When the series of images ended I reached out and flicked the projector switch off, sending the last holo spiraling down into darkness. That was when the years suddenly seemed to bleed one into another; past, present, and future so lacking in definition that for a moment I couldn't tell them apart. I couldn't remember how many names I had worn, or where in my life each one belonged. It was the darkness that triggered it, the absolute darkness of a moonless night, on a campus that had long since let its street lights fall into disrepair. Total blackness, within the classroom and without. And in that utter darkness, silence. Not the relative quiet of a handful of students who had other things to do, other places to be -- that would have been reassuringly familiar, a restless silence filled with guarded whispers, the rustling of papers and tapes and clothing, and the barely audible shifting of flesh as one student stretched, another yawned, a third dared to turn off his recorder. But instead, nothing. An absolute silence, the sound of a dozen people who felt more comfortable with stillness than with life. An inhuman silence that had existed on Earth for so long that I could no longer count its years, or separate them in my mind.

A touch to the control plate brought up the lights, an unhealthy green to illuminate empty, purposeless faces. For a moment I was angry, and dared to hate the creatures that had brought us to this pass. But anger of any kind is a dangerous emotion, it eats at the nerves and eventually makes you careless. And carelessness was a luxury my kind couldn't afford. I took a deep breath to steady myself, and recited once more the litany of my post-Conquest existence: You swore you would accept this. You have no other choice.

"That's all for now," I announced. Bodies stirred, moving from lethargy to life without obvious reluctance. Why did they come here? What did they want? A comfortable ritual, perhaps, or a taste of the past. It didn't really matter. They came, and I taught them; the ritual exchange permitted us some illusion of purpose, so I encouraged it. At heart it was just another lie, another emptiness... but we must hold on to some illusions, and so they learned -- or played at learning -- and the ancient ritual held sway. Education. Without free thought, it had no meaning; without creativity, it had no purpose. Why did they bother? Why did I?

They filed out in silence, leaving me alone in the classroom, with only the projector for company. After a moment I turned its motor off. The pockets were in need of repair -- had been, for some time now -- and one of them jammed when I tried to open it to retrieve my holodisks. Just my luck. I pried back the lip to get the disk out, careful not to do any permanent damage. There were fewer and fewer people to repair such things, in the world that the Tyr had left us, and I hadn't worked in holography for... well, for long enough. I couldn't have repaired it.

At last I had them all, three matched disks in their labeled cases. ART OF THE SUBJUGATION, PARTS I, II, AND III. Holding them brought to mind images from our most recent lesson: an earthenware vase supported by ten identical figures, a sculpture of steel and plastic which was tedious in its symmetry, a computer generated light-sculpture too balanced to be dynamic. Disk after disk, holo after holo, the message of the Tyr was driven home: In unity there is strength. Diversity breeds chaos.

We've learned our lesson well, I thought grimly.

My image, seen in the shimmer of a plastic window, against the backdrop of the Georgian night: A middle-aged man, well-schooled, retiring, an instructor of night courses in post-Conquest art in one of Northamerica's few remaining colleges. My age had always been difficult to judge (thirty-five? forty? perhaps a well-preserved fifty?) and now a touch of gray at my temples, artificial, added to the uncertainty. Hair a sandy color, not unappealing, body neither fat nor scrawny, but comfortably lean. Once I was considered tall, as the standards of men were measured, then average in height as man's fortune increased, now tall again by comparison. But not excessively so. Averageness was important, it was my only armor against discovery, and so I was carefully, studiously, average. What nature had not provided, cosmetics and tailoring did; my appearance should inspire no curiosity in either human or Tyr.

But when I looked at my reflection for more than a moment, when I allowed myself to see... ah, then the ghosts were visible. Visions arose from the past, images displaced from their natural timeframe, wrapped around my current visage like a mask. What I had been. The things I had failed to do. What I had chosen to accept. If it was true that the coward died a thousand deaths, then I died each time I looked at my reflection. And so I chose the easiest course: to look quickly and then turn away, lest I render myself incapable of maintaining that lie which was now a necessity of my life.

Mine was the last of the late-night classes, so I locked the building when I left. Coarse steel bars had been placed on the windows, ironic in light of the fact that theft was almost nonexistent. What was the point of accumulating wealth in a world that no longer had purpose? But what little thievery there was, was focused upon the few items of real value -- such as sophisticated electronic equipment in working order -- so I took the time to check the double doors when I was done, pulling hard at the two of them until I was sure that the ancient locks had caught.

Don't dwell on the past, I cautioned myself, but the ghosts of memory were legion tonight. The spirit of Earth had been destroyed, but what right did I have to complain? The current world was no threat to me or my kind; how often had I dreamed of that coming to pass? What price would I not have paid, in my youth, to purchase a lifetime of peace?

Not this, a voice whispered, couched in the cadence of recall. Never this...

Memories: I felt them rising within me, tried not to let them overwhelm me. Of all my unique weaknesses, this was the worst -- and the only one which I had not, to some degree, mastered. My brain seemed loath to distinguish between sleeping and waking, and plagued my conscious hours with images that rightly belonged in dreams. Pre-Conquest science had verified the problem -- electromagnetic patterns occurred in my waking brain which should only appear during sleep -- but had offered no salvation; my own experiments, so successful in every other regard, had failed to provide a solution. All I could do was concentrate on the present, observe my surroundings--

And stop suddenly, alert. Something was wrong; I knew it, but couldn't say how. I listened: no sound existed that was any more or less than ordinary. I looked, deep into the shadows of night, my vision adequate even in the relative darkness: I saw no shapes or movement which any such night might not contain. The air? I tested it: warm Georgian moisture, rich with the smells of autumn.

And then the breeze shifted direction and suddenly there was something else -- horrible, stifling -- that awakened memories so intense that they struck like a fist straight into my gullet, driving the breath from my body in a sudden eruption of fear.

I ran. Tried to run. The past overlapped the present, raining images down upon me as I dodged that hated smell. But a hand shot out of darkness and grabbed me by the lapel of my coat as I passed the corner of the building. I was swung back, into the brickwork, and there was blinding pain -- but that wasn't what terrified me most. It was that smell: a thick, acrid odor, the stink of Earth's defeat.

Honn-Tyr.

There were six of them -- at least, six that I could see -- and they were all heavily armed. Taller than I was by a handswidth, with black and mottled green and a dozen other shades of almost-black covering their bodies in random splotches. Identical, all of them, with an absoluteness that bore chilling witness to the unity of their nature. Six armed extensions of a single will, gathered about me like the fingers of a hand, poised to crush. And willing to crush, should I dare to defy them. But there was nothing to be gained by fighting them, I knew that from past experience. No hope of escape, on any terms. I knew that all too well.

The dark claws reached for me and I held myself still, despite my revulsion -- submitted to the odor of their presence as they searched my person, tearing my clothing, discarding their finds -- and tried to forget that once, in the distant past, I had dared to fight them. My current identity was passive, nonthreatening; I couldn't afford to lose control of that.

At last they finished. My disks were scattered, and I saw a clawed foot crush one of them as my assailant shifted his weight. My other possessions were scattered as well, lost in the thick summer grass. And the pills on which I depended -- my God, if those were lost--

"Daetrin Ungashak To-Alym Haal."

My current name, a Tyrran number; voiced in the harsh, staccato whisper of the Honn-Tyr, it was a comment as well as a question.

I barely managed to get my voice to work. "What do you--"

"Tiye Kuolqa," my assailant announced. It is the Will. "You will come with us."

I considered running. Better in some ways to be shot down now, than to face whatever fate the Tyr might have in store for me. But there was, as always, a shadow of cowardice resident within me -- and it was this that won out, whispering, Maybe they don't know the truth yet. Maybe there's some other reason they want you. Maybe, if you cooperate, you can talk your way out of this. And so, clinging to that fragile hope, I moved away from the wall -- slowly, making no sudden movements -- and allowed them to drive me southward, toward the bulk of the campus.

How had they found me out? Certainly not through any outstanding display of intelligence on my part, or any hint of a rebellious nature. Those things would have stood out like armor-spikes on a human, and I had been careful to suppress them. Since the time of the Conquest, the Tyr had devoted itself to redesigning the human species. From the wholesale slaughter that took place during the Subjugation, to the current system of transportation, it had worked at weeding out all seeds of possible insurrection, removing men of intelligence and spirit from Earth's gene pool in the hope of rendering the human race more tractable. And it appeared that it had succeeded -- not for genetic reasons, I suspected, so much as for psychological ones. When any act of unusual intelligence might cause a man to be taken from his native planet, geniuses were loath to advertise their talents. As for whether the spirit of revolution was hereditary, and could thus be eradicated, or whether it was latent in all human beings, ready to spark to life in response to the proper stimulus... we hardly understood that ourselves, in the years before the Tyr came. How could our conqueror have gained any better comprehension?

By those standards, I should never have been discovered. With my averageness wrapped around me like a concealing cloak, I should have slipped through the years unnoticed, unharassed. So what had gone wrong? Why had they taken me? Where had I miscalculated?

"There." A captor nudged me with the point of his weapon. We had reached the concrete bridge that had once spanned a football stadium. They herded me toward the bleacher stairs, and flanked me like hunting dogs, driving me downward. Toward the nightmare vision of a Subjugated landscape. Transports had blasted the field clear of grass long ago, fusing the sod and clay beneath into a black, glasslike expanse. The surface was marked with a spiderweb of thin, jagged fissures, some barely discernible and others, which time and ice had widened, of treacherous proportion. The bleachers themselves had long since rotted away, leaving metal struts sticking out of the concrete like twisted knives, red with decay. And in the center of it all--

A skimship. But not the common, suborbital type which the Tyr often used to patrol its conquered territory. This was clearly an intership shuttle, capable of maneuvering in the dark, empty spaces which lay between the planets.

My heart nearly stopped as I realized what that meant. I had always known that I might be taken from Earth -- that was a possibility we all lived with, subject as we were to the whims of our alien oppressor -- but I had stored that knowledge in the dark back rooms of my mind, where such things can be deliberately forgotten. The thought that it might happen here and now was suddenly more than I could handle. My body froze in mid-step, and I felt incapable of moving it.

No one who leaves the Earth may ever return. That was the conqueror's law; it had never, to my knowledge, been compromised. To lose Earth now meant losing it forever.

What was the ancient belief, about leaving one's native soil?

They forced me across the cracked-glass surface, using the points of their weapons to drive me forward, and into the skimship. There, in the dimly lit interior, one of them shoved me down into an aircushioned plastichair. Not designed for human comfort. Another strapped me into it. With sharp, alien gestures they made their intentions clear. Say nothing. Be still. We will kill you if you try to defy us. Trembling, I sank back into the cold plastic seat, wondering where in this conquered universe they were taking me. In the skimship's claustrophobic confines the smell of Honn-Tyr was nigh on overwhelming, awakening memories that were better off forgotten. I fought them for a while, hanging on to the present moment as though it were a lifeline -- but then, as the skimship blasted the field yet again, and lifted me from my native soil for the first and probably the last time, despair possessed me utterly and I slid coldly down into memory.

Icy. Mud. Beneath my fingers, nearly frozen. Pain.

I drag myself a few inches farther. And farther. Important to get away. The ship is burning, might explode when fire hits a fuel line. I dig my few functional fingers down into the frozen soil an inch, two inches, then hit slick ice beneath; my hands scrape back without finding traction. No farther, then. I lack the strength. I pray that this is far enough. All about me are greater and lesser bonfires, spurting orange and blue sparks into ebony blackness. Pyres of the dead, monuments to our last warplanes' final effort. I lower my head in sorrow and exhaustion; tears, like bits of ice, work their way slowly down my cheek.

We failed, my world, we failed!

I try to draw one arm up under me, to raise myself up a bit more, but sudden darting pain from forearm to elbow causes me to drop, gasping, to the ground. Broken, then -- or worse. That sleeve of my uniform is still intact, preventing me from assessing the extent of the damage. As for my other arm... that, and the whole left side of my body, is a mess of blood and burns. Am I dying? Is this what dying is?

Forgive me, my world. I did what I could. Forgive me that it wasn't enough.

Footsteps. I feel them first, through the ground against my face: alien footsteps, a horribly familiar rhythm. Tyr. The sharp odor of burning flesh assails my nostrils, and I hear the sizzle of their weaponry as it turns our few survivors into so much roasted meat. Killing those remaining few who risked all for freedom, and lost; cleansing the Earth of its rebellious vermin, once and for all.

Including me.

The footsteps approach. I become aware of the sound of my breathing, the blood welling up from one lacerated lung. I don't dare cough, though the sticky fluid fills my mouth and throat, and threatens to choke me. Because then the enemy will know that I live. Death in battle is one thing, and I had been willing to risk it in order to save my people. But to be fried to a crisp by the Tyr's cleanup crew offers neither honor nor purpose, and so I lie as still as possible upon the cold, wet earth, and try to minimize the roar of my breathing. My body is cold, my blood pressure minimal, my heartbeat slow under the best circumstances. Perhaps they will mistake me for one of the dead; if so, it won't be the first time it's happened.

The footsteps surround me, stop. A scanner purrs -- then silence. They have no need to speak, these alien warriors, but share each thought and purpose in a kind of species unity that we, being individuals, can't begin to comprehend. But apparently they have judged me dead -- or dying -- for they move on wordlessly, seeking out another wounded shadow to receive their judgment.

I live.

That thought takes form slowly, almost reluctantly. I live. Will live. Want to live, despite all that the Subjugation will mean. My powers of healing are excellent. I know; if I can survive the next few hours -- and find shelter before daylight -- I have no doubt that I can and will recover. Surely I can learn to play the game that the Subjugation will require, and adapt to the Tyrran will.

To survive. Is there shame in that? I did what I could to save my planet, risked giving up a longer life than most men even dream of. But that war is over now. And the need to survive is a powerful master. A jealous god. Is there such defeat, in bowing to his dictates?

I wonder what time of night is passing. How long the battle lasted, after I was struck down. The darkness of the sky is absolute, shrouded in cloudcover, unblemished by the light of day. Except... I catch sight of a narrow band of gray rising almost lazily from the far horizon, and I feel my body shiver in pain and fear as I know myself far from any hope of shelter.

I look around, desperately. There is no possible source of shade, not anywhere. And even if there were, I couldn't get to it. Not like this. I must face this first day unprotected, offer up my blood to that vicious, hungry star....

I did fly into sunlight during battle, I remind myself, although the heavily tinted glass surrounding my cockpit protected me from the worst of the radiation. I seem to remember that the sun can't kill me. Burn me, yes, in the course of a long day's passage, and evoke a defensive reaction from my radiation-sensitive body... but it cannot, in and of itself, kill. I remember that, somehow. And try to believe it, as the sun rises into the heavens.

I feel it first on my outstretched hand.

...my outstretched hand...

Burning away the timefugue

...sunlight?...

Into a fever that is even more painful: reality.

I looked down at my hand, at the beam of light that had fallen across it, and moved it out of harm's way. It took me a moment to remember where I was, and then a moment longer to realize what was happening.

We were flying through a sunlit sky. Which meant that we hadn't left Earth yet. I felt a lurch of wild hope within me; was it possible we weren't going to leave Earth after all? I leaned toward the window, and dared to look outside. A calculated risk. I saw a field of brilliant white, seething with deadly radiation; it was too painful to look at for more than a moment, and as I fell back into my seat, shielding my eyes against the glare, I could feel the fever starting. My own fault, I thought. I should have stayed in shadow.

"Be still," a captor warned. A little late.

"Where are we going?" I didn't expect to be answered. But to my surprise, the Honn-Tyr seated opposite me spoke. "Ustralya. The Kuolqa-Angdatwa."

Through the thickness of his accent I made out the remnants of a familiar label: Australia. A land bathed in sunlight, when much of Northamerica was clothed in darkness. That prompted a new, and much more immediate fear: did they know the advantage it gave them, to bring me here?

No, I told myself. They couldn't possibly. The Tyr's ruling palace -- the Kuolqa-Angdatwa -- had been erected amidst the ruins of Sydney as a gesture of contempt for the soldiers Down Under, who had persisted in fighting long after the rest of us had accepted defeat. That's all. That it was daylight there so soon after I was taken prisoner was... well, bad luck. Damned rotten luck, to be blunt about it. But that was the extent of it. Surely.

We dove through the cloudcover with a suddenness that left my stomach in midair. Damned Tyrran pilots! I was only just recovering from that when we pulled into a tight circling pattern. I glanced out the window again, squinting against the glare. There: the Kuolqa-Angdatwa. Like a fat, stone spider it sprawled amidst the ruins, embracing fragments of buildings and pavement as though it had itself wreaked the destruction. A few bits of buildings remained intact, impressive in their decay. Like the Romans, who left the last wall of the Temple standing as a witness to the magnitude of what they had destroyed, the angdatwa squatted amidst the ruins of free Earth smugly, contentedly, its very position saying: Here. See what I have conquered. See what I chose to destroy.

I closed my eyes, but it was long before the vision faded.

We landed.

There was a jerk as the skimship was secured -- to what, I couldn't say -- and then the portal split open, and sunlight poured in. They unstrapped me and made me stand, and instinctively I reached into my pockets -- for my sunshades, my cap, my thin cotton gloves, the dozen and one bits of clothing that would protect me from the worst of the radiation -- but those things had been left on the ground in Northamerica, where my captors had strewn them. Along with my pills.

"Move!" I was struck in the back, forced to march forward. It was a choice between the sunlight and their wrath, and of the two, Tyr anger was infinitely more lethal. Daylight can't kill me, I told myself, reassured by my memories. I stepped into the puddle of light -- like walking into fire, but I managed it -- and then, reluctantly, stepped outside.

--And I had remembered the particulars, what it would do to me and why, but Christ, I had forgotten the pain! It hit me in the face like a panful of burning coals, and air like molten glass seared my throat and lungs with every breath I took. I could feel the fever rising as my body fought to adapt, and I was glad that my temperature had begun to rise on board the skimship; I could never have faced this, cold.

Had it hurt this much on that terrible day when I lay cold and bleeding on an exposed plain of mud? Or had I simply lived such a sheltered life since then that what little tolerance I'd once possessed had faded away? I could hardly move, couldn't see at all, just staggered forward when the point of a Tyrran weapon forced me to go: one step, two, then countless numbers -- an endless march through the center of Hell, with my body racing to adapt. Blood pressure up, heartbeat pounding, all my vital signals readjusting themselves according to those terrible, alien instructions. Eyes readjusting as I walked. I could almost see my surroundings by the time the thrust of a Tyrran handgun sent me through a doorway, and into shadow.

I leaned, gasping, against the nearest wall. A big risk, not to keep moving; angering the Honn-Tyr meant courting death. But my body was in shock from adapting so quickly; I needed a minute to pull myself together.

To my surprise, no one disturbed me. I waited for the fever to peak -- it did so quickly -- and then tested my vision. A little blurry, but functional. The fever would make terrible demands later, exacting a high price for its alteration of my metabolism, but for now it accomplished what it had to. My senses were altered, my muscles stiff with pain, my heartbeat pounding within my ears so loudly that it took effort to concentrate on anything outside my body -- but there was a purpose in all of that, and I knew it would be futile to fight it.

Honn-Tyr surrounded me: a dozen in all, waiting with the stillness that was the hallmark of their species. And another creature, far more imposing. A Tyr, I guessed, but not a Honn; taller and more deadly, with sharp spikes jutting out of its bony plates at strategic points, and gleaming scales on its torso that made its belly resemble that of a snake. Where the Honn had two small arms, nearly vestigial, tucked beneath their major pair, this creature had four taut, sinewy limbs wrapped in serviceable muscle; where the Honn had a minimal tail that served them merely for balance, this creature had a length of chiton and muscle that culminated in a spear point of sharpened bone. All of it guarded by bone plates, and bits of bone plates, that slid over each other as it shifted its weight in much the same way that medieval armor had done, steel glistening on steel as it moved.

Raayat-Tyr, I guessed. One of the Unstable Ones. I had heard rumors of them -- all violent -- but what unnerved me more than anything else was the extent of its natural armory. The Honn were the Tyr's bred warrior caste, and they weren't nearly so well protected. What role had nature cast this creature in, that it made its martial cousins look so vulnerable by comparison?

"You are ready?" it asked me. Its voice was more fluid than that of its shorter companions, its palate kinder to English phonemes. Surprised by that question, I nodded and pushed myself away from the wall, into the pooling of sunlight. There was no pain this time, aside from that of the fever itself. I had adapted, at last.

It indicated a somewhat circular tunnel, then entered. I followed. Six of the Honn-Tyr accompanied us. The interior of the angdatwa was dimly lit, and formed more like a rabbit warren than anything else. Twisting tunnels cut their way through miles of mortared stone, floors and walls varying in height, width, and texture as we progressed. Halls twisted chaotically, turned back on themselves, and merged by the dozens in intersections that were no more than rough-ceilinged caverns. There was no regular pattern that I could discern, nor any doors or other openings that might lead to adjoining chambers. Small patches of something green -- perhaps some alien life-form, or maybe a synthetic substance -- glowed dully, stuck to the ceiling at random intervals to serve as a minimal light source. The resulting semidarkness was soothing, but powerless to blunt the edge of my fever. It was too late for that, now; I was fully adapted, and must wait for the proper biochemical triggers before the process could begin to reverse itself.

Just when I began to think that we were going to walk this labyrinth forever, my guide halted. The Unstable One touched the wall to one side of him, just so and in a certain spot. I saw no markings. Barely a moment after he had touched the wall it split open, and a doorway the width of a Honn-Tyr was revealed.

He gestured toward the opening and I passed through, expecting him to follow. But the door closed behind me, so quickly that I felt it brush my clothes as I entered the chamber it guarded. I found myself in a dark room, almost but not entirely without light. While I waited nervously for my eyes to adjust, I strained my other senses to the utmost, anxious to gain some clue as to where I was, or what was going to happen to me. My capacity for smell had been damaged by the sunlight, but it was still acute enough to tell me that I was not alone. One, maybe two different kinds of creatures were with me; as for just how many of them there were. I couldn't tell. The first smell was somewhat familiar, and might be Tyr; mercifully, the fever had made me much less sensitive to its fetid power. As for the second...

I sought its source, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and slowly a crouching form became distinct from the shadows surrounding it. Like a panther it was, but an alien version -- more graceful in line than its Earth-brethren, more upright in posture, with taloned claws resting where a panther's shoulders would be; vestigial wings, which nature had redesigned for combat. Even if I had not known what it was, I would have recognized it as a hunting animal; its form, its poise, its aura of tense alertness, everything about it identified it as a predator of formidable capacity. A potentially deadly adversary, whose dark-colored fur was marked with random daggers of black, whose muscles rippled purposefully beneath the sheen of its alien coat. Its eyes fixed upon mine and held me, entranced, until I forced myself to look away.

A hraas. I had never seen one before, and hoped never to again. The sight of it awakened fear within me on a level so deep within, so primitive, that I could do nothing to control it. I could read its purpose -- its only purpose -- in the set of its body. It wanted to hunt. It wanted, more than anything, to hunt me. I wondered what contract the Tyr might have made with its bloodthirsty intelligence that managed to keep it under control; it did not strike me as a creature that would tame easily.

As if sensing my fear, it rose slightly from where it sat; delicately curved talons flexed beneath the smooth fur of its paws as those gleaming eyes fixed on me, colorless jewels set in a bed of ebony velvet; its hunger was palpable. Only when the figure beside it rasped a command did it settle, with a growl, into its former stance. Tensely. Waiting.