Synopsis: Six months after the Tomorrow People's emergence, a new challenge forces the Malthus children to think of their future - and of their past.

The Kindred Spirits universe is dedicated to the late Philip Gilbert.

Level Sands is the sixteenth story of Kindred Spirits and the second of Catharsis - a sequence of stories set in the Kindred Spirits universe and exploring the after-effects of the Great Emergence on the lives of those who fought for it.

It is strongly recommended that you read these stories in the correct order:
Kindred Spirits - Two Aims, One Destination
Kindred Spirits - Double Bluff
Kindred Spirits - Slipping the Net
Kindred Spirits - Consumed by Fire
Kindred Spirits - The Stair
Kindred Spirits - Stara Majka
Kindred Spirits - ZD28-FV6
Kindred Spirits - Darkness and Lust
Kindred Spirits - Abandoned
Kindred Spirits - The Path Ahead
Kindred Spirits - Serpent's Tooth
Kindred Spirits - Grand Central Station
Kindred Spirits - Luna Yuletide
Kindred Spirits - Resolutions

Kindred Spirits - Catharsis - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Kindred Spirits - Catharsis - Level Sands

Previous stories can be found in the TPFICT archive or on our websites at http://www.oocities.org/tiylaya/KS/ or http://www.effdee.demon.co.uk/tp/Stories/stories.htm

Comments would be welcome to tiylaya@yahoo.com

Disclaimer:
This story is based on the television series 'The Tomorrow People', created by Roger Price and owned by Thames Television/Freemantle Media. It also features original characters and situations created by, and the intellectual property of, Jackie Clark and Elizabeth Stanway, October 2003.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: 'Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.' - 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Prologue:

"What the hell do you call this?"

David Barton looked up in surprise as a wad of paper slammed onto his desk, barely missing his hands. Kershia stood in front of him, incandescent with rage. Despite the last few months of collaboration between them, her sudden appearance took his breath away and he stared at her. Her dark hair was pulled tightly back from her face, leaving nothing to distract from the fury in her expressive brown eyes.

It was long moments before David realised that she was waiting for his response, arms crossed in front of her. He frowned, letting her see his displeasure. Even here in the offices of the newly established Novus committee, it was considered rude to teleport uninvited into a private office - let alone the office of the committee chairman. She ignored his frown, and David sighed, recognising the stubborn expression on her face from long experience.

Leaning forward, he picked up the document she had all but thrown at him, scanning the letter that formed its cover page. He frowned again. "It's addressed to Abigail," he protested.

"Just keep reading," Kershia ordered icily.

David turned back to the paper, becoming worried now by her sustained anger. When he looked up again, he knew that a fire smouldered in his eyes that was the equal of Kershia's.

"They're trying to take the kids back," he said angrily. "My kids."

Kershia moved for the first time since her arrival, stepping forward to lean over David's desk with her palms flat on its surface.

"You lost any claim you might have had to call them that when you threw their brother in a detention camp."

David couldn't deny it. He didn't try to. He stood, stepping out from behind the desk and moving away from Kershia to stare out of the window. He didn't want to meet her eyes just now. There was too much that was indefensible in his past, and she knew more of it than just about anyone else.

Her hand on his shoulder spun him back around to face her.

"Don't pretend that you didn't know about this," she snapped. "The British Government is claiming legal custody of the Malthus children. You were second in command of the Malthus project!" David hesitated and Kershia pounced on that hesitation. "You did know!"

David nodded, reluctantly. "They asked two days ago if I'd testify about the children's parentage if the TPs took this to court."

"And what did you say?" Kershia demanded fiercely.

"I told them that under no circumstances would I help return the kids to the military - any military," David told her. He shook his head. "I didn't think they'd go ahead. I mean, what have they got to gain? What could possibly be worth the scandal?" He gave her an inquisitive look, his mind never wandering far from his responsibilities. "How did this get back to you, Kershia? Because you're on the Novus committee? I know some of our people are helping arbitrate child custody disputes, but that's more under Marc's remit than yours."

"Oh, Marc's furious too," Kershia assured him bitterly. "He and Abby have no intention of abandoning Thomas now. And why did this come back to me? I guess none of us have spoken to you about what happened to the other kids after we took them..."

He heard her hesitation, and frowned. Usually she only wavered like this when speaking about her personal life in front of him. "You do know what happened to them?" he pressed.

"'Know what happened to them?' David, I'm one of their guardians! I cared for them when we first found them! I gave those frightened, confused children a home - or as close to it as we could get on Luna." She shook her head. "Those kids have never had an easy time, and I'm not going to let this happen. Not now, when they have the chance of starting anew for the first time in their lives." She looked up resolutely. "If that means taking this to court, so be it!"

Golden wheat rippled softly in the wind. It marched off in ordered rows to a distant horizon where the yellow sea met the azure sky. James closed his eyes and lifted his face to the distant sun. Its warmth bathed him, even as the afternoon breeze played through his wheat-blond hair.

Slowly he opened his mind to the world around him, revelling in the vibrancy of a living world. As his mental defences lowered, his thoughts spilled outwards and he felt the currents of air against his mind as well as his skin. He felt the crop ripening, each stalk turning its swollen ears of grain towards the life-giving sun. He felt the myriad of miniscule lives that played themselves out beneath his feet, or in the thickly sown fields around him.

A mile or more away, across those ripening fields, James could feel his brothers and siblings as a bright beacon, always there on the edge of his thoughts. The relaxed and open minds of Adi, Sanela and their father too were bright highlights in the glorious and never-ending panorama. More faintly, James felt the fleeting thoughts of Emina and her other descendents, five generations of the Reganovic dynasty still running the farm that had belonged to their family for centuries. He knew that on a whim he could reach out and see through the minds' eyes of the undefended Saps, listening to their innermost thoughts as if to their casual chatter, but he resisted. He was no longer an amoral child who knew no better, as he once had been.

He felt the tingle of a familiar mind approaching, and, eyes still closed, raised mental defences that would once have been far beyond his understanding, reluctantly withdrawing his psi-awareness.

"Daydreaming?" Adi grinned as James opened his eyes. He tossed James a broad-brimmed hat. "Our Majka told me to bring this out to you."

James stretched out an arm to catch it, but Adi's throw was a touch too energetic. James caught the hat with an instinctive reach of his telekinesis, and it wavered in its arc for a moment before drifting into his hand. He felt a moment of pride in his achievement. It was barely a month since his breakout, and already his more errant abilities were coming under control. Briefly, he felt amusement from Alex, Vicky and Will, and he sent his siblings a quick apology. Of course, being along for the ride - following thought for thought - as Alex and the twins learnt to master their own powers probably hadn't hurt.

"Talking to the others?" Adi asked softly. He shook his head at James's startled look. "No, I didn't hear you. I recognised the signs." He stepped up to James's side and lifted his own face to the sun for a moment. The pale sun that filtered through Luna's reinforced windows had never felt like this.

"I was just wondering which of them told on me to Emina," James told the younger boy, and he felt a momentary indignation from the others before firmly shutting them out.

Adi laughed quietly, sharing the sensation. "Your brothers and sisters worry about you when you go exploring." He glanced sideways. "Particularly when you don't take care, you know that."

James simply nodded. Even after six months, it felt odd to be more than a handful of metres away from his siblings, and he knew they felt the same. Of course, it would take no more than a thought for them to be linked as closely as ever - just as it had taken more than a passing thought of them to bring Alex and the others to mind. Nonetheless, they resisted the urge. They had been given a chance for a new start. It was up to them to take it, and that meant exercising self-control. James and his siblings were determined to do whatever it took.

He pulled the hat down firmly, letting its brim cast a shadow across his pale features. He could still feel the tingle of the sun against his skin, and realised ruefully that their concern had been well founded. Nine years of confinement on the Malthus base, followed by five years of isolation on Luna, had left all the Malthus children a little photosensitive. It took very little for the sun's ultraviolet rays to leave their pale skin reddened and sore. Adi held out a hand, using his own telekinesis to summon a bottle of aftersun lotion, and handed it over without comment. It was hardly the first time this had happened in the six months since the Malthus children had come to live on Emina's farm.

"Are you two going to stand around admiring the view all day? Or are you going to give me a hand?" Adi's uncle Raif spoke from just behind the two boys, making them both jump a little guiltily. He raised an eyebrow as they turned to face him, gesturing back towards the nearest of the farm's large sheds. "I was just about to get some of the equipment out. There's a harvest to be gathered in and work to do." He nodded good-humouredly at James, "After you put some sunblock on, of course. You're already going to be in trouble, but I'd rather not be!"

James couldn't keep his excitement from showing. Ever since their arrival, he'd taken every opportunity to join in the work on the farm, accompanied from time to time by one or more of the others. After the confinement of Luna, they all revelled in the freedom of physical activity under the wide-blue skies. Emina's family had accepted their presence with surprising tolerance, taking in the arrival of the Malthus children as an aspect of their Stara Majka's return. And careful of their protection only in part for fear of the old matriarch's wrath.

He nodded eagerly, already reaching out to ask Alex to find him some sunblock. But he froze mid-motion, the broad smile fading from his face. Not only Alex, but all of the others, had come quite suddenly into full contact. He felt their anxiety calling him home.

"James, what is it?" Adi asked with a sudden frown.

James glanced at him, and now there was an expression on his face that was not entirely his own. The Malthus children stared out at their foster brother's frown from James's eyes, and there was an intensity to their gaze that Adi had rarely seen. "Don't you feel her? Kershia just jaunted in. She wants to see us, and she's not happy."

Kershia

The Malthus children had been so young when she came into their lives - barely nine years old. They knew of her, of course. For years David had visited them, teaching and guiding them, and throughout that time, images of Kershia were a constant background to his thoughts. The children had grown up with those thoughts as their playground.

They had been infants when they became aware of the minds around them. It had taken them longer to begin to understand the entanglement of their own thoughts. Gradually, personalities had begun to emerge from the commonality of eight minds that had been in contact since their birth. Thomas and Cat had been first and strongest, the two of them mischievous and interested in the people around them. Alexander had surfaced next, becoming the thoughtful planner of the group as they began to explore the world in which they found themselves. James had followed, his bold nature and impulsiveness balancing Alex's restraining influence. The others had taken longer to find some aspect of themselves in the whole, content in their formative years to allow their more powerful siblings, Cat and Thomas in particular, to sway their thoughts and actions.

It was Catherine who first suggested the game of hiding from their visitors. At first, the other children had been baffled by the concept. How could anyone be unaware of their presence when the world was an ever-changing and vivid kaleidoscope of thought and energy? The children had marvelled to find that their visitors did not see the world as they did. They couldn't imagine the isolation and grey tedium of a closed mind. In the midst of their gestalt, it was Thomas who suggested that they exploit the curious solitude of the Saps around them. It meant nothing to the children to pluck the secrets from the dancing thoughts around them, but they laughed to witness the reactions of their visitors to those easily seen words. The delight in their achievement that they sensed from David and General Walthorpe just reinforced their pride. This was what they had been made for, and it came as naturally as breath itself.

The Malthus children were the ones who first made David pause in thought - pulling images of the pretty young analyst down in the research division from his subconscious mind. He hadn't even realised the attraction he felt towards her, until the children laid his innermost thoughts bare before him. After that though, she was never far from the centre of his world. For three years his mind echoed ever more intimate thoughts of her, and gradually the children lost interest. Where was the fun of reading thoughts he made no attempt to hide - even from himself?

With the knowledge of all those around open to them, the children grew with the certainty of what they were, and what their destiny held. They knew from the moment of their first conscious awareness that the Tomorrow People existed, and that very existence was wrong. Theirs was the greatest endeavour in human history. They knew that it would be their task to end the TP menace and return the world to the hands of those who had earned it. The children soon became arrogant in the knowledge of the great future ahead of them.

It was an exciting day when they read in David's thoughts that they would soon be parted. They had always known it would come, of course, but even in their absolute acceptance of their destiny, they couldn't suppress the slightest tremble of fear. They had never been separated and for the weakest among them - for Edward, Elizabeth, Victoria and William - the concept was difficult even to comprehend. They drew comfort from David's anticipation of the day. The other children would be scattered from one end of the country to the other, but David wanted Alex for his own son. He and Kershia would have the family they dreamed of.

They waited in a flurry of anticipation when they sensed from General Walthorpe's mind that Kershia was near. There was already a touch of uneasiness amongst them though. Thomas's rare absence - taken in a closed vehicle for an emergency appointment with the dentist at the nearest large army base - was a disconcerting strain on their accustomed mental link. More concerning still was the apparent fact that, although David's Kershia was no more than a hundred metres distant, they could hear nothing from her mind. When Alex suggested they hide as they so often had before, they were quick to respond. Unsettled as they were, the chance to set their visitor off balance couldn't be missed.

She walked into their room seeming as unsubstantial as a ghost in the intuitive world the children inhabited. From their hiding places, they stared at her, trying to relate the woman they had known second-hand from David to the empty place that her closed and shielded mind left in their mental environment. They reached out to feel the shape of her thoughts, but their mental fingers could not hold it, her mind slipping from their grasp as if greased. It was a new experience for them, and one they quickly realised they didn't like. Even as Walthorpe called them forward, even as Cat spoke for them, as Alex tried to wheedle confidences out of this strange woman, Catherine and the distant Thomas were marshalling their siblings' minds into a tight spearhead of thought.

It all but deafened them when Kershia suddenly opened her mind in a telepathic shout. From an intangible ghost, absent from their mental world, she suddenly lay at its centre, distorting their universe like a black hole warping space with its power and mass. They were already stunned when a fusillade of energy beams swept the room.

They woke to a tearing, aching hole in their minds. Thomas was gone, torn from them in the moment of their capture. With horror and shock ringing through them, they stared at the metal ceiling beneath which they had awakened. The world was silent, only one mind colouring a lifeless and barren inner landscape. Kershia stood before them, with compassion in her eyes and now, for the first time, she let them see it in her thoughts as well.

Their old life had come to an end.

A new one was beginning.

And Kershia, who had haunted them as little more than a phantom for so many years, was quite suddenly at its centre.

The old farmhouse stood in the very centre of the Reganovic farm. Over the years Emina's family had grown and drifted apart. Some of her children and grandchildren had sought work in the towns of Spionica, Dobrovci, Gradacac or another of the local settlements. Others had been lured farther away still, to the bright city lights. Nonetheless two of Emina's offspring - three now with Alija's return - together with families of their own, remained to work the farm that had been in their family for generations. They had spread out, occupying different buildings amidst its sprawling fields, but this house remained at the farm's heart.

It was here that Emina and her late husband had raised their eight children. It was here that she had cared for Adi and Sanela in the year after their parents had been taken. And it was to here that she had returned beyond her family's hopes, bringing her grandchildren and seven new additions to the family. To the Malthus children, this was a new horizon - more of a home than the Malthus base of their early years, or the sterility of Luna, could ever be. Now the only walls confining the children were the ones in their own minds.

Looking around at her assembled brothers and sisters, Catherine wondered with which of them that thought had originated or whether it even mattered. It was seldom these days that the seven of them indulged in a mental link that was this close. It was a measure of just how disturbed Kershia's thoughts had been on her arrival that her former charges had felt the need. Now Kershia was in the kitchen, speaking to Emina in low and urgent tones. Cat paced the sitting room where she and her siblings had been told to wait. She felt Alex urging her to calmness, and breathed in his support, letting it quiet some of her trepidation. She felt the others calm as she did herself, her influence over their mental state still strong, despite all these years. One of them, even Cat wasn't sure who, started to run through the soothing meditations every new breakout was taught, and all seven of them allowed the pattern of breathing and imagery to rule them. They were tranquil by the time they had finished, confident that, whatever came to pass, Kershia and Emina would care for them.

Their stillness was shattered after mere moments. They felt Thomas reaching for them an instant before he slipped from hyperspace and into the room. Abby and Marc each rested a hand on the shoulders of their adopted son, but their minds were closed and it was clear from the confusion on Thomas's face that he knew no more than they did.

Their link with Thomas would never be what it once was, but it was strong nonetheless. The hole he had left in their minds had never truly healed, and never would now. Even if Thomas hadn't suffered the damage to his telepathy that only chronic Barlumin poisoning could cause, the children had grown apart in the years during which they had been parted. Despite that, they had welcomed him back and it was eight united, if confused, siblings who faced Abby and Marc now.

Abby smiled anxiously around the room. "I see you're all here," she observed.

Cat raised an eyebrow, making Abby flush for the obvious statement. Thomas shot his sister an annoyed look before turning back to his adopted parents with an expression flooded with uncertainty. "Marc," he appealed. "What's going on?"

"Wait," Kershia spoke softly from the doorway of the room. Emina followed her as she stepped inside, welcoming both Abby and Marc to her home with a warm embrace. Kershia exchanged quick and worried greetings with the newcomers, and the children could feel tightly shielded thoughts flying between Kershia and the two Canadians. Ignoring the telepathic conversation as something rude and unwelcome in civilised company, Emina waved everyone to the seats that formed a loose semi-circle around the room. The children arranged themselves wordlessly, obeying their aged guardian as they had so often before. Abby and Marc moved to one side of the hearth that was at the focal point of the semi-circle, and Kershia joined them after pulling a chair into the centre of the group for the old woman.

Emina sat down slowly, easing tired muscles into the chair. She looked out into the sea of fourteen- year-old faces and sighed. "The British government want you back," she told them without any prevarication.

Kershia echoed her sigh. "They claim that they have legal right to custody of all eight of you."

The children stared at them, stunned. Thomas shook his head and kept shaking it.

"No. No, I don't believe it. David never wanted to see me again. He hated the sight of me." He climbed to his feet and stumbled backwards, knocking over the chair and still shaking his head. "He wouldn't have cared if I'd died in the Camp. He wouldn't take me back."

"Thomas. Thomas!" Abby moved forward quickly, taking both of Thomas's hands in her own and stopping his retreat. "Thomas, David has nothing to do with this. Even if he did, we don't think it's personal. To the Government you're a loose end. They just want to make sure it's tied. We're not going to let them take you against your will."

She glanced back at Marc and he took over, addressing all the children in his soft voice. "The Saps have served a summons on your current guardians," he told them. He indicated Emina, Kershia, Abigail and himself with a hand gesture. "And that's us. We're going to go there and tell them you're better off with us. Abby's right. No one will make you do anything you don't want to do."

"But you had a right to know," Emina finished briskly. "This is your home and you're welcome here for the rest of your lives. You know that."

"And you're ours now," Abby added, still holding Thomas's arm and looking into his eyes. Slowly he nodded, and she released him. He righted his chair with shaking hands, sitting again with his siblings.

Abby gave him a reassuring smile. She backed away towards her husband and friend, and then all four adults were waiting and watching the seven remaining children for any sign of a response.

"You're not sure of that," Cat said with certainty. They hadn't meant to pry into Emina's unshielded thoughts, but in their anxiety they hadn't been able to stop themselves. "You think they might be able to take us away."

"I thought we were adopted," Alex demanded of Kershia. "I thought nothing would change that, but you're not sure that you can keep us."

Kershia hesitated. "The Saps have already got a legal order for your return, Alex. To challenge it, we're going to have to take this to open court."

Abigail sighed, stepping forward before Kershia could continue. "Do you know how many children were displaced during the war, Alex?" She paused, waiting until the children shook their heads, unwilling to commit themselves to a number. "We reckon it on the level of tens of millions - ranging from the youngest toddlers to teenagers several years older than yourselves. It's been overwhelming, and a nightmare on so many different levels. Most of those children have been rejected, many are traumatised by the experience, and the Labs were just never set up to cope with the sheer numbers of them. Each Lab handled the problem differently at first, but gradually a system evolved to deal with it."

Kershia nodded, stepping up to Abby's side. "For the last few years, almost every Lab in the world has had three options. The children can be considered wards of a Lab - living in dormitories, either in the Lab itself or in Lab-owned housing and cared for in large groups. Or couples or families willing to provide and care for them on a short-term basis can foster the children. Or, finally, the children can be registered by the Lab as adopted - settled with adults who love them and want to care for them, take responsibility for them, for the rest of their lives - as Abby and Marc do for Thomas, as Emina and I do for you, Alex, and you, Cat, and you, James, and each of you, Will, Vicky, Edward and Lizzie. We consider you ours, and by Lab law you are."

"But Lab law isn't everything," Emina observed. She saw the hurt looks from all around her and dismissed them with a wave of her hand. "I understand that you thought negotiation was impossible before, but a child cannot be adopted without the consent of their parents."

"Wherever we could, Marc and I would talk to the parents of breakouts and arrange signed custody papers when we were Lab leaders," Abby protested. She shook her head. "But not every Lab did the same. Even if they had, some parents wouldn't speak to us, and there are even those who would claim they signed under duress."

Marc nodded grimly. "Which is why I've spent a large part of the last six months trying to mediate in custody battles between Saps and their children's TP carers worldwide." He sighed. "There are some parents who genuinely believed it in their child's best interests to give them up at the time. There are others who have changed their minds about us since, and accepted that we're not the monsters we were portrayed as. But there are a few, just a few, who hate us still - or who believe that breakout was a choice the children can be beaten out of - and we cannot place their children at risk. And even if the Sap parent is kind and loving, is it always best to disrupt a child who may have been settled amongst carers for half their life?"

There was silence for a moment after Marc's rhetorical question. The children tried to frame a response, but their thoughts were jumbled, not forming coherent words of any kind as they tried to absorb the information. Finally Alex pulled order from the chaos, asking the only question that sprang to mind.

"But we don't even have parents to ask - not in that way. We were made, not conceived. How could the Government claim us? Why would they even want us?" He waved a hand at the television on one side of the room and it activated itself in response to his subconscious telekinesis. A page of news headlines appeared, ranging from the continuing political outfall to the momentous emergence in the spring, through natural disasters in the developing world, to an influenza outbreak that had claimed the lives of several people in Great Britain. Already the word 'pandemic' was being bandied about with the usual double standards of a society that could panic about five deaths in one hemisphere while blithely ignoring the weekly loss of thousands to disease in the other. "Isn't there enough trouble in the world, without using us to make more? Don't tell us that a battle like this won't hurt the reconciliation process. How can we possibly be worth it?"

"You keep talking about parents," Thomas chimed in, "but we don't have any - none but you. Why should we be so important to nameless bureaucrats? And how can a government claim custody of us?"

Kershia hesitated. This was the one aspect of the case that she'd been working up to telling Emina when Abby and Marc had arrived. "The Government claim that since they were responsible for the first nine years of your upbringing they have a duty to ensure that you are provided for, and ... as for custody..." She paused, broadcasting reassurance before going on. "They claim to have permission to raise you from the original donors from whom your genetic material was derived - they're calling them your biological parents."

Genetics.

It had betrayed them.

That was all they could think as Kershia stood before them. She was more open to them than she had ever been - and every fibre of her body and mind was burning with rage where it wasn't flooded with fear and grief.

"How could you?" she screamed the question. "How could you know about this and not warn us? How could you hide the fact that you had a brother!"

They stared at her, almost blinded by her sheer incandescence, but all they could see was the memory of another familiar face - the one that had haunted them since the moment they had awakened here on Luna. Through the years of therapy, the years of guided dreams and gentle counselling from Kershia, they had kept their memories of him locked deep inside.

At first, Kershia had been wary of the seven children she had taken responsibility for. They had watched her with eerily identical expressions of closed distrust, and she had been nervous of them in turn. She was a stronger telepath than any one of them, and better trained by far. But the merged children were a formidable power in their own right, easily strong enough to damage her unprotected mind if they attempted to do so. In those first weeks, knowing nothing but the mission for which they had been created, with the certainties of life on the Malthus base torn out from under them and everyone they knew taken from them, they had more than once tried to do just that.

The development of mutual trust had been a slow process. By the time Kershia's mental defences began to come down, the children had begun to learn how to build their own, simply by example. Thomas went behind those early mental shields, every thought of him suppressed when Kershia was in the room. Despite that, his absence had defined their first days on Luna. Where Kershia had assumed their isolation and desolation had resulted from their sudden withdrawal from the mental landscape of a Sap base, that had merely been an accent on the loss of Thomas from their unity.

At first, it was a comfort to know that their brother was free to fulfil the mission for which they had been created. David and the others at the Malthus base had been certain in their beliefs. No one had been permitted to approach the children without repeatedly proving their devotion to the cause. The eight genetic products of the Malthus project must never doubt for a second that their mission was a just one - that even the biological weapon they had been bred to disperse was justified in this battle for survival.

It had been easy to hate Kershia for preventing them from achieving their destiny, and to dismiss her words as propaganda. Even as the months faded into a full year, they weighed the surety in her single mind against the certain knowledge of all those they had known in the past, and found it lacking. It was only gradually, as time passed, as they grew to know Kershia better and the effects of her therapy mounted, that their doubts had begun to grow.

Subtly, the eleven-year-old children had begun to press their custodian on the fate of Operation Malthus - questioning her about the trigger agent that would activate the virus they still carried. They had probed for information, hoping to find a hint, somewhere, of what had become of their brother. They began to discuss it amongst themselves, on the level below vocalisation and well beneath anything Kershia might overhear. Would Thomas do what he had been trained to do? Should he?

And then, that morning, Kershia's arrival had been like a bombshell in their midst. Thomas had destroyed the enemy ... and he had destroyed his own life in the process. How could their brother be a Tomorrow Person? What did that make them?

Sap telepaths had donated the genetic scaffold on which the genes that encoded the children had been hung, but every sequence had been inspected, studied and modified. Genes from disparate donors - from lone telepaths and from telepathic siblings - had been merged, modified and mutated. Only the strongest had been left.

Some of the eight children shared commonalities that suggested a closer genetic connection than others. The red hair and green eyes that Will and Vicky shared had always marked them as different from their blonde, blue-eyed siblings, but that was just the most obvious of the features that both differentiated the children and united them. All had sprung from a common genetic pool. All were siblings. They were children of the project rather than any pair of genetic donors. How could Thomas's genes have warped him so badly?

And yet, the children looked at Kershia. They peered into her anguished mind. They saw the death and destruction that Thomas's actions had wrought. They read there what the same Saps who had nurtured the children in their infancy had done to innocents. What they had done to children just like Thomas, and to Thomas himself.

The concept of free will, the ability to determine for oneself what was right and wrong, was not one which had entered their minds before Kershia had taken them. It was one which they still had difficulty grasping.

Troubled and confused, the children told Kershia everything she asked.

'Malthus Monsters!' the placards shouted, or simply 'Justice'.

Thomas kept his eyes averted from the slogans, and from the angry, jeering crowd who chanted them. To either side of him, Abby and Marc walked. They shielded him from view, and shielded him too from the worst of the mental noise that the outraged Saps generated. Nonetheless, it was a relief for all three when they reached the doorway, and confirmed their identities to the police officers stationed just inside. Thomas heard the sighs from both Abby and Marc, and felt a ripple of relieved thought from others: TP security officers that he hadn't even realised were present. He looked up at Abby in surprise, and she nodded, her mental voice amused, but a little sad. (You didn't think Jimmy or Steph would let us walk through that without people watching us, did you?)

(Jimmy was angry enough with us for even taking part in this,) Marc added. (He doesn't believe that the Saps have any claim to you - and he doesn't trust their motives.)

Any claim. Thomas's mind lingered on his words, wishing that they didn't make him feel like property to be owned and traded. But wasn't that what this whole affair was about?

Neither the TPs nor - as far as Sophie's people could tell - the British authorities had leaked word of the custody hearing to the press, but a media feeding frenzy had rapidly surrounded it. With Abigail, Marc and Kershia all named on the publicly available list of interested parties, it was inevitable that some sharp eye would notice the case. Operation Malthus had acquired an air of mystery since it was mentioned during the Great Emergence six months before. The general population knew that the programme had been one of genetic manipulation. They even knew about the Malthus virus that had been designed to target pre-breakout children, and that Thomas had been constructed to spread it. They knew nothing of the seven others. A legal document listing eight children with the surname Malthus, together with the high profile TPs involved, was a bombshell. A quickly placed restraining order kept the given names of the children, and the name of Emina Reganovic, out of the reports. Despite that, and within hours, news of the impending hearing had replaced scare stories about the flu outbreak killing children and adults alike in northern England as the main headline in the more sensationalist British press.

And so the crowd had gathered. A few were Tomorrow People, demanding compensation for their confinement in the camps. More were Saps who had seen loved ones suffer and die in the camps that had spread around the planet. Many acted now out of grief. Others acted out of a nagging guilt for what their own ignorance had allowed to pass, either at home or abroad. All their emotions had become focused on this hearing. The reputation of Thomas's siblings had been tarred by his actions in Toronto, and by the aims and intentions of the project that created them. Now the very Saps who had tacitly supported those aims were calling for someone to stand to account for the lives that had been lost. They were calling for justice for the dead.

Thomas felt the weight of those calls as he and his adoptive parents followed the mental beacon that was Kershia's frustration, picking up their pace without discussion in an effort to head off any explosion. Kershia had never been one to suffer needless ceremony or circuitous talk gladly. It was ironic that her role as the children's protector, and her position on the Novus committee, had left her dealing with both. She was already facing the courtroom's door when they reached it, and they didn't need their telepathy to tell she was irritated. She glanced upwards as a buzz rose from the already-full public gallery in response to their arrival. The reaction of even this small audience was not exactly friendly towards the only Malthus child in attendance.

An unfamiliar TP was at Kershia's side - the lawyer recruited from the London Lab for the occasion. The young man sat between her and David Barton - clearly endeavouring to placate her, and not enjoying his position. David's expression was closed and stern when he too turned to face them, despite his obvious relief that they had arrived on time. For a long moment, the Sap's eyes lingered on Thomas, and the young TP returned the gaze. In the wake of the Emergence, David had worked closely with all the leading TPs, but Thomas had kept well out of his way. This was the first time the two of them had met face to face since before David's dramatic reversal. Thomas hesitated. In the years since his breakout, Thomas had never been able to meet David's gaze. He was the one who had shattered David's dreams, landing both of them in the camp. But those were dreams David now regretted, and Thomas had been a child still learning to distinguish right from wrong. Perhaps six months living with Abigail and Marc had given Thomas a self-confidence he had lacked, but today, to Thomas's surprise, it was the older man who looked away first.

Abby shot Kershia a questioning look, but her friend raised a hand to stop the telepathic thought that would clearly have followed it. "The presiding magistrate just sent a message - any show of telepathic abilities will be considered 'contempt of court'," she told them aloud, rolling her eyes. She glanced at Thomas and he knew, without needing to hear her voice it, that the look carried a warning. Both Catherine and Alex had opposed any of their siblings attending this hearing - Alex from a wariness of exposure, Cat out of some deeper fear of what they might hear. With the two of them in firm agreement, the other Malthus children had rapidly acceded to their will. Only Thomas had the independence and strength of will to represent his siblings here, and they watched now through his eyes. He felt them lurking in the back of his mind, had heard their dismay at the reception that had greeted him. No number of warnings would break that contact, but at least Thomas could keep his interactions with the others subtle.

There was no time for further discussion. Thomas, Abby and Marc had to hurry to take their seats as the door to the courtroom was closed and the presiding magistrate entered. The man looked cautious, wary of the attention that what should have been a quiet civil case had attracted. He glanced up at the public gallery, and the muttering crowd fell silent under his stern gaze. He swept the two groups of interested parties with a similarly severe look as he took his seat, arranging his papers on the desk in front of him.

"This hearing is called to order," he announced matter-of-factly. "We are here to discuss the custody of eight siblings which has become disputed under unusual circumstances." There was a surge of sarcastic muttering from the gallery and the magistrate glanced up sharply. "I want to make it clear that we are here to consider the best interests of eight vulnerable minors, not to judge the morality or legality of Operation Malthus." There was another burst of noise and the presiding magistrate rapped his gavel to restore order. "Which is not to say that such issues do not merit investigation. In reviewing the documents submitted by both parties in this case, I have personally been shocked, and more than that, horrified, by the events which they describe."

Thomas felt the magistrate's eyes lingering on him, and shuddered, wondering once again if his actions would come back to haunt both him and the others. He felt his brothers and sisters comforting him as the man sighed and went on.

"However, as I have said, we are not here to judge such matters." He shuffled the papers on the desk in front of him as if refreshing his memory. "There seems to be no dispute over the basic fact that the children were born and raised for the first nine years of their life by a specialist division of military intelligence, with the knowledge of their genetic parents - " He raised a hand stilling the formal protest of the TP lawyer. " - Of the donors from whom their genetic material was derived. However, what appear to be in dispute are the motives for their removal from that custody, and their current status. Are they to be considered novus, or sapiens? Even if they are Homo novus, case-law still requires each custody dispute between genetic parents and Labs to be considered on an individual basis. If Homo sapiens, by what right does the Lab network claim to have decided their fate? At fourteen years of age these children are old enough for their own opinions and choices to be considered, as well as their best interests. Do they wish to remain with their current carers when they were, after all, abducted?" He shook his head. "I must warn you we are likely to be here for some days, if not weeks, to consider this complex case. Now, shall we proceed...?"

"Did it feel good?"

That was the question that always rang in Thomas's mind when he thought about what took place in Toronto and all that had happened, both before and since.

It was quiet that night in the dormitory, and dark. Only starlight, streaming through the heavily reinforced windows of Luna's top level, cast ghostly highlights on the faces of the room's occupants. James lay awake in his bed, his eyes reflecting two bright sparks of light and his voice seeming loud above the soft breathing of their sleeping brothers. He looked across the room to the equally wakeful Thomas, his gaze probing, as if he were trying to understand the newly returned prodigal. He kept his voice low, but it was full of fascinated horror as he repeated the question.

"Thomas, did it feel good? To do what we were made to do?"

Thomas turned from him at first, breaking their eye contact. His younger siblings had haunted his thoughts every day since he was parted from them, and yet in the week since his 'rescue' he had found himself amongst virtual strangers. But no matter how far they had grown apart, James had a right to hear the answer to his question. Thomas sighed, turning back to face his brother, but when he spoke it was in a telepathic whisper.

(Not for a single moment.) The vehemence in the thought left James reeling. Thomas sensed his brother's surprise, and his mental voice become angry. (What did you expect me to say, James? That I was overjoyed? That it made my life worthwhile? Even when we were little, we knew what would happen to the Tomorrow People we found. I lived out in the real world for two years after you were torn from my mind. I played with other children and met other people every day. Was I supposed to be happy that I was going to make them suffer?)

(But you did it.) James's confused response was as much a self-defence against Thomas's anger as an accusation.

(I did it.) Thomas's thoughts flooded with sorrow, forcing James to raise his mental shields in a hurry. (And I made the wrong decision. Hundreds of people died because of me - do you think I'm ever going to get over that? We were lied to. We were told that we would save the world, but the Tomorrow People aren't trying to take over the world, just to live in it.) Thomas's thoughts became grave and shocked. James sensed his brother's surprise and flashes of something more: acute concern for his siblings and their future. (Jamie, why are you asking me this? I thought you were happy here. I thought you had accepted what Kershia told you.)

(What Kershia told us! What the Saps at Malthus told us! What's the difference, Thomas?) James's voice was earnest and intent. He struggled to put into words the questions that the seven of them had buried in their collective subconscious. Too often, Cat or Alex had forced these issues aside. Too often, the others had allowed them to do so. Now, adventurous as ever, James faced them alone. (All our lives people have been telling us what's right and what's wrong. The Saps told us that the Tomorrow People are the biggest threat that the world has ever faced. The Tomorrow People tell us that they are the world's only hope. And they all believe what they're saying - believe it with all their hearts. What are we meant to believe, Thomas? How are we meant to decide what is right?) He paused, projecting all the uncertainty of their last four years to their brother. (We've thought about it, Thomas. How could we not? We don't believe that betraying the Tomorrow People would be the right thing to do any more. But we won't act against the Saps either. Who are we to decide which should happen?) He tried to give a laugh. (As long as we're still infected with this virus, we're hardly likely to face the choice though, are we?)

Thomas was silent for long moments, his telepathic shields hiding his response. Their brother Will stirred, lost in some nightmare, and James forced his own mental defences higher, knowing the nightmare was real. When Thomas opened his thoughts, they were confused and very sad.

(You can't use the virus as an excuse, Jamie. Sooner or later someone will find a cure, and then what will you choose? I spent two years alone, James, surrounded by Sap minds, and every one of them knew that the Tomorrow People were an abomination. I spent three weeks in a happy, lively Lab, and felt nothing but love and an undercurrent of fear. All my life I'd only known one strong opinion. I had to act upon it. But I saw the way that the Tomorrow People were treated, and no matter what they were, none of them deserved that. I've seen what Saps can do and I've seen how Tomorrow People react when pushed to their very limits. I can't support anyone capable of what David and the others did to Marc, Abby, and all their people.)

James's eyes met his brother's across the room, unsure how best to put his concerns into words. (Thomas, you're a Tomorrow Person yourself. You're ...) James's telepathic voice trailed away and he tried to strengthen his mental defences, but Thomas had already caught the thought.

(I'm biased?) Thomas asked quietly. (One of the enemy?)

James sensed a welter of thoughts in his brother's mind. Betrayal and rejection were familiar tenants there. (I didn't mean....)

(I know, James, I know.) There was only resignation leaking past Thomas's shields now. (You just want to know what you are. I understand. I'm a Tomorrow Person, but I'll never be one of them, any more than you are. Would I still have been a TP if Operation Malthus had never tinkered with my genes? They never intended this to happen, but how do we know how extensive their modifications were - or how much of what they were doing they understood? What makes us what we are? Our genes or what we choose to be?) Thomas sighed, aware of James's incomprehension. (Don't worry about it. I just want to know what I am, Jamie, and I want to know what you are too. Despite everything, you're still my little brother.)

Sighing too in his confusion, James forced a smile in the darkness. He let his bittersweet mood spill into their link. (If you ever find out will you tell me?) he asked, only half joking.

(At once, James. At once.) Thomas smiled too, recognising his brother's attempt to lighten the mood. (Get some rest, now. Everyone will be grouchy in the morning if you don't.)

James lay back in his bed, closing his blue eyes. It was several minutes before he reached out with one last question.

(Was it very lonely, Thomas, when they took us? We missed you terribly.)

Thomas didn't answer for so long that James wondered if he was already asleep.

(I felt as if my world had ended, but looking back at it I'm glad. No one has the right to deny another human their existence, no matter what their cause. I can't be anything but grateful that the Tomorrow People stole you away, Jamie. I couldn't stand it if you'd been forced to make the decision I made.)

"Why are they pushing this forward so fast?" Kershia ran a hand through her dark hair as she asked the rhetorical question.

Jimmy glanced up with a frown from the computer console at which he was working, but he remained silent. From her seat by the kitchen table, Emina gave him a considering look of her own. Jimmy had been stern and uncommunicative since he and the others had arrived this morning, his behaviour not far from actual impoliteness. In her own concern for her children, she would make him allowances, but only so far. Shaking her head, she returned her attention to Kershia.

"I am sure the reason will become clear in time," she smiled reassuringly. "Impatience is a failing of the young. You'll grow out of it."

As she had hoped, her comment drew a brief smile from the thirty-four-year-old woman. "I'm hardly young any more, Majka. No, the Saps are worried. They've pushed at every step to speed up the hearing - not even bothering to respond to some of our points."

"They're up to something," Jimmy declared abruptly. He sat back from the computer he had been working at, and folded his arms with quick, angry motions. "That's it. This farm now has a security system more advanced than most Labs!" He looked back at Kershia. "None of which would have been necessary if you'd refused to go along with this sham of a trial. The Saps have an ulterior motive. We just don't know what it is yet."

"Jimmy, we don't have any evidence of that," Kershia argued more out of her impatience with Jimmy's open distrust of all things Sap, and the arrogance in his voice when he used the word, than out of any strong conviction. She took a step towards him, placing a hand on his crossed arms. The gentleness in the gesture formed a striking contrast with her angry words. Jimmy didn't shake her off, but there was no sign that he felt her touch when he responded.

"They're killers," he told her sharply. "No matter how we appease them, that's not going to change. They're saps, nothing more."

Emina sighed. She had hoped that Jimmy's relationship with Kershia would moderate his views, but maybe it wasn't enough. These two could be so good for one another, if only their firebrand natures would just complement one another, and not conflict. Shaking her head, she fixed Jimmy with a stern look. "You will keep a civil tongue in your head while you are on my farm, young man!"

"Sorry, Majka." His response was automatic and well trained after the years on Luna. He smiled suddenly, "And I'm not exactly young either these days, Emina."

Kershia perched on the kitchen counter beside him, and continued more calmly. "Let's just do what we can, and wait and see. For all we know, the sapiens just want to get this out of the way and get back to worrying about other things."

"This flu virus?" Emina asked, leaning forward in her chair. While the mortality count from the influenza strain that had emerged in northern England remained small, it was growing rapidly. In the week since the outbreak had begun, secondary infections had begun to appear in pockets both in North America and across Europe. The first, seemingly hysterical cries of 'pandemic' were starting to sound alarmingly prophetic. And, like the devastating 'Spanish Flu' pandemic of a century before, it was striking the young and healthy, not the infirm who were influenza's usual victims.

"It's a concern." Stephanie spoke from the doorway before stepping into the room. Her month-old son Ewan slept peacefully in a sling across her chest, and she took a moment to seat herself and lift him into her arms before continuing. Her fellow TPs watched her with a wonder that had yet to fade as she held her small miracle. Stephanie herself though gazed down at the baby with an instinctive concern for his safety. "It's a miracle we haven't seen any cases in the Labs. We're screening everyone coming in and out of London and the Highland Lab - the children in particular. Just one case could spread like wildfire in a Lab, and by all accounts the thing is multi-drug resistant!" She rocked her son nervously as she spoke, until Emina pulled herself out of her chair and moved around the table to gently lift him away.

"Ewan is quite welcome to stay here, you know," the old woman told her. "Until the danger of infection passes, at least. I've already told you I'm happy to mind the child, and with Alija's little Mia already here, a second baby is hardly any more trouble..."

Stephanie looked uncertain, but she smiled in genuine gratitude. "I'll talk to Roger," she promised before her expression became serious once again. "But, Emina, you have enough to worry about at the moment. What time are our visitors due?"

"Any time now," Jimmy told her grimly. "Marc's probably picking them up from the airport right now. I asked him to bring them in without calling ahead, as a test. We only just got this system online in time."

Emina sighed. "I still don't see why my poor farm needs an intruder warning system. We have nothing to hide, and this isn't a prison."

The three Tomorrow People exchanged looks. They had already argued this out with the old woman once today. Emina felt that the children should be encouraged to stand up and defend themselves against their detractors. After all, the seven children in her care had done nothing of which they could be ashamed. On the other hand, Emina had not been exposed to the vitriol that the leading Tomorrow People had faced since their emergence into the public eye. Today's visit from the hearing magistrate was as much exposure as the children need face, and as much as Kershia and the others intended them to.

"This system isn't going to keep people in or out, Majka," Kershia reminded her wearily. "It will just let you know when they're coming - and if they're armed."

She was still speaking when sirens split the air, their piercing notes impossible to miss or to ignore. Ewan awoke with a wail that was echoed by six-month-old Mia as she wakened in the nursery upstairs. Four of the Malthus children appeared in a flurry of light and sound, and Adi and Sanela jaunted in a moment later, their father heading instead to rescue his crying daughter. Cat, Edward and Elizabeth tumbled into the room, their eyes wide with confusion.

(It's me!) Marc called loudly enough for everyone but Emina to hear him. She raised her hands to her ears in distaste, grimacing at Jimmy until he shut the alarms off.

"They're here, I take it?"

********

Thomas had declared his desire to stay with Abby and Marc on the first day of the hearing. After his opening statements though, the magistrate's insistence on speaking to the other children personally had hardly been a surprise. Nonetheless it had taken two days of careful negotiation to arrange this visit. At first the magistrate had demanded that the children appear in court, or at least on a live video link. Surprisingly both sides in the case had protested that second option: Kershia knowing that the children would have to be seen as a group if the magistrate had any chance of understanding them; the lawyers acting for the Government claiming that there would be no way to ensure the identity of the child being interviewed. In fact, the Government's insistence that they be provided with blood samples from the children, for the purposes of genetic sequencing, had been met with wary confusion by TPs and magistrate alike. Kershia and Abigail had both refused point-blank, failing to see the necessity, and for once in complete agreement with their head of security. The magistrate had made it clear that if any genetic identification were to be done, it would be under the auspices of the hearing and the details kept confidential. The Sap lawyers had relaxed their demand after that, seeming oddly disappointed.

It was late on the second day of the hearing that an Alliance representative had appeared in the observation gallery. By his mere presence the bronze-skinned Thargon indicated that the Earth's peacekeepers had become aware of, and were monitoring, the tensions that surrounded this dispute. The threat was unspoken, but it was ominously clear nonetheless. In the six months since their arrival the Alliance fleet had shown no hesitation about intervening in active Sap-TP disputes. Both sides had felt the painful aspects of such intervention. If the two sides could not co-exist peacefully then the Alliance was not afraid to impose co-existence by force. The Thargon's silent observation reminded them of that. It told everyone involved in the hearing that this situation would not be allowed to threaten the hard-won stability.

After that, it hadn't taken long to settle the details, both sides becoming more ready to compromise in light of the possible repercussions of not doing so. And so it was that the magistrate was matter-transported to Bosnia together with a court recorder and the most junior of the Government's representatives. Unaware of their location, scanned for weapons by the farm's security systems as they walked up the drive, and scanned too by the belts that transported them, they presented as little threat to the children as the TPs could devise.

Even so, it was an anxious group that waited as the visitors were closeted alone with the seven teenagers. Jimmy had jaunted out, wary of being seen by the Saps, before Emina could welcome the magistrate to her home. By contrast Stephanie, wife of the first openly declared TP in the Metropolitan Police and well known in her own right, was content to wait. She watched now as Kershia paced nervously, circling the trestle table that ran down the length of Emina's large kitchen until the old matriarch extended the cane she used occasionally for balance, blocking the other woman's way.

"Now, I don't want you wearing a rut in my floor tiles, young lady," she chided.

Kershia stared blankly at the obstruction for a moment before laughing, the tension she felt finding a brief release. She threw herself down in one of the kitchen chairs, joining Stephanie, Emina and Marc at the table. The soft-spoken man studied his friend with some concern.

"Worrying about them isn't going to help, Kershia," he told her quietly. "Particularly if they hear you. The children are old enough and strong enough now to make it clear what they want."

Kershia nodded, but her eyes were anxious still as they flicked from face to face. "I just wish I was certain what that was," she told them. "They've come so far since we found them, but... well, the children haven't always seen the best side of us after all."

"They have a home here," Emina reminded her, her expression confident. "They know that."

Kershia buried her face in her hands, kneading her eyes with her palms. "I think you're right, but it frightens me that, even after all this time, I'm not sure."

No one is perfect.

It was the lesson they learnt when Emina entered their lives. Always before their worldview had been one of extremes - perhaps the Saps were the perfect inheritors of the Earth, perhaps it was the Tomorrow People. Emina looked at Tomorrow People and Saps alike with the same critical eye. The old woman accepted each person she met as a whole, seeing their bad qualities as well as the good and tolerant of both. Emina was the first person in their lives who saw the seven of them as children, worrying less about what they were than what they were capable of being.

Emina's compassion, tempered by the wisdom of her long life's experience, had carried them through the realisation that the virus they carried had infected Adi and Sanela. It had carried them through their sense of desertion as Kershia grew more involved with running Luna and could spare them less and less of her time. It had given them strength to cope with Thomas's return, Nova's arrival with the cure to the virus that had isolated them, and his revelation of their potential. Perhaps the Malthus children weren't perfect, but who in this world was?

Even so, the children clustered tightly around both Kershia and Emina when the day came, just a few weeks after Nova's visit, that they set foot outside Luna's top level for the first time. Corridors stretched into the distance, radiating out from the central hub like spokes on a wheel. Or, perhaps more aptly, like the anchoring strands of a spider's web; for these corridors were cross-linked by smaller passages, forming a complex warren. It wasn't the scale of the complex that hit the children first as they stepped out of the lift, but rather the teeming masses of humanity that filled it to bursting. Metal bunks lined the corridors, half concealed by a riot of brightly coloured fabrics and decorations, and between the bunks people swarmed. Luna was too full now for everyone to be assigned duties or tasks. Too many people had nothing to do through the long days. They wandered the corridors, talking and planning for the distant time when they would be free to return home. A sense of frustration permeated the place, but it was merely a ripple on the surface of a deep sea of relief. These were the lucky few who had reached the haven of Luna. The Tomorrow People felt safe here, just as the Malthus children had felt safe in their own metal box far above.

Kershia stood behind them, the light contact of her mind reminding them that they were stronger than they realised. They felt her reassurance as they had throughout the long climb down into the control level, and then the lift ride that had brought them here. (You don't need to be scared,) she 'pathed the thought reassuringly. (You're strong enough to cope, all of you.) They tried not to hear the uncertainty behind her words. The virus that had isolated the children for the last four years was gone now, and with it their protection. The threat that had kept them away from the teaming masses of Tomorrow People down below, had kept the same throng from their door. How could they deal with so many people, more than they had ever seen? How would they be treated by the displaced and desperate masses?

They peered about them in awe, all but overwhelmed by the sheer pressure of minds that surrounded them. From time to time, the unusual group drew attention as Kershia led them out into the hallway, and away from the lift. The children felt each spike of thought, the unusual sensitivity Alex had displayed since his lone trip down to Earth exacerbating the vulnerability of their weak mental shields.

It was a simple thing that betrayed them in the end. A little girl tripped, banging her arm against the edge of her bunk as she fell. Shocked by the sudden pain, the second-generation child wailed her displeasure on every level she knew. The Malthus children cried out aloud too, their defences inadequate against so loud a thought.

Secure behind her own mental shields, Kershia glanced around anxiously. Like most of the Tomorrow People in the crowded corridor she had barely been aware of the child's unfocused telepathic cry. It was the reaction of the Malthus children, rendered vulnerable to the child's pain by their open mental link, that had been unmissable. Faces turned towards them. The emotional aura became streaked with curiosity as the hitherto unregarded group were scrutinised in detail.

(Malthus!) The broadcast thought came from one of the administrators who frequented the Lab control level when on duty. He looked from Kershia to Thomas, and then to the other children in horrified disbelief, that single word ringing through his thoughts. He shielded his mind after that, but the damage had been done. Four years after its destruction, the history and legacy of Operation Malthus was no longer secret in Luna, and the images were out there now, in the mental landscape. The reaction to them was immediate, and all that might have been expected. A wave of fear and revulsion swept through the crowd.

"They don't understand," Emina reminded the children matter-of-factly. "And they're frightened." But she hurried them along nonetheless, as rapidly as her old legs would allow her. News travelled at the speed of thought, and now Tomorrow People forced themselves against the walls as the group approached. Children were drawn away by their mothers, pushed back into the shelter of the bunks. All attention was on the Malthus children, and their mental link began to falter under the strain. Cat and Alex were pulling away now, trying to shield their own minds before they were overwhelmed. Desperately, the weaker children clung to their more confident siblings.

There were images of the children flying mind-to-mind all around them. Vision and that other sight became confused as Emina urged them to follow Kershia through the never-ending corridors. They seemed to be moving through a hall of mirrors, strangely distorted images of themselves reflected back at them wherever they looked. They were all crying now. Inaudible over the noise, Thomas was trying to reach for their minds with reassurance. Kershia led them away from the central hub, trying to avoid the most crowded areas as they headed towards one of the secondary lifts. Attuned to her mind, they caught anxious flashes of thought from their long-time guardian. They barely noticed when she slid to a sudden stop, the disorientated children bumping into one another and the adults. A crowd of Tomorrow People blocked their way, and Kershia stepped forward, shielding the huddle of children from the people they faced.

"The children are no threat to you or anyone else," she said simply. "Let us pass."

"After all they've done?" A man stepped forward, his expression bitter. "What are they doing here? How could you place us all at risk?"

"They've done nothing to you." Desperate to avoid an angry confrontation, Kershia spoke soothingly - as if to a fractious child. "They're cured of the virus. These children are innocents."

The children didn't hear a word of the exchange. James was pulling away from the others now, raising his own mental shields to block them out. Unsure of anything, unable even to consciously frame a decision, Vicky, Will, Edward and Lizzie held him back. Highly shielded, Alex and Cat were already all but inaudible - their eyes wide with the terror of their sudden isolation. Thomas stood firm in the middle of the group, trying to reassure his weakest siblings.

"You can deal with this," he told them all. "Drop your link. You can shield out the minds if you're not trying to maintain it. You don't need to hold on to one another. Kershia and I won't let anyone hurt you! You don't need to be together."

"Together." Lizzie echoed the word in a whisper, anchoring her drifting thoughts on Thomas's now in sheer desperation. Edward's eyes were going blank, and his siblings could barely hear his mental voice as a drifting wail in the emptiness of his own head. Will and Vicky gripped one another's hands tightly, using the physical contact to reinforce the mental contact between the two of them, even as they tried to defend themselves against the suffocating press of Luna's attention.

(I'm sorry.) James's mental defences closed, his conscious thought severed from their link. His eyes closed too, and he fell to his knees as he was forced to confront the world truly alone for the first time in his life. Thomas felt the panic in his abandoned younger siblings, and tried to step into the gulf in their minds, but his shields too were high and he'd been separated from them too long. They could feel his reservation and that was all it took to prevent his thoughts becoming theirs. Edward and Lizzie were gazing vacantly into space now, their expressions twisted by terror. Vicky and Will held one another, each desperate for guidance the other was incapable of giving. How could they face the world without one of the others to show them what to think? Who were they, alone and afraid?

(Roger! For pity's sake, I need your people here now!) Kershia's thought, so close by, wiped out what was left of the group's shields. The other children watched in stunned confusion as Edward and Lizzie folded into unconscious heaps on the ground. Cat and Alex rushed to their siblings' sides, tears running down their faces, and Emina moved with them, laying a hand on each child's forehead in an effort to assess their condition. Kershia spun away from her confrontation with the still angry and confused crowd, dropping to her knees by Edward's side.

"How could you?" Thomas's bitter whisper cut through the noise in the corridor. Their eldest brother had stayed with the unsteady James, drawing him to one wall of the broad corridor as if using it for shelter. Now he stepped out of the shadows, his hands resting on his hips, his jaunting belt obvious around his waist. "Can't you see what you're doing to them? Can't you see what the fear and anger you hide from one another is doing to my brothers and sisters? You can control it - all of you. You can defend yourselves against your own thoughts. They can't!" He shook his head, anxiety for the others driving him to a stand he would never have dared make for his own sake. "You know how they've learnt to define themselves? As separate, apart from the rest of the world, Sap or TP. They've had to, and now that's shaped them. They've learnt to depend on one another because there was no one else. They should never have had to. They're no different from anyone else here." His expression became sombre and he looked around the hushed crowd. "I should know."

There was silence for a long moment, and then the arguments exploded throughout the corridor. Some adult Tomorrow People continued to push to the front of crowd and peer at the children, their minds full of suspicion. Other adults, horrified at the behaviour of their peers, pushed forward too, determined to help. Kershia and Emina accepted the support gratefully, both too caught up in caring for the unconscious Elizabeth and Edward to spend time controlling the crowd that edged steadily forward.

Pushed aside in the general confusion, Will and Vicky found themselves separated from their more recognisable siblings. Sudden terror flooded them as, for the first time in their lives, they were utterly isolated. Thomas's words rang over and over in their minds, drawing their thoughts into a loop. No different? They had always been special - always apart. No different from the teeming crowds around them? They reached to Cat, longing for her advice, hearing only silence. They reached for Alex and for James, unable to deal with uncertainty like this alone. Alex stared at them with blank confusion, battling his own mental cacophony, unable to deal with theirs. With each moment the mental pressure around them seemed to be growing, as if it was battering down walls in their minds. William and Victoria clutched at their heads, aware simultaneously of the deafening thunder of the crowd's thoughts, and the deafening silence where the others should have been.

In the crush of the crowd Emina gathered Alex and Cat protectively to her side, beckoning for Thomas and James to join them. She began to look around for the twins, only now realising they were absent. In a shimmering jaunt Roger joined Kershia, facing down the assembled Luna residents, his face grim as he explained the cure and reminded them that their leaders would never place them at unnecessary risk. Still resentful, but beginning to realise how their mass hysteria was affecting them, the crowd began to back away. Shouts died away slowly into murmurs.

The agony in Will and Vicky's thoughts didn't fade. The noise level was rising still, until all the millions of Tomorrow People in the world seemed to be screaming in their fragile minds. Vicky screamed too, a desperate thin sound. The remnants of their mental link still at the back of his mind, it was Thomas who turned first to meet her pleading look. Fire flooded their minds; a chaos that spilled from their burning thoughts and into their brother's. His eyes widened and he began to push his way through the crowd to the two of them, abandoning the side of the others. Kershia looked at him in confusion, catching the edge of his panic, but not understanding the cause of it. Slowly, much too slowly, her eyes began to turn toward the twins.

"Vicky! Will!" Thomas's cry was desperate. He knew this feeling - and what it meant. "You have to give in to it, open yourself to the possibilities! You can't control it until you accept it!"

His shout turned heads, focusing attention on the pair of them. The force of that attention hit them like a projectile, breaking down the final wall of inhibition that had kept their potential constrained. Genetically flawed saviours of the human race, bastardised inheritors of Homo superior's gifts, the Malthus children were far from perfect in anyone's eyes. Despairing, terrified, the two of them took the only avenue of escape open to them, wrenching themselves into the soporific peace of hyperspace.

The chairs which usually littered the farm's common room were drawn up in a loose semicircle, as they were when Emina told them Bosnian folk-tales around a roaring fire. A fire smouldered in the hearth, even now in the late Autumn warmth. The heat seemed to press in on the children, making them irritable and restless. Catherine felt Alex urging her to calmness, but she sensed that even her brother's slow temper was starting to burn. The two of them exchanged impatient looks. How many times did they have to answer the same questions? How many different ways must they find to tell these people that they didn't want to leave?

"And you say you know what Stockholm syndrome is?" the Sap lawyer asked again, his tone profoundly sceptical. Frustrated, the children shifted in their semicircle of chairs. They tried to project their certainty to the Saps sitting in front of them.

"Yes!" James shouted the word, and William stepped in to complete the sentence, "Yes, we know!"

"A tendency in the victims of kidnapping to identify with, and come to sympathise with, their abductors," Vicky recited in a sing-song tone. "We know!"

Cat was the one who moved in now to calm her siblings as Alex took over the conversation. All of them were tired, after an hour of questioning that seemed to repeat itself in ever-shorter cycles.

"Of course we've given it thought," Alex told their inquisitors, his frustration obvious in his voice. "Did you think we don't know we were kidnapped? But Kershia and Emina have never lied to us." He looked up at the magistrate and visibly calmed himself, even as Cat's reassurance calmed the others. "Sir, we grew up believing that the Tomorrow People weren't even human. Homo sapiens were the only true people and we were their elite. We were gods among men, the only ones who could save humanity!" He paused, taking a deep breath and shaking his head. "Do you know what it's like to know that, and then to discover that we were lied to?"

The magistrate looked from face to face with a certain amount of dismay. For a moment they saw themselves through his eyes, seven faces differing in shape, differing in gender and in the details of their features, but identical in expression and intensity. The image, and the sense of alarm which accompanied it, shook them. Mental shields which had slipped, both around them and between them, were hastily raised. Their united front shattered, and from the way the visitors recoiled, perhaps the sudden variety in their expressions was as disturbing as the sameness had been a moment before.

The magistrate sighed, glancing down at the papers he held in his hands. In the last hour he had questioned the children about their years on Luna, about how their feelings had developed as they grew older and their understanding deepened, about their hopes and aspirations for the future. Despite their patience, their careful and considered answers, he wondered if he understood them at all. Was he talking to seven children, or just one entity with seven pairs of piercing, penetrating eyes? Even if he asked to see them separately, would he be any closer to being sure? And did it, when all was said and done, actually matter? If he was here to decide how the children's best interests were served, did their mental independence, or lack of it, actually affect the issue?

"Don't you want to live a normal life?" he probed. "Go to school?" He looked around at the old fashioned décor and the sprawling vistas visible through the window. "After all, this place would seem to be rather remote."

Alex echoed the magistrate's sigh. "We go to socials at the Labs sometimes," he explained tiredly, "Emina insists. She says that we'll go to college next year."

"College?" the magistrate echoed, surprised. He double-checked his notes quickly. Surely the children were only fourteen?

James rolled his eyes, interrupting as his brother was about to continue. "We're Tomorrow People! We've been privately tutored all our lives - at our own speed. We're a bit out-of-synch with Sap schools."

"But you're not all Tomorrow People, are you?" The Sap lawyer stood suddenly, and prowled around the room. He stopped in front of Elizabeth, focusing all his concentration on the quietest and meekest of the children. "You're a plain old Sap, just like me, just like your genetic parents. Doesn't even a part of you want to come back home? Wouldn't you be happier amongst your own kind?"

Cat automatically moved to support her sister. Even after all their years of counselling, Elizabeth and Edward rarely asserted their self-identity, looking to their siblings for guidance. Suddenly though, Catherine felt Alex in her mind, holding her back.

(Let Lizzie answer,) he told her anxiously. (Each of us should have an answer for this.)

Elizabeth's eyes widened in near panic. Her eyes slid from the Sap to her brother and sister, not understanding why they suddenly shielded against her. "We ... I ..." she stammered eventually. "I'm happy here."

"But you don't have to do what the TPs are telling you," the Sap pressed, taking a step forward so Lizzie was forced to lean back in her seat. "You don't have to stay imprisoned here."

Lizzie stared at him like a rabbit caught in headlights. Alex and Cat were still closed to her, and James, Vicky and Will followed their lead. Anxiously she reached instead for Edward, and he joined her at once, their combined mental strength overwhelming their own ability to shield their telepathy. For a moment the Sap's mind was open to them with startling clarity, and the thought that dominated it both surprised and frightened them.

He was desperate - the children were needed. Lives depended on their return, and even this Sap hadn't been told how and why. But he didn't need them all. One child would be enough - one of the Sap kids, not the TPs. If he could just persuade one of them...

(Help us!) Elizabeth's urgent appeal brought the others back into her mind at once. In a heartbeat they saw through it and into the Sap's thoughts. Alarm coloured their reaction, combining with the exhaustion of an hour's questioning to break down their hard-formed inhibitions. Perhaps it had been naïve to hope that their best interests had ever been an issue in this hearing. Nonetheless it was a disappointment to have their suspicions of an ulterior motive confirmed. The fear that had shaped Cat's life for so long exploded into anger, and for once she felt every one of her siblings in full agreement with her. They would never permit themselves to be made into the weapon their eldest brother had become. They would not be used!

Alex, James and the twins jaunted to the back of the room, so instead of facing the children in one group, the visitors now found themselves surrounded by them. With a reach of his telekinesis and a flare for dramatic effect, James fanned the open fire and flames leapt up, casting their shadows across seven angry and determined faces. Catherine stood, gathered Elizabeth and Edward into her thoughts, and the three of them reached out telepathically. With the ease of their years of early training, they reached into the Sap thoughts and established themselves a foothold there. Gradually they pressed forwards until the Saps gasped from the pressure growing within them.

Catherine stepped in front of Elizabeth at the same moment that Alex used telekinesis to shove away the Sap menacing his sister. Cat's eyes flashed with fury. "Imprisoned?" she demanded. "You think we're prisoners here? You think that we couldn't walk out of here at any time we chose, and defend ourselves if necessary?" She shook her head. "This is our home now. Emina and the others want us because of who we are, not because of what! This is our family and we're not going to be taken away from them. You're not going to split us up, and you're not going to drag us back into this conflict. We won't be used to fight a war we don't believe in!"

Kershia burst into the room then, her wide-open and anxious thoughts forcing all seven of the Malthus children to shield themselves. The Saps in the room gasped for breath as the mental pressure upon them was suddenly lifted, and the government lawyer scrambled away from the children, backing up until he was pressed against the room's wall. The magistrate and his court recorder remained seated in their chairs, their expressions shocked and more than a little scared. Kershia scanned the room quickly, reassuring herself the children were safe, before stepping aside to let Emina enter.

"Children, apologise!" The old woman took in the situation with a glance and her tone was shocked. "I will not tolerate such behaviour!" Catherine stammered out an apology and the other children echoed her in a soft ripple of noise, each of them suddenly ashamed of their anger. The magistrate took a deep breath to steady himself and frowned, surprised by the obvious love and respect for Emina on the faces of the tired children. Satisfied, Emina nodded, her voice still stern but becoming softer. "Run along now, if these people want to talk to you again I'll let you know. Now, Kershia, you and Marc take these gentlemen home. I think they've had enough for now."

Kershia smiled at the old woman's peremptory tone, despite her anxiety. "Yes, Majka," she said simply.

They were loved.

How odd that they should learn that in the midst of such hatred.

Silence, blessed silence, filled William and Victoria after that first desperate jaunt, but emptiness too. It flooded them, washing away the anguished thoughts, soothing. A new clarity shone in Vicky's green eyes as they met her brother's. Colours swirled around them, the patterns indistinct and hypnotic.

"Where are we?" Her voice echoed impossibly in the boundless space. "What are we?"

Will held her hand tightly, afraid to let go, "Who are we?" he added simply.

"You're who and what you always could be." Thomas's voice was startling in the silence of hyperspace. He stood on nothing, a few metres away, the expression on his face joyful but his eyes sad. "You've always had this potential. You just had to be yourselves for a few moments to find that out."

"Alone," Vicky said softly. She could feel the hole inside where the minds of the others should sit. Only Will was there now, comforting her with his presence. There was a sharpness to his thoughts, or perhaps it was no more than the absence of an echo. Vicky found herself at first intrigued by the strangeness, and then startled to realise that the interest was hers and hers alone, not shared with any of their distant siblings.

She sighed. It was so peaceful. Here, for the first time in her life, she was truly being herself. For the first time, she felt capable of doing so. Her eyes drifted shut as she studied the inside of her own skull.

"Will, Vicky, we can't stay here." Thomas's voice was a little slurred, as if he was fighting off sleep, but after the exhausting day they had experienced who could wonder? "I had to follow you quickly. I couldn't risk losing you. But this place isn't safe. We have to go back. You have to will yourself back to Luna."

Vicky felt Will's terror and echoed it. "Go back? To the voices and the pain and the confusion?"

"You can block the voices." Thomas's voice was soothing, falling unconsciously into a sing-song rhythm. "You can accept your abilities, free your minds from their shackles. Open your mind to its full potential, Will, Vicky. We can go back."

"But why?" Vicky knew that the words should be imbued with some emotion, but weariness swept over her, draining all colour from her voice. "Why go to where we're not wanted? Why go back to where we're not loved? Why not just stay here?" If Thomas had a good answer, he couldn't find the words to articulate it; he could only watch through hooded eyes as Vicky's drifted shut.

*****

Emina's clear chocolate-brown eyes were darkened with worry. She wrung her hands in anguish, frustrated that she was unable to help, but forced instead to stand by and watch. Kershia and Abigail's fingers whitened where they pressed against the white surface of the link table. Their minds linked with the ease of experienced telepaths. They wasted no time on surprise. There would be time for that later. Kershia's mind led the link, reaching for the children she had raised for the last four years.

(Will! Vicky!) The telepathic voice didn't come close to rousing the twins. Its tone became desperate. (Thomas!)

(Kershia?) Thomas's voice was hazy. He seemed confused, aware of the other minds in the link with her, but too tired to put a name to any of them.

(Thomas!) Kershia pounced on the contact with the young Tomorrow Person and Abigail echoed her wordlessly. (Where are you? Are Will and Vicky with you? You need to come back here. Hyperspace is dangerous and you're already too tired to last for long.)

They felt Thomas open his eyes, heard him remember where he was and why.

(Vicky! Will!) His voice was weak but urgent. (I'm here. Kershia's calling us. You have to concentrate.)

(Kershia?) Will's voice was barely more than a whisper, but Thomas picked it up, boosting it with his own flagging power.

(Will!) Kershia's voice flooded relief. (It will be okay, darling. You and Vicky are going to be fine.)

(I don't understand.) Vicky murmured vaguely. She struggled to concentrate, drawn in by the urgency of their long-time guardian's tone.

Thomas gave a wry laugh. (You told me you weren't loved, Vicky. Do you still think so? Can't you feel it: the love drawing you home?)

(Link your mind with my mind,) Kershia urged. (Imagine a flower blooming in the dawn sunlight. Imagine a child being born into a new world.)

Vicky and Will hesitated. It would be so easy just to relax and drift away. Fears and confusion had surrounded them for so long back in Luna and their return could only add to their siblings' distress. Thomas's breakout had shaken them, but that had been an isolated event. This ... this was the end. The final nail in the coffin of Operation Malthus.

No matter whether they broke out, they would always be Malthus children. The Tomorrow People would never accept them, but would even Cat and the others want them back now? There would be so much to come to terms with if they did as Kershia asked. Will sighed softly, closing his eyes in exhaustion. Why bother? They felt Thomas's panic and Kershia's fear as they began to slip away from their brother's hold.

New imagery came into their link: A flower that bloomed only in the dead of night, unfurling petal by petal. A supernova in an ebon sky; spreading the stuff of life to worlds yet to form. The fist of anger opening in a gesture of openness and friendship. Jimmy, the children realised, and Stephanie, Roger and the others, each of them joining Abby and Kershia in reaching for the lost children. For the first time the adult Tomorrow People let the children see their love and compassion, underlining Kershia's desperate plea.

(Trust us. Open your minds. Open yourself to your potential. You're being reborn, emerging into a new life, accept that freedom!)

(Free your minds.) Kershia begged. (Come back to us.)

Pale hands touched the link table's surface, small fingers parting Kershia's and Abigail's without breaking the mental circle. Startled, Kershia looked up into dark blue eyes in a pale but determined face. Abby smiled, accepting the Malthus children into the link as if welcoming them home. Closing her eyes, Cat focused her mind.

(Come back to us.) Cat's mental voice was scarcely audible through the interference of hyperspace, but, attuned to her for their whole lives, Vicky and Will could hear every word. Alex was there too, and James, their sister linking them to the Tomorrow People with no need for physical contact. The twins felt a tired acceptance there, and knew that they were not the only ones who had been changed by this day. (It doesn't matter what people think of us or what we are. We're loved here. You're loved. Come back to us.) Images of Luna's control room filled every mind, of Edward and Lizzie still unconscious, of Emina stroking the hair gently from their pale faces, of the desperate longing of their siblings for Will and Vicky's return. It cut through the confusion of hyperspace, dragging the twins back to consciousness.

A flower blooming in the night. A new child born. Kershia's broadcasts were a constant reminder and Thomas forced the nascent breakouts to listen, even as Cat called to them.

With a final sigh of acceptance, William and Victoria abandoned their resistance. Acceptance opened their thoughts; hyperspace rippled with energy as the final connections that defined the incredible nature of their minds were forged. The image of Luna's control room pulled them forward, the weight of minds in the Luna complex distorting even the fabric of hyperspace. Yielding to their fate, Vicky and Will followed that pull. Relieved, exhausted, Thomas jaunted after them, joining the celebrations, as the newest Tomorrow People were welcomed home.

It was a nervous group that reconvened in the courtroom.

The Sap lawyers formed a tight cluster, their junior representative absent after his ordeal at the hand of the children the day before. The Tomorrow People too were tense. Had the children's impulsive outrage counted against them? Or would the magistrate make allowances for the seven troubled adolescents?

There was an air of helplessness from both sides. Every argument about the children's welfare had been heard, every scrap of evidence regarding their origin and upbringing reviewed. The week of hearings had divided the press and the population. Sympathy for the children, at first in short supply, had swelled as more of their tale had been heard. There seemed to be little argument that their first nine years had been characterised by what amounted to psychological abuse. But opinion was divided as to whether the approach had been justified at the time - and whether their care now was best committed to the Tomorrow People who had every reason to resent them, or to the government that was publicly committed to righting past wrongs.

That was the question that the magistrate laid out as he summed up the situation for the assembled parties. Thomas let the words spill over him, despite his personal interest in the answer. His mind dwelt instead on his conversation with Catherine and the others the night before. The seven of them had been holding back from him, refusing to say what had triggered the outburst Marc had described. He had wondered at their unaccustomed evasiveness, and wondered still more at the one thing they had told him. If this court were to decide against the Tomorrow People, the Malthus children were determined not to become pawns once again. They would flee from Saps and TPs alike, building new identities for themselves with their years of intelligence training. And no force on Earth could track the Malthus children if they were determined enough to remain concealed.

Thomas had thought long and hard about that assertion while his siblings slept. Should he inform Abby and Marc of their decision? His siblings had strength of will, true, but they were young still and inexperienced. Of course, if the children were taken from their home then he too would be torn from Abigail and Marc's care, and he was no more prepared to remain in Sap custody than his brothers and sisters were. Could he compromise the leader of Earth's Tomorrow People by forcing her to conceal his intentions? No. If it came to it and his siblings fled, then he would go with them, his fate bound to theirs as it always had been. There was an odd sense of peace that came with the decision, and he knew that Abby, Kershia and Marc had marvelled at his sanguine air that morning.

He knew that they felt it too when his serenity was shattered. They followed his gaze as he turned to the observation gallery and the blonde, blue-eyed boy and girl who had stepped from hyperspace and into the back row of seats. The eyes of the TP group returned to the front quickly, anxious not to give Catherine and James away, but the magistrate had seen the ripple of motion, or perhaps had simply noticed the sudden faraway look in the TPs eyes. He paled as he noted the two teenage children, and his voice faltered before he went on, as eager as the TPs not to reveal the children's presence.

Thomas felt his sister's regret at the man's reaction and frowned. He shouldn't have felt her emotion so clearly, not through her shields and his own. It took him long seconds to realise that Catherine and James weren't shielding, or at the very least, were shielding at nowhere near their full strength. But they weren't concentrating on him. Sap minds had never presented a challenge to the Malthus children, it was blocking them out that had always been the problem. Now Catherine's blocks were gone. Confused, Thomas turned towards them once again, at the same moment that Cat cried out in dismay.

"You've done it!" Her voice was clear, ringing in the quiet courtroom and bringing the magistrate's words to a shuddering halt. "After everything that happened - all the effort that went into stopping you - you released the virus!"

Abby came to her feet in a smooth motion. She spun to face first the children, and then the government lawyers. "That's what this is about?" she demanded. Suddenly too much had become clear. "This flu ... the Malthus virus? No... some mutation... a hybrid? That's why we've not seen it in the Labs." She shook her head, wide-eyed. "It's mutated past the trigger agent, hasn't it?"

James jaunted to Kershia's side, activating his sister's matter transporter at the same moment. There were unshed tears in his eyes. "We wanted to know why they needed us so badly," he tried to explain.

Kershia placed a hand on his shoulder, putting her other arm around Catherine's shoulders and trying to calm them both. The court was in uproar, the magistrate calling for order as the entire public gallery pressed forward to get a sight of the Malthus children. Their guardian turned a bitter look towards the government's representatives. "We vaccinate against the Malthus virus even now, but you can't yet, can you? You know the kids were infected, and you know they were cured. They have to have the antivirus. You let the genie out of its bottle, and now you need them to get it back in."

"If you can," Abby added unhappily. The fight against the Malthus virus had taken the Federation's brightest minds years. What hope did anyone have of containing its more infectious cousin? She hesitated, looking up at the Alliance representative, who was leaning forward watching events with interest. "You couldn't have just asked us for help?" she murmured, more to herself than to the faceless Sap authorities who had unleashed this plague upon themselves. If only they could have handled this out of the public eye. How much harder would placating the Alliance be now? But perhaps avoiding Alliance attention had been the Saps' intention from the start. Would the TPs have run to tell tales to the planet's alien peacekeepers if they had been approached directly? Wasn't a public determination to take responsibility for eight mistreated children - and the secret development of a cure from their antibodies - ultimately less risky than taking a chance on the Tomorrow People's reaction? Perhaps expecting years of suspicion to have vanished within six months had been too optimistic. Turning back to the Saps, she frowned. "We need to talk in private. At once!"

"No!" The magistrate's voice cut angrily through the rising buzz of conversation. Eyes turned to him in surprise, and he rapped his gavel on the table, calling for order. "No, Ms. Rollinde. With all due respect for your position, you do not dictate the order of business here. This court does not rise until I say so."

Abigail opened her mouth to protest, her expression surprised. A thought from Marc stopped her, and she subsided, returning to her seat with a rueful smile and a nod to the judge. Despite her apparent humour at the magistrate's statement though, she couldn't suppress a quick, anxious, glance towards the Sap group.

The magistrate noted it, and knew he didn't have much time. The children's sudden allegation had disturbed him as much as it had everyone else in the courtroom. If the Tomorrow People really could help with the influenza outbreak, he had no right to keep them here. Still ... "I want you all to know that events here this morning have had no influence on my decision." He paused, clearly sensing the sudden increase in tension in the room, even without the benefits of telepathy. "Yes. I've reached a decision. I was asked to consider the best interests of the eight children not conceived, but rather manufactured, as part of Operation Malthus. In the course of doing so, I have seen evidence of appalling wrongs, of abuse and abduction. We've heard from the second-in-command of Malthus itself how the children were used - seen as tools, rather than as individuals. We've heard of a project with huge aims and an unshakeable belief that failed utterly." He sighed. "But now is not the time for the speech I had prepared." His eyes lingered on Catherine and James, and they both moved slightly backwards, as if they could shelter in Kershia's shadow. "Yesterday, I spoke to some of the children, and they told me they had been taught to think of themselves as gods among men. For a moment, as I watched, their faces were masks of cold arrogance, before the uncertainty of the intervening years washed it away. Frankly, it was frightening, but all I could think of was Shelley's Ozymandias - the arrogance of a long dead king declaring 'look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' while all he had wrought was fallen into decay. Well, now it seems that all of us shall look upon the works of Operation Malthus and despair - even as its premise lies shattered at our feet.

"But no matter what has happened to the project in the years since, it is an undeniable truth that Malthus brought eight intelligent and powerful children into this world. It is the duty of those behind Operation Malthus - His Majesty's Government - to ensure that those young people are supported until they reach adulthood."

There was a ripple of surprise from the public gallery and a gasp from the TP group. Thomas came to his feet, taking a step towards his brother and sister as all three of them prepared to flee. He looked back desperately, longingly, towards Abby and Marc. They both reacted to the look of anguished decision on his face. They had seen it once before.

The magistrate rapped his gavel on the table once again, stopping both Canadians half out of their seats. "And that is why I am ordering the Government to pay maintenance costs to the current guardians of all eight children." There was a moment of dead silence before the magistrate continued. "Regardless of their genetic origin, I do not believe it in the best interests of the children to remove them from the care of a family that clearly cares for them greatly, and is able to help them in ways that their 'creators' could not. The eight Malthus children are being well cared for and it is my firm belief that removing them from their current guardians would only cause further psychological harm. Custody of Thomas Malthus is granted to Abigail and Marc Le Fevre. Custody of the remaining seven children, to Kershia Agenwala and Emina Reganovic."

"We can stay with Emina?" Catherine asked the question in a dazed tone, almost unable to believe it after their earlier resolve to abscond.

The magistrate nodded, and he spared her a gentle smile. "Malthus is a tumbled ruin now. It's time for the level sands to cover it over for good. It's time you made a new start." He looked around the room; at the public gallery with its watching Thargon, at the Sap delegation who seemed torn between disappointment at their failure and relief that aid might yet be forthcoming, and finally at the Tomorrow People. "And now, Ms Rollinde, go and save those people. Court dismissed!"

What made a place home?

The children found themselves wondering that through the long, confusing days that followed the Tomorrow People's emergence. Their years on Luna were coming to an end - that much had been clear from the moment John laid down his ultimatum. This had once been their prison, and yet, the Malthus children found they were terrified of leaving it behind them. Did that make Luna home? After all, where else was there for them to go? Could an anonymous Lab ever be the haven to them that this place had been?

Kershia's presence might have helped assuage their fears, but Kershia was busier than ever now. She snatched rare moments with them when she could. Looking at her pale face and the shadows under her eyes, they knew that they must make the most of those quiet times. So they held their silence, and placed their trust in her. She would not forget them.

Just as Abby and Marc had not forgotten. Marc slept on the top level now - when Travin insisted, and his infirmity left him no choice but to rest. Thomas had been nervous at first. Would Marc still trouble himself about the Malthus child, now that he no longer needed protection, and after a full year to dwell on Thomas's actions? He needn't have feared. Abby had brought Marc here, and his eyes had searched eagerly for Thomas on his arrival. Stepping forward he had gripped Thomas's shoulders, studying the changes in his former charge, and being studied in return. The other children felt their brother's shock. Chronic Barlumin poisoning had aged Marc in the last year, grey tingeing his hair, and folds deepening the lines around his eyes. Even the few moments he spent standing in front of the children seemed to tire him, and he had an air of frustrated resignation as Abby and Emina helped him to his new room.

*****

Emina and her grandchildren had been worried by Marc's condition too. With both Sanela and Alex so recently come to their full powers, it was impossible for the children on the top level to shield effectively against one another. The Malthus children saw the images of Sanela's mother and father that came to the forefront of her mind more and more often. They picked up glimpses from Adi too, and they felt Emina struggling to think of other things rather than trouble her grandchildren. Adi and Sanela had only the hazy memories of small children, separated from their parents for three years. Emina could hardly bear to think of her son suffering the same degeneration that afflicted Marc - or worse.

It was four long days after the TPs emergence that Kershia jaunted onto Luna's top level. The children had been scattered through their rooms - life going on even amidst this uncertainty - but the wave of mingled joy and concern Sanela broadcast brought them running to the common room. Alija Reganovic stood unsteadily at Kershia's side, a matter transporter around his waist and a warmly wrapped bundle in his arms. He stared at his daughter, ignoring the older children that surrounded her, seemingly as shocked to see her as she was to see him.

"Daddy!" She ran to him, almost knocking him off his feet as she threw her arms around him. Adi jaunted in a moment later, his embrace steadying his father and sister as Alija sank to his knees, trying to embrace both children while still holding the bundle against him. A baby's wail split the air, and Adi and Sanela backed off, startled. Alija glanced down at the infant he held, rocking her gently. She quietened, soothed by the combined mental efforts of the telepaths present, and for a moment there was a look of despair on Alija's face.

A memory flooded through minds left open by Sanela's broadcasts. Emina remembered how Alija had held his son and eldest daughter as babies, his mind gently soothing and caressing theirs. What must it feel like for him to see a child in his own arms, and yet not feel the gentle murmur of her thoughts? How much had he lost? The old woman stepped into the centre of the room and threw her arms around her son and newest granddaughter, falling to her knees beside them. Alija clung to her, forgetting for just a moment that he was an adult and a father. "Majka," he sobbed brokenly.

Adi and Sanela watched, surprised and afraid, stepping back towards the silent support that the Malthus children offered. Their father looked old and weak now, just as Marc had. He shook with silent tears, his face buried in his own mother's shoulder. Emina held him, letting the worst of his anguish subside. Slowly, she reached down to ease the baby from his trembling arms. "Let me take her," she said softly.

He resisted at first, but then exhaustion seemed to sweep over him and he yielded. He looked up at his two elder children from where he knelt, holding out both arms to them. They came to him, but there was a serious look in their wide eyes as the two empathic children helped their father to his feet.

"Adi, Sanela, I want you to meet your sister, Mia," he told them softly. Adi managed a slight smile, before Sanela asked the question everyone had avoided.

"Where's mummy?"

Alija's face crumpled, and they knew the answer before he could voice it. Emina and her family fell into a tight huddle, and Kershia and the Malthus children looked on - grieving for a woman none of them had known.

*****

Two days passed before Kershia came again to the top level. They had been sombre days, as Adi and Sanela learnt to know their father again, and to cope with their loss. The Malthus children could only try to be there for their young friends - to soothe away their tears and accept their outbursts. Emina and her grandchildren had become more than just fellow captives on Luna's top level, even before the virus that necessitated their confinement had been cured. They were close to Cat, Alex and their siblings in a way that only Kershia, and perhaps David, had been before. So the Malthus children kept their telepathic shields high, not letting their own uncertainty about the future leak to the two younger children, or to the weak and painful telepathy that Marc was only now beginning to recover.

Kershia's arrival was a welcome relief from that enforced silence, but again she came with a companion, and this time it was Abby who stood by her side. The children present - Adi, Alex and the twins - smiled a warm, if somewhat wary, welcome. If Kershia's life was busy, Abby's had become hectic. The children were usually asleep before she returned to Luna's top level, and had not yet woken when she left again. Her appearance in their small domain could only mean that the conversation they had been waiting for was about to occur. Over the past six days, the constant telepathic background of Luna's trepidation had slowly begun to fade, and the children had realised that, from their unique vantage point, they were witnessing Luna's demise as they had once witnessed its birth. It seemed almost selfish to fear what that meant for them.

Again they gathered quickly, Catherine and Thomas taking a few steps forward ahead of their siblings. Adi backed off to one side of the room, his expression confused as Abby smiled around at the assembled group.

The publicly declared leader of Earth's Tomorrow People looked tired, but happy. In many ways, this last week had been a personal triumph for Abigail, and Marc's release had lifted a weight from her that the children hadn't even known she carried. She stole a glance now towards Marc's room, and he came to the door. For a moment his pained expression showed the discomfort that even the presence of other telepaths caused him at present. Then his eyes met Abby's and the pain faded, the expressions of both becoming so intense that the children felt embarrassed even watching.

Kershia coughed pointedly and Abby and Marc flushed, their attention returning to the children. Cat sighed, tiring of the suspense.

"We're packed and ready," she said simply. "Where are we going?" The three adults seemed startled and Cat sighed again. "John gave you seven days to clear Luna; it's been six." She shuddered, unable to hide her fear, and Alex stepped to her side supportively. "Where are you sending us?"

"We're not sending you anywhere," Abby told her at once. "We're taking you." She moved forwards until she was standing in front of the eldest Malthus child. His expression became guarded, and she glanced back at Marc, who nodded simply. "Thomas, Marc and I would like you to come live with us ... if you want to?"

Thomas stared at her, and at Marc, trying to find words, trying even to frame a coherent thought. He nodded, and kept nodding until he wondered if he'd be able to stop. Abby laughed, soothing his thoughts as she had when he first broke out, and as she had throughout his training. Marc pushed off from the doorframe where he had been leaning, and crossed the room until he could put one arm around Abby's waist and the other around Thomas's shoulders.

The other Malthus children let Thomas feel their support, happy for their brother. They had welcomed Thomas's return, but their brother carried a guilt that only Abby and Marc could ease. This was right for him, and right for them too. All three needed to find peace.

Kershia smiled nervously, "I've arranged rooms for rest of us in the new London Lab." She paused, looking around the children. "I know I've been busy lately, but I'll make time for us ... somehow. I promise."

"What on Earth are you talking about, girl?" Emina's sharp voice came from the door to Alija's room. She sounded more surprised than angry, as if she'd never even considered the possibility. "The children are coming to Spionica with me."

Will and Vicky moved to the old woman's side, ready to help her. Emina had shown her age in the last few days, grief bowing her shoulders. Now though the old fire was back in her eyes, rising to the challenge as all assembled stared her. Only Adi seemed unsurprised, his expression almost identical to his grandmother's.

"Of course you're coming with us," he told them with absolute certainty. "You're part of our family now." The boy smiled at Abby, Marc and Kershia. "You all are, but Cat and the others especially." He looked from Catherine to Alex. "You've wanted to come home with us almost since we met you."

The children stared at him with a new hope in their eyes, some of them stealing almost guilty glances at Kershia. Their long-time guardian looked seriously at Emina, her expression compassionate and a little uncertain. "Emina, are you sure?" Kershia stepped forwards to take Emina's hands in her own, and look into her eyes. "Majka, I know this is a hard time for you."

Emina smiled sadly. "Tamara isn't the first loved one I've lost, Kershia. I'm old, true. I've seen the years pass and I've weathered their storms as well as their triumphs. I have a little strength left in me. Enough for this. You love the children, Kershia. I know it, and they do too. But these children don't need more metal walls, a dormitory in a hive of telepathic humanity. They need wide horizons and open skies. They need a normal life, a family who will accept them and love them unconditionally, as you and I do." Kershia hesitated for a long moment, feeling the minds of the children around her and sensing that this was what they wanted. She glanced briefly at Abby before smiling and nodding. Emina clapped her hands together sharply, making everyone in the room jump. "All right, children. Get your things. We're going home."

The earth seemed to radiate the day's warmth. The last rays of the setting sun played over the fields. Golden light from above seemed to blend with the sea of wheat, so that heaven and earth were united by a warm and rich glow.

A light breeze played across the farm, making the harvest dance and preventing the heat of this Indian summer from becoming oppressive. It caressed the farm buildings, carrying the scent of the evening meal that was being prepared, and the voices of the children, with it.

The roar of the farm's big harvester faded into a coughing splutter, and then into silence as Uncle Raif parked it in a sheltered corner. His deep tones carried on the breeze as he called for the children who had followed the machine to help him with the tarpaulins that would protect it through the night. It was the work of mere moments for Adi, Alex, James and the others to spread the oiled fabric, and hoist it far above their heads to fall in neat ripples over the harvester. Raif ducked out from under it at the last second, and laughed at their mock attempt to trap him. He was only half-joking as he noted how much easier the harvest had become, now the farm boasted so many telekinetics.

(Dinner time!) The call came from Vicky a moment before the ringing of the farm's old handbell broadcast the same message. The group working on the harvest turned, Raif and Emina's other descendants as eager as their newer family members to heed the call. Even Vicky's siblings didn't need the mouth-watering images she broadcast to encourage them. Technology advanced relentlessly, the world was overturned, but some things would never change. A harvest was still hard and hungry work, even in this day of modern farm machinery, and even with the special powers of Tomorrow People to assist them. The harvest party trooped towards the big house en masse - Emina's children, grandchildren and even a few great-grandchildren, eager to join their Majka at her table.

Catherine hung back from the group, letting her siblings drift away from her as they laughed and joked with their cousins. On impulse, she closed her eyes and raised her arms as if she could embrace the whole world. Throwing back her head, she felt her straw sun-hat fall to the ground behind her. Its fall seemed to last for ever as she shook her hair loose from its tight plaits. There was a sense of wild abandon in the motion, a freedom that she had never allowed herself to experience before.

Her sense of self spread out from her in a rippling wave, sweeping over the farm, and far beyond to the village and the other smallholdings scattered around it. Her powerful, trained mind touched those of a thousand Saps, and even a few Novus, but too briefly to invade their privacy. It was simply that they formed part of her world, and Catherine found she was glad of each and every one of them.

"Majka will scold us if we're late to dinner," Alex noted, his voice seeming loud as the conversation of the main party moved indoors.

Cat opened her eyes, momentarily guilty, momentarily afraid of being caught so wide open and vulnerable. Alex just raised an amused eyebrow at his sister, before smiling. Cat grinned back suddenly, and it was her old grin. Alex's smile widened. He had thought that the mischievous child who had once led their games had vanished for ever under the weight of the years. Perhaps she had just been too frightened to come out and play.

Tears pricked the corner of Cat's eyes as she heard his thought, and he stepped to her side, brushing them away.

"No more hiding," he said joyfully. "No more fear. We're free now."

Cat nodded. She was unsure herself whether her tears were of sorrow for the years they had lost, or of joy for the new start that the hearing's decision had finally allowed her to believe in. She had feared for so long that everything they had could be snatched from them in the wink of an eye. They had been pawns in a larger game, their lives dependent on the whim of others. No more.

"Do you think Emina will even notice if we're a minute or two late?" she asked lightly, looping her hand through her brother's arm as they walked towards the farmhouse. Alex's thoughts shared her delight in the knowledge that, for the first time in their lives, they weren't being watched. Their actions were theirs and theirs alone to decide. On the other hand, Alex echoed the thought to her, they were part of a family now, and no Reganovic risked the wrath of their beloved Stara Majka lightly!

They broke into a run towards their family.

The farmhouse kitchen echoed with cheer into the night, traditional Bosnian storytelling not forgotten even in these modern times. Light spilled from its open windows and doors, an oasis of warmth and comfort in the living desert of golden wheat. Slowly the air stilled, the temperature falling with the clear autumn night. The sound of laughter faded into quieter conversation as the family broke reluctantly into small groups, heading cheerfully for their own beds.

Eventually all was silence; all noise, all pretence was swept away by the stillness of sleep. Slowly, tired legs dragging her old bones upstairs and around the corners to each of their small rooms, Emina checked on her dreaming charges. Satisfied, she settled herself in her own bed and smiled. Her eyes drifting shut, she dreamt of family, she dreamt of home, and she dreamt of peace.

Epilogue:

David Barton looked up from his desk as a shadow fell across the paperwork he was reading. Kershia blocked the light, silhouetted darkly against it like some avenging angel.

She moved to one side, only half visible in the dark shadows that had filled the room while David was concentrating, and the illusion faded as she perched inelegantly on the corner of his desk. She tilted her head to one side, studying him. "Isn't it time you went home and got some rest?"

David suppressed a flare of irritation, knowing from long experience that letting Kershia see it would probably be counterproductive.

He didn't need yet another tiring confrontation. The revelation that the Malthus virus had re-emerged in this new and virulent form had scandalised the entire world. The fact that their own governments had infected their children, and the attempt to conceal that fact, had frightened the general public. The readiness Abby had shown in asking any Lab with the resources to manufacture doses of the vaccine and cure had unsettled them. It was only to those who had fought the secret war to which Operation Malthus belonged that both facts came as no surprise. Efforts to bring the outbreak under control had forced the cooperation of Sap and Novus authorities alike, and of course, at the interface between the two was the Novus committee, coordinating the efforts of both sides and trying to minimise the friction between them.

And then there was the Alliance. In the last few days of trying to pour oil on troubled waters, David had found himself wondering if the only reason their alien 'observers' hadn't sought retribution for this latest blow to the fragile peace was because in the labyrinthine complexities that lay between military and civilian authorities there was no one body that was obviously to blame. Nonetheless, the Thargon vessel's thunderous low-altitude run over London had put the wind up more than a few of Britain's political masters.

David sighed, in some ways he could almost sympathise with his former Government's attempt to handle this without alerting the TPs and the Alliance to the problem. In other ways, he felt they had missed the entire point: Novus and Saps were in this together now. Abigail and her people were as nervous of the Alliance's wrath as the governments of the world were. It was time for them to cooperate. But even so...

"Jaunting into my office - again?" he demanded.

Kershia blinked. "Actually, I walked. I did knock," she added a little defensively. "I was just leaving, and I saw your light on. I wanted to tell you you're working too hard."

David tensed himself for an angry reply, then relaxed with a sudden smile. Kershia had always been able to get to him like this, as nobody else could. And she was usually right. His smile faded, and he forced the memories aside. That phase of their lives was over now, whether he wanted it to be or not. He had just never expected leaving it behind to be so difficult. "Heading home?" he asked casually, beginning to fold his paperwork away for the night.

"Actually I'm going to jaunt and see the children before it gets too late."

David paused, a sheet of paper still in one hand. "Are they well?"

"Well, and happy. I think they've finally accepted that they're part of the family now." Kershia smiled. "And your statements on our behalf helped with that. The children know it too. Thank you, from all of us."

"I just did what was right," David shrugged off the praise, unsettled by Kershia's earnest expression. "You know me well enough to know I'd do that." He looked up at her as he packed the last of his work in a briefcase and stood, reaching for his coat. Striving for a little humour, he grinned. "But you: Nursemaid Kershia. I wasn't expecting that!"

Kershia's brown eyes sparked mischievously. "There's a lot you don't know about me, David Barton," she told him, her laughter fading with the rest of her as she jaunted to Spionica and the farm that the Malthus children called home.

The End