Boukey finished his story this way: "After we reached the oasis, my memory fragments completely. I know that we made our way to Mondacc, untracked so far as I know, and that somehow we made our way to Margarnagarr to follow the trail to the clinching evidence. But then I can remember almost nothing. My journal was lost in the struggle with the Songdealers on the Enterprise."

The Elder said: "There is something strange in this. That you protected your memories is one thing: to have them fused closed is another. There are layers of protection and counter-struggle here. The question is what it means, and whether you could survive bringing it all forward. It goes without saying that we need them. But we don't want to jeopardise your mind. What do you think?"

Boukey looked at him and said: "I don't know how to help."

The Elder replied: "Neither do I. All I can suggest is that you try what worked before. I have to go on a mission tonight, but I suggest that you try and go down into those caverns again. Where the water was. In your mind. In your dreams. Maybe it will unlock the past. But it may unlock other things."

Boukey tilted his head to one side, looked off into the distance, and quietly said: "I will try. If I cannot cope in a place like this, with good friends " -- here he smiled at Mandy and the Terran -- then when."

******************************************************

They had broken out the cigars on Britannicus Tertius. The dinner had been excellent, and there was room for a little more review over the brandy snifters. In her armchair by the fire, Cruella motioned to the Chief to continue.

The Chief pressed a button, and the MousePoint presentation took up where it had left off before dinner.

"Of course, we have placed a Cordon Sanitaire around this whole subcluster so that none of this seeding nonsense will get too far before we take it over. We will burn the whole galaxy if need be. That is a minor detail. Tern is about to be transformed, and when it is taken care of, we will be able to use their scientists our way. As Your Disney remarked before dinner, Tern franchises would be quite attractive -- capturing the Gaian market -- big money all over the universe. "

Scchluppp sipped his brandy, which made the rest of the figures around the round thankful that they had already eaten dinner, and said: "How can you be so sure that this will work? I am no specialist."

"Oh," said Cruella, "They are fooling around in space, and we have given them some cartoon creatures to keep them away from him, and trying to get into our system. It is all foolish: they think the battlefield has something to do with space. We gave him a few days to become ingratiated with the ecology of Tern. He has come to the end of his open memories. As soon as he hits the original story, probably tonight -- right Chief? --"

The Chief nodded: "We have been releasing his memories to him carefully since he arrived, and when the moment comes, then the synaptic implant will trigger the phyllomemetic virus, and the planet will be Disneyfied within hours. It is the plantmind that is half of what makes it work, it needs the complementary human-to-plant side to their tinkering, and only he has that -- only he can move over the divide without triggering the defences. Plus the Ternian root memories from the woman. That moves it much deeper, all under their defences: she had Tern in her bones: we needed them both, and we needed them, how can I put it" -- and here there was a smile around the room -- "together. That was what it was all about, always.

Now we will be able use their system to spread our message even further. Quite a neat technology at their end, and quite a neat one at ours. I naturally prefer ours, but together, they will be unstoppable. Plant-mind: and what we have planted in his mind. Really quite neat: a joint project between Replication and Nuurd's group. " Nuurd, by far the youngest person in the room, beamed and added: "Of course we needed the raw material, but Your Disney provided that. " There was another round of brandy, and then Cruella signalled for silence.

************************************************

When he said good night to Mandy, Boukey sat for awhile and looked out of his window at the stars over Tern. They had all gone. He sighed. He began, as he so often did, to bring into his mind, not where he was going, not down into the caverns he had unearthed in those desperate moments on Demershinnia, but a small fragment of a memory, something he could not place, but something talismanic. It was Sharazade under a tree not far off, lying there, sleeping. Where was that tree? He could not remember. All he could remember was the feeling of great peace, and then how it was gouged out by a hollow pit of sadness. And another fragment: Sharazade running towards him on a beach, her hair full of sand. But no: that was Demershinnia: not a beach. But there was water.

It was all too confused. But there was that feeling of great peace: that they were together, even in a world of hate. Perhaps if he held on to that, it could help. He turned over, and emptied his mind. He went back to the desert. And then, strangely, the memories began to come back.

There was a dry wind, and sand in cascading ripples covered the desert as far as they could see. And then his mind cleared: no, it was the sky that cleared, and they could at last see Luna, bulging towards the full, the stars in train. In the dark distance, against which the heavens spangled, hills pointed the way to Mondacc.

"See," she said. " 'Look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold.'"

The Green Man smiled: "Shakespeare."

"My father used to recite him all the time, even when I was small. He once kissed me on my forehead, when I was very small, and said: 'Let her be a Portia for wisdom, a Jessica for beauty.' And I had no idea what it meant, but went around chanting "Aportianisdom, Ajessicabooty" for days until everyone got sick of it. " She laughed a little, and then his memory shifted and there she was laughing a lot, really laughing, and he was riding a bicycle badly in circles on the Margarnagarr Road.

He woke up with a start. He had been sleeping and did not know it. His body was drenched in sweat. He was feverish, and thought for a moment of calling for help. And then he lay back down. He could not go on. It was too painful. But also beautiful: it made him sick with desire for that lost past.

He decided to try and stay awake and reconnect to the deep caverns of water that had opened up to him on Demershinnia. And within moments, he had that feeling again, and that sound of echoing dripping water. But then it turned, and he looked, and he saw blood dripping down the walls, no, not on the walls, but in the river flowing through the cavern. There were bodies, floating on the river, like autumn leaves, multicoloured, in tartans of many colours. And they clutched each other as the boat moved through the reddened darkness, bumping into body after body. They were escaping. But from what?And then he turned to her, and saw that she was dying.

And he awoke, screaming throughout everywhere.

But there was no one there. And he had not uttered a sound.

There was some terrible battle going on in his mind: it was as if the walls of his mind were bleeding. He held his head as if he could hear the blood dripping: but it was only the pulse in his temples, pounding.

He slowed his breathing back down, and after a few moments dipped his mind again in the cool waters of the vast caverns below Demershinnia.

And this time he had a glass of cool water in his hand, and they were in a pub, and they had been riding and heard the pipes, and come over a hill and there was the great gathering, and on all sides a great meeting was underway. A majestic figure at the front of the crowd, swathed in fierce bright garb, was exhorting all against the growing Federation tyranny. And as far as one could see along the water's edge, there were dances and games going on simultaneously. They parked their bicycles and went into the pub, and they held hands, and drank cool water in the hot day. There was excitement everywhere, and they drank that in too. There was singing and fluting and fiddling and carrying on. And there was a kind of excitement on her, and she rose and said: "Do any of you know 'Aghadoe'?" and began to sing --

There's a glade in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There's a sweet and silent glade in Aghadoe,
Where we met, my love and I --
Love's bright planet in the sky, in that sweet
and silent glade in Aghadoe.

There's a glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
There's a deep and secret glen in Aghadoe,
Where I hid him from the eyes of the redcoats and their spies
That year the trouble came to Aghadoe

But they tracked me to that glen in Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
When the price was on his head in Aghadoe,
O'er the mountains, through the wood,
As I stole to him with food,
And their bullets found his heart in Aghadoe.

I walked to Mallow Town from Aghadoe, Aghadoe,
Brought his head from the gaol's gate to Aghadoe
Then I covered him with fern and I piled on him the cairn;
Like an Irish king he sleeps in Aghadoe.

And sat down to great applause.

He said: "You are singing Earth songs again."

"I am," she said. "I have to. When you are in love you have to sing the songs of your heart."

And a thrill of pain went through him. And he woke again, on Tern, far away. His head hurt terribly. His body shook. It was later, much later. The darkest time of the night.

He would wait until someone returned. Until the Elder could speak with him, carry him through this. Till Mandy came back. Till something happened to take him away from this, till --

And he was asleep again. And in his sleep he walked on broken fragments of memory, faces and sounds that crunched under his feet as he went. He was on a beach, and there were shards of shell everywhere, and each shell was a memory, and with each step he crushed one, something in his past Every step was torture, under his feet the past bled into the sand, but he kept moving. She was somewhere ahead of him, needing him. There was a whisper from the ocean, and it said, "Reach down, reach down for that one, that one there."

And he looked out to where the whisper came from, and he saw a great ship with cartoon sails, bobbing on the sea. And the wind from the sails whispered: "Reach down, for that one, reach down." And he reached down.

And he looked at the shell, and in the creamy whorled inside of the shell, he saw the beginning of something. He saw a room lit only by candlelight, and a distant sound of festival, and it was late at night, and Sharazade. There was nothing but her in the world. And she was looking at him, and combing her long hair, and she was coming to him and they embraced and they were together, as one, at last.

And the whisper said: "Look closer, look closer" and he saw that, everywhere around the room, faces looked in, and watched, and when they were done, the door to the room opened, and Cruella de Villeneuve walked in, her face a slashing smile of triumph: "Hello, children," she said.

There was a moment of hideous terror in his soul, and he threw the shell down onto the sand, and put his foot down on it to crush it into dust, to eradicate it, to pulverise it, to smash it forever. But in that last terrible moment, a cry came over the sands to him, saying stop, stop, stop, oh my sweet Boukey, stop, beloved, stop, if you ever loved me, for the love of Tern, for love, stop, I beg you stop, and he stood paralyzed with revulsion and dread. And one last time she came to him over the beach, and she reached down and took the shell from under his feet, and held it to her, and the memory shimmered in the whorls, and he saw in the shell that she hurled herself at the vicious all-seeing monster and then something happened, but it was all in the shell, and she held it tightly to her, and said, wake up, wake up, wake up, beloved, and he knew that it was the last time, and she reached out, and they tasted each other's salt tears as they kissed, and she said, wake up, wake up, she has no power here anymore, and there was a shudder in the wind, and they turned, and out upon the sea, the great ship was flung against the rocks and was broken, and the sea churned, and the two of them ran along the beach, and then in the end the salt waves engulfed them.

And Boukey at last awoke and this time did not return to sleep again.