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  Paul looked down on the sands below. There was no sign of the creatures, but the little tormals remained cocooned in their protective shells.

  “Now we know what they need their armor for,” said Paul.

  “We scanned for life,” said Steven. “There was nothing bigger than those lizards.”

  “We scanned for carbon-based life,” Peris corrected him. He joined them in watching the sands. So too did Rizzo and Thula. He had done what he could for De Souza, who remained unconscious. If he were lucky, De Souza would wake up back on the Envion. Otherwise it was unlikely that he’d ever wake up at all.

  “So what are those things?” asked Paul.

  “I’m guessing silicon-based,” said Peris. “A theoretical possibility—until now.”

  “You mean we’ve discovered a new kind of alien life?” said Paul.

  “Maybe they will name it after you,” said Thula, “if you ask nicely.”

  “You think?” said Paul.

  “It could have been the drilling,” said Peris, ignoring them. “Perhaps the drill reached a certain level, and these things felt threatened by it. It would fit with a silicon life-form. The atmosphere here is part oxygen, which means that a silicon-based creature would produce silicon dioxide as a by-product of breathing. But that silicon dioxide would be a solid, which would choke the respiratory systems of the creatures with sand . . . Unless they lived in temperatures of several hundred degrees, closer to the core, where the silicon dioxide would be a liquid.”

  “Man, it’s like being back in school,” said Thula.

  “So they broke the drill head,” said Paul, “then came to find out who’d sent it down there in the first place.”

  “It seems the likeliest scenario,” said Peris.

  Steven got to his feet and began moving away. Rizzo watched him go. She was amusing herself by sharpening her throwing stars on a whetting stone. Rizzo, thought Paul, was very odd.

  “Where are you going?” asked Paul, but he understood quickly enough when Steven stopped and stared at the research team’s shuttle, marooned on its pad in the center of the station. It was too far to be reached by jumping. Steven’s right hand instinctively stretched out to it, as though he could draw the craft to him by force of will alone. Paul joined him at the railing.

  “I should have run to the shuttle, not the wall,” said Steven. “I panicked.”

  “You weren’t alone. Don’t—”

  Paul didn’t get to finish his sentence. The walkway shook beneath their feet, and for a moment Paul was sure that they were both going to be tipped to the sands below. He and Steven clung to the rails for dear life. The whole station seemed to be vibrating.

  “What is it?” cried Steven. “An earthquake?”

  But Paul didn’t think so. Whatever those creatures were, they could burrow through sand, and possibly rock as well. They weren’t about to let some ladders and walkways keep them from hunting. If they couldn’t climb up to attack, then they’d settle for the next best thing.

  They’d bring the walls down, and their prey with them.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ani’s nose was bleeding again. It always gushed when she pushed her abilities to the limit, and her training with the Gifted Novices required her to do it so often that she no longer had a single garment unstained by her own dark blood. She was the only one who displayed her weakness so dramatically, although others had their own ways of revealing the strain that they were under: a facial tic here, an uncontrollable trembling there.

  But Ani bled.

  She felt the blood running over her lips—left nostril first, then right—but she did not try to wipe it away, or stifle the flow. Instead she concentrated on the face of the tutor seated across the table from her. It was a simple test, but one that Ani had so far consistently failed. The tutor, whose name was Thona, was resting the palm of her right hand upon a small plate. Ani’s task was to convince Thona that the plate was growing hotter and hotter, until eventually the perception of heat would force Thona to snatch her hand away to avoid being burned. So far, after many attempts, the plate had remained determinedly cool, apart from the natural warmth of Thona’s own hand.

  Ani tried to relax. Relaxing, focusing, that was the secret. You couldn’t force it. You had to clear your mind and control your breathing. You had to forget the plate. The plate didn’t matter; it was never going to be hot. What was required was a gentle manipulation of Thona’s perceptions. But Thona was strong. She was three times Ani’s age, and although she was supportive and tolerant of the Gifted Novices under her tutelage, it didn’t take a mind reader to see that she was growing increasingly impatient with Ani’s lack of progress.

  Ani tasted the blood on her lips. She breathed in, and caught the saltiness of it on her tongue. Her concentration slipped, and in her frustration she pushed herself too far. The flow became a spray. It spattered the front of Ani’s robes, the table . . .

  And Thona.

  Ani leaped from her chair, mortified. She put her hand to her nose but the blood wouldn’t stop. She tried to sniff it in, and it caught in the back of her throat. She coughed, and more blood sprayed. She started panicking, feeling light-headed, and the room began to spin around her.

  “I’m—” she said, but got no further. All went black, but not before she caught a last glimpse of Thona’s face, dark with anger and spilled blood.

  • • •

  When Ani regained consciousness, she was lying on a couch in the corner. A Half-Sister from the medical wing was wiping the blood from her face with a damp cloth, and offering her water to drink. Thona stood to one side in a gaggle of the Gifted, all staring down at Ani. The tutor had cleaned most of the blood from her own face, but some still speckled her red robes with darker patches, and a single smear of it lay beneath her right eye like a forgotten tear.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Ani.

  “There’s no need to be,” said Thona, but her face gave the lie to her words. Ani had failed. Again.

  Sarea gave a spiteful little giggle, but Tanit jabbed her with a sharp elbow.

  “It’s not what I do,” Ani tried to explain, blushing with shame. “It’s not my strength. I can cloud. I can convince you that you’re seeing something that isn’t there, but I can’t make you feel what isn’t real.”

  But even that wasn’t entirely true. She had used the word you, but in truth she had never been able to cloud Thona’s mind. Oh, she could trick her fellow Novices, or at least those with no psychic abilities at all, but when it came to those with their own well-honed skills, those like Thona and Tanit, she might as well have been trying to change darkness into light. She had tried repeatedly under Thona’s instruction as various members of the Gifted sat before her, cold-eyed and unyielding, immune to her probing. No wonder Sarea and Nemein dismissed her so casually.

  Meanwhile they could manipulate her as easily as a doll, although they did so only under the supervision of their tutors, for even seemingly weak psychics like Ani were deemed precious, and they looked out for one another. The Gifted were the elite, and it was understood that all were still nurturing their talents, even if some made progress so much faster than the rest. Ani found this deeply frustrating, for she was acutely aware of the honor conferred by her flowing blue robes. Now she pulled at them anxiously.

  “Clouding is simply the manifestation of your gifts with which you have become most comfortable,” said Thona, not for the first time. “You’ve just grown into the habit of using it, while failing to develop your potential in other areas. But Dessa can cloud too, and look at her! Dessa?”

  She turned to Dessa, and so did the others, but it was several long seconds before the girl spoke.

  “If you can convince someone to see what isn’t there, it requires only a minor adjustment for you to make that same individual feel something that isn’t real,” Dessa said evenly. “You simp
ly haven’t found the mechanism for that adjustment yet.”

  Thona nodded in satisfaction, but not at Ani.

  “Quite,” she added, “but we will.”

  Ani remained unconvinced: perhaps clouding was all that she had, like an athlete who could only kick with a right foot, or throw with a left hand. Sometimes a degree of ability simply made one’s other failings all the more obvious.

  And, hovering at Tanit’s other elbow, it seemed Nemein was unconvinced too, for now she pointed a taunting finger at the small, sad figure of Ani on the couch.

  “Are you sure, Sister Thona, that she has any real talent at all?” said Nemein, and cast a sidelong glance at Tanit, seeking approval. “Perhaps we’re wasting time trying to improve something that’s destined to remain basic, when that energy could be better spent working on something more important?”

  The implication was clear: Nemein would rather that they focused on her own more interesting talents, for her specialty was disease, and she was anxious to move on from curable illnesses to her own variations on cancer and plague. But Tanit replied before Thona could.

  “Nemein,” she said in her clear, carrying voice. “Do you not recall when you first began, and all you could muster was that ridiculous pimple on Sarea’s face? These things take time, and the poor girl’s only been here a few months.”

  She smiled, warm as the sun, and Ani found herself grinning gratefully back at her. Like Syl, Ani was wary of Tanit, but still she couldn’t help but be drawn by the young Novice’s charisma. She might have been dangerous, but that made her approval somehow more significant.

  “How do you feel now?” Tanit asked, almost gently.

  “Okay,” said Ani. “A little dizzy, but it will pass.”

  Tanit nodded at her encouragingly, holding her gaze.

  Now the medic looked to Thona. “I would suggest that the Novice’s training be suspended for today.”

  “Really?” said Thona. “Three years of medical training, and you tell me what I already know? Go and make yourself useful elsewhere.”

  The medic took the insult without flinching, and left the room. The Sisterhood operated a strict hierarchy, and seniors tolerated no dissent from mere Half-Sisters.

  “Go to one of the meditation rooms,” Thona told Ani. “Read. Think. Clear your mind. Tomorrow we shall try something new.”

  Ani nodded. Something new would be good. If she were forced to look at that plate again, her brain would surely explode. She stood. The room tilted slightly, and congealed blood slid down the back of her throat like slime, but she swallowed it and made her wobbly way to the door. Tanit gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder as she passed, and the fleeting touch of another made Ani pause briefly, yearning desperately for her mother, for her home.

  She stumbled down the hallway and into the first unoccupied meditation chamber. It was less austere than the training room—fragrant, faintly lit, and piled with seductive tapestry cushions. Artificial intelligence systems meant she could call up art, books, and music from Illyr, Earth, and the handful of other worlds that had so far yielded significant signs of culture, but Ani accessed none of them. Instead she collapsed in a corner, and cried and cried.

  • • •

  Thona stood before Grandmage Oriel. The old Sister’s quarters—the largest in the Fourteenth Realm—were illuminated by rainbows thrown by fluorescent crystals, and the crevices and carved nooks on the rock walls contained artifacts from hundreds of worlds: art, fossils, specimens in jars. Such displays were not uncommon among the most senior of the Sisterhood. Each was a physical manifestation of a piece of knowledge gathered and treasured.

  “You have blood on your face,” said Oriel. Even in the dim light, her eyesight was uncannily sharp.

  “Ani,” said Thona. “She bled again, badly. She even lost consciousness for a time.”

  “But you will persevere.”

  It was an order, not a question.

  “Yes. She has a gift, but I fear the extent of it may be more limited than Syrene hoped.”

  “No matter. Some ability is better than none at all, and we have known Novices in the past that have required time to develop their capabilities. Does she still consider herself to be a hostage?”

  “I hardly think she considers the question at all,” said Thona. “She’s very anxious to please.”

  “And what of Syl Hellais?” said Oriel.

  “What of her?” said Thona, who cared little for ungifted Novices.

  Oriel’s face remained impassive, but inwardly she could barely contain her impatience. Thona was so blinkered, so unambitious in her thinking, that her definition of “Gifted” extended only to psychic abilities. But there were other strengths, other talents. Oriel saw much potential in Syl Hellais—potential, and more, for there was something about Syl that troubled the old Sister, a blandness to Syl’s character that did not chime with her natural intelligence. It suggested the possibility of concealment, and Oriel was most curious to learn what it was that Syl might be hiding. But Syl had so far proved unreadable, even to one as talented as Oriel.

  “Syrene is most anxious that Syl should find her place in the Marque,” said Oriel. “She has high hopes for the daughter of Lord Andrus and his dead Lady. She could be a great ambassador for the Sisterhood.”

  Syrene had not stayed long at the Marque before returning to Earth, her journey back to the planet made more rapid than ever by the discovery of a series of new wormholes. Officially Syrene remained in mourning for her husband, Gradus, and she partly blamed Syl and Ani for his death, but Syrene was nothing if not practical, and the Sisterhood was her first love. If the Earth hostages could be put to use in the advancement of the Nairenes, then so be it.

  And doubtless Syrene had other secret aims in mind, for such was her nature.

  “We should never have admitted Syl Hellais to the Marque,” said Thona, still wittering on. “The mother turned her back on us, and now we give shelter to the daughter? She does not want to be here, and I, for one, do not want her here either.”

  This time, Oriel sighed aloud. How many times did they have to go over this?

  “She requested admission to the Sisterhood,” said Oriel. “We cannot turn down one who offers herself to us.”

  “She requested admission to save herself from death, or the near certainty of it,” said Thona. “That is not a genuine calling.”

  “And Ani? Did she not join us for the same reason?”

  “But she has a gift!”

  Arguing with Thona, Oriel realized, was a fruitless exercise.

  “And,” Thona added, “we do not need her as a hostage to use against her father. That problem has been solved.”

  Ah, thought Oriel, that much at least was true. Governor Andrus was now Syl’s father in name only. Syrene had seen to that.

  Syrene, and what dwelt within her.

  CHAPTER 9

  The sands of Torma were alive, both inside and outside the platform. The survivors watched as they churned and roiled, buffeted by the unseen creatures that moved beneath them. Occasionally one of them would break through, its back curved and catching the sunlight, shining like cut glass. They were almost beautiful.

  Almost.

  The walls of the drilling platform were constructed from sheets of heavy alloy, each riveted to the next, and specially designed to be resistant to the heat of the Tormic sun. Otherwise, to touch them would have been to risk scorching one’s skin. Their foundations were sunk into the sand, but only to a distance of ten feet or so, and that was largely a result of their sheer weight. Whatever the creatures were doing underground, it was not only causing a degree of vibration capable of loosening the rivets but also distorting the shape of the walls themselves, buckling them slowly so that eventually they would put so much pressure on the joins between the plates that they must eventually collapse.

&n
bsp; “We won’t last six hours up here,” said Steven. “And we won’t last six seconds once we hit that sand.”

  “We need to get to the shuttle,” said Paul. “It’s the only way.”

  “But how?”

  “A line. We can run a cable from the walls to the edge of the platform, and rappel down.”

  “But where do we get the cable?”

  “There,” said Paul. He pointed to a coil of wire that lay on top of a jumble of barrels, crates, and unidentifiable pieces of mining equipment. It stood just beneath the walkway, some twenty feet from where they were. Twenty feet away, but also at least nine or ten feet below.

  “Were you planning on walking over to get it?” asked Steven. They had all surmised by now that, whatever the nature of their enemy, the creatures must be acutely sensitive to the slightest of vibrations and the shifting of the sands. After all, the unit had seen no evidence of eyes on their heads, and there would be little need for them below ground. Setting foot on the desert floor would be like ringing a dinner bell.

  “Nope. You and Thula are going to take a leg each and lower me down.”

  Thula wandered over to where they stood.

  “Did I hear my name being taken in vain?”

  “I have a plan,” said Paul.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  Thula permitted himself a grin. “Those are always the best kind.”

  • • •

  Paul swayed. The blood was going to his head, and he felt as though his brain was about to explode in his skull.

  “Easy,” he said. “Easy!”

  The fingers of his outstretched right hand brushed against the coil of cable. He couldn’t quite reach it. Just a little farther. He twisted his body slightly so that he was looking up between his own legs at Thula and Steven.

  “Let me down another few inches,” he called.

  “We can’t,” said Steven. “We’re at full stretch as it is.”

  Paul tried again, but it was no good. The cable was just too far away. He was also growing increasingly nauseous. The creatures were now hammering ceaselessly away at the walls, and the vibrations were passing through Thula and Steven and into Paul. He was swaying slightly, like a man who had somehow found himself upside down while on a ship rocking at sea.