“So we’re actually inside the body of a star. . . . Good piloting.”

“We’re still alive. So, yes, it was good enough.”

“And the Xeelee?”

“No sign that they are on to us yet.” Pirius glanced at his displays. “I’ll wait a couple of minutes. Then we’ll work our way along the tail, a series of short hops. And once we’re out of there, if we’re lucky—”

Nilis nodded. Pirius studied him cautiously. Still he seemed remarkably calm, and Pirius thought his face seemed smoother, as if lacking some character, some detail. “Commissary, are you all right?”

Nilis smiled at him. “As perceptive as ever! I could never pass this on to him, you know.”

“Who?”

“Nilis—ah, Nilis Prime. My original. He must get the data, of course, and my analytical impressions. But I think I should keep back the rest. The emotions. I’ve already begun the process of deletion.”

“You’re a Virtual. It’s against your programming to edit yourself.”

Nilis shook his head. “You can’t hand out sentience without enabling choice.” His smile faded. “It feels . . . odd, though. To be closing down sections of my mind. Like a partial suicide. But it’s necessary. He wouldn’t go on, you see, with the Project, if he knew.”

“Knew what? The fear?”

“Oh, not that. Fear is trivial. Pirius, at most only three of our eight ships will make it home. No, not fear: the horror of seeing those around you die, and die for your ideas. Nilis has never really confronted this, you know, sitting in his garden on Earth, immersed in his studies. And he won’t be strong enough. I know, because I’m not. But he must go on; he has to complete Project Prime Radiant, for all our sakes.”

“Commissary—”

“I’m all right. I’ve already cut it out of myself, you see.” Nilis lifted his Virtual face, red-giant light casting subtly shifting shadows from the lines of his expressionless face. “Shall we go home?”

Chapter 33

Nilis stayed at Saturn, studying the material Pirius had retrieved from configuration space, which appeared to be a spec for a weapon system. But, apparently plagued by guilt, he sent Pirius Red back to Earth, ordering him to rest up. Pirius didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t protest.

The rest cure didn’t work out, though. Pirius Red was alone again, alone in Nilis’s apartment, aside from a few bots.

Of course here he was on Earth itself, surrounded by a vast population, a population of billions: a greater crowd than any other human world, save only the pathological Coalescent communities. Somehow that made it worse than in the Venus habitat.

He tried walking in the Conurbation’s teeming corridors and parks. He even dug out one of the Commissary’s old robes so he wouldn’t stand out from the crowd so much. But he had nothing in common with these chattering, confident swarms with their rich, intricate social lives, their baffling business, their soft hands and unmarked faces. They were so remote from everything he knew from his origins in the Core that he may as well have been from a separate species.