Of course foreknowledge would have been a great advantage—if not for the fact that the other side had precisely the same capability. In an endless sequence of guesses and counterguesses, as history was tweaked by one side or the other, and then tweaked again in response, the timeline was endlessly redrafted. With both sides foreseeing engagements to come for decades, even centuries ahead, and each side able to counter the other’s move even before it had been formulated, it was no wonder that the war had long settled down to a lethal stalemate, stalled in a static front that enveloped the Galaxy’s heart.

For Pirius, it was like looking in the mirror—but not quite.

The architecture was the same: a broad face, symmetrical but too flat to be good-looking, with sharp blue eyes and a mat of thick black hair. But the details were different. Under a sheen of sweat and grime, the pilot’s face was hard, the eyes sunken. It was as if the bones of his skull had pushed out of his flesh. He looked much older than nineteen, much more than two years older than Pirius.

In that first glance, Pirius quailed from this man. And yet he was so familiar, so like himself, and he felt drawn.

He held out his hand. The pilot took it and clasped firmly. It was an oddly neutral feeling, like holding his own hand; the pilot’s skin seemed to be at precisely the same temperature as Pirius’s own.

“I saw the Xeelee ship you brought back,” Pirius ventured. “Quite a trophy.”

“Long story,” said the pilot. He didn’t sound interested, in the Xeelee or in Pirius. His voice sounded nothing like Pirius’s own, in his head.

“So I get to be a hero?”

The pilot looked mournful. “I’m sorry,” he said, apparently sincerely.

That bewildered Pirius. “For what?”

There was a heavy hand on his shoulder. He turned and found himself facing a bulky man with the long black robes and shaven head of a Commissary.

“Pirius—both of you!—I’ve been assigned as your counsel in the trial,” the Commissary said. “My name is Nilis.”

Even at this moment of confusion Pirius stared. Arches was for young people; with white stubble, his face jowly, his skin pocked with deep pores, this Commissary was the oldest person Pirius had ever seen. And he was none too smart—his robe seemed to have been patched, and its hem was worn and dirty. Behind him were two more Commissaries, who looked a lot less sympathetic.

Nilis’s eyes were strange, blue and watery, and he looked on Pirius and the pilot with a certain soft fascination. “You’re so alike! Well, of course you would be. And both so young. . . . Temporal twins, what a remarkable thing, my eyes! But how will I tell you apart? Look—suppose I call you”—the older pilot—“Pirius Blue. Because you’re from the future—blueshifted, you see? And you will be Pirius Red. How would that suit you?”