Search Worlds Without End

In the star system ThreeSys, three members of the elite human "Meshed" caste have used their great gifts for evil purposes -- enslaving the lower orders in the addictive dreams of a powerful narcotic. Now hunted by those seeking bloody retribution, Corey, Annmarie, and Eve-along with Eve's lower caste lover, Naverdi -- must flee to Paradise, the first world in ThreeSys to know the curse of human habitation. But something is waiting for them on the now abandoned planet -- a sinister being that can turn their own powers against them, an entity that has broken down all barriers between virtual and real; a creature that has chosen Naverdi to bear its offspring into the world.

Nebula Award winning short story. It was originally published on Sci Fiction, June 22, 2000. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois, and the Nebula Awards Showcase 2003, edited by Nancy Kress.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It first appeared in the anthology Black Heart, Ivory Bones (2000), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It can also be found in the collection The Cure for Everything (2013).

A runaway slave sold into the service of troubled Emirate diplomat Mira LoDire, Costa, a female breeder, finds herself drawn to her reluctant mistress and discovers that her troubling visions may hold the key to defying ruthless Faraqui domination.

A galaxy whirls in conflict as tyrant slavers prepare to reclaim the frontier planets wrested from them generations ago. Living on one of the forfeited worlds they covet most is Frenna, bred for bondage and given a virus that guarantees two decades of youth for servitude, followed by an agonizing death. But then she learns an amazing secret: the end is not inevitable. There is an escape. An antidote. A cure.

Yet Frenna's escape is into an exotic, bloodswept world, a fierce arena where muscled slaves wage brutal battles for their masters' amusement. Frenna has become a medic: her job is to administer a mercifully quick end to the mortally wounded. But she still carries the secret of freedom. And as warships arrive in conquest, this last hope must survive in a murderous domain of monstrous holograms and irresistible deadly potions. In the final frenzy, sisters and lovers, killers and saviors, all will be swept together in a maelstrom of annihilation, survival and redemption.