Axis

"Sulean," he said. "I found it."

Then he closed his eyes for the last time.

The silence in the common room was interrupted by a timid knock.

There was only one person at the commune who hadn't attended this meeting. Mrs. Rebka hurried to open the door.

Isaac stood outside, still wearing his night clothes, the knees of his pajamas soiled, his hands dirty, his expression somber.

"Someone's coming," he said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The door to Brian Gately's office opened just as a news summary popped up on his desktop. The visitor was the chubby DGS man named Weil. The press release was something about the recent ashfall.

Weil had left his sullen friend Sigmund elsewhere, and he was gri

"You forwarded this?" Brian asked, gesturing at the release.

"Read it. I'll wait."

Brian tried to focus on the document, but his mind's eye insisted on reviewing the photograph Pieter Kirchberg had sent. The corpse of Tomas Gi

He was tempted to ask. He dared not. He blinked and read the press service release.

PORT MAGELLAN / REUTERS.ET: Scientists at the Mt. Mahdi Observatory today made the startling a

The ashes and the microscopic structures the ash contained, believed to be the degraded remnants of Hypothetical structures from the outer reaches of the local solar system, have apparently shown signs of life.

In a joint press conference held today at the Observatory, representatives of the American University, the United Nations Geophysical Survey, and the Provisional Government displayed photographs and samples of "incompletely self-replicating and self-assembling quasi-organic objects" recovered from the western extremes of the dry inland basin that stretches from the coastal mountains to the western sea.

These objects, ranging from a pea-sized hollow sphere to an assembly of what appeared to be tubes and wires as large as a man's head, were said to be unstable in a planetary environment and hence posed no threat to human life.

"The 'space-plague' scenario is a non-starter," senior astronomer Scott Cleland said. "The infalling material was ancient and probably already corrupted by wear and tear before it entered the atmosphere. The vast majority of it was sterilized by a violent passage that left only a few nano-scale elements intact. A very few of these retained enough molecular integrity to re-initiate the process of growth. But they were designed to flourish in the extreme cold and vacuum of deep space. In a hot, oxygen-rich desert they simply can't survive for long."

Asked whether any of these structures remained active today, Dr. Cleland said, "None that we've sampled. By far the greatest number of active clusters occurred deep in the Rub al-Khali," the oil-rich far western desert. "Residents of the coastal cities are unlikely to find alien plants in their gardens."

Because harmful effects ca

There were a couple of further paragraphs with trivial details and contact numbers, but Brian figured he had the gist. He gave Weil a well-what-about-it look.

"Works out nicely for us," Weil said.

"What are you talking about?"

"Ordinarily the Provisional Government isn't much more than a harassed na

There were more private planes per capita in Equatoria than anywhere back on Earth, most of them small craft, and an equally large number of casual airstrips. For years the traffic had been unregulated, ferrying passengers between bush communities or oil geologists to the desert.

"The bad news," Weil continued, "is that Turk Findley made it to his plane, along with Lise Adams and an unidentified third party. They flew out last night."

Brian felt an expanding hollowness in his chest. Some of it was jealousy. Some of it was fear for Lise, who was digging herself into deeper trouble by the hour.

"The good news," Weil said, his smile broadening, "is that we know where they went. And we're going there. And we want you to come with us."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Turk had expected to land his aircraft at a familiar strip a couple of miles outside of Kubelick's Grave, west of the foothills on the highway to the oil allotments. His plane might be confiscated if Mike Arundji had called ahead and was prepared to press charges. But that was probably inevitable anyway.

Diane surprised him, as the plane began the long glide down the western slopes of the divide toward the desert, by suggesting a different destination. "Do you remember where you took Sulean Moi?"

"More or less."

"Take us there, please."

Lise craned her head to look back at Diane. "You know where to find Dvali?"

"I've heard a few things over the years. These foothills are riddled with little Utopian communities and religious retreats of every imaginable kind. Avram Dvali disguised his compound as one of those."

"But if you knew where he was—"

"We didn't, not at first. But even a community like Dvali's is porous. People arrive, people leave. He was hidden from us when it was critical for him to hide, before the child was born."

It meant another half hour in the air. After yet more simmering silence Turk said, "I'm sorry about that phone thing back in the city. What were you doing, trying to get a message to your mom back in the States, something like that?"

"Something like that." She was pleased that he had apologized and she didn't want to make it worse by admitting she'd called Brian Gately even in an attempt to get Tomas Gi

"Go ahead."

"How come you had to steal your own plane?"

"I owed some money to the guy who owns the airstrip. The business hasn't been going too well."

"You could have told me that."

"Didn't seem like a good way to impress a rich American divorcee."

"Hardly rich, Turk."

"Looked that way from where I stood."

"So how were you pla

"Didn't have what you could call an actual plan. Worst case, I figured I'd sell the plane and bank whatever I didn't owe and find a berth on one of those research ships that sail out past the Second Arch."

"There's nothing past the Second Arch but rocks and bad air."

"Thought I'd like to see for myself. That, or—"

"Or what?"

"Or if something worked out between you and me, I thought I'd stay in the Port and get a job. There's always pipeline work."

She was briefly startled. Also pleased.

"Not that it matters now," he added. "Once we're done here—and whether you find out anything about your father or not—you're going to have to head back to the States. You'll be okay there. You come from a respectable family and you're well-co