"Excellent, ser."

"When will you marry, Olmy?"

"When I find the woman who can purge my twenty-first year, first incarnation."

The minister laughed heartily. "I hear you keep a fine advocate company in Axis Nader. . . . What's her name?"

"Suli Ram Kikura."

"Yes, of course. . . She's been active smoothing things between the Nexus and the Korzenowski hot heads, has she not?"

"Yes. We seldom discuss it."

The minister sucked in his breath, looked concerned and stared down at the platform. "Well, just so, then I have a difficult mission for you."

"My joy to serve the Hexamon."

"Perhaps not this time. No mere investigation of illegal gate commerce. Every few decades, we send someone back to the Thistledown to check stability. But we are doubly motivated this time. The Thistledown has been reoccupied."

"Someone crossing the Forbidden Territories?"

"No. More puzzling. Nothing has disturbed our sentries at the first barrier. Apparently the occupants have entered the Thistledown from outside; perhaps more startling, they are human. Not in great force, but they're organized. There's no use speculating where they come from; the information is too equivocated. You'll have authority, of course, and the necessary transportation. Ser Algoli will inform you about the other requirements. Understand?"

Olmy nodded. "Ser."

"Good." The minister leaned over the railing and peered at the surface twenty kilometers below. A maelstrom of lights swirled around several of the lanes. "There appears to be a jam-up at that gate. Ah, it's the season for worries. The month of the Good Man." He turned to Olmy. "Good luck. Or, as the Eld put it: Star, Fate and Pneuma be kind."

"Thank you, ser."

He stepped back from the platform and left the chamber, taking the lift up the long, slender pylon to the Central City, where he arranged his affairs for a protracted absence.

The assignment was a privilege. Return to the Thistledown was forbidden for any purpose not essential to the Nexus. Olmy hadn't been there for well over four hundred years.

On the other hand, of course, it could be a very dangerous mission—especially with information so equivocated. He could help ensure his mission's success by bringing along a Frant.

If there were humans in the Thistledown, and they weren't city renegades—the most likely explanation—then where did they come from?

Far too narrow and equivocated for his ease.

Chapter One

April 2005

On the first leg of the trip, in the passenger cabin of the long-bed shuttle, Patricia Vasquez had watched the Earth's cloud-smeared limb on a video monitor. Before her own transfer, cameras mounted in the shuttle bay had shown her the long waldos maneuvering the huge cargo out of the bay into the waiting arms of the OTV—orbital transfer vehicle—as if two spiders were trading a cocoon-wrapped fly. The operation had taken an hour, and with its slow fascination had distracted her from thoughts about her present circumstances.

When her own turn came and she donned the passenger bubble to be guided across the ten meters to the OTV's lock, she worked hard to appear calm. The bubble was made of transparent plastic, so she did not suffer from claustrophobia—almost the opposite, in fact. She could feel the immensity of the blackness beyond the spacecraft, though she could not make out stars. They were outdone by the glow of the Earth and the close, brightly lighted surfaces of the OTV, a train of clustered tanks, balls and prisms wrapped in aluminum beams.