"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, though there was a horrible suspicion bubbling through her mind. Those nights he never came home. Courier duty, he said, like the rest of the cell were given. Except she'd never been asked to run anything at night.
Simon picked up his cup of tea and settled back into the settee. The sheet screen began showing a datapool news report of the spaceport. Bodybags were being carried out of the wrecked administration block.
"Oh, God," she whispered.
"Eight people dead," Simon said. "Including Mr. Raines's colleague."
Braddock Raines was standing at the end of the settee, his face impassive. Michelle flashed him a hugely guilty glance.
"Seventeen injured, three critically. Our cargo-lifting operation delayed by several days. And the whole of Durrell terrified about what retaliatory measures Z-B will employ. After all, we promised to use our collateral necklaces to prevent any interruption to our asset realization. What do you think, Michelle, how many Thallspring citizens should Z-B kill so that your resistance movement doesn't do this again? Ten?"
"Stop it."
"Fifty?"
"None!" she shouted. "None at all. He didn't do this. We didn't do this. All we do is sabotage your transport and stolen factories. This isn't what we want, not killing people."
"That's not what you want, Michelle. There's a difference in your understandable, if pathetic, yearning to fight the invasion, and the goals of your alien allies."
"Josep is not an alien!"
"Dear me, what an irony I have here. We can extract the entire truth from you should we so wish, yet we cannot install the truth. But the truth is what I am dealing in. Josep's body was altered, enhanced, by alien technology. He was using you."
"He was not. We were in love."
"Ah." Simon sighed happily. "Was this your first love, Michelle?"
"I... it..."
"So it was. How delightful."
"No, it wasn't." Even as she denied it, she knew Roderick knew, really knew, and blushed heavily.
"There is a standard ploy that intelligence agencies use for infiltrating their enemies, Michelle. It's very common and has been in use for centuries. You find some lonely, sad little soul working in the place you need to be, a woman maybe approaching middle age and unmarried, or maybe not as pretty as her contemporaries. Perhaps it's simply someone who doesn't fit into her new environment very easily, who finds it all new and strange and frightening. Either way, you send in a wolf. They meet, as if by chance. She finds herself courted by this most handsome man, impossibly talented in bed, devoted to her and her alone. Her heart belongs to him. And with her heart comes her complete and absolute trust. Does any of this sound familiar, Michelle?"
"Don't," she said weakly.
"Did he come into your life around the time we arrived on your planet, Michelle? This is your first year at university, the first time you've ever really been away from home. Your grades weren't very good. You were lonely. Did you meet him on campus? No. Before then? Ah, of course, the real first time you left home. Your mother and father paid for a vacation at Memu Bay, a reward for passing your exams. That's it, isn't it? That's where you met him. It was a classic, perfect holiday romance."
Michelle was sobbing helplessly. The pain the words inflicted was worse than any torture. "He loves me. He does!"
"Then we invaded. He appeared back into your life as if by magic. Yes. He lived with you, unofficially of course; there's no record of him in the university files. In fact, there's no record of him anywhere on Thallspring. Digitally, he simply doesn't exist. Do you know how impossible that is, Michelle? The most powerful askpings ever written cannot find a single trace of him in the global datapool."
"He's human!" Michelle implored. "Please." She turned to Raines, who shook his head sorrowfully.
"Did Josep tell you if he had special software?" Simon continued relentlessly. "Really clever, super-secret software that could help the cause?"
Michelle was starting to curl up back into a fetal position. The brutal voice just went on and on, tearing her world apart.
"Software that was better than any AS on Earth could ever produce. What did he say, that it was written by a few teenage geeks in their bedrooms, who also just happen to be loyal to the Thallspring cause?" Simon put his index finger under the girl's chin and tilted her face back. Her cheeks were sticky with tears. His electromagnetic sense observed the tidal waves of distress tormenting her thoughts. "I'm so sorry," he said tenderly. "I really am. This is all as frightening to me as it is you."
"Prime," Michelle stammered. "The software was called Prime."
* * *
It was quite an operation, lifting the dragon out of its underground lair. The route had been prepared years ago, of course. Denise's family had sunk a second shaft down to the chamber, a bigger shaft than the elevator, which emerged to the side of the small stone temple.
Lawrence sat on the curving stone bench, watching as its concealed hood rose up on magnetic pistons, bringing a meter of soil with it. The dragon slowly emerged underneath, still sitting on its white-glass pedestal. Its golden power-induction mesh was wrapped tightly around its midsection. Sunlight glinted off individual strands. Electrohydraulic motors whined loudly in the placid air.
"Welcome to the world," Lawrence said. "I don't suppose you can sense visible light?"
"Not directly," the dragon replied. "However, I receive the images from yourself and other humans. I know what Arnoon looks like. It is very beautiful."
Repairing Lawrence's leg and hip wasn't all the pattern-form sequencer particles had done. They'd also modified a cluster of his neuron cells, giving them an ability similar to a DNI implant. D-writing, Denise called it, the particles engineering cellular structures in a direct fashion that human v-writing could never achieve—outside of germline treatments. Vectoring in new DNA was a scattergun approach deployed against entire organs or muscles; this was far more selective and precise.
"But you haven't given this communication cluster to everyone here?" he'd asked her.
The two of them had sat together in the snowbark pavilion for most of the morning, discussing how to get the dragon up to a starship. They were being polite to each other, nothing more. There was too much history for friendship.
"No," she said. "Only people like me and Raymond and Jacintha need it. We didn't want to create some kind of superwarrior breed. The enhancements given to the children are more benign and beneficial."
"Similar to germline v-writing?"
"Yes. The patternform sequencers can alter DNA quite easily. We gave everybody cancer resistance, and stronger immune systems, and refined organs, much greater life expectancy, a higher IQ. Their changes will be permanent, and the traits will carry down the generations. Arnoon won't have to depend on the dragon anymore."
"And the food," he said. There was a carved wooden bowl on the table in front of him. It was piled up with various fruits. He rested his finger on the rim, pressing it down so the bowl swung from side to side.
"The plants are also genetic adaptations," Denise said, enjoying his discomfort. "They'll breed true. In a hundred years, this forest will be an orchard that can feed a city. Nobody will need protein cell refineries anymore. Another economic necessity will be consigned to history."
"An economic necessity that liberated seventy percent of the human race from perpetual starvation. Growing things for food is a terribly inefficient use of energy."
"That depends on the nature of the culture you have to feed," she said. "Massive industrialized nations had to use industrial farming to feed their urban populations. If you replace them with scattered self-sufficient villages like Arnoon, then the requirements become very different."
"A world of physically separate communities linked by the datapool. The true global village. Knowledge belongs to everybody, and everybody goes their separate ways. You need microscale manufacturing to back that up, you know."
"I know. We've been studying the dragon as best we can, and we've copied every memory it has. If we give that to the rest of the world, then we hope something similar to the patternform sequencer can be built. It'll take decades, but we never wanted to force change overnight. This is going to be an organic revolution, generated from internal knowledge. It must succeed, if not here, then on a fresh world. Today's culture can't be the only way a technological society develops. It can't."
His eyes flashed with mischief. "Plenty of prejudices to overcome."
"There certainly are." She picked a peach from the top of the bowl and held it up in front of him.
"You sure? Last time a girl did this to me I threw up all over her."
"You're just a born romantic, aren't you?"
He took the peach and bit into it. The fruit was sweet and succulent. Quite pleasant, really.