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20

The light was not gentle.  Aristide came awake with floodlights stabbing his retinas and his lungs filled with fluid.  He turned on his side and heaved up the water of life, then narrowed his eyes and peered out.

The pool of life was stainless steel and stood in the middle of a bare room equipped with functional furniture made of aluminum and pseudo-leather.  One wall was featureless white, and featured a steel toilet and steel sink: the other walls were transparent plastic.  The room was so brightly floodlit that he could see very little past the walls, only the occasional dim yellow light.

Apparently he was still a prisoner.

Aristide rose, let the fluid escape back into the tub, and then put on the clothing that he found waiting on a chair.  He recognized the gabardine trousers and spider-silk jacket twenty years out of style.

He put on his clothing and walked up to the glass and made binoculars of his hands and pressed them to the glass wall.  Through the wall he could see human silhouettes beneath the dim yellow lights.

"Hello hello!" he called. "Where are we this time?"

"Myriad City."  Tumusok's voice came from speakers somewhere above him.  Aristide relaxed slightly.

"How'd I get here?" Aristide asked.

"Maybe it's you who should enlighten us."

"Surely you know better than I."  Aristide leaned away from the glass, frowned.  "I seem to remember my cat talking to me."  He touched the glass.  "Is there some reason I'm stuck in a glass room?"

"We're trying to find out if you're a bomb wired to explode." 

The voice was Lin's. 

"A sensible precaution," Aristide said. "Though I presume you've checked my code thoroughly to make sure no one's tampered with it."

"True," Lin said. "But Vindex has been full of surprises up till now, and—"

Tumusok interrupted, his voice harsh.  "Of the forty million-plus men sent to Courtland," he said, "you're the only one who's come back."  There was a pause, and then: "Even I didn't come back."

Aristide looked at the dimly lit figures beyond the glass. 

"Did I come back with a cat?" he asked.

"Not a cat," Lin said.  "Some kind of amphibian mammal.  And what appears to be a lot of data, much of it astronomical.  Not in size, but in content."

Aristide smiled.

"Perhaps you can explain," Tumusok said, "why you came back from Courtland when so many others didn't."

"Well," Aristide began.  He gave a wan smile, then sighed.  "I'm afraid the answer won't reflect well on me."

 

"It's lucky that Vindex is lonely," Bitsy said. "Otherwise he might not have been so susceptible to a glossy, shiny-eyed mammalian bouncing up and down in his lab asking 'Where Master?  Where fish?'"

"He didn't scan you?" Aristide asked.

"Of course he did.  He pinged me to find out what components answered his hail, but as I'm an avatar of Endora, I have the power to tell my higher functions not to answer."  Bitsy narrowed her eyes in a piece of smug self-congratulation.  "Besides, I acted like a good little pet.  I managed to convince him that I was nothing more than what I seemed.  I'm a pretty good actor, if I say so myself."

"You've had enough practice at making me think you're harmless, that's true enough."

Bitsy did not deign to reply.

In a government Destiny limousine provided by Tumusok, Aristide and Bitsy were speeding toward Aristide's pink marble hotel from the Domus' bland, white headquarters with its rows of identical windows—whatever state architect had designed the building hadn't realized that, in a place like Myriad City, it was the inconspicuous buildings that stood out. 

Aristide had spent three days being debriefed in his glass-walled cell.  Bitsy's confinement had been even more rigorous: she'd been brought to consciousness only in a bare virtual space, surrounded by ferocious firewalls while being simultaneously probed, analyzed, and interrogated by Endora and ferocious attack programmers—"hattackers"—employed by the Domus. 

Eventually both Aristide and Bitsy had convinced the Domus of their bona fides, and they were released in order to prepare a formal report on their activities, to be delivered to the Standing Committee the following afternoon.  Bitsy's virtual personality and memories had been downloaded into the physical Bitsy that had remained in Myriad City.  Though now possessing two complete sets of memories, Bitsy seemed to have little trouble reconciling them.

"Is my formal report prepared yet?" Aristide asked.

"Yes.  You might want to read it before you sign it."

"And your formal report?"

"Also ready."

"Perhaps you would favor me with some of the details?"

Bitsy did so.  When she was swallowed by the undersea trap on Hawaiki, she found herself in a medical facility equipped with pools of life and large, menacing robot guards to hold the victims beneath the surface until their brains were restructured along the Venger's lines.  The robots hadn't been told what to do if their ambush caught only an animal, and so they kicked the matter upstairs. 

Pablo's rebellion hadn't developed a lot of bureaucracy by that point, so he handled the matter himself.  When he arrived, Bitsy was hopping around the room and wailing for Master.  The distress was only partly feigned.  Bitsy was wicked smart but hadn't anticipated meeting the Dark Lord in person anytime soon.

"Wait a minute," Aristide said. "You were transported to Courtland?  Not to a pocket universe?"

"Specifically, I was transported from Hawaiki straight to Greater Zimbabwe.  That's where Vindex has his headquarters."

"Pablo has developed a way of calving off wormholes to connect one place to another in our universe?"

Bitsy was matter-of-fact.  "He has achieved that particular holy grail, yes."

"Can he project them, or must they be carried from one place to another?"

"Carried.  As the Priests of the Venger carried their wormholes with them from Courtland to Midgarth."

"We could be invaded!" Aristide said. "Pablo could push an army through an unknown wormhole into any pocket, at any time!"

"The fact that he didn't," Bitsy said, "argues that he can't.  Apparently we swept up all his wormholes when we arrested his first set of agents, and the wormholes collapsed in self-defense."

"But—"

"There is a good deal about this in my report.  Would you like to read it?"

Aristide sighed.  "Not at the moment."

"May I continue my narrative?"

"By all means."

"I became a pet," Bitsy said.  "Vindex gave me a saltwater pool and mackerel to eat, and I had the run of the palace.  Since everyone in any of Courtland's pockets worships and adores him, and there's no domestic opposition or criminal underground, as a culture they're not being very sophisticated about security right now.  Through observation and some guesswork I was able to gain access to some of the Venger's systems and files and physical systems, just not enough to make much of a difference.  I was able to get Daljit's astronomical data, because Vindex made it generally available to his own astrophysicists.

"After your arrival, I was able to use the Venger's codes to subvert the instructions given the pool of life, and instead of altering you, you were disassembled and uploaded.  I uploaded myself likewise along with any data I'd been able to find, and pulsed the information to each of the Loyal Ten on one of the Venger's electron beams.  I reckoned they'd be able to read all the dots-and-dashes, and so it proved.  Here we are."

"You get the Grand Trophy for Extreme Cleverness, that's certain.  I shall try to think of a way to reward you properly." 

"Yes?"

"Perhaps," Aristide said, "some fatty tuna."

 

Both were present at the Standing Committee, which had changed only slightly since Aristide's last appearance.  One of the deputy prime ministers had been replaced, as had the Minister of Industry.  Tumusok attended in his full military uniform, though rumor was that given the failure of the invasion his head was on the chopping block, and he might soon be replaced. 

Which if true, Aristide judged, wasn't entirely fair.  Tumusok had hardly been alone in planning the invasion, hadn't been in charge of the whole thing, and the attack had always been risky in any case.  Yet, if Coy Coy fell, perhaps his replacement would make a better commander.  Or a worse one—there was always that risk.

The Prime Minister, Aristide was informed, was watching the meeting from a secure location elsewhere, and the meeting was also being broadcast to other, more obscure functionaries and committees located here and there in loyal space. 

As a Force Five gale spattered water against Golden Treasure's windows, Aristide and Bitsy each presented their reports and then summarized them orally.  The woman from the Advisory Committee on Science spoke next. 

"The Venger's calculations have been checked and are correct.  Assuming of course that his data is accurate, his conclusions are justified.  The universe is an artifact."  She shrugged.  "Of course, we're living in an artifact now.  I honestly don't see what's got him so cranky."

Bitsy looked up from the forepaw she was licking.  "I have always known that I was an artifact," she said. "I know who created me and why.  The human race, long convinced of its special place in a universe created especially for them, may require some adjustment to the new reality."

"Which leads me to suggest," said one of the deputy prime ministers, his voice thoughtful, "that we consider an Elite Committee to study this data, and make recommendations for policy."

"Policy?" asked the woman from the Advisory Committee.

"Vindex claims to have discovered not only the origin of the universe, but the person or persons responsible.  This has profound implications for our relationship with communities based on religion."

"We should keep the data secret for now," said the other deputy prime minister, the curly haired one.

"Absolutely," said the Chancellor.

"I'd like to volunteer for the committee," Aristide said.  And then, "And I'd like Daljit to be recruited as well."  He smiled.  "My avatar's partnership with her was formidable.  I should like to see if we can re-create such a team."

"Right."  Tumusok turned to the woman from the Advisory Committee.  "Could you bring me a list of names by, say, tomorrow?"

"Ah—I suppose I could, yes."

"What implications does this knowledge have for policy?" asked one of the deputy prime ministers.  "Does it actually make any difference to the war that we know the Venger's goals?"

"Yes," Aristide said.  "It gives us the option of offering Vindex what he wants."

Eyes turned to him in surprise.

"We tell him that we will try to build this hypertube to the origin of the universe," he said. "If he is convinced of our sincerity, he may cease his attacks."

"But we wouldn't be sincere," said the other deputy prime minister.  Then, in confusion, "I am correct in assuming we'd be lying, aren't I?"

"The Venger's project would take many years," said the woman from the Advisory Committee on Science.  "And it may be—probably is—completely unfeasible."

Tumusok's face held a look of sullen triumph.  "So we could use this offer to delay, until the balance of power swings decisively to us.  And then—" He slapped a hand down on the table.  "We destroy him."

"We'd have to assume that he'd be aware of that likelihood," Bitsy said. "I imagine he'd demand guarantees."

"Of what sort?" asked Tumusok.

"Observers, perhaps?" Aristide suggested. "Allowed to move freely in our zone to verify that we're not cheating?"

"That'll be bloody inconvenient if we are cheating," muttered the Chancellor. 

One of the deputy prime ministers tilted his head as he listened to something in his implant.  "The Prime Minister says that observers in Topaz are completely unacceptable," he said. "We don't want them spreading another plague here."

"Exactly," said Tumusok.

"So much for the truce idea," said the Chancellor.

Commissar Lin spoke.  "Not necessarily.  We can always offer and see what terms he demands.  Even fruitless negotiations may serve to delay matters until Vindex can be dispatched."

"I don't know what's in train for, ah, dispatching him," Aristide said. "I claim no more than the average amount of foresight, but if I were you I'd take a close look at the segment of the Kuiper Belt between here and Epsilon Eridani."

Lin looked at him.  "Yes?"

"He told me that he halted his journey on a Tombaugh Object, where he built a place to live, and where he incarnated himself physically.  It was there that he first opened communication with Courtland."

The woman from the Advisory Committee frowned.  "Ye-es," she said, calculating.

"If all he wanted to do was talk to Courtland, he didn't have to stop on a rocky planette and built a house.  I think you should consider that it might not be a house, but a base."

"Uh-oh," someone said.

Tumusok turned grey.  Bitsy flopped on her side, her tail twitching, and Aristide idly rubbed her belly.

"Vindex might have left something out there," he said. "Instructions for nanomachines to build a mass driver, for example."

"We have a mass driver of our own!" blurted the Minister of Industry.  The others looked at him in silent reproach.

As a culture, the political class in Topaz was not good with secrets.  There was little point, when the information was usually available to fill any citizen's curiosity, either with data or inference based on data.

Aristide spoke into the awkward silence.  "I had rather hoped you'd build one," he said. "Preferably on a moon with a photochemical atmosphere, so preparations will not be observed."

By expressions on certain faces, he knew he had guessed correctly.

"With luck," he continued, "you can finish Courtland with one shot.  But bear in mind that if Vindex is building a driver out there somewhere, he's had many months' head start."

The woman from the Advisory Committee put a hand to her head.  "It would have to be immense."

"Correct," said Bitsy.  "The RCDA—Rogue Comet Detection Array—is pointed outward.  From the Kuiper Belt, Vindex would have to accelerate the projectile to relativistic speeds in order to be sure of knocking out one of the Loyal Ten before we would see it coming—and if he uses rockets as an element of the acceleration, we'd see it anyway."

Bitsy's tail lashed.  "I suppose he wouldn't use just a single rail gun," she said, "but a whole series of them, each imparting another push to the projectile."

"How is he powering it?" asked the woman from the Advisory Committee.  "I can't imagine he's managed to build a nuclear power station out there, out of nothing."

Aristide viewed the committee with interest:  his speculation about the rail gun had now, in the minds of the committee, become a desperate fact.  All looked haunted, if not panicked, by a thought they hadn't considered until just a few moments earlier.  The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of desperation.

"We've seen no sign of his shipping antimatter anywhere, let alone the Kuiper Belt," Bitsy said. "So it's likely he's using solar power both for building and then for powering his weapon."

"Not much solar power that far out," Aristide said.

"No.  Construction would be slow, and there might be a significant delay between shots."

"He might be lucky," said the woman from the Advisory Committee, "and have a source of geothermal power."

Aristide looked at the Minister of Industry.  "When will our own mass driver be completed?"

The man reddened.  "I probably shouldn't say.  Spoken too much already."

"That's our deadline, then, whatever it is.  But as we're building it, we should be certain that Vindex doesn't know where our driver is, or can't find it once he starts looking."

"Or," said Bitsy, "that one of the people who knew about it died in the zombie plague, and get turned to one of the Venger's clients long enough to report it to his boss."

That set them into a panic.  Decisions were made in haste, though with a certain residual decorum.  Endora, speaking through Bitsy, said that none of those who knew officially of the rail gun project were known to have been a pod person—though of course if someone had carelessly blabbed to someone, that someone could have been anyone.  The committee breathed only a little more easily.

"Perhaps," said the Chancellor, "the Treasury can afford more than one mass driver."

"Redundancy," said Aristide, "is our friend."

Tumusok and Bitsy both looked up, their eyes identically glazed as they communed with their implants.

"Now what?" Aristide muttered.  Bitsy yawned, stretched, and looked at him.

"Vindex is demonstrating his petulance," she said.  "He just threw a new weapon at us—at Topaz, I mean."

"What was it?" Tumusok asked. "All I got was a lot of data."

"Courtland fired a missile," Bitsy said.  "Our antiproton beams intercepted it.  It was about three meters long, but at my best guess it contained a wormhole gate leading to a universe containing about ninety million tonnes of antimatter.  The antimatter was ejected, but fortunately it's no longer aimed at us.  It's heading south of the plane of the ecliptic, and doing battle with the solar wind all the way."

"Our defenses are adequate?" Tumusok asked.

"Unless he fires millions of the things, yes." 

They both jumped as Aristide hammered the table with both fists. 

"Damn it!" he said.

The committee stared at him.

"Do you mean to say," Aristide said, "that our civilization has now reached the point where we're hurling hostile universes at each other?"

There was another moment of silence.

"Apparently yes," Bitsy said.

 

"I'm annoyed," Daljit said.  "No, more than that.  I'm furious."

Aristide looked at her across the table.  "Not at me, I hope."

"No.  Yes.  Make that hell yes."

He was silent, observing her.

"I failed," she said.  "I sensed something behind those Chiau equations, and I failed to find it, and you failed to inspire me!"

"It could be argued," he responded, "that I did inspire you, though the you and the I were alternative versions of ourselves.  But," seeing the impatience in her eyes, "I won't argue that.  Instead I'll suggest that our alternative selves were not entirely lucky."

She narrowed her eyes.  "I tried to break Chiau's theory and I couldn't," she said. "I switched to genetics because it was still in a place where I could contribute, and astrophysics was such a dead end."  Her lips tightened.  "I so want it to be your fault that I failed," she said.

Aristide shrugged. "Let it be my fault, then," he said, "if it will soothe you."

For a moment they fell silent.  They had met for dinner on neutral ground, a restaurant inland from Myriad City, in a place called Tres Piedras.  Daljit now worked in a secret installation and had leave only two days out of ten, and Aristide had his own war work, so the rendezvous had to be arranged well in advance.

It had been difficult for Aristide to make an exit from Myriad City.  The government had released the identity of Vindex, and Aristide had been under siege by an army of cranks, reporters, and historians who wanted everything from Aristide's opinion of his twin's character and intentions to those who insisted he was part of Pablo's conspiracy.  Tumusok had assigned Aristide bodyguards.  One of these was an old friend—Captain Grax, full-sized again, whose trollish presence outside Aristide's door served to discourage both assault and inquiry.

A pair of Aristide's guards, both human to all appearances, now dined soberly at a corner table and kept alert watch on the other diners.

Aristide had escaped his pursuers thanks only to Bitsy, who had carefully switched off all surveillance along his route as he passed.  Now that he was in the restaurant, he sat facing the wall on the far side of the room.  Though he had got a few strange looks from other diners, he and Daljit ate in relative privacy.  Anyone trying to communicate Aristide's whereabouts from this area would encounter a strange communications malfunction.

Bitsy's powers to hide Aristide, or anyone, or anything, had been greatly enhanced by emergency war legislation.

One piece of information that had not been released was Pablo's astronomical data, or the nature of his solution to the Existential Crisis.  So many people and politicians, however, had been let into this secret that Aristide concluded it couldn't be kept from the public much longer, and he had felt free to tell Daljit what he knew. 

Daljit was dressed in subdued colors, blues and violets, that contrasted with the white brilliance of the table linen.  Over her plate winked the jewelry that called attention to her fine hands.  Her mole was all in order.

She sighed, looked away.  "I envy my twin.  And I know I'll carry that bitter envy forever."

"She didn't die well."

"Who cares?  She died at her moment of triumph.  And I—" Her lips twisted with disgust.

Aristide sipped at his glass of water and wondered if Daljit was too young to know what such a death, a permanent death, really meant.

"You've refused an appointment to the Elite Committee," he said.

"I'm not elite anymore.  Everything I know is out of date.  I don't even think like an astrophysicist any longer."  She looked down at one clenched fist.  "I'm not going to compound my humiliation by joining a committee of physicists who are all faster and more current than I am."

"It's a mistake."

"It's a mistake I can live with."  Bitterly. 

He said nothing. 

"And you?" she asked. "Do you envy Pablo Rex?"

"Get thee behind me, Pablo," he said. "I rejoice in the difference between us."

"He has found a purpose."

"So have I.  Opposing him."

Daljit looked at Tecmessa, which leaned against the table in its case.  

"You still go armed, even though you have guards?"  Daljit asked.

"I've received a rather astounding number of death threats," Aristide said.  "Until the police check them and discover that they originate from the usual harmless cranks, I'm to be careful."  He sighed.  "I had found a pleasant sort of obscurity, and now I wake to find I'm infamous."

"I still don't understand what a sword's going to do against a shotgun."

Aristide looked at her.  "Would you rather I carry a shotgun?"

She had no answer, and so ate a piece of mushroom.

He regarded her, dark eyes and graceful hands and asymmetric mole, and spoke.

"My career has of late been a tale of miserable failure," he said. "As a soldier, I led my forces to their destruction.  As a prisoner, I failed to do more than dance to the tune of my captor.  As a philosopher, I failed to win the Other Pablo from his solipsism.  Even as a heckler, I failed to enlighten or amuse."

She looked at him, analytical.  "The whole army failed, not just you.  Since you were prisoner in a whole universe devoted to the enemy's cause, it's not surprising you failed to escape all on your own—you had only a few hours, you could scarcely dig your way out of the Château d'If with a rusty spoon.  As for Pablo Rex—" She shrugged.  "He's been planning this for centuries.  If you couldn't talk him out of it in the course of a short conversation, I can't blame you."

He smiled.  "And my failure as a heckler?"

She returned his smile.  "I think you underrate your malevolent wit."

"Well," he said. "That's a relief."  He ate a prawn, sipped his wine, and regarded the glass.  "You know," he said "when I was young, I had to be careful how much I drank at a restaurant, because I would have to drive home afterward—physically drive, I mean, wrestling with the steering of a superannuated Chinese automobile creeping along roads that had been built on twisting alpaca or cow paths.  It was amazing the hazards we lived with in those days—and we thought ourselves advanced, so much luckier than those who had gone before. 

"We had to deal with environmental destruction, climate change, and nuclear or biological terrorism, but at least there were no global wars, no cholera epidemics, no smallpox or polio."

Daljit blinked at him.  "Polio?  What's polio?"

"You can look it up.  I had a great-uncle crippled by it."  He sipped again, sighed.

"And then," he said, "came the Seraphim.  And all the helplessness in the world descended.  I couldn't even save the ones I loved, let alone the other billions who died."

She reached out, took his hand.

"I was reminded of all that," Aristide said, "in Greater Zimbabwe, as I sat paralyzed listening to Pablo telling me of his mission.  And I wondered whether it was better to remember all that horror, or forget . . . like you."

Her eyes flashed.  "I didn't choose to forget," she said.

"No.  You were killed twice by me, and once by the state, and though you were resurrected each time, you don't remember any of what happened in the interim.  All you know is what you can imagine, which may be far more frightening than what actually occurred.  All you know is that you were not you, that you were helpless to prevent your own transformation into one or another form of monster.  I, on the other hand, remember my defenselessness and incapacity and failure all too well.  Which of us, I wonder, is better off?"

Her expression hardened as she considered this, and she withdrew her hand. 

"I'd rather have the memories," she said.

"Would you?  I can enlighten you about at least some of it."

Her eyes narrowed.  "Your memories wouldn't have anything like the same context as mine."

"True enough."  Aristide took a piece of bread and spread butter on it.  "Together we shared two great ecstasies," he said.  "The first, after we planned and carried out an assassination.  The second, lasting several days, when we were slaves of Vindex, and lived in a ménage à trois along with our idealization of him."  He put down the bread and looked at her.  "Tell me—is it best that I remember all this, or that you will never know?"

She looked away, her expression uneasy.  "I only know that this—ecstasy, if you insist—is not possible now, between the two of us as we exist now," she said.

"I didn't understand that until my own captivity," Aristide said.  "Because now I would do nearly anything to avoid a reminder of that time of fear and failure, and I daresay you would, too."

Daljit looked at her plate. "Let's change the subject," she said.

"As you think best," said Aristide, and—because he would not be driving—poured himself a slug of wine.

 

"Is there more poetry on the way?"

Bitsy's voice came from Aristide's implant.  Under autopilot, Aristide's Destiny arrowed along the highway toward where Myriad City sat in its golden glow, followed by the bodyguards in their own, more fearsome, vehicle.  Aristide slouched in the seat in back, wine spinning in his head.

"More poetry?" he said. "Inevitably."

"I thought your last one was rather good.  Though I'm no critic."

"Thank you.  I think."

She could heal me, at least a little, he thought,

But there is naught I can do for her.

Poetry.  Perhaps.  Barely.

The thought would need development.

"May I ask a personal question?" said Bitsy.

Aristide lifted his eyebrows.  "There's something you don't know after all these years?  Ask away."

"You have," said Bitsy, "got rather good over the years at concealing a broken heart.  I merely wondered if there was anything I might do for the sake of comfort."

"You are a civilized creature, to be sure."  Aristide closed his eyes and leaned his head against the cushion, which adjusted itself to his contours.  "I'm on my second millennium of broken hearts," he said. "Unlike Bad Pablo, I've long ago left behind the weeping and smashing furniture and demanding of the sky, Why me?  I shall retain my dignity, work hard, and try not to write too much bad poetry."

"And, if the past is anything to go by, chase tail."

Aristide sighed. "Your vulgarity is justified merely by the facts.  But in actuality I intend to chase no one other than Bad Pablo, who I shall hunt down along with all his works until I have rendered them all into vapor."

"Work is the traditional substitute for happiness."

"Saving civilization isn't a substitute," Aristide said. "It's a necessity."

There was a moment of silence. 

"Apropos Bad Pablo," Bitsy said. "I should commend your instincts."

"Yes?"  His eyes blinked open.  "How so?"

"When you decided to interest yourself in the implied spaces, I didn't think it was a very useful idea.  I thought you were just trying to find an excuse to travel and work off the ennui of the last few centuries.  It was the sort of work that didn't need a Pablo Monagas Pérez to do it.  But instead the implied spaces turned out to be exactly the right place for you to be.  It's as if you were looking for Bad Pablo without knowing it."

Aristide laughed.  "Perhaps Bad Pablo and I are entangled on the quantum level."

"Technically speaking," Bitsy said seriously, "the odds are very much against it."

"I know," Aristide said. "But in a universe that is nothing more than an artifact, all sorts of entanglements should be possible.  For instance—"

"Wait." 

Bitsy did not often command.  Aristide shut his mouth and obeyed.  Mileposts clocked the seconds as they passed.  Finally Bitsy spoke, and though she used a normal, conversational tone, somehow Aristide sensed behind her words the yawning of the void.

"Aloysius is gone," Bitsy said. 

Aristide spoke into the sudden great emptiness.

"Gone how?" he asked.

"Destroyed."

"Hit with an antimatter universe?"

Bitsy's ears twitched. 

"If I had to guess how," she said, "I would say that Bad Pablo's mass driver is no longer a hypothesis."

 

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