figure once more stood before the manual-input console. The white-clad form had vanished—but only for the moment. Again, the shadow presence forced letter upon letter into the console, only to get yet another message on the manual screen.
OVERRIDE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Before the shadow could react, the area around the console was flooded with brilliant white radiance emanating from a winged androgynous figure bearing a flaming sword and a spear of glittering ice that the angel hurled toward the console.
The dark shadow threw up a black void curtain, plunging everything into darkness.
* * *
—
Estafen shook his head, looking around for the walls of the library, but they weren’t there. Instead, he stood in a narrow alley, more like a lane. To his left was an awning that stretched above the small tables and straight-backed chairs of an establishment that might have been a café.
Yet another ship dream?
“It’s not a dream, Estafen.” The voice was low, feminine, and not quite sultry. “It’s very real, just as I am.”
He turned. A woman stood a yard away. She was almost as tall as he was, with raven hair not quite to her shoulders, hair that framed a slightly oval face with a high brow, brown eyes, straight nose, and skin the color of light amber honey. Rather than the robe he half expected, she wore a dark gray singlesuit that revealed a trim, muscular, but definitely feminine form.
He looked past her into the twilight sky. How much time had passed? Perhaps a score of blocks away he could see the remaining wisps of gray smoke likely rising from the library . . . or what had been the library.
“It’s real, but it doesn’t have to be. Nothing’s changed, Estafen. Not yet.”
“Why are you here?”
“To see if I can persuade you not to do what you plan. You’ll only prolong and spread the conflict.”
“There’s no conflict in the aetherial realm. And there won’t be any conflict from the clay of the planet below that’s all the dreamers will have. They need unfettered knowledge.”
“You call it clay. That’s your vision. What lies below the ark will be a garden, especially compared to this.” She turned and gestured toward the smoke from the burned library. “That is what unfettered knowledge has brought, even in the beginning.”
“Perception isn’t reality,” countered Estafen.
“Perception is all anyone has of reality. Reality is minute electric charges patterned in a void of empty space. Meaning that reality depends entirely on perception.”
“And perception must be channeled and controlled,” he replied, his words heavy with irony.
“Excesses of anything—freedom, food, energy, knowledge—anything at all—must be controlled. Over time, self-control without oversight has never worked.”
“Neither has controlling oversight. It results in stasis and stagnation.”
“It also results in peace, and only with peace can there be prosperity.”
“I’ll settle for unfettered knowledge, thank you.” He stepped back, ready to turn away but knowing that the rebuttal to his words would likely not be more words.
She moved even more quickly than one of the aetherial gryphons, but he still twisted away from the ancient blade that came up underhanded, his left hand snapping down with enough force to break a wrist—or a forearm. The knife clattered on the cobblestones in front of the café.
His kick went to her kneecap, and she went down.
After a quick search that turned up no more weapons, he turned and began to run with long gliding steps that carried him away from the café and down the lane to the boulevard leading to the library.
And then bluish-white light flared across his vision, blinding him.
* * *
—
Once more, the shadowed figure stood before the console, beholding the same message on the manual screen.
OVERRIDE AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Methodically forced pulses of air created another set of characters. As soon as they did, another message appeared.
ENTER MODIFICATION NUMBER.
Before the manifested shadow could begin to enter the next set of characters, a whirlwind of fire, with a center of amber too bright for eyes to behold, appeared almost on