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kable

progress. In expressing the hope that Steve would find a way to rejoin

them, he was being perfectly sincere.

Steve was, after all, the fourth Chosen One. Despite the arguments and

the bitterness they had proved they could work together in the past and

they would do so again.

Only this time their relationship would be on a different footing. The

sheer brilliance with which he had conceived and executed the plan to

destabilise Ne-Issan would force his longtime detractor to accept him

as an equal.

At the beginning of their relationship when they had used bits and

pieces salvaged from wrecked Skyhawks to build the powered hang-glider

on which Steve had then taught him to fly, there had been a period of

real rapport.

It was Steve's involvement with Clearwater which had sown the seeds of

distrust. In the interval between that painful episode and now,

Cadillac had come to understand that the betrayal - in which his

ex-soulmate had been a willing accessory - was part of a larger pattern

of events; a pre-destined step along The Path which had led to

Clearwater's journey into the Federation and the appearance of his true

life-partner - Roz.

Bringing the four of them together was more than a question of simple

symmetry. Despite the bitter words that had passed between them, Steve

was the only close male companion - apart from Mr Snow - that Cadillac

had ever had. The 'otherness' of his straight-boned body and

unblemished skin, and the fact he had been chosen as the next wordsmith

of the M'Calls, had always distanced him from his clan-brothers. They

had shown respect for his status, but his peer group had cruelly mocked

his appearance as a child and later, on entering manhood, they had

treated him with benign disdain for not being a true warrior.

Brickman had been no better, but in a different, more exciting way.

Having expressed his gratitude for being pulled from the burning

wreckage of his Skyhawk, he had proceeded to show him absolutely no

respect at all.

He had challenged every assumption, questioned every decision, demanded

endless explanations - and had even muscled in on his own pupil-teacher

relationship with Mr Snow.

Cadillac had borne all this - though not always nobly because he

regarded Brickman as his intellectual equal.

A stimulating companion and thorn in his side, whose own courage and

daring had set the standard by which he now measured himself. The

loving partnership with Roz had given him a new assurance and sense of

completeness, but there was still a gap which only Steve could fill:

the deep-seated bond between male warriors who have faced danger and

death together.

A similar bond united Roz and Clearwater. A bond which went far

beyond the spoken word. They were soul-sisters, twin spirits united in

mind and body by a shared destiny and the pain and joy of motherhood.

Clearwater had given birth to a child she would never see, the dark

star whose life-task was to destroy the Federation from within, and now

Roz carried the other half of this cosmic equation, Talisman, the

Shining One, who would become the saviour of the Plainfolk.

For the moment, this knowledge was theirs alone.

Cadillac did not know that Roz was pregnant, or that Sand-Wolf was not

Clearwater's true son. Which was just as well, because he had more

than enough to occupy his mind - namely when they should leave

Ne-Issan, what they should demand by way-of payment, and how they

should deal with any attempt by the YamaShita to double-cross them.

Given the services they had rendered to the YamaShita, they should have

been able to sleep easily in their beds, but Cadillac did not wholly

trust their hosts, or any dead-face for that matter. His familiarity

with their language and customs had enabled him to detect a subtle

shift in their hosts' demeanour since returning with their grisly

trophies from the Summer Palace, and it had made him reallse - more

forcibly than ever the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Iron Master