The Line of Polity (70 page)

Nodding half to herself, Mika said, "Dracomen ... any of them really. I think we're going to need all the allies we can find." She gestured back into the craft. "It's out of its box now and I don't think there's anyone who can put it back."

Apis knew she didn't mean the creature itself, but the technology it represented.

A woman danced in space, surrounded by diaphanous white material. Close focus now revealed that she had floated out from the shade of a shattered habitat, and the last vital fluids were boiling from her body. The silver-haired man shut off close focus before the child on his knee decided to ask him a question about the revealed image. Observing at a distance the broken bodies desiccated by vacuum into rolling woody statues, the mass of shattered biodomes, and the habitats melted into grotesque baroque shapes, his expression turned utterly cold.

The boy reached one pudgy hand towards the screen. "Dead?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Oh yes," said the man. "Certainly that." He paused for a moment, then in a bitter voice explained, "You see, this is what is called a Cadmean victory."

Pulling his hand beck, the boy put his finger in his mouth as he stared at the screen. After a moment his attention wandered to those toys of his scattered on the floor.

Abruptly he swung back to the man. "Story now?"

When this elicited no response, the boy began to fidget. Eventually the man reached across and picked up the storybook from the chair beside him. Opening it, he observed a heroyne, caught in the damaged memory fabric of the page, in a cycle of perpetually swallowing the same priestly individual. He closed the book and returned his attention to the main screen.

With his gaze fixed, and his eyes hard as nail-heads the man began, "Once upon a time... on a planet far far away... there lived a Dragon ..."