2093-07-05 Local Time 1622
Planet Kirwin 
Day 369 

Silence. Pleasant, cool silence. Pain, the old companion, grew tired, left it at short stitches at the ends of exhalations and a vague twinge during deep inhalations. The cloth around him was cool, drank the heat that threatened to suffocate him. He stretched his fingers under the cloth of the pillow till the muscles vibrated and the tendons snapped back. 
     The air smelled... smelled of something strong enough to penetrate the odour of illness and phlegm in his nose. Something pleasant. It tingled as the fragrant air ran coolly down into the tips of his lungs and the cold spread before the heat of his body swallowed it. Another breath, careful, deeper, with open mouth, so as not to raise the old companion... delicious cold heralded the air in his lungs, confirmed the use of the expended strength. The pain slept on. 
     He opened his eyes slightly. The light was blue, blue-green, with a flower pattern... curtains drawn closed. The windows behind them must be open. The cloth moved slightly with the wind... another surge of that smell – herbal, reminding him of... of Niko's tea – mint and more... salty, humid... an ocean. Kirwin. 
     He returned into the silence behind closed lids, savoured the air in his lungs, the breath, cool and sweet and salty and filled with promises... 

"Come on, Shane. Wake up. You need to eat something." The voice was calm despite the request. Gentle fingers touched his shoulder once again. He opened his eyes, and yellow-red light blinded him before his pupils could adapt to it. The curtains were drawn back, the sun was low. He pushed himself up a little bit and noticed – frightened again as he had so often been at BETA – that his arms were trembling with the effort. Niko set the big mug of soup – vegetables and something that could be chicken or not, didn't matter – down on the nightstand. She stuffed the pillows behind his back, his and... hers? He looked to the side, realized that the other side of the bed was being used. Nice... 
     She noticed his look and snickered. "You weren't much in the way of entertainment, my dear. The only thing you've kept me awake with over the last ten days was your coughing." 
     "Hm." After a moment of disappointment, his humour won: "My repertoire is adequate for symphonies, after all." He managed a snotty snoring: "You should appreciate that." 
     "And now if you don't mind, you should appreciate my cookery." She held the mug out to him. "It's nearly cold. It took me more than a quarter of an hour to get you awake." 

2093-07-14 Local Time 0141 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 378 

"Not again!" The coughing shook him and he pressed his crossed hands against his chest. Dark yellow phlegm. The light flickered. The generator worked irregularly. In the semidarkness she saw pale-blue, glowing particles in the coughed-up stuff when she set the bowl aside and gave him a cloth soaked with cold water. He took it, cleaned his face and grabbed – slowly because of his by-now sore muscles – to the side for a mug with cold peppermint tea. He washed out his mouth and spat the tea after the slime. 
     She couldn't let it be. "Look." She showed him the bowl. 
     He turned his head away. "Please..." The coughing had already set in again. He suppressed it for a moment. "It's hard enough to spew up this stuff while having the feeling that your brain just fell after it. But there's no need to examine it further." He pressed his palms against his temples when the next retching coughing fit shook him. 
     She looked with pity at him, felt that it wasn't only the throbbing headaches that accompanied the nausea which tortured him, but above all the fact that she held the bowl. Oh, Shane... What are friends for then, hm? "I'm sorry, but I've never seen anything like that glowing stuff before." 
     "The way I'm feeling, I wouldn't wonder about ticking antitank mines." Another coughing fit made his body collapse again. She had to hurry with the bowl. This time it was green with some black-red-brown droplets in it: viscous phlegm with old blood. Niko handed him a fresh cloth, let him wash out his mouth again. "The physician who said I ought to welcome every drop of the stuff that comes out has definitely never been forced to do this for himself!" He leaned back against his pillow, exhausted, and laid his head back to relax his tense chest muscles. It was of no use: the next coughing fit announced its arrival. 
     She looked thoughtfully at him while she soaked the next cloth with cold water, threw the dirty one into the basket, refilled his mug with cooled-down, strong peppermint tea, and asked herself if he was aware that this torture would have killed him only ten days ago. 

It was past 0300 when he finally fell into a broken sleep. She stood up, stretched herself, and wrapped the blanket closer around him, staying carefully away from his facial zone. He'd wake immediately if even one strand of her hair should reflect a part of his breath. She bowed her head. Would he ever again get used to embracing her, hugging her, burying his face in her hair so she could feel his breath on her neck? The movements of his chest were regular now and, apart from a faint wheeze, almost soundless. She couldn't sense pain in him now, only exhaustion caused by the coughing. It was time for her to sleep, too. Tiredly she crept under her blanket, curled up, and felt her senses focussing on the breathing impulse beside her... A hand felt around, seemed to search for something. She took it, crossed her fingers with his. His sleep grew quieter. 

2093-07-15 Local Time 0821 
Ranger-1 at the sector of Xanadu 
Day 379 

"I can't believe it! They really put him onto the wanted list." Zachary Fox pushed the transparency away, frustrated. 
     "Who's wanted?" 
     "Goose." 
     "And Niko?" 
     He shook his head. "She's got a watertight alibi. Sure, they want to interrogate her and there are still these silly disciplinary proceedings because he lived with her, but formally they haven't got a trace of evidence against her." 
     "Unless he's found on Xanadu." Doc shook his head. "Or gets caught when he leaves. I thought the two of them would be smarter. It's pretty obvious that the BWL won't let the planet out of their sight now. He's an ST, after all – whatever she may feel for him." 
     "Well, Doc." Zach looked thoughtfully at Hartford. "Somehow this isn't like him at all." 
     "What? Goose and all these psychic gurus?" 
     "No. Just think about it. Xanadu is a hopeless position. I think Niko's capable of seeing the planet as a refuge. But Goose?" 
     "He's half-dead, Zach." 
     "He has chest trouble, not head trouble. Maybe he's wild, but he isn't stupid." 
     "So you're assuming they're not on Xanadu at all?" 
     "I'm not assuming anything." Zach grinned briefly. "We're observing Xanadu on the BWL's orders, and that's all we're doing." He gave Doc a short glance over the computer console. "But I think we should be prepared for surprises in this affair." 

2093-07-22 Local Time 0301 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 386 

It was cold and there was a faint draft. Niko crept deeper under her blanket, wrapped it tighter around her, and tried to close even the last gap. Then she felt the absence of something – Shane. She sat up. Her senses reached for him. Nothing. The door was open a crack: the reason for the draft. 
     Xanadu's Star, he slept away almost the whole month. It was a kind of art just to keep him awake long enough to eat and wash. And now he's out and about in the middle of the night? 
     She fished beside the bed for her boots, wrapped herself up in her blanket, and followed him. The front door was also open. Outside? "Shane?" 
     The silhouette at the cliff's edge was difficult to see in the moonless darkness. Should he've walked that far? Her eyes slowly got used to the starlight. He wore only the thin linen clothes in which he had slept. His feet were bare, and besides that, his shirt was open down to the waistband. She felt cold just looking at him. "Fifteen minutes..." She thought she'd misheard, but he continued, faintly, as if his voice might break. "Fifteen minutes for just under a half kilometer." He leaned into the wind that plastered his clothes to his body and set them flapping behind him, took a deep breath, and exhaled the air with force against the blowing wind. Then he looked at her, his eyes only a sparkle in the dark. "I have to change that." 

His breath was wheezing when they reached the house again, and he pressed his forearm against his left side. Side stitches. Niko wanted to wrap him in the blanket as well, but he swerved aside with the old familiar panic of physical contacts, of someone too close to him in his eyes. Even in the atmosphere of a whole planet, a single breather at his side was still a rival. 
     The windows were still open. When she noticed the thin layer of sweat on his forehead, she pushed him into the kitchen and made black tea: Ceylon, grown on Kirwin, caffeinated. After she made him drink a big mug of it, she took a seat next to him at the kitchen table. "You've got to be careful. You can't allow yourself any relapses." He just looked at her, didn't answer. "What did you want out there, anyway?" 
     "Stars and storm." He took a deep sip of his second mug of tea. "Freedom." When she stared at him uncomprehending: "I've missed them, Niko." He hesitated, searched for words. "The stars and the wind. I've never paid attention to it. They were always there – somehow. Even at Wolf Den. The wind dry and dusty, the stars behind armored glass... but they were there. Do you understand me? There was nothing of it inside the mountain. Only memories..." He pushed the mug away and searched her eyes. "Do you know what it's like to dream of running?" When she remained silent: "You feel the work of the muscles, the tendons getting tense till they almost tear, the flexing of the joints cushioning the force of your feet hitting the ground... the air inside your lungs, your pulse in your veins... and finally the vibration of exhaustion and the cooling sweat. – You– you wake up and think you've run, just run, now, only a moment before – and then the memories of your dreams are replaced with reality: the pain in your sides, the wheezing, the inner heat, the narrowness..." He cramped his fingers tightly around the mug. "Back into prison." 
     "You will run again, Shane. – If you stop these sorts of escapades." 
     "I had to know that all of it still exists." His voice was faltering but less tired than she'd feared. "I was buried alive for a whole year, deeper than these gas grenades I'm searching for..." 
     Niko looked up, stared suddenly forcefully and fascinated at him. "That's it!" 
     "What's it?" 
     "You and the gas grenades." She slammed her flat hand on the table. "It was right in front of our noses. Dammit! I've already said it myself." 
     "I don't understand a word you're saying, Niko." 
     "Shane, you said on the ship that except for you, all UVP material is stored at LongShot, right?" 
     "Yes, of course, but–" 
     "Think about it. You're an ST, and this gas was made to–?" 
     "To kill STs. Therefore it must also be UVP since it was never handed out to the regular forces." 
     They looked at each other. In unison: "It's at LongShot!" 
     "And it's damn hard to get something out of those labs." 
     "The place is so tightly controlled that there just have to be deviations to be found if someone was in there! When I'm back at BETA, I'm going to search for them." 

2093-07-22 Local Time 0441 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 386 

"That's it!" 
     He was out the bedroom door with a speed she hadn't thought him capable of, with his breath wheezing from the night's strain. Sighing, she wrapped herself in her quilt again and walked after him. At BetaMountain the man is dead to the world before midday, the first weeks here he just overslept totally, and now he's developing into a night owl... what's next? Installed duvet feathers? He sat at the kitchen table and hastily scribbled long columns of letters and numbers. 
     "What's what, Shane?" she asked sleepily. 
     "How do you train a body that can't be stressed, hm?" 
     "Not at all. It's impossible." 
     "Yes! It's possible! Among other things, they trained us in a special form of close-combat gymnastics which was intended to keep us fit during flights with mass personnel carriers – you know, these sardine cans. I'd totally forgotten about that, since we never used it. And what's the main problem there...?" 
     "Extreme lack of space?" 
     "That, too. And oxygen shortage. So air must be saved, and then the gymnastics mustn't cause physical strain–" 
     "Since the consumption of air would rise otherwise. Does the basic education have to be right now, in the middle of the night?" 
     He grinned. "Absolutely. – I should be able to do these exercises. I–" 
     "Don't you dare do gymnastics right now. You've just missed having an attack." 
     "And? I–" 
     "Shane! Go to bed." 

2093-08-20 Local Time 1302 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 415 

The solar glider stopped with whining buffer fields in front of the house. Zozo jumped out of it and rushed up the porch stairs. "Niko! Goose! Are you there?" 
     "Over here." Niko came around the corner, put down a basket of vegetables, and welcomed him. "Goose is doing better," she anticipated his question. 
     "Thank the Mothmoose! I–" 
     She laughed out loud. "Don't let him know that. Shane said recently that if that beast trumpeted him out of sleep just one time more it'd end up in his frying pan." 
     "For Heaven's sake, no! It's a holy animal." 
     Niko snickered. "And a loud one. How is it that you're here?" 
     "We've got this silly reception with the Andorians in the capital. I've fobbed the whole mess off on Zeezo and scarpered for today. Need to find out how my two favourite escapees are doing. Where's Goose now?" 
     "Behind the house, doing his exercises – I think." 
     "What? You don't know?" 
     "I mean I'm not sure if what he does is a kind of training. Look for yourself..." 

...shift weight to right foot. Pelvis leads body. Slowly lift off relieved foot, set down a half foot-length ahead without putting weight on it. Arms follow circles of power, push against an imaginary enemy. Roll back. Shift weight to left foot... 

"He takes nearly twenty minutes for thirteen of these figures, Zozo." 
     The Kiwi watched the slow, rounded movements in fascination. Gooseman was still alarmingly thin, but at least he appeared lifelike again. "Looks a lot like a dance in slow motion." 
     "That it is, Zozo." Goose broke off his exercise. "The body wants to hurry, and you force it to resist itself if you refuse it the speed. Your whole muscular system is worked through from the base after a quarter of an hour without increasing your breathing rhythm." He looked away for a second, gazed at the cliff with narrowed eyes. "That's why I can do it." 
     "What's it worth as a martial art form?" 
     "In perfect use you can come up against every hard school with it." With a short look towards Niko. "Including tae kwon do, jiujitsu, and ninjitsu. But the underlying mentality is difficult." 
     "Why that?" 
     "STs are pretty wild, Zozo. This takes composure." 
     "Sounds like heavy discipline." 
     A shadow flow over his face. "I really need that." Only Niko received the following thought: ...I can never afford to lose control of my rage again, to hurt her again... 

From the porch they watched Goose where he wandered along the mint fields towards the cliffs. "Does he go that way every day, Niko?" 
     "A day isn't really his scale, Zozo." Niko smiled pensively. "Goose is far too arrogant to bother with something as banal as days." 
     "What do you mean by that?" 
     "He gets up, does his exercises and marches on, every time a bit further. When he comes back he takes a shower, eats something, and falls asleep. When he wakes he starts at the beginning again. Whether we have daylight or not, whether it's raining or foggy." She shook her hair back. "He scared the hell out of me once when he walked off at two o'clock in the morning. I didn't notice until he was already gone and I was really worried about him." 
     "And what does he do now?" 
     "Since then he leaves notes on the table." 
     "Is he making progress?" 
     "He began three weeks ago with fifteen minutes; now he's gone for nearly two hours. Always at the same speed." 
     "I'd never have believed that Goose could wander at that leisurely pace." 
     "It's his only chance to make it." Niko twisted her mouth slightly. "Know the distance and ration your strength." 
     "Sounds like an order." 
     "Wolf Den." She sighed. "I hear more about it these days than I'd like." 
     "Don't you walk with him?" 
     "He prefers to be alone. I think his weakness gives him a hard time, and I remind him of it when I accompany him and have to consciously adjust my pace. He will increase the speed when he gets round the island in one go." 
     "That's more than ten kilometers." 
     "He applies the standards of Wolf Den. Everything or nothing. He doesn't consider anything else." She shook off the thought. "What's new at BETA?" 
     Zozo looked uncomfortably at the ground. "I don't know the details, but Zachary and Doc seem to have a dubious job at no-one-knows-where for more than a month and a half now. I've talked with Eliza. But she said she doesn't know where the two are, either." 
     "If I know BETA they're condemned to lurk for us near Xanadu." 
     "I think so, too." He chuckled. "Good thing you aren't there. But there's something else: I heard noises to the effect that SecStaff is going to bring a charge against you. I don't know for what. – But in any case, the rumour factory is working extra shifts." 
     "That was to be expected. Fits into this nitpicker's house." 
     "Sure. And while I remember: I think your problem about having to leave him alone here has been solved on its own. Little Swee's got Antarian flu. Mrs. Zee has decided to stay with the children on the estate for the next year. She said to me she'd be pleased," Zozo twinkled roguishly, "to get another child back on his feet." 
     Niko laughed out loud. "Goose won't like the sound of that at all. He hates to be mothered." 
     "Then Ma Zee's going to make him healthy at incredible speed – so that he can finally flee from her!" 

2093-08-20 Local Time 2251 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 415 

...he slowly turned round toward her, looked at her with a strange light in his eyes. His voice was very cold, very controlled. "And I can't stand to be imprisoned here. All day long caught between these walls, buried inside this mountain!" His fist crashed against the window frame. "You can't stand me laughing about my death?" He made a step towards her, hesitated, trembling. "You don't know what it's like to be caught in this carcass, waiting for some screwup to give this roach its final victory!" Another step. They stood in the middle of the room. Nearly colorless eyes. "I'd welcome death!" 
     "No! Shane, please. You shouldn't say–" She came over to him, put her hand on his arm... 
     "Don't touch me!!!" 
     Niko didn't even see the blow coming. She felt only the impact of the back of his hand on her cheek and the dull bang when her head hit the wall. Dazed, she struggled to her feet, just stared at him with eyes wide from shock, met the colorless, burning eyes and shrank back up the stairs for the door, locked it behind her... 

"No!!" He jerked awake breathing heavily, pressed his hands against eyes and temples, again and again saw her shrinking back from him with a maltreated face. "No..." His voice was nearly a sob. 
     "Shane." The hand on his arm was warm, shockingly familiar. "It's a dream, not reality." 

He looked at her with wide-open eyes from within the darkness. Fingertips felt for her cheek, touched her, trembling. So it's the same dream again... If only I could find out what's tormenting him so much. It can't only be that he struck me... "Talk to me. This dream is getting you down. If you talk I can help you..." She felt his retreat into the darkness. 
     "I can't..." 
     "Shane," she bowed her head, formulated the next sentence very exactly, "I know what you're dreaming of. And I know also that you're walking though hell with that dream every night. I've been there. I've seen this dream with my own eyes. I got over it, over the dream and over the reason behind it, and now it's up to you to–" 
     "You don't understand." The voice was wan, almost without emotions. Again the wall of ice... To hell with it! But he continued. Well, it's better than nothing... "I'm an ST. I shouldn't dream. My cerebral structures were designed for simultanous memory processing, not processing that came later within REM phases, to make people like me more independent of sleeping times and duration." 
     "But it's a fact that you're dreaming. Even you can't deny that." 
     "I'm not. But do you remember what I told you about the A's?" His hands closed hard around the quilt. 
     Xanadu's Star, what has he got to face to give me this answer?
     "Not to fulfill expectations at Wolf Den – or to differ from them – was dangerous. I... I didn't have a word for the pictures in my sleep, but I recognized fast that nobody expected me to have them. So I learned to keep my mouth shut about them..." 
     Gods, he's resisting fifteen years of indoctrination. 
     "These pictures... dreams... were wild, bloody, absurd, sometimes insane, and they made me incredibly confused. I was almost twenty when I began to dream about things I liked..." 
     "And what have you dreamed of?" 
     "Of you." 
     She blushed. And now your old dreams meddle with the few good new ones. Shane, why have you never told me this? She laid her hands on his, pressed his cramped fingers. A picture formed in her mind of a child who hid himself in bare corridors and was afraid of his dreams because nobody told him what they were and that it was normal to have them. She pushed the image aside. Nonsense! He'd never have been like that. Wolf Den didn't allow weaknesses to be shown... 
     "In... in these dreams back then there was a voice... false... sweet..." He shivered heavily now. "Abandon... stop... just don't fight back any longer... and it would be over. I never listened, I fought against it. I didn't want to die..." 
     She was coming closer to the answer. "And the voice was there again." 
     "Since the gas." 
     She crossed her fingers with his as she finally understood. What he can't concede, can't allow himself to concede, is that on that day, for a moment, he listened to that voice. The disease had eaten up the creature of Wolf Den and the boy who survived totally on his own there defended himself in the only way he ever learned: strike. 
     Fingertips touched her cheek in the darkness again, If this is a splinter of the child he could have been without Wolf Den... By all the Gods, Shane, what did you have to do to yourself to survive there? 
     A line from a Crusader poem flitted through her thoughts: 
     ...nothing hurts more than the pain of shattered souls... 
She heard the faint wheezing in his breath get louder. That's too much to bear for him! 
     Her powers sensed for the splinter of the self that couldn't cope with the memory. 
     ...you didn't give up, you're still here, you have survived... 
     Dreams came to her: narrow, bloody, choking, full of pain... She turned her eyes away, forced her way through them, saw herself in the tan twilight on Granna... Another image appeared: blue shimmering blackness interspersed with brightly coloured jewels – a starry night seen with the enhanced senses of an ST... again blood and suffering, rage and hatred, entangled in artificial bonds – behavior-conditioning psychiatric drugs... There! She felt the wounded self beneath the rage, among ruins of ice... 
     ...you have survived... 
     ...no, only what hurt you is still left... 
     ...I touch you, feel your hurt, your horror about what happened. You're still here... 
     Trembling fingers touched her cheek as the mental cosmos expressed his doubts. 
     ...you've defeated it. I've seen your dreams. They are wonderful and they're still there... 

The dawn's light already shone through the curtains that moved with the wind when she returned to reality and found him sleeping in her arms with his back leaning against her, his head on her shoulder... She smiled. He hated to be mothered, but the child he was never allowed to be needed just that: warmth, confidence, and answers... 

2093-09-15 Local Time 0005 
Ranger-1 at the sector of Xanadu 
Day 441 

"What the hell is going on now?" Doc started out of his half-sleep at the detection console. "Oh, holy bits! – Zach!! Get out here, you won't believe this!" 
     The Captain appeared drowsily from the back bank. "What–" 
     "Ships! Xanadu is launching ships! Fifteen, sixteen... twenty-five... Shit!" 
     "How many are them?" 
     "GV said more than a hundred." 
     "How many?!!" Don't talk such nonsense, they don't even have that many." Zach climbed into his seat and almost caught his dressing gown on the back of the seat. "Really. Devil take me! Doc, can you track them?" 
     "More than a hundred vessels? You're dreaming." 
     "Record it. Maybe one of them is behaving a bit strangely. How long can you keep them under detection?" 
     "They zoomed apart in a star formation like a piece of fireworks." Doc chuckled. "Under these circumstances – I can track them for a half light-minute, but after that," he shrugged, "they've got open sky! We've really underestimated those two, Zach." 
     Fox grinned. "Not us... only the rest of BETA." 

The circle was assembled around her, collected its energy into the matrix in the great crystal hall... 
     ...she imagined the space ships racing through the darkness... down to the last dust molecule behind the seats, exact duplicates of her own... perfect, spherical symmetry in navigation... the circle concentrated, gave her the energy she needed... a half light-minute the student had said, the mentor decided to be safe, and gave it a full light-minute... still twenty seconds... good luck, protege... 
     ...exhausted, Ariel let the circle stop. The ship was on its way. 

2093-09-15 Local Time 2153 
Planet Kirwin 
Day 441 

"Ariel's ship is on its way as arranged." Niko put her space sac next to the front door. "What should I look out for when everything at BETA has calmed down?" 
     "Search for connections between Wheiner, Negata, and Walsh. All of them were involved in the STP, and at least two of them were at GTP." 
     "You're sure about the senator?" 
     "LongShot – is very likely. He got high-security material out of LSL once before. As for the STP – yes, one hundred percent." Goose smiled bitterly. "I can't tell you how, but he is involved in it. And the GTP's continuation after Earth joined the League... there aren't many people within the government who have enough power and money for such actions." 
     "And sufficiently few scruples." Niko looked at her chronometer and dropped her shoulders. "I have to..." She sniffed. "I don't want–" 
     "Shhh..." He put his hand on her shoulder, pulled her close to him after a short hesitation. She felt his warmth, the regular breath in his chest below her cheek. He propped his chin on her head, held his face in the cool draft from the opened front door. But he held her, for the first time in over a year. She felt him suppressing the impulse to retreat, to keep distance, felt his victory in the silent fight: his embrace grew tighter. She felt a hand in her hair; turned-away fingernails traced the lines of her cheek. A memory flamed up... Not. She felt that day's horror catch up with him, remembered the restless dreams of the last nights. 
     "Maybe you should write down your dreams. Or draw them. In any case, you have to deal with them. It won't be over until you've worked them out." 
     His voice was merely a vibration in the throat on her temple. "I know, but..." 
     "I can forgive you. Why you can't forgive yourself?" 
     He didn't answer, but she sensed the increase of the flight impulse and his repelling of it. "Take care of yourself. They'll hunt you like a dog because they assume you know where I am." 
     "And? I'm living with a wolf!" 
     "Who's damn concerned about you." He let her go. "Remember: The best weapon against the establishment is attack." He grinned, though his expression was a touch wan. "Good luck."