight years, since before his retirment. It doesn't make sense."

"I accept that governor. But there may be another factor. The Magalunda toll."

"The what?"

"My term. I have been looking into how many Magalunda they killed."

"What can that have to do with it?"

"I look for associations. Some associations are due to causation."

"And is there one?"

"You tell me." I tapped the desk and brought it to life. Its light caused the papers that lay on it to glow. Then I collected up the papers and accessed the file that I had spent a few evenings compiling. A tally of kills. It included all of Rushalyn's gentry.

"How did you get this?"

"R&R. Familian Da Silva's office."

"He kept a running total?"

"No. But he did record the outcome of each hunt to send up to the Ministry of Science, xeno-cultural division. That is a standing order, if centre gives permission for hunting on a settled planet. In case they need to revise the directive."

"In case they realise we are destroying an indigenous culture you mean?"

"Yes."

It was working. The hornets of his mind were flitting, looping around. Agitating.

"So show me." He leaned over the desk. The two police were also fascinated.

"You don't hunt, I seem to recall," I commented, mischievously. Mcrae grunted. "Nor you, boys?" They did not answer. "No, I guess not." No harm in making them dislike me. All part of the kicking plan.

I scrolled through the list on the desk. The names of the victims were near the top, but there were others among them. By each name were numbers ranging from 15 to 35.

"I had no idea. It's carnage!" whispered Mcrae.

"It surprised me too."

"But these names, with over 30 kills. They haven't been ill. They are all alive and well. I should warn them."

"No. I have proved nothing. Only a weak association."

"And if you were to prove a strong association, what would be your explanation? How can a tally of kills translate to death, natural or otherwise? If they were not murdered, what are you saying?"

"Nothing, yet."

"Come on doctor, play the game. Share your thoughts."

"It's philosophical territory. Cultural, even. If these kills have left a legacy, in the bodies of the victims, we are dealing with something supernatural. Beyond our understanding."

"Rushalyn is founded on science Dr Isso. As is your profession."

"Rushalyn is founded on the energy-well."

"Yes, of course."

"And who really understands the energy-well, Governor Mcrae?"

He paused, for a long time. I watched his eyes roam from kill list to map and back again.

"So what do you want to do? What do you need?"

This was Boka Mcrae's last question to me. It transformed my view of him. He lived between two forces; his own sense of duty to the health and development of human civilisation, and the political needs of his masters. These would, in an ideal galaxy, be congruent. Both should be directed towards the long term good of our expanding dominions. But anyone who had worked in centre, and saw the perpetual shuffle of officials on the way up or the way down, knew that powerful drives of self-protection and expediency could pollute nobler principles. In offering me everything, it seemed he had made his choice. He recognised where the investigation was taking me. Here, at the end of his middling career, he wanted me to see it through. The fact that he had said this in front of tame police showed that he had no fear. They might inform on him. He did not care.

"The world-builders' original feeds."

He smiled, knowing that I understood how unreasonable the request was.

"That might take more time than you have."

"It would need to be a... unilateral action."

"Indeed. Give me half a day Dr Isso."

"I appreciate it, Governor."

But he was not interested in respect, and left, the brace of police in tow, without comment.

*

"Is it surprising, really? After what they did to you, that you can't feel a thing."

"But I do feel. Too much. My skin is on fire."

She had relapsed. Physical collapse. A technician at a substation on the periphery of the settlement, Dennis Lefeuvre, found her reaching through the metal fence, apparently trying to touch a ceramic insulator. He rushed back inside, pulled a lever to cut off the power (plunging an eighth of the settlement into cold darkness), and ran back out to drag her away. She stared back into his anxious, confused eyes but did not resist. He took her to the hospital.

And here we were again.

"That's just signals, a nociceptive storm, we would call it. No Amanda, I mean really feel. Perceive emotions."

"I..."

"Perhaps it will develop, like it does in a child. That's what you are, in a way. The cold has wiped the slate of human experience clean. Who was it anyway? Who put you in the tube?"

A final attempt to lead her to her own memories. Amanda shook her head. There were none.

"You don't know. I'll tell you Amanda. Your father."

She gaped at me. Her mouth, fallen, spelled Why? I could have showed her the cartridge, brought her face to face with him. But I had to do this. I had to hurt her.

"I had assumed it would be because you were dying, but it wasn't. You don't have a disease, a cancer, an infection. It was to protect you from getting a disease. The plague."

I touched a button and angled the head of the bed up. Her pale gown moved over skin that was still over-sensitive. The nerves were proliferating and recalibrating after seven years of stasis. Every touch was transmitted to her brain as a pain stimulus. I winced in sympathy.

"More lidocaine? Let me turn it up."

She nodded.

"It'll settle, the hyperalgesia."

Her face relaxed a little.

"Your mother, according to the census, died in an industrial accident. She was working for energy in the southern continent on Banda, supervising the construction of a dam. There was a problem, a valley was flooded before the population were evacuated. She was there, helping... Your upbringing was left to your father. He watched the plague, saw it creep across systems, and decided to remove you from danger."

Images fell into place. Watching the memories click together behind her eyes was akin to child's game. A rim of moisture under her left eye formed a drop and fell. I touched a tissue to her cheek.

"I came home from school. Daddy was standing in the kitchen. The radio was on. I walked in, and there were three others, dressed in grey. Two women, one man. No words. One of them jabbed me."

She remembered.

"I was smiling when I saw Dad; I had good news for him, I'd been selected for an away team, to survey a new agricultural site. He was cynical. I'd caught him in a bad mood. He said 'what's the point?' I didn't know what he meant."

"He did it to save you Amanda."

I held my face close to hers.

"Don't hate him Amanda. The grief killed him before the epidemic took hold of Banda."

I knew this. My basic access rights had confirmed his passing. Caught in a rain storm 25k from his settlement. 'Misadventure'. No; I suspect he just went for the long walk.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked.

"To make you understand."

"Why?"

"This is what you need, to make you whole again. Without it, you will remain as empty as the tube they threw down the mountain."

*

I messaged Iliana and suggested that we meet in the thawing facility. Public appearances were out of the question now. All whom I touched were going to be at risk, and their futures likely to be destroyed. She was sitting on a stool against empty, tile-lined backdrop. It struck me that Iliana must have witnessed and managed many thaws. But not Amanda's. She would never have allowed it to go like that.

"Well here we are again," I said. "How did you think it went, when Amanda was thawed?" Iliana may have been expecting a friendlier opening. But things had changed between us. Part her warning, part my fear of contaminating her professionally. And time. No time for friendship.

"As you know, there have been a few improvements in here since her time. Amanda probably woke up, opened her eyes and met the new world head-on."

"And without the cognitive therapy that had been paid for. Was that under Gordon O'Connor?"

"Nominally, he would have been in charge. But I doubt he had any direct responsibility for her mistreatment, if that's what you are saying. He tended to delegate..."

"So he could get out and so some hunting."

"You're still casting around for motives? Who hated him. You think Amanda managed it?" A suppressed laugh, mild derision.

"We know he wasn't murdered, don't we. I'm not looking for motives. This is above motive."

"Is that why you asked to meet me? To explain."

"I don't have anything to explain yet. But I want to ask you something. Will you come to the energy-well with me?"

I saw fear. She held her left hand in her right protectively. The hand that had trembled when we crouched behind the wall.

"What's the matter Iliana?"

"You know Stephen. You knew when we were up on the wall."

"What is it? Parkinson's disease?"

I had broken her. She cried. I, the injurer, now tried to console her. She had no one else to lean on, and when her face and eyes were red raw, and her nose was dripping, she allowed me to hold her.

"I'm sorry Iliana. I'm so sorry. Do you know when?"

"It shouldn't come on for another twenty-five years. Early still, too early... but not now."

"When did you find out?"

"I ran a genetic panel when we got back from the hill. I've never agreed with them, I always tell me patients to avoid them. It does no good, knowing what cannot be avoided. But something happened to me out there."

"Acceleration. But you're better now."

"For how long? Did it change my timeline, bring it forward, like it did the others? How can I ever know? Until one day I notice that I can't prepare food, or my writing looks different? There will be no warning."

"Have you any idea how it could happen? A mechanism?" Best to take her mind away from her own fate, I figured, and apply it to the science.

"None. I have nothing in common with those five. Nothing."

"You knew them. You treated them."

Iliana looked at me in disgust. I had dared include her in the category they occupied, the hunting gentry. She shook her head.

"Was there anything else that you wanted with me Stephen?" She made it clear, in her words and her tone, that she now regarded herself as my tool, a means to my own end. She didn't know I had been recalled. In her eyes, I was an investigator looking for a result. I dominated her. I was centre. There was no affection.

"I'm going out there again."

"Why? What good can that do?" she asked. I was pleased. Perhaps she still had some concern for me.

"I need to see the channels, the quicksilver, whatever it is. It is the explanation, I am sure of it."

"Who will you take?"

"I wondered about Bulstrode."

"He won't go. He knows the leukaemia will come back. That is his fate."

"If it his fate, perhaps he won't mind. Did you ever run his genetics? Perhaps this is the year he dies."

"You don't care one little bit about us, do you?"

"I care. I care about the Amandas, the incomers diverted to colonies like Rushalyn to fill the ranks of pioneers, a commodity, hanging head down, warehoused in ships until the price was met, until the right settlement put out a call for more workers...with no thought of their welfare... for profit..."

"Stephen! Be careful! The whole hospital is wired."

"Is it? To where, to whom? Mcrae? The Ministry?"

I knew. But the risk was worth Iliana's re-engagement. She needed to know I cared.

"Good luck," she said quietly, and offered her still wet eyes and cheeks. I kissed her once.

*

The initial feeds were unlocked by the same archivist. The strength of Boka Mcrae's instruction overcame her need for 'two keys'. Even so, she needed time. The format was different. The truck and helmet feeds had been stored on tech that was indestructible but barely compatible with available devices on Rushalyn. I had to suffer these tedious and self-referential explanations before settling down with Mcrae to view them.

They arrived at dawn. With every passing minute the light improved. The carrier's down-facing feed gave a view of the sea. Incoming waves scrolled across the screen, outpaced by the lumbering vehicle that rushed over it. The coast came into view, and the carrier slowed. The bow feed showed the mountain, untouched, and the cliff that the chief had already identified as a potential site for settlement; all it needed was a bit of levelling. The screen went blank. The archivist made adjustments, and we were now looking at the feeds of the forward party who were sent to explore the first few kilometres of terrain inland. There were four of them. Their feeds quartered the screen. The sun was slow to rise on Rushalyn, then as now. Dawn stretched over two hours, and its strengthening light explored nearly all the colours of the visible spectrum.

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks. I shifted in my seat. Boka Mcrae leaned in to ask if we could fast-forward. But the archivist was entranced. We were here for the duration, it seemed. I tapped her on the shoulder. She understood. The feed was played at x1.5, then x3, then x5. The landscape was featureless, we were sure to notice a significant change.

During the playback we caught glimpses of the world builders' faces, as colleagues turned to face one another and say something. I tried but failed to identify Bulstrode. The feeds were unattributed. Perhaps he was not in the forward party.

We all saw the change. A distant column of shifting blue light rising up from a fissure, piercing the lower atmosphere. It occupied the centre of each world builder's feed; they barely took their eyes of it. The column thickened as they approached. Something must have been said, for they decided to move sideways, to skirt this glorious, unexpected feature. Out of the gloom rose a hill. The same hill Iliana and I had climbed. A natural look out, for those who were nervous of coming too close, too soon.

They trudged up its side. I saw heavy duty boots landing on jagged rocks at awkward angles. Then a general halt. All the feeds were stationary, save the tilt and yaw of head movements. Ahead, there was a break in the rocks. A path, carefully lined with hand sized rocks. At first I thought nothing of it. Iliana and I had followed the same path, though the border had long been disrupted.

Then I realised.

The feeds stopped. The final impression was of the sun breaking over an irregular landscape, its granite profile akin to the kind of graph Vanessa might present to her minister, an economy in turmoil, riding the winds of history and crisis. Then cut.

"What happened?" I asked of the archivist.

"They all just stop."

"Censored?"

"Given that all four stop simultaneously, then yes, someone has deliberately redacted them."

"Feeling nervous?" I quipped to Boka Mcrae. He was still staring at the screen, and the blacked out quadrants.

"I want to go there, to the hill," he murmured.

"It's a long trip. I made it once already."

"You're suggesting I'm too old."

"Yes. You are."

He laughed. "Dr Isso, never let it be said you are less than honest!"

I smiled back. If only he knew me.

*

I barely noticed the fissures, so focussed was I on the possibilities that awaited me as I crossed the short bridges. In the forest I used the clunky, standard issue wrist piece I had forsaken on my arrival, and cut through the rows towards the grassland and the edge of the river. Then the rope bridge, swinging like a pendulum in a fresh breeze. I steadied myself with two hands, and forced myself not to look back.

The hill was easy to spot in the magnesium glare thrown down by a high blue sun. I made straight for it. A short metal spade swung at my belt. A pair of fibre gloves was tucked into my belt.

On the hill I crouched at the wall, as before, and watched the lip of the energy-well for a while. There was no activity.

I began to dig at the base of the wall. Every few minutes I stood up to survey my surroundings. There was no movement.

The wall was once much higher. Its formation of large, irregular rocks and interposed fragments carried on well below the hill's surface. The mud and scree I was digging had been put there to conceal it. After an hour I stood in a hole, one side of which was solid wall. There was still no sign of it joining a floor. I extended the hole lengthways for a while, and revealed a niche. It was the size of a human head, and I fancied it might have accommodated a household god. Thus my mind made leaps and assumptions.

I dug down some more. There must be a floor.

Something shifted. The light changed. My head was shunted to one side by a blow. I saw the structure of the wall move and break. White light flooded new gaps as component pieces fell on me. My arms covered my head, and I contracted into a foetal position. It took a long time for the stones to settle. I was buried, but not crushed, and I could tell by the way things moved above me as I breathed that I was not going to die. The layer of rock over my body was not particularly thick. I did not know, yet, if any bones were broken. But my leg hurt badly.

A humming sound. A shout. My name. A pause. Then blinding light as a large rock was lifted away.

"Bloody idiot."

It was Iliana, accompanied by the retrieval team.

*

I was aware of the craft taking off, and relieved to know that we were returning to Rushalyn. This outweighed the acute embarrassment of having to be rescued.

The craft's smooth progress was interrupted. There was an explosion, and we were rocked sideways. My gut hit my chest as we lost altitude. We can have been no more than a few metres off the ground, as the deafening sound of rock scraping metal filled my ears. Still lying flat on a gurney, I looked sideways and saw the bonded wire that lent the hull its strength tear apart. Iliana fell away from me, her hands still cupped in the shape they had adopted while palpating my possibly broken tibia. I saw her head hit a storage unit. She fell unconscious.

The retrieval team, comprising pilot and paramedic, were up front. That was where the bolt had hit. I could not tell if they were injured or dead.

The craft skidded on its side and stopped. I was held in position by the belt that Iliana had secured around my waist, and now dangled against it from the gurney that had been attached to the floor, but was now protruding horizontally following the ninety-degree turn. A large tear in the roof, flapping free of the binding energy that had ensured the hull's integrity, framed a jag of landscape. Into this strode a man in metal capped boots.

Bulstrode ducked down to survey the craft's interior. He laid his weapon, a surface to air tube, on the ground.

"Doctor! You are having a very interesting day."

"What are you doing Bulstrode?"

"My job."

With his back bent he entered the craft. Demonstrating ample experience of the field, he checked Iliana's vital signs and nodded. He didn't bother with the pilot's cabin, knowing well that nobody could have survived the shell's impact up front. Then he unstrapped my waist and hauled me out, taking care not to stress the tibia that pain and unmistakable deformation told me was fractured.

"What do you mean?" I spoke into his back, for he held me as one would a large child and my head dangled down behind his broad shoulders.

"Wait a bit. I'll tell you."

"Are we alone?"

"Yes. That's the problem."

He sat me on the lip of the energy-well and strapped my leg. The pain eased a little as the stressed tendons and stretched nerves were realigned. I lay back and let the sweat begin to rise from my forehead. I suppressed the urge to vomit.

"Dr Murphy. Will she be safe?"

"Perfectly."

I regained my composure. I was in charge here. I was centre.

"Come on Bulstrode. Confess."

"To what?"

"The desecration."

He was bemused, but not particularly surprised. He had caught me at the wall, after all.

"How did you find out?" he asked.

"I've seen the initial feeds. The path up the hill. You were not the first to build on this planet. Were you in the forward party?"

"Yes. We found a simple building. Empty. No life. But signs."

"What? Go on."

"Chipped granite, rounded forms, primitive."

"Magalunda."

"Not typical. Perhaps the pregnant female. I still don't know."

"But culture, nevertheless."

He smiled, but it was a bitter expression. I kept the pressure on him.

"And what did you do with that discovery?"

"We all had a look. We knew the feeds had been seen in the ready camp, by our chief. There was no question of keeping it a secret among the small group. We completed the mission to survey the energy-well, climbed down and back up, then returned to base."

"And you debated. It was all about the money, I suppose."

"Yes Doctor. Not something you have to worry about, I suppose."

"You'd be surprised."

"You seem very confident. Is that how they train you in centre?"

"No. It's a gift. I imagine you argued among yourselves, weighing the loss in world-building fees against the potential rewards of finding a new culture. Benson Crite adhered to the oath that all world-builders take, to preserve. The younger ones, like you perhaps, stayed quiet, waiting to be led. And the hoary old timers who had already built a dozen worlds advocated genocide. Clear them out. Erase all traces. And that's the way it went. You dumped rock on the hill to bury the structure, adding metres to its height. Unfortunately, entropy reversed that, revealing the one remaining wall..."

He had nodded his way through my re-creation.

"Right in many ways, but so, so wrong."

"Enlighten me."

"We could not agree. Instead, we decided to start work and make a decision when we had learned more. If there was culture here, we would be sure to encounter it."

"And you did! When you came up from the energy-well."

"They were waiting for us. They must have been watching. We were vulnerable, fatigued..."

"Why would they bring a kid to an ambush?"

He hated that. For a few minutes I feared for my life. But that was my method. To kick and kick and kick.

"It was no ambush. But I panicked. You might have done the same."

"And this sealed the deal. You couldn't report it up the line now. So you buried the hill and... wait! You killed Crite?"

"I didn't. But I was complicit. Someone knocked him into a channel. He wanted to bail out, make a full report. He was close to retirement, pension. We needed to work."

"And he came out half the man he was. A legend... and after the building was done, you stayed. What was that? Guilt?"

"Yes. Guilt. I resolved to watch over the Magalunda as Rushalyn developed..." A brief faraway look. Had I been stronger, I could have attacked him. "When I developed leukaemia, I knew it was retribution for the kid I had killed. So I made a decision. I spoke to the walls of the stone hut I had just made for myself, away from the bickering gang...""

"Your home on the mountain. You faked the leukaemia, as an excuse?"

"Not hard. Our medic sympathised, and the staff I met in the hospital, they were easy to fool."

"Including Xanthe Bellaron? But in your loneliness, you confided in her. About the kid."

"A little. And it helped. She needed me more that I needed her, with her PCI and all that. She believed everything I told her. She still does."

"You feel nothing for her?"

"My life is dedicated to a higher mission now. She was necessary."

"And somehow you found a way to pick off the hunters and make their deaths look natural. Why allow five to die in such a short time? The cluster has blown the whole thing, it's brought me here."

"I did not kill those gentry."

"Then why are we here? Why shoot us down. Why are we talking?"

"He put a finger to his lips, and made a Shhh sound.

I was completely under his power. He dragged me to the elevator cable and rolled me onto the no-frills platform that was summoned from half way down the energy-well by a lever in the battered yellow hut. The platform had no guardrail. I feared that one of my feet could be hanging the edge as we began to descend, but Bulstrode arranged me with care.

At the bottom he dragged me along a short tunnel into a cavern. The walls shimmered with blue and silver light. I strained to look towards the channels, to see the quicksilver. Already I had noted several thick cables curving across the hard ground. They travelled some way up the fissure before turning into the narrow, drilled tunnels that took them to the substations scattered around the settlement.

"It's beautiful." I said, simply. We were now adjacent to a channel, and the glimmer of the quicksilver, whatever it was, entranced me.

"I thought so too."

"Do the Magalunda worship this place?"

"Probably. Who knows?"

"Haven't you studied them?"

"A little. The Ministry of Expansion could have learned something... but," he turned my head roughly to face him, "THEY ARE ALL DEAD!"

"All of them? The hunting?"

"Yes. Family after family, group after group. As of six months ago, they are extinct."

"How do you know? The planet is huge..."

"The planet is silent."

I was at a loss now. There was still too much that did not make sense. And I was developing a strong impression that the person who was going to have to pay for this crime, was me. For I represented centre, and the venom that had distilled and purified within Bulstrode while he brooded on this injustice over many years was surely directed towards the Ministries. Who else was there, in sight, to blame?

"So how did the gentry die?" I asked. While considering my question, I ran scenarios through my mind. If he lunged for me, I might roll towards the nearest channel and grapple him into the lethal fluid? Or sacrifice a hand by splashing some it into his face, in the hope that his injury was worse than mine.

"Hunters have been dying for years," he began. "Their deaths have not raised any suspicions because they were generally older, richer, closer to the end of their lives than the beginning. But I began to take notice, because I knew how successful they had been out in the grounds. I used to go out and watch them. Sometimes I scared the families away, before the hunters grew too close. I learned camouflage. I stay out overnight. And I saw the loose correlation between kills and premature death long before the cluster brought you here."

"How many had they killed?"

"There was no threshold. Some had killed ten, some twenty-five. I could not find a strong mathematical relationship... only a suggestion. I graphed it. It wasn't impressive." This was all good. He was talking. We were joining our minds to solve the problem. I had a chance.

"I could help there. I noticed a similar relationship for the five. But I took it further, and added another factor. The intensity, the frequency of the killing."

"It's not that. I too worked on a model. The hunters do not provide the crucial variable."

"What is it then?"

"Potential. The potential for life."

"The Magalunda. The years of life taken from them?"

"Yes. For every timeline that is cut, every life that is taken, this planet takes retribution."

A risk now. A final kick. "Come off it Bulstrode."

He reacted badly. I had pushed him too far. He stood up and dragged me to the edge of the nearest channel. Then he pushed my face down to the silvered surface. There was no reflection, only a strange depth, full of movement. Although the blue-white light it emanated was fierce, the glare did not hurt my eyes. Even with my lids closed, my retinas perceived strong light. I struggled to speak, and thought for a moment that doing so would cause my chin to touch the surface.

"What's... your... explanation. This? The energy?"

He pulled me back to temporary safety, threw me back on the ground.

"These channels are the key to the planet. They are why we were sent in the first place. Free energy. Limitless energy. But we have never understood it."

"Do you?"

"I understand that it is more. It binds the planet, and its life."

"And holds you to account?"

He looked at me carefully, examining me for cynicism. But he saw that I was genuine. Perhaps there was hope for me yet.

"To account, yes. Consciously or unconsciously I do not know. But it has extracted life from those who were arrogant enough to take life."

By natural causes. An acceleration of biological processes that each victim's genetic heritage, lifestyle, or a combination of both, had already started. Their timelines were already drawn, but the energy-well pushed them along, accelerated their arrival at the destination that none of wish to see hoving into view. I liked the explanation. But... the science.

"No-one will ever believe you Bulstrode. There is no explicable mechanism. You are attributing to the planet some kind of moral balance, and that's without even attempting to explain how this... this stuff... accelerated well understood processes."

"It is not always necessary to understand the mechanics, Dr Isso. Recognising the cause and effect is enough. Didn't we, humans, learn to sow and farm and grow under the Earth-sun's benevolent warmth for thousands of years without knowing how?"

"That is not enough."

"For centre you mean. You are right. They will be down here, to take the energy-well apart, to examine its source. They will drill to the core. They will find a jewel and leave a ruin. They already have. The indigenes are dead. Genocide by degrees, supported by central officials who legalised hunting. And now the well is open. The Ministry of Expansion, human civilisation owns the rights."

"I don't buy a conspiracy."

"Of course you don't. You are IT!"

"I am not. I do not support what has happened here."

"You do, through your involvement in centre's policies."

"Then I cannot win, in your mind."

"You are irrelevant. I don't care about you."

"So what is your intention? To save the planet? Isn't it too late now? It's on the charts. The scientists will come down, whatever you do."

"They will not find much."

I looked up to the distant surface, where the light was beginning to fade. I wondered if Iliana had regained consciousness. Or if the retrieval team's failure to return had been noticed.

"What have you done?"

He threw me a metal canteen of water, left a pack of dry food by my feet and stepped onto to the platform.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE BULTSTRODE?"

He sauntered back, knelt down, put his face in front of mine.

"What I had to do, to protect my family."

"Your wife is dead. Your children are all over the galaxy."

"So I told Xanthe. No, my wife lives. My children live. But they are not free. Once we tapped into the well and proved that there was new form of energy here, centre was never going to let us, any of the world-builders, go free. There were too many interests. Too much profit. The Ministries began to compete for control. And what we knew was too valuable to have us roaming the galaxy."

"What was the deal?"

"I made a proposal. To stay, to watch over the well, and destroy it, with the whole settlement, if the energy proved too dangerous. Or, when centre sent the order, to contain the project."

"How?"

"Charges, deep in the granite. Under the Maleçon, the settlement. Up in the mountain, along the zone of fissures. Here, in the drill holes. That time has come. I am going to bury this settlement, just as I buried that Hagalunda building on the hill... We do not own this planet. The Hagalunda did. Now, no one will have it."

"Is that what centre wants?"

He nodded, then retreated to the platform. I heard his heavy step on the metal, heard it rattle to the surface and clunk to a halt at the top. I looked around for the control panel, and saw that it lay behind a locked metal cage. The energy flowed inches away from me, bathing my skin in cold blue light. It was oblivious.

I found myself taking to the planet. I watched the movement of quicksilver and imagined it as planet-blood. I had read about Gaia as an adolescent, and rejected it. The theory, that a planet could maintain its own balance, a biological and environmental account, was attractive, but without a controlling intelligence it fell apart in my mind. This was Bulstrode's belief. The planet extracted a toll. Still, this did not provide a full explanation of all that had occurred here. The individuals, the timings. In my vulnerable mind I fell away from the mechanistic and wandered a lonely path towards an area that I had always preferred to avoid: faith.

To understand Rushalyn, perhaps I needed to believe in Rushalyn. Then, if Rushalyn liked what it saw, emerging from the mist of technology and profit, it might reach out to me and grant me the ability to comprehend. I wished for the quicksilver to rise from the channel by my side, a glistening string, entering my head, joining, expanding the basic cognitive tools. I was delirious.

There was movement above. The clatter of the lift. And Iliana, kneeling on the platform, badly hurt, blood obscuring half her face, a dark, grit-packed cut extending from her temple to her jaw. She would be scarred for life there. I don't think she could see through her right eye. The arm on the same side hung uselessly. She must have been thrown against the hull there.

"Can you walk?" she said, weakly.

"Bulstrode?"

"He's gone. He looked me over, but didn't care. We're all going to die anyway."

"Why do you say that?"

"He told me."

Iliana looked at my leg, but didn't seem too bothered. She was faring worse than I.

"Come on," she said. "Who were you talking to, by the way?"

"The planet. For forgiveness."

"Useful."

"We need to leave."

"Right."

"No, I mean, completely. Now. Off the planet."

"How? Who's ship? Mcrae's? We aren't going anywhere Stephen. Accept it. We just need to be somewhere with a view. There's no way we can make the walk back to town, no way."

I hated her fatalism. I refused to die here, on this corrupt rock.

"What happens when a retrieval team fails to report in?"

"Nothing. Sorry, but there's no chance of being picked up."

"The governor then? Can't you message him?"

"Why would you trust him?"

We started the long crawl, like two penitents, around the hill, over the sharp shards of granite, into the grassland, towards the river. Iliana could barely walk. Her good arm, the left, was trembling terribly, and her feet could only shuffle, like a typical patient with advanced Parkinson's disease. Our eyes met.

"Why is it happening to you? What have you done?" I asked. She knew what I meant.

"I guess I offended someone, somehow."

"You never hunted. You never killed."

"Never."

"You don't deserve it."

"I do." But she was in mood to elaborate. We had to save our energy for the long walk.

*

The bridges held no romance for me now. Each was a hurdle. IIiana was in better shape than me and took some of my weight. My leg was swollen, the skin tight with underlying haematoma. The sickest I have ever been. It took three hours to reach the settlement. I told Iliana what I had learned from Busltrode. The information seemed to give her strength.

I visualised the wrecked craft, and wondered if one of them could carry us out to sea. I kept looking up, to the sky, wishing for the reassuring bulk of a ship, sent down by centre to pick me up. Any punishment would be better than this.

When the settlement came in to view, beyond the grasslands, I was relieved to see that the buildings were still standing. But the people in the factories, the homes and the schools were ignorant of the danger. They should be evacuating now, but Iliana and I had no means of warning them. Except our parched, breathless voices.

"We have to split up," said Iliana. She was right, but I didn't want to hear it. "Can you get to the quay on your own?" I nodded. "I'm going into the settlement, to raise the alarm. Get as many out as possible."

"There is no transport."

"They can flee to the river. He won't have set charges that far."

When we came through the brown field area and reached the back end of the settlement, Iliana headed down a street. She did not say goodbye or show any other sign of affection. She was thinking only of the population. I did not see her again.

The curved quay, with the cone-topped church at its end, lay in a still quiet sea. I staggered along it, interested only in the abandoned and dilapidated ships that were tied to the stubby metal posts. The tide was about half-way in, and rising. The middle wreck was afloat, just. Its hull was still wedged into shale, but I could tell by the way it rocked on the waves that the slightest impulse would dislodge it. It had no power; it had not been used for over 40 years, but I could think of no other way out of here. If it could float, it could carry me away.

A deep, apocalyptic rumble travelled through the ground. My internal organs jogged in the tissues on which they were suspended. I looked back to the settlement, and saw that the air above the buildings had become dull, despite the strong sun. A brown cloud was rising, dust particles agitated by forces that were now travelling through the settlement's foundations.

I could not see if Iliana had succeeded in warning the people. If she had, they would be streaming away beyond my view. Thinking rationally, I saw that her plan was futile. I had heard no siren, no announcement. Only those she saw, face to face, would be warned. A tiny percentage.

I walked on, along the quay. Behind me, the Maleçon was folding into the sea. Chunks of the road, the place where I had eaten my lunch by the wall, fell down onto the granite blocks below. Beyond this, buildings – the recommended bars, the cramped residences of thousands, factories, slid forward. The mountain rumbled, but the hospital tower was still intact, and above this governor's house.

The church door opened. Amid the chaos and fluidity, there stood John Wesley, framed by the building that only a week ago had never known him, but that he now owned absolutely. His church. He stood there, waiting. I had no options now. I needed him. So I walked on, limping, repeatedly collapsing, trying to carve the pain out of my brain and put it elsewhere, an abstraction.

When I was close to his door he came forward and pulled me in. He could have come earlier, but chose not to. I glanced at the symbol above the door, and my revulsion of all that it represented returned. As I did so, his voice rose above the clamour behind us.

"Dr Isso. What makes you think this house will serve as a refuge? Do you really think it can survive?"

"We need to leave. The ships." We. I didn't care if he came or not. But I needed his physical assistance.

"The ships are dead Dr Isso."

I collapsed onto a wooden pew. Here, with the door closed, it was possible to convince myself that peace still reigned.

"We can float out to sea, await a rescue. Centre knows what's happening, they arranged it. They will come down, survey the wreckage."

"Why would they rescue us? Surely, if this is all part of a plan, they will destroy us. No traces. No witnesses."

My head sagged. He was right. My official position was no longer a protection.

"Don't you want to even try, John? Have you no desire to live?"

"Oh, if only you knew, if only you could feel what we feel."

He took another pew. Then he leaned forward and placed a palm on the stone floor.

"Don't you feel it Dr Isso? The planet is sucking the strength from the structures that is has unwittingly powered for fifty years. It had woken up to our true nature. We are no longer welcome."

I shook my head.

"You don't believe me Dr Isso? You have no faith. Now, of all times, you need to accept it."

"Give me your proof John."

"I am it. I am message that Vanessa Eo sent to you. You expected me to come you, a tame carrier, with bland words. No! I am more than that. I am a force, imbued with the knowledge that Eo discovered. Centre sponsored this settlement for one reason only. To study the energy-well, in time to funnel it, to control it and use it off planet in the battles that our great, expanding civilisation has not yet had to face, but surely will. That is why all this..." a hand flew in a wild arc, "was put here."

"But in fifty years nothing has been done. If centre wanted to weaponise it, they would have done more, sent down the military."

"No. They played the long game. They wanted just to observe."

"Observe how it killed?"

"Yes. The hunting of Magalunda was permitted for a reason. To expose the settlers to the energy-well and see what happened. Rushalyn is an experiment, a grand one. The settlers are the subjects. To keep it running, people were sent here who should not have been, sick cryos, racial variants, the galaxies unwanted.... all without their consent. And many, those who came close to the well, and hunted, they were vivisected."

"By... the well?"

"By centre. Or by the resource that centre wants so desperately to control. Energy, a kind that has not been found anywhere else in the galaxy. An intelligent, moral energy. Whoever owns it, whoever can define what is right and what is wrong, can use it as a targeted weapon that can discriminate between friend and foe by weighing their actions, sensing their contribution to destruction... and holding them to account. Here, it has acted to protect the Magalunda, it has revenged those who took their lives, accelerating its interventions when they approached extinction... a futile effort, in the end. It is a great reckoning."

"Vanessa Eo told you this."

"You knew her, doctor. She was from the same stable as you. Empirical, cynical. Trust me, this is what she discovered, or surmised. She was convinced! That's why she is dead."

"You should have told me before. Before things began to fall apart."

"Like I said, I am not a mere messenger. The knowledge she gave me now defines me. That's what happens..."

"In cryo?"

"It is a dangerous process Dr Isso."

"But why settle for death, here? Help me onto one of the ships. I'm on your side! We can still do some good here."

"You? The great whistleblower? I don't think so. If you are rescued you will politic your way back into centre and the story will never be told."

"No. I promise. I promise..." But I had lost hope. Blood was trickling from my leg onto the floor. The sight of it weakened me further. I heard waves breaking. John Wesley looked through one of the narrow windows, then rushed up to the second floor. I saw seawater seeping through the walls. The sea was absorbing the great forces that were rending the settlement, and reflecting them back onto the shore that was now reverting to its natural state.

"JOHN!" I shouted. "We need to MOVE!" Would proximity to death provoke fear, at last?

The door opened. I turned my head, painfully. Amanda Hacallef, drenched, pale, shivering.

"Come on." She beckoned me out.

John Wesley bounded down the stairs. Their eyes met.

"John. We need to go."

He shook his head.

"Why not John?" she asked.

"This is my fate."

"No. You don't owe this. You have more to give, on other planets. In other churches."

He stood his ground.

"John," I interjected, softly. "She needs you to help. Otherwise she dies, with me. She needs your help."

"No. I was sent here to finish this."

"Vanessa?"

"She made me promise, she..."

Yes. Her final act. More than a message. A force. She identified John Wesley, she used his faith and bent it to her own righteous mission, which was to ensure that Rushalyn stayed buried, and no one escaped. Not even me. Whether this was to keep the secret of Rushalyn buried for the good of all civilisation, or to keep centre happy and save herself, I could not be sure. And now I presented him with a bind; his deeply imprinted mission, versus the life of the only person he had connected with.

"She has already lost her family John. She does not deserve this... you alone can help her. I cannot."

He looked from her to me. I studied him, for signs of logical reasoning. His eyes moved rapidly for a few moments, then fell. He did not have the tools. He could not make a decision. He was PCI, an empty vessel, an actor, deep in faith, absent of substance. He fell to his knees, undone.

"Wh... what's happened t...t... to him?" asked Amanda, shivering. I threw her my coat, itself soaked in my cold sweat. She took it.

"He's PCI. Like you. Deep. Fooled everyone. Come on, we need to untie one of those ships. You have to help me."

She hesitated.

"Amanda. Do you want to live?"

She answered my helping me to my feet and walking with me, through the spray of breaking waves, to the mooring posts. The ropes were a thick as my forearms, and decades of tension had caused the coils to almost merge into each other. They were not particularly frayed, the rope's quality had ensured that.

"What do we do?" she asked.

"Pray."

It was a facetious comment. But I meant it. For now I believed in the planet, and I believed in its ability to weigh morality. And confident in the rightness of my own path, I asked it to help me, by cutting the rope and releasing the ship.

Amanda sat with my on the quay, shivering still. A crack, rising above the tumult, turned our heads. The hospital had slipped its foundations and was moving, upright still, down the mountainside. Then it collapsed.

"Where I was born, again," she said, bitterly.

"You were cheated. If I make it out of here, I will find out who was responsible, I promise."

"It was my parents. They made the decision. The others... pah!" She was no longer interested in justice.

Now she placed her hand on the rope.

"You can feel it. The energy."

I tried too. I felt nothing.

"You have done too much Dr Isso. Your history is too... contradictory. But mine... mine's a blank. I owe nothing. I am owed nothing. I have hurt no one. No one will hurt me. I am like a new fresh, new species. Rushalyn comes to me. Look."

In the water, where it encircled the inverted arc of rope that hung from the quay, I saw phosphorescence. Strands of silver merged around it and created a metallic coating. The rope rose from the water and uncoiled itself from the mooring post.

"It's helping us," I murmured.

"Me. Not you."

The silver coating now extended along the rope's entire length. When it reached the ship itself I saw the dents pop out and rents in the split wire close up. Beneath the rust and the decay, the ship was energised.

"Are you controlling it?"

"I can feel it. I can't tell it what to do. I can only wish."

"We must rescue John."

"There are tens of thousands back there."

"Too late, for them."

The ship now floated above the water. The shelled creatures on the hull were exposed, and green-brown algae hung off it like a dark curtain. Amanda touched the side and the hatch opened. An overpowering stench of sea rot rolled over us. I glimpsed the interior – lighted, dated, intact. Would I even know how to operate it?

"We take John. We fly over the settlement. Dr Murphy is still there." I insisted.

"Only the ones you know matter."

"Yes."

She judged my morality. I feared her.

Together we dragged John Wesley out of the church, still in a foetal position, and into the ship. Then we were flying over the collapsed settlement. It was rubble. The charges had all gone off. I saw people in distress, crying in the streets, and others, perfectly still, their limbs arranged unnaturally. Most were under the bricks and the pre-fab walls.

There was no sign of Iliana.

"The well. Go to the well." I instructed Amanda. I had to see it. We flew over the aesthetically displeasing forest, the grasslands, the river (unfazed by the calamity on the coast, flowing serenely) and onto the landscape of stone that only the Magalunda had touched before Bustrode and the world-builders arrived. The retrieval craft lay on its side in a black sweep over disturbed shale. Beyond this, the fissure containing the quicksilver channels had been filled. The yellow hut had fallen in, the walls of the well had been blown. The only sign was a depression where the colour of the granite was slightly darker.

"Back, back to the settlement."

As we crossed the mountain's lower contours I spotted Bulstrode's home. He was standing near the front door, the brown bundle in his folded arms. He couldn't see our faces, but he knew I was there, and waved nevertheless.

A strangely affectionate but very final gesture.

We made more passes over the settlement. Not one living person. Bulstrode had placed his charges with ruthless efficacy.

The air shuddered one more time, rocking the craft. Amanda gained altitude in a hurry. From our elevated position we watched the base of the mountain slide away and roll through the town. Our view became obscured by grey dust.

Bulstrode had buried himself. Somewhere down there lay the world-builder with a bundle of small bones clutched to his chest.

*

Two months later, I made my report to Phoebe Grant, surgeon-general. I had, as John Wesley predicted, 'politicked' it. There are always paths to be found through such situations.

The investigation, I could report, was complete. The dead hunters had succumbed to a hitherto undiscovered form of radiation that accelerated biological processes and brought forward pre-destined, degenerative illnesses such as ruptured aneurysms, seizures and even suicidality. Iliana was proof of this. The medics at centre checked her application record, found a bio-sample, and confirmed through genetic analysis that had she lived, she would have developed Parksinson's disease in the next three decades. Proximity to the well brought the symptoms forward.

There had been other deaths, but because they were not clustered they had not attracted attention. A retrospective review of their death certificates would, I suggested, confirm my hypothesis. If enough were analysed, it could shown that they had died 'naturally', but years before the usual progression of disease should have caused their deaths.

"They are sealed, in the Ministry of Expansion. I tried. " she said, sardonically.

"This radiation. It must have been effective within the settlement itself. It ran right thought it, no? Power outlets, machinery, sub-stations."

"You had to be close to the energy-well itself."

"And that's where these Magalunda lived?"

"Yes. They probably revered the channels. And the hunters followed. Then they died."

It was enough. She did not steer me towards deeper theories, of blame, retribution, or genocide. She was not interested in the peculiar licence given for hunting. Perhaps she had been warned off it by her minister.

"So, this world-builder, Bulstrode. You say he blew the settlement."

"You will have seen the feed from the ship we escaped on. The way he waved us goodbye. He did it."

"I did. What was his motive?"

Did she already know? Our interview was being recorded. She did not want to wander onto contentious ground.

"He hated Rushalyn, and he hated centre. For the genocide, as he saw it, of the Magalunda."

"Why was he so... involved?"

"He believed they were more developed than centre gave them credit for."

"Any evidence of this?"

"None that I saw."

"What was he carrying? In the feed, he was carrying something, a bundle."

I shook my head. This was news to me. Grant did not pursue it.

"And he had the foresight to set these charges shortly after the basic landscaping," she continued. "This doesn't scan Stephen. The killing of the Magalunda hadn't started by then. How do you explain that?"

"I think he made a deal... early on." Careful now, Stephen, I told myself. But I had to give something out, hint at a higher influence that we could both allow to pass without miring ourselves in detail.

"A deal? With whom?" Come off it Phoebe, play the game!

"There may have been a financial imperative, with another agency, to keep control of the energy source. He was vulnerable, around his family situation. They were poor, left alone on his home planet. He wanted to protect them."

"Care to elaborate on which 'agency'?"

"That's outside my terms of reference. That might have to be taken up with another Ministry. "

Grant looked at me with distaste. But she knew what I was saying. That's far enough, for both of us. Then her expression softened.

"Your report does not leave this room, Stephen. The same goes for your wider opinion. Go on. Elaborate. Carefully."

"It all comes down to ownership, Surgeon-General. Who owns the energy?" I paused, and saw the silver light, the flickering pattern on the walls, the light of a new day illuminating a deep, dark hole. A lonely place to die... had it not been for Iliana. Brave, serious Iliana. Buried in the rubble, while doing her best to save the people she had taken an oath to treat. What was her story? Why did she volunteer?

Pools of light.

"There is one, unresolved concern, medically speaking." I had started. Now I had to finish it.

"What is that Stephen? Is it not in the report?"

"I felt it was too... incendiary. It thought it would be better for you to hear it, then decide on what should be done."

"Go on." She didn't want to hear it. To make hard decisions.

"The radiation explains the deaths to some extent, but the theory has holes, as you have noticed. It is possible, though impossible to prove, that it worked in synergy with another factor. An infective factor."

All ears now, aren't we Pheobe?

"What, exactly?"

"It is possible that an infectious agent was transmitted from the fauna on Rushalyn, the Magalunda, via the blood-hunters. I cannot vouch for the hygiene of their methods. I have heard, in other cultures, of 'blooding', wiping blood from the first kill on the face of the hunter."

"Disgusting."

"Yes. And a possible explanation."

She entered a world of her own, wherein complex, multi-branched interests turned around one another, intersecting, undercutting, surmounting, strangling. The hint of a smile.

"That sounds dangerous Dr Isso. That's how plagues start."

"It is. If the infectious agent were to jump the planet."

"Alarming." She might just as well have said, 'That works!' The perfect solution. I was dismissed.

And Rushalyn, along with every other planet and system in the quadrant was quarantined.

*

Amanda found a role in one of the five ministry planets, I will not say which, nor what name she goes by. She thrives in the field to which her talents drew her. I am sure her PCI helps, in a strange way. In its black depths, she dived further into the human mind than most ever do. And her brush with awesome power revealed to her the potential that humans have in this universe.

We met a few times. She was happy. Then, like the good intentions one has to bereaved friend, the habit fell away.

But when we met, I stood by her in the high accommodation block, looking out over the planet's covered surface. Several hundred kilometres away the continent gave way to ocean. We could just make out the transition from land to slate-grey water, and in silent accord we reflected on our time together on Rushalyn. Once, I said,

"Do you still believe what you saw Amanda?" To me, the magic had died with the march of time. I preferred explanations based on known science, and had made subtle enquiries about novel energy sources. The sea may have been charged. The man-made earthquake may have released energy into the dead craft, allowing its wire structure to regain integrity.

"I don't need to believe Stephen. I saw. You saw. How do you think we escaped? Luck?"

"You still believe the planet gave itself to you."

"We were as one. The planet was a host without guests. The Magalunda were dead. I was there, empty, and innocent. It came to me."

My silence was cynicism, and she heard it. "It doesn't matter. I don't care if you believe it or not."

"Do you ever wonder, what might happen down there? Whether the channels will surface..."

"You won't let that happen, will you. You won't let people go there again."

"That won't happen. Rushalyn is sealed."

"I feel it sometimes." Here we go, I thought. A part of her is still there.

"You feel it calling to you?"

She turned to me with an expression of dislike, and I regretted my choice of words. Then she moved to kitchen area, signalling that our moment of historical intimacy was over. Bustling over a coffee-maker, she said,

"No Stephen. Nothing like that. There is no bond. Only memory. I don't have to make myself believe, I'm not like you. John taught me something about faith. It doesn't have to be active. Just accept it. Relax. It will come to meet you. Everything is easy after that."

She had lost me.

*

Once a year (it used to be once a month), I visit John Wesley. He uses the same name. There was nothing to be gained by inventing a new profile. He sits on a bench in the sunny garden that his therapist has determined is the most conducive artificial environment. He watches pond life, the movements of branches, the daily arc of the sun. He has been granted a small plot of real earth, and had learned how to propagate plants and nurture them. He does not speak. The therapist tells me he is still working out what he would do if a scenario that was presented to him while in a severe PCI phase. The same therapist revealed to me that whoever presented this vulnerable young man with such a conundrum was grossly irresponsible; if it was a psychologist, a medic... a professional, they should be struck off. Disgraceful.

I nodded in feigned ignorance and sincere agreement. Yes, I reflected, they should. They should hate themselves.

The End
