Kay gave him a look loaded with dislike. “This is why we need to start here. This is where we can muster sufficient leverage to alter the field the entity is putting out. And even then it isn’t going to be easy. We’ll need to get a bunch of resources in at short notice, specialists, engineers. Cam’s lot are going to build an engine in orbit, based on principles put together by Stig’s and Ertil’s people, and the big icy bastard is going to stitch it all together and flick the switch. By which time we all need to be home in bed, loves, all goodbyes said, because that’s when the boom goes down.” Alison saw this as well: a simple query and her mind was filled with technical specifications, blueprints, designs for machines that existed across multiple timelines simultaneously. Each component was meaningless unless you could perceive the whole. She let out a shuddering breath, seeing it ghost white from her lips. Julian was holding her hand in his, and she knew her fingers must be icy.

She became aware of another then, in that mental space. It was Rove, albeit Rove on the back of someone else. He was using Charen Volkovska, spirited away years ago, now Rove’s demon ambassador to the court of the Posticthyans. Alison watched, holding her breath, as Rove’s presence moved through the same models and diagrams. She was unhappily aware that he probably grasped it all just a little better than she did.

Khan was pressing on with more layman’s explanations, simultaneously reassuring and practically useless. But Alison just watched Rove, waiting to see which way he would jump.

She was practically in the man’s mind. He was concentrating so hard that he had no idea he had an audience. She saw him construct his own model, or perhaps Volkovska had built it for him. Alison couldn’t quite see how it would work. However, it would be operating upon the same forces that Kay and her peers were marshalling, intervening at a crucial moment to do…something, but she couldn’t say what. If it was Rove’s plan, though, she was willing to bet it would be catastrophically bad.