Payal’s entire world went silent. It has to be tested, she said to Canto with an almost preternatural calm. To make sure it’s what we’re looking for.

Yes. A single gritty word.

“Did … did I do the wrong thing?” Nikhil’s shaky question had her snapping out of her frozen state.

Passing the papers to Canto, she took the vials and slipped them into her pockets. “No, you did exactly the right thing. Now, I need you to tell me everything about Raja MedChem.”

THE small specialized lab was back under Rao control in a matter of hours. The scientists who’d considered rebellion quickly changed their minds once they realized they were known to the Rao successor after all.

Theirs had been a rebellion of opportunity, not passion.

Canto had, by then, wiped all security footage of Nikhil’s actions, so that the man could slip back into his position like nothing had happened. It’d be a temporary one, as once they’d checked they had every detail about the manufacture of the drug, Payal intended to disband the lab and have her medication produced by a small, trusted unit. For now, the Aleines had done an emergency test on the vials Nikhil had appropriated, and confirmed it was her medication, so she’d been able to take a dose.

As for Nikhil, he’d be receiving a serious promotion very soon.

“Reward people who do the right thing,” Ena Mercant said to her when she visited Delhi the day following. “Make it clear by your actions that good work and ethics will get a person further along in your organization than corruption. Blind loyalty can’t be the first yardstick.”

“Blind loyalty?”

“Loyalty is a good thing,” Ena confirmed, “but you want people in your organization who aren’t afraid to challenge you or bring you ideas that break the rules. Your father rewarded only the loyal, and so was surrounded by toadies.

“You want the kind of loyalty you have with Canto—where you know the person will back you, but they remain their own person, willing to stand against you if required. Nurture the strong who are faithful. That is true leadership.”

“I understand,” Payal said, adding that piece of data to the decision matrix in her mind.

“Most of all, keep on being who you are, Payal.” Ena’s eyes held approval when she turned them on Payal … and the older woman’s approbation mattered. A great deal. “You stand here today because you acted on your conscience and saved the life of a young woman—and in so doing, you set in motion a chain of events that led to the answer to your problems coming to your door. He came not because you are powerful, but because he trusts you.”

Payal intended to follow Ena’s advice. “In the meantime,” she told Canto as the two of them lay in a hanging bed on a sprawling verandah in the back of Vara, “I passed on Nikhil’s regards to Visha.” The bed—which Payal had found in deep storage—swung gently in the evening light.

“You romantic.”

Payal laughed, wild and unfettered. It came easier now, finding a balance between sanity and total erasure of self. “She blushed because she remembered him, too. She was also proud, I think, when I told her that Nikhil had risked himself to warn me of insurrection. Her shoulders grew straighter, and her eyes shone.”

“The man is a hero to her now.” His arm her pillow, Canto now curved his hand around to rub his knuckles over her cheek. “You’d better get ready for a wedding invitation soon.”

Payal moved to lean over him—a maneuver it should’ve been impossible to make easily in this bed designed to swing, but there were advantages to being a telekinetic. Including the fact she could freeze the bed in place when Canto wanted to shift in or out of his chair.

His beloved face was relaxed as he looked up at her, galaxies in his eyes and his hair damp from the swim they’d just taken in the secluded lake to which she’d teleported them. Soon Vara would have a pool. Being in the water was important to Canto, and so it was important to Payal.

“Should we?” she asked him.

“Should we?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Get married.” It wasn’t a Psy thing, but weddings in Delhi were always loud, colorful events, and Payal felt like making a loud, colorful start to her new life.

Canto’s lips curved in a slow smile. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

She grinned, kicking up her legs. “Yes.”

“Okay, but you have to get me a ring. And I’m not budging on a small, pretty cake for our private—and naked—post-wedding celebrations.”

Laughing, she climbed on top of him, her 7J who had never forgotten a single one of her dreams. “Agreed. Done deal.”

This man, he was hers. For always.

Divergence

Coherence, connection, bonds, that has always been the answer. We must fight to hold on to that which makes us a sentient society capable of empathy and hope and joy.

—From The Dying Light by Harissa Mercant (1947)

If enough believe, does delusion become reality? What is reality but the will of the masses?

—Discussion question: Philosophy 101

IN THE HEART of the Substrate, an unbreakable tendril that connected two anchors sparked with blue fire that began other small fires. As they burned, the waters of the Substrate grew clearer, until parts were translucent limned with blue. Even Ager was astonished, such purity of Substrate flow unseen in their long lifetime.

Deep in the PsyNet, in the mind of an anchor unlike any other, a neosentience in danger of losing itself forever took its first clear “breath” in hundreds of years. It wasn’t Psy, changeling, or human, its thought patterns unknowable, but it watched the bond deep beneath the starlit sky of the PsyNet as a mother watches her children.

With hope. With fear. With wonder.

It sent the mind in which it hid images of a drop of water falling onto a dry seabed, a single blade of grass coming to life in a desert, a tiny iridescent butterfly in a huge rocky gorge.

Even as that mind woke and asked, “Is it enough?” another, far more twisted mind came to wakefulness.

The Queen of the Scarabs, she called herself now, though others still said the Architect. The name didn’t matter, only what she was, what she’d become. A spider with endless tentacles, endless disciples.

The Psy, those inferior minds, had stopped the first wave, but unbeknownst to all but the queen, that had been a test strike to evaluate the enemy. She’d held back many of her children, sacrificed others.