“You’ve been to hyperspace?” Molly felt her heart skip a beat; she hurried up beside Cat. “I—that’s why I came to find you. I need to get there myself.”

“What? Why’d you wanna go there? That place’ll give you one helluva migraine.”

Molly wasn’t sure what her mom wanted her divulging, but she felt like she was already erring on the side of un-caution just by being near the alien.

“My dad’s there,” she said. “Maybe a friend of mine as well.”

“Mortimor? What in the galaxy’s he doing there? Thought he slunk back to Earth years ago.”

Molly shook her head. “I don’t know.” She followed as Cat turned down another side-alley. “I’ve been told we need some special fuel.”

Cat laughed. “Yeah. That, and a hyperdrive that don’t exist. Speaking of which, you wanted to know what was in the water?”

“I have the hyperdrive, I think.”

“What?” Cat pulled Molly to a stop, right in the middle of the narrow side-alley. Molly looked to the side and saw Walter’s diminutive silhouette framed by another well-lit and busy street.

“You have the hyperdrive?”

“The hyperdrive?” Molly repeated. “I don’t even know what that means. But according to this Byrne guy, I think I opened the hole above Palan that my mom escaped from.”

“Your mom? Parsona? Ain’t she a little . . . dead?”

“The ship,” Molly said, realizing it would be easier to introduce them than explain it.

“Oh, that Parsona.” Cat gave her a brief, concerned glance, as if she were thinking it’s not healthy to anthropomorphize ships to such a degree. Instead of saying anything, however, she simply turned and gazed down the dark alley for a moment. “Well, if you say you opened a door like that, then you must have the drive.” She laughed to herself, shaking her head. “Damn, that’s a clever place to put it. Ryke must’ve rebuilt it though, or someone would’ve noticed.”

Molly froze. She had a flashback to the smelly guy in her ship pointing out something in the engine room to one of his Callite partners.

“Shit,” she said, tasting the old word, which mixed well with the after-taste of the foul rag. “I think we might have a problem.”

“What’s that?” Cat asked, following along as Molly hurried off toward Walter.

“The guys on my ship,” she said, “I think they know about the drive!”

She broke out into a trot, her head balanced on the knife edge of worry and woozy.

Cat came running up alongside her—the alien’s strides easy and effortless. “These guys you keep mentioning,” she said, “they didn’t happen to smell like raw death by any chance, did they?”

28

Edison grunted and stood up from another of the Bern comp-uters. “Complete data destruction,” he said. “I hypothesize demagnetization.”

Anlyn frowned and stepped close to the control station’s carboglass window. Looking out, she could see their borrowed Bern ship locked to the end of the long coupling corridor. After the first few computers were found perfectly clean, she had assumed they all would be. Edison, bless him, thought the sampling size was “statistically insignificant,” and had insisted they check several more.

“Are you satisfied?” she asked, smiling at his reflection in the glass.

“They scuttled their endeavor completely,” he said.

Anlyn nodded. “Which still leaves us wondering if they gave up or just changed tactics.”

“I disagree.”

Anlyn turned to give him her full attention. Edison spoke while re-moving the battery and power inverter he’d been using to temporarily juice up the computers. “The Bern abstained from fleeing this structure in haste, nor did they sulk off in defeat. They methodically scrubbed everything.” Edison aimed a claw at a patch of the rubberized decking. “Impressions there and there indicate removed equipment containing much mass. Equipment repurposed elsewhere.”

“Yeah, but where? And why leave this place unguarded?”

Edison gestured beyond Anlyn. “Visualize. These structures are devoid of defenses. No impediments to movement, no blockades, all open vectors of sight, all engineered for offense, a launching pad for unbridled attack.”

Anlyn frowned. “With no worry of reprisal?” she asked.

Edison shook his head. “Without Drenardian fear,” he said. “More parallel to a Glemot’s clinical precision. You must cogitate as a Bern.”

Anlyn gazed back out the window, imagining the way she would set things up if she were expecting an attack. Edison was right. Her side of the rift was purely defensive, and she couldn’t help but think that way. For generations, her people had held the lines, learning how to build trenches that never budged. This side was all seek-and-destroy.

“It still doesn’t make sense to leave in such a hurry,” she said. “You think they just jumped into a star because it gave them a way around our barrier? Then why didn’t we hear about them from Bishar? Surely if an invasion had begun he’d have been notified by the Circle.”

“You’ve stated the exact quandary I’ve been pondering.”

Edison came over and rested a hand on Anlyn’s shoulder. “What be-comes of interstellar craft that hyperjump into preexisting mass?”

Anlyn shrugged and lifted her empty hands, palm up. “They disap-pear?”

“Precisely, but to what location?”

“Nobody knows—they never come back.”

“Include this variable: assume the Bern determined a reliable method for returning.”

“Returning from where?”

“Hyperspace.”

Anlyn frowned. “Hyperspace isn’t a place, though, is it? It’s just a made-up name. An idea.”

“That is one possibility, statistically likely, perhaps. However, some-thing interconnects point A to all possible point C’s. Travel requires existence. Movement must be analog, not digital. Objects occupy all states between.”

Anlyn scrunched up her face, trying to follow along. “The point B’s, you mean?”

“Correct. It’s not theoretically impossible that myriad such points constitute a physical place hyperjumpers travel through. If that sup-position is correct, one logical conclusion could also explain—”

“What happens to bad navigators,” Anlyn finished for him. “So, if you accidentally jump into another object, you get inside hyperspace and you can’t come out. Like something is blocking your way.”

“Theoretically,” Edison said.

“Okay, so you’re stuck somewhere. Won’t your oxygen run out?”

“Probably. Perhaps hyperspace consists of a junkyard of failed navigational attempts, derelict ships drifting throughout a large void similar to the vacuum of space but without the stars. Survivors could temporarily resort to looting, taking by force oxygen and spares from recent arrivals—”

Anlyn laughed. “Is this a real theory, or an idea for a holovid? Sounds to me like wishful thinking on your part.”

“Incorrect. I’m being scientifically rational—”

“I can totally see you as a hyperspace pirate,” Anlyn said, squeezing his arm. “You’d be ferocious, and have the best ship with all these spare parts cobbled together. And a peg-leg!”

Edison flashed his teeth. “Humorous visual, but I am being unbiased and logical. Dwell on the theory and compare it to our observations. The Bern deduced something new about hyperspace, found a primal door that opens all others. Is that not what hyperspace is?”

“Nobody knows what hyperspace is,” Anlyn said.

“We know some. We know one can travel extreme distances through-out our galaxy. If it connects all that space, it logically follows it could connect even more. Perhaps we heard nothing of an invasion because the Bern are preparing their attack from within hyperspace. Perhaps they’re building structures similar to this one. Perhaps, when they attack, it’ll be from every possible vector at once—”

Edison’s eyes flashed, his fur bristling with all the signs Anlyn had come to recognize as him having an idea.

“That explains the most confounding variable! They do not calculate it necessary to be here because they can return at any time of their choosing. Instantaneously. Setting up in hyperspace is synonymous with setting up everywhere. They are here, by all practical military measures. More crucially, their raid could target Bishar and the Great Rift from hyperspace with less effort than from these obsolete stations. Perhaps—”

“These are a lot of ‘perhaps,’ coming from you.”

“Perhaps,” Edison said, smiling. “And perhaps we should forget the prophecy and our previously stated mission of peace. Transmitting word back to the Circle becomes direr, or ascertaining the Bern fleet’s location and effecting an ambush before they diverge along too many vectors to defend.”

“I don’t know,” Anlyn said. She looked out the glass, mulling it over. In the distance, the armored wall of the Great Rift could be seen, the gold glimmering like a nearby star. It felt strange to see an object residing in her own galaxy while her home was so impossibly distant and inaccessible.

She looked at the foreign design of the ship they had become stranded in. Massive and black, with menacing barrels and rocket pods, its fear-some demeanor hid its toothless condition. She looked down the hull at the strange squiggles adorning it.

“What’s its name?” she asked Edison.

“Increase specificity.”

“The ship,” she said, pointing. “What’s it called?”

Edison gazed out with her. “The Exponent,” he said.

“The Exponent,” she repeated. “How coincidental is that?”

“I believe ‘ironical’ is the correct term. Exponent is a mathematical notation for enormous numbers, and we are but two. It also pertains to rapid growth, and barring advances in xenobiology, such is statistically unlikely for us.”

Anlyn smiled and shook her head. “That’s what I love about English. So many words have multiple meanings, the reader ends up injecting some of their own. Like the Bern Prophecy, for instance.”

Edison grunted. “That’s what I loathe about the language. English can be imprecise when wielded improperly. It leads to conversational derailments such as this.”

“I don’t see a derailment—I see a detour. And where you see a math-ematical notation, I see a deeper meaning, a coincidence that’s hard to ignore.” Anlyn turned and faced her love. “Exponent can also mean a person who brings forth a new or great idea. Like maybe the one you just had about hyperspace.”

Edison frowned down at her. She leaned close and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his tunic. “I think we need to test your theory, and that scares me,” she said.

Edison lightly stroked her back with his massive paws. They both looked to the side, out through the glass to the quiet cosmos beyond.

“I’m unable to deduce a reason for your frightened state,” Edison said. He smiled at Anlyn’s reflection. “Calculate the statistical likelihood of my incorrectness.”

29

“Hello? Son, can you hear me?”

Cole cracked his eyes. There were no goggles, no bright, searing light from everywhere, just the soft warmth of arti-ficial bulbs. Two men leaned over him. One of them he recognized but couldn’t place. He had short hair and a generic-looking face. Very generic, like Cole had seen a hundred people who looked just like him.

The other man seemed slightly familiar as well. Cole blinked and attempted to bring them into focus. The second figure had wavy brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard, both laced with gray. Cole felt he should know their names.

“Can you hear me?” the man with the beard asked.

Cole nodded.

He looked around and saw the same room from his last dream: beds and curtains and white walls.

“Can you move your arm?”

Cole watched the lips move, forming the words. It all seemed to be happening at a normal pace. Very un-dream-like. He smiled up at the men.

“Your arm, son, can you move it?”

Cole raised his left arm. He tried to make a fist, but it felt weak and tingly, like he’d been asleep a long time.

The generic-looking man smiled. “The other one,” he said.

Cole continued to admire his own hand while the other arm came up. He lifted his head and stared at it in disbelief. It wasn’t his. Flaps of skin hung open like fleshy shutters. Inside, small pistons, bundles of wiring, metal plates—they moved at his command. He traced the mechanics down past a hinged elbow until it met his own flesh, the two slightly different colors of dark skin adjoining in a neat line.

“Very good,” someone said.

But it wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all. Cole tried to sit up, but several hands forced him down. He tried to complain, but a mask was placed over his face. He took a deep breath to protect himself from whatever was about to happen. He looked up at the man holding the mask and tried to remember where he knew the guy.

Dakura! The guy was a Stanley! Cole gasped in disbelief—then he found himself hoping and praying that all his nightmares had been dreams, some simulated hell—

All he got for the sudden intake of air, however, was a heaping lungful of the stuff from the mask . . .

ѻѻѻѻ

He came to again, but in a different room. Sitting up, the various visions mixed together, confusing and piecemeal: his own face reflected in a visor, a boy he had murdered so many years ago, a girl with fiery red hair—