“Want me to kill the kid now?” Saladin whispered inches from my ear.

I laughed inside at myself. I had half known he must be awake, and half not cared. “No,” I answered. “I know Bridger could destroy everything, just like Apollo, but there’s too much to gain if it goes right. We have to gamble on this one, Saladin. We have to trust the Driver.”

CHAPTER THE TENTH

Stalin in One Weekend

Imagine, reader, the view that lucky stars enjoy as young worlds orbit, rich with life. The star catches brief glimpses as its children spin, of living oceans, lichen jungles spreading new dirt across still-cooling rock, and the first sentiences raising curious eyes to their bright parent. Such a view Martin Guildbreaker shared, seated in the main hall of the Utopian Transit Network as its technicians circled from computer to computer, their coats showing birdman cities, giant mushroom forests, seas of dark ghosts, anthropomorphized animals striding in armor through medieval castles, and a dozen other teeming worlds. Their creatures circled too: a fat, snoozing Techupine bristling with detachable tools, a Gilded Owl, a rambunctious two-headed dragon, Crystal Bats transparent as glassfish, and a rainbow cloud of Hummerlights, glowing hummingbirds as colorful as orchids, which schooled around the room like minnows in fast-forward. Did Martin ask himself, I wonder, as suns must: How long until these wonders launch to the heavens on their self-made wings, and do not need me anymore?

“Guildbreaker, the set-set you hired just attempted murder!”

“What?” Martin rose at once, too slow to intervene as the Utopians seized the set-set who sprawled on the floor at Martin’s feet and ripped the wires from their mesh of sensors. The set-set screamed. The Major once described to me a time he saw a man struck blind and deaf by a blow from a flying rock. He told me he had never heard so pitiful a scream, the soldier, still a boy, shaking more from terror than from pain, floundering helpless in a silent, death-black world with two of five senses lost; imagine then the set-set’s scream losing forty of forty-five.

“What are you doing?” Martin reached out a strong hand to the set-set, who latched on like a drowning man.

“They tried to make a car crash.” It was Aldrin who answered, seated on her unicorn whose panther-black skin merged with her coat of deep space to stream night and stars around the rider.

<what? i did no such thing!> the set-set protested, wiping tears of shock. For legal reasons the name of this set-set must remain confidential, not that many would care which of this race of bonsai brains had answered Martin’s call.

“That was live data!” Aldrin shouted. “Can’t you tell the difference?”

<live data?> The blinded set-set’s fingers trembled as they dug into Martin’s arm.

“You just tried to delete a data point from the set you were viewing.”

<i wanted to see what impact it would have. i was going to put it back later.>