4

Money: People need a form of currency that is not just registered somewhere in a silicon brain. Human corporations like Cybercorp, System Metals and JMCC tried, in the early centuries of the millennium, to ban cash money, but they failed. The resultant black economies in the end produced an entirely new currency. The New Yen we know today was that currency, though it can hardly be described as 'new' anymore. Since its inception it has had many contenders. The greatest of these is the comparatively recent 'New Carth Shilling'. It is the case that so long as there are things of value to be exchanged, there will be money. Without it someone, at some point, will write an IO U, and in reality that's how it all started.

From How It Is by Gordon

The Pelter residence was large, and set in its own grounds outside the city. In Stanton's experience it was always the wealthy ones who bemoaned Polity takeover, because it prevented them getting even wealthier at other people's expense. The residence itself had something of the appearance of a Roman villa, but with decorations somewhat more baroque. It was surrounded by orchards of self-pruning pig-apple trees. The trees produced apples the size of human heads. They were never picked and at certain times of the year, effectively the twin summers experienced on Cheyne III, the orchards often swarmed with fruit wasps and small blade beetles. This was now one of those times, but the worrying swarms were not in the orchards. The swarms that there were, which they saw during a fly-by, were around the residence itself, and were of a distinctly uniformed variety.

'They may have found him by now,' Stanton observed, secretly hoping that was true.

'They are searching the house and I have no doubt they will find a lot that is of interest, but they will not find Mr Crane there,' Pelter replied. 'Anyway, they have not yet come anywhere near him. He would have heard them.'

That was it. Stanton gazed at Pelter and understood now what the aug, control unit and optic link were all about. Great: a human lunatic linked to an artificial one. Pelter had his own personal gridlink.

'Can't you just tell him to come out to us?' he asked.

Pelter twisted his face into what might be described as a smile. 'So you understand, John?'

'Let's say, I know what you're doing… Right, where do you want me to bring us down?'

Pelter pointed out beyond the orchards. 'Bring us down in Tenel's orchard. We'll walk in for Crane, then maybe go and visit Tenel afterwards, if he's in.'

'They'll have him by now,' Stanton said.

'Not for long,' Pelter replied. 'Not for very long at all.'

With an almost vicious twist of the joystick Stanton brought their latest stolen AGC down low, and without lights. He landed it between the rows of plum and cherry trees that Tenel favoured on his property. Stanton waited a moment for his vision enhancement to kick in before he climbed from the vehicle. It surprised him how well Pelter coped in the dark, despite having only one eye. Then again, perhaps Sylac had made some other alterations he did not know about. As he followed the Separatist leader down between the rows of trees, he wondered if even Pelter knew what those alterations were.

In minutes they came to a broken-down chainlink fence. In the pig-apple trees beyond this, blade beetles were rattling their razor wing-cases. The sound made Stanton's arm itch even more than it already did. At least the wasps were somnolent at night.

'If one of them hits you, be very certain you do not yell out,' Pelter said.

Stanton remembered the last time such a beetle had hit him in me face. He had required the services of a cell-welder then, too. He folded up his collar as high as he could and ducked his head into it. These insects could kill people, not deliberately, but with the accidental brush of a wing across a vein when medical help was far away. In some areas a kind of armour had to be worn for fruit picking.

'How far is it?' he asked. It seemed to him that they must be getting a bit too close to the residence and the flashing lights. Knowing the beetles liked light, he hoped the cops were having a bad time of it.

'No further,' muttered Pelter, and pointed ahead.

A few metres ahead of them stood the statue of a bearded gentleman clad in impact armour and holding some weapon horizontally across his stomach.

'My grandfather. He served in the Prador war,' he explained.

'Here?' asked Stanton.

'Earth, I think. He left here a century ago.'

So saying, Pelter turned back towards the statue and pressed one hand to the side of his head. It was obvious that he was new to using augs and internal control mechanisms. Stanton shook his head and thought he might tell him about it - sometime.

Somewhere an engine started, and with a low grating noise the statue slid to one side. Exposed now was a square entrance and steps leading down. Pelter gestured and Stanton followed him below. It was dark, even for enhanced vision, especially when the statue slid back into place. Once it had stopped sliding, a greenish light flickered on. They were in what appeared to be a small wine cellar bounded by three walls racked with wine bottles and one wall of stone inset with an armoured door.

'I didn't answer your question about getting him to come out to us,' said Pelter.

'Are you going to answer it now?' Stanton asked.

'Yes.' Pelter walked to one wall of wine bottles. He studied it for a moment, then stepped aside as a vertical section, four bottles wide, slid out. In a moment a set of shelves was revealed. From one shelf he removed two slim square cases. He ignored the various weapons and makings of explosive devices that occupied the other shelves, and held up just the pair of cases.

'We had to come here for our new identities,' he explained.

He lowered the cases and nodded towards the armoured door. This action initiated four loud thumps as locks disengaged. The door opened silently. Stanton thought it would be more appropriate for the door to creak.

'Even Crane would have a problem wiui that door,' Pelter commented.

Stanton looked inside the room beyond and wondered just how true that statement was.

They called him Crane because he was so very tall. They called him Mr Crane because he was so very prone to dismembering people. However, even politeness did not work. Mr Crane would kill people as ordered by the holder of his control module, though occasionally he killed people for reasons that were inscrutably his own. John Stanton stared at him and felt the urge to just turn and go. Mr Crane was two and a half metres tall, so appeared slightly ridiculous sitting in a normal-sized camp chair. He was also utterly still. Over his attenuated frame he wore a coat that stretched right down to his much-patched, beloved lace-up boots. A hat wiui a wide droopy brim hid his features. Stanton noticed there was mould on the brim of that hat, just as there was on Mr Crane's overcoat. Not surprising, as it was damp down here.

'How long's he been here?' he whispered.

'Two years,' Pelter replied, and his hand moved up to the metal on the side of his head. This gesture now confirmed for Stanton the antecedents of the module Pelter had caused Sylac to implant in his skull.

'It was that hit out on the island, wasn't it? You sent him there to kill one man… and how many was it he killed in the end?' he asked.

Pelter said, 'Don't push it, John. You're a lot more dispensable than he is.'

Stanton bit off any more comments and just watched them. What were they saying to each other, he wondered. What did their little electrical conversation entail?

'Come on, Crane. Time to wake up,' Pelter said, aloud.

Mr Crane stood up in one abrupt movement. Stanton took in the black glitter of eyes now open below the brim of the hat. Crane's head turned toward Pelter, and he took one long pace forward. Pelter stepped back, his hand pressing harder against the side of his head, and an expression of intense concentration on his face. Crane did not move further; instead he reached up and removed his hat to expose a totally bald head, a thin-featured face and those completely black eyes. 'That's better,' said Pelter.

Stanton reflected how Crane's artificial skin looked just that: artificial. It had been previously suggested that his skin should be changed, but no one ever wanted to get that close. Stanton supposed the skin must serve the purpose of preventing blood getting into Mr Crane's workings. He made sure he kept well out of reach as Crane emerged from his prison. Pelter lowered his hand, then turned for the stairs. Crane walked just a pace behind him, taking dainty little steps to hold the same position. Stanton picked up the two cases, followed, and wished he were somewhere else.

Cormac glanced up through the transparent roof, then back at the mirrored containment sphere. It seemed that there was a hand closing tighter in his chest for every moment he went without linking in. Maybe he had made the wrong move? Maybe it would be better to have stayed linked and got out of ECS? Immediately upon thinking these questions, which since leaving the shuttle he had been asking himself with greater regularity, he felt an angry self-contempt.

ECS had been Cormac's life for so very long, and he truly believed in what he was doing. He looked ahead at the short queues before the various embarkation gates. There was an example of what he had been defending: those queues never became very long. There were no papers to be handed over, no passports, and no lengthy customs bureaucracy to bypass. Polity citizens travelled in absolute freedom from world to world. The only restriction was on proscribed weaponry, and even that did not prevent travel. If said weaponry was registered and deactivated, you could take it along with you. Even if you did not register it, you could still travel, only the weapon would be dust at your destination; disintegrated by the autoproscription device the runcibles had inbuilt. To travel distances once inconceivable, all you had to do was book your place and pay a fee, register your identity with the runcible AI when you arrived at the sphere, and walk on through. So bloody damned simple. These people here with their daft cosmetic alterations and pos- sibly brain-scrambling augs, they just had no idea, no idea at all.

Cormac stared down at his hands, unclenched them and flexed his fingers. OK - it was going to be OK.

I will remain calm .

He began walking again before people started to wonder why he was standing still in the middle of the embarkation lounge staring up at the sphere. All he needed now was some Samaritan to come up to him and tell him not to be frightened of it. He smiled tightly to himself as he walked along, then, before he reached the row of gates, he turned towards one of the wide and ornately cast synthestone pillars that ostensibly supported the chainglass roof. At one of the four consoles, in the base of the pillar, he halted and slapped his hand down on the reader. He blinked on a momentary flash of red as the reader scanned his retinal pattern.

'Identity confirmed, Ian Cormac,' spoke an androgynous voice.

'I want passage to Minostra as soon as possible,' he said, then he turned his head slightly as all sounds beyond him suddenly cut out. A privacy field that he had not requested had developed. Now a completely different voice, but one he recognized, spoke from the console.

'Would that be executive class or second?' the Cheyne III runcible AI asked him.

Cormac frowned, but felt a kind of joy. This perhaps was the nearest he could come to linking. This privacy, this difference.

'I think there is nothing worse than a runcible AI - an intelligence responsible for the lives of thousands every day - that likes to make jokes,' he growled.

'Then let us move on to something without humour. Arian Pelter has disappeared. Before doing this, he managed to withdraw Separatist funds as well as his personal fortune in cash. He was also seen visiting Sylac, whom I believe you know. Other events may also be connected. A turbine-powered catamaran was driven into the old lading docks and caused extreme damage. I only mention this because of the rumour that it contained a headless woman.'

'That may have some relevance,' Cormac conceded, immediately shutting down on an emotion he did not want to identify. 'Pelter was always one for melodramatic gestures. Combine something like a Viking funeral with a Separatist blow against the industry the Polity condescends to allow… Is that all?'

'I have no more information to pass on to you at present.'

'Will you pass on anymore?'

'If instructed.'

'Who instructed you this time?'

'Horace Blegg… Now, if you go to Gate C, your departure time will be in ten minutes.'

'Thank you.'

'Good luck, Ian Cormac.'

Cormac was about to ask if he needed it, when the privacy field suddenly shut off. He turned away and headed for Gate C. As he walked, he pulled up his sleeve and punched in the deactivation sequence on his shuriken holster. Within minutes of leaving the Mino-stra containment sphere, he would be able to reactivate it. The main reason for the proscription was to prevent a person carrying an active weapon within the sphere itself. All weapons on the proscribed list were of the types capable of being used to damage a runcible; an occurrence that could easily lead to another Samarkand.

First Constable Abram spoke quietly and calmly into his mike as he watched the house through his favoured pair of antique binoculars. It was a small place by the standards of the area: one of those Tundra chalet replicas that had been all the rage half a century back. The roof was red-tiled over a construction of synthetic wood painted a quaint pale blue, which appeared silver in the light of Cereb, and there was a rocking chair on the veranda. Appearances could be deceptive: this did not seem the residence of an arch-criminal. He lowered the viewer and sighed. He would have preferred to bathe the place in searchlights, but blade beetles were rattling in the trees behind him and they would be attracted to the light. Already four of his men had been sent back for cell-welding after that fiasco at the Pelter residence. The men he had with him now had intensifier augs, so didn't need much in the way of light to operate. But things could still be missed.

'Now, I will ask again, because it is of a great deal of interest to me, are you all in position?'

Abram was noted for his relentless sarcasm. Many of his constables found it more frightening to be summoned into his presence than pulled before some of the other more explosive officers. He knew this, but just could not help himself, sometimes wondering if it was a sickness. He nodded to himself as four positive replies came back to him over the radio.

'Now I strongly suggest that when I say the word "Go" - that wasn't it by the way, it will be a moment yet - that you break down a few doors and arrest Alan Tenel for his numerous crimes. Now… Go?'

Abram raised his binoculars again and increased the magnification. Those who had braved his sarcasm to ask him why he used such an old instrument always got the same reply: 'Image intensifiers are the product of characterless technology. I will use them only when necessary.' It was perhaps half the truth. He knew it was probably more to do with establishing a kind of individualism: a common pastime in the vast sprawl of humanity.

He watched two of his officers moving onto the veranda. From the back of the house came the sound of breaking glass. There was a flash that momentarily blacked the binoculars' lenses. When the blackness faded, the officers were gone from view, but he could still hear them.

'Alan Tenel, get up and move away from the bed. Hands out in front of you.'

'What?… Who the hell do you think you are?'

'I won't ask a second time.'

'This is private property. How dare you!'

'Tenel, you're a Separatist shit and you're under arrest. You can walk out of here fully dressed or I can drag you out by your ankles and focus the lights on you. Plenty of blade beetles waiting out there… That's better.'

'Excellent reading of his rights, Pearson. I must remember that approach line next time I'm lecturing new recruits,' said Abram.

Nothing more than sounds of movement came over the radio for a moment.

'Sorry, sir, but he seemed a bit reluctant to cooperate.'

Abram emerged from the orchard as his constables hauled Tenel out of his house. Pearson, who, like a lot of the older recruits, was a heavy-G adaptation, had one hand clamped on Tenel's upper arm. Abram studied carefully this man they had arrested.

Tenel was small and old, and didn't look as if he could offer any trouble. Pearson and Alex were capable of tearing the man in half between them, and Jack and Solen, walking behind, both towered a head and a half above him. Abram momentarily wondered if the information given them had been mistaken, then dismissed the thought. ECS did not make that kind of error. As Tenel drew closer, Abram began to note a certain weaselly confidence.

'You do know why you've been arrested, I take it?' he asked.

'You've made a mistake, First Constable - one for which you'll pay dearly,' said Tenel.

Abram wondered what that meant: was it the usual bluster of men with a bit more in their bank accounts than the general population, or something more sinister?

'I never pay dearly for my mistakes,' said Abram. 'I'm a policeman.'

'You won't be laughing when they…'

Tenel stared beyond Abram and over to the right.

Suddenly his eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. He pulled against the grip the two constables held on him - then he pulled harder.

'You have to get me out of here,' he said quickly.

Abram stared at him.

'You have to get me out of here!'

As Tenel struggled harder, there was spitde on his chin. Abram glanced round and saw, standing at the edge of the orchard, a very tall and odd-looking man.

'Ground him,' Abram ordered. 'Pearson, Jack, with me.'

As Pearson released Tenel's arm, Alex tripped the prisoner and forced him face-down on the ground. Solen dropped to a crouch, aiming the stubby laser carbine he was holding. Abram began walking towards the odd man, with Pearson and Jack behind him. He heard the various sliding metallic sounds as laser carbines were brought to bear and primed. Probably OTT again. This individual was more man likely a gardener employed because he was so uncommonly tall and could prune the trees more easily man most.

'No, let me go!' Tenel shouted, then his cries became muffled, no doubt as Alex shoved his face into the dirt. Abram smiled to himself; Alex was not above a litde brutality when necessary. He hooked his binoculars on his belt and rested his hand on the butt of his pulse-gun. The tall man stepped further out from the trees, then stopped, very still. Abram felt a momentary nervousness, then told himself not to be ridiculous; he had two of the toughest cops on the force with him.

'Who are you?' he asked when they got closer.

The man started moving towards them, his lanky strides eating up the ground in between.

'I suggest you stop right there.' Abram drew his pulse-gun.

The man just kept on walking.

'I said stop! Stop, damn it! Oh shit!'

Abram fired, all the time thinking: Oh, you poor bloody idiot. There was a thud and a puff of smoke -embers falling from the man's coat. His stride did not diminish at all. Abram fired twice more, to nil effect on the man's progress. There were flames rising from his coat now. With one sharp movement he slapped them out and continued, trailing smoke.

Jack and Pearson opened up with laser carbines, red flashes cutting through the night - and suddenly the strange man was on them. Abram felt something like a piledriver hit his chest. Next thing he knew, he was on his back on the ground, straining for breath as he looked up. Pearson had his carbine right in the man's face, his finger down on the trigger. Smoke was billowing into the night, and sheets of burning skin fell about the man's shoulders. A long arm snapped out and the carbine spun away in pieces, then Pearson was held up high by his biceps, kicking at air. Jack rushed in from the side wim a flat dropkick that would have dented steel plate. Abram heard Jack's leg snap and saw him caught in the action of kicking, the man's other hand gripping his ankle. Suddenly he was released, but before he could fall back that same hand had snapped up to his diroat. Their attacker brought Jack and Pearson together with sickening force, then discarded them like a couple of food wrappers.

Abram smelt burning plastic, and suddenly knew what they were dealing with. He got breath into his lungs, where it bubbled. Shattered ribs ground together in his chest as he fought to speak into his mike. He looked up as their opponent loomed over him. The hat and all the face covering had been burned away, to expose an underface seemingly made of brass. The hand covering had also been burned away to expose the same metal. Not a man then, only one choice left really. Abram expected this face and hands to be the last he saw, but the face turned away as multiple shots set clothing afire. The attacker moved on.

'Android… fucking run… let it… have him.'

The words cost him, and Abram spat blood as he painfully turned over to face his remaining two officers, and the prone Tenel.

'Run… fuck… run.'

But it was not they who ran - it was the android, with unhuman acceleration. It had Solen first, just picked him up and threw him. Solen smashed straight through one of the wooden pillars supporting the veranda, then into the front of the house. He hung there for a moment amongst splintered boards before peeling out and mud-ding down. Alex sensibly tried to escape. He moved only a pace before a flat brass hand punched through his back and out through his chest. He hung mere pinioned and squirming for a second before he died, then the android lowered its arm and Alex's corpse slid bonelessly to the ground.

Abram tried reaching up to change the frequency on his radio, aiming to call for backup. But the control was at his shoulder and he just could not raise his arm that far. With dimming vision he saw the android now standing over Tenel. The litde man was on his knees as if pleading, but not for long. The tiling grabbed his shoulder, then yanked him up and spun him, all in one movement. It next caught his ankle in one hand, and held him there while it gutted him with the other. Abram wished he could turn off his earplug, because the screams now came through multiplied from four different throat mikes. Abram closed his eyes and kept utterly still as the android dropped what was left of Tenel and moved back in his direction. He listened as the heavy footsteps halted right next to him. An android… what chance did he have? It would hear his heart beating. He slowly opened his eyes and gazed up at its brass face.

'Go… on then,' he managed.

The android squatted beside him with its elbows on its knees, gore dripping from its massive brass hands. In a curiously birdlike way, it tilted its head to one side and studied him, then it reached out one of those hands and plucked his binoculars from his belt. What now? What the hell was it doing, toying with him like this? How the hell had someone made a sadistic android? As Abram watched in puzzlement, it stood up, placed the binoculars in the pocket of its long coat, closed one metal eyelid slowly over one black eye, then walked away. Abram felt sure it had winked at him. But he never told anyone that.

In the twenty-first century the 'disposable culture'prevailing on Earth threatened ecological catastrophe. Landfill sites were rapidly filling with disposable nappies and plastic throwaways. The power stations that burnt this plastic waste, as well as the vulcanized rubber tyres of the time, went some way to alleviating the problem. But a solution was not truly found until all the industries concerned were forced to use biodegradable materials. Even then the problem remained, for the power stations were eventually closed down because of their contribution to global warming. Later in that century the problem was again apparently solved by use of a bacterium genetically modified to eat plastic. This solution unfortunately caused its own disaster, when this same bacterium then proceeded to devour other forms of plastic and rubber, and even developed a taste for fossil fuels. The war and the chaos resulting from this crisis is a matter of common record. So, when you have finished drinking this self-heating coffee, please remember that, even though it is made of self-collapsing plastic, this cup still won't look very nice lying on the pavement, so you must dispose of it in a sensible and considerate manner.

From The Coffee Company

This was the area agreed on, but Stanton could see no sign of them on the white sands. The papyrus, then. Here a stand of papyrus, seeded from the beds in the north, protruded like a tongue out into the sea. He slowed and circled the AGC over it. No sign of activity. He had promised himself that at the first sign of the police getting close, he would run. Things were just getting too bloody. He brought the AGC down until it was only a few metres above the sand, then edged it into the papyrus and let it settle there, crushing the thick stalks beneath it. Before getting out he cursed and then grabbed up the parcel he had placed on the passenger seat. Madness, all of it. He stamped through the papyrus to the white sand beyond and surveyed his surroundings.

'Over here.'

Pelter stepped out from the same stand, but further up the beach. He waited until he was sure Stanton saw him, then stepped back in. Stanton followed him along a crushed-down path to a small open area where the plants had been ripped out and neatly stacked to one side. Probably Mr Crane's work - he was good at ripping.

'Well?' said Pelter.

Still clutching the package Stanton glanced at Mr Crane, who was squatting with his back to a wall of papyrus. The android was studying a number of objects lying on the ground in front of him. There was a piece of green crystal that might have been emerald but was more likely beryl, a chainglass blade, an old egg-shaped data unit, a small toy dog made of rubber, and a pair of antique binoculars. Did this monster's insanity have a name, Stanton wondered.

'They're checking every passenger going onto the shuttles, so there's not much chance of getting through with our friend here. Anyway, I'm told the runcible facility is crawling,' he said.

'We knew that would happen,' said Pelter. 'My patience is not endless, John.'

Stanton decided not to point out that Pelter's patience was practically non-existent.

'It cost us five thousand, but I got confirmation. Cormac went to Minostra, where he was taken aboard a delta-class deep-spacer called Hubris. Hubris went on to Samarkand. My contact has information that the ship's taking a stage-one runcible there, but he can't confirm it.'

'And the other?' asked Pelter.

'Quarter of a million for the three of us. We have to be at the spaceport first thing in the morning, and we have to get in there by ourselves. Jarvellis says that it's then or never, as she's leaving at first light. Apparently it's getting just a bit too hot around the ports. Not only are the police searching for us, but they're following up on Cormac's report about proscribed weapons. ECS monitors down there have been asking pointed questions about why an insystem cargo transport needs under-space engines.'

'Is that all?'

'No, when we get to the Lyric the hold doors will be open. Inside she'll provide supplies for insystem, and two cold coffins for when she takes us interstellar. That's all we get. She wants no contact with us,' Stanton said.

Pelter rubbed at his optic link and Stanton noted Mr Crane's head come up.

'That bitch has made a lot of money from us over the years, and she won't let us into the crew quarters!' Pelter started at a whisper and finished on a shout.

Stanton gestured to Mr Crane. 'She knows about him. She brought him here,' he said.

'You told her?' Pelter asked.

Stanton felt sweat breaking out on his forehead. Mr Crane was putting away his toys.

'I had to, Arian,' he said. 'If we'd turned up without letting her know we had him with us, she might well have not opened her ship at all. I couldn't risk that.'

Pelter lowered his hand, then abruptly he squatted. Mr Crane froze.

'Very well,' he said. 'We'll get over there in the night and go on in. I don't think we'll have too much trouble. Now… John… give Mr Crane his parcel.'

Stanton walked over to the android, dropped the parcel on the ground before him and stepped back. Crane reached out one brass hand and pulled it closer. He tore locally manufactured paper wrapping away and tilted his head at the contents. Then he stood and stripped off his old, burned coat. Stanton observed that very little synthetic skin now clung to Crane's brass body. There was none at all on his arms, or on his face and head. He carefully placed his old coat on the ground and took up the new one. Methodically he buttoned it up, before taking up the wide-brimmed hat that had become slightly crushed in the parcel. He first straightened the hat, men placed it carefully on his head. His toys he removed from the pockets of his old coat and placed in the pockets of his new one. After a pause he squatted back down and started to take them out again, one by one.

'Mr Crane is very pleased,' said Pelter.

'I'm glad to hear that,' Stanton replied.

A white craft, looking like nothing less than a giant cuttlefish bone, rose into the night sky in eerie silence. When it was half a kilometre up, the green light of an ion drive stuttered, and it accelerated away. Stanton watched it for a moment, then focused his attention back down on the fence. More activity than usual; he had expected no less.

Security round the spaceport was heavy, but quite simply less secure than that around the runcible installation. Here a submind of the runcible AI had as its domain the perimeter fence and the two gates, but because cargos could be large, or sealed, or containing items impenetrable to scan and which, under Polity law, could not be unpacked, only scanned, things still got through. Also, because the Polity was supposed to be effectively without borders for its citizens, there were no constant restrictions on their passage. Because ECS would be searching for him and Pelter and Mr Crane, Stanton now expected restrictions. However, he did wonder if the authorities really thought it likely the three of them would just try walking in there.

Proscribed weapons were the only items disallowed. Stanton considered that, with the freedoms the Polity allowed, it had shot itself in the foot as far as rebellion -and the apprehending of criminals - was concerned. The sort of ad hoc operation going on now was full of holes. After searching the length of security fence once again, he lowered his intensifier and turned to Pelter.

'Local cops at both gates, and a couple of ECS Monitors,' he said, and then peered at the glowing face of his watch. 'We've got about an hour.'

Pelter nodded and glanced at their original AGC. Stanton followed his gaze. The two men inside were, of course, utterly still. There was something a bit spooky about seeing them sitting there in Stanton's and Pelter's clothing. The two ECS Monitors had drunk just a little too much in the arcology bar, so had no time to react when Mr Crane stepped out in front of them. Of course, reacting would have done them no good. Mr Crane just slammed their heads together and carried them away. Stanton wished he had not slammed them together quite so hard, as he pulled the collar of the appropriated uniform away from his neck. The blood inside was drying fast and the hardening material scratched against his skin.

'You'd better try and link in,' he added, when Pelter seemed disinclined to move.

Pelter looked at Mr Crane, then at the AGC again.

'There a problem?' Stanton asked.

'Mr Crane will be off the command frequency for the duration, but he is pleased with his coat,' Pelter replied. Stanton translated that as 'off his leash', and wondered if he wanted to take this any further. Was it a calculated risk or suicide?

'We can try ramming the fence,' he suggested.

Pelter stared at him, all indecision wiped from his face. 'We stay with this plan. It gives us all the best chance.' He turned to Mr Crane who was sitting in the back of the Monitors' AGC. Mr Crane took off his hat and dropped down out of sight. Pelter raised a hand to the side of his head, and let out a slow breadi as he concentrated. While he was doing this Stanton walked over to their original vehicle and opened the door. An arm flopped out and he picked it up and tucked it back into the dead man's lap before taking a chip card from his pocket. He rested it in the slot of the onboard computer and watched Pelter. After a moment Pelter turned towards him.

'Now,' he said.

Stanton pushed the card home, then punched in a code that their cell had bought almost a year ago now.

'City control… city control… city control,' the computer burbled.

'I have it,' said Pelter, his voice echoed by the computer.

Stanton turned and reached over the dead man's shoulder, gave the tap of the oxygen cylinder tüere one half turn, and men stepped back and slammed the door of the vehicle. He held up his diumb to Pelter. The vehicle's AG engaged and it lifted from the ground. Above Stanton's head it spun 360 degrees, men tilted from side to side. It then hovered stable where it was.

'Let's do it,' said Pelter, his face creased with concentration and a manic grin. He lowered his hand and turned toward the Monitors' vehicle, climbing in the passenger side. Stanton hesitated to join him. He did not like the fact that Mr Crane was now sitting up again and looking about himself with birdlike interest. When he finally did get in the car, Stanton could feel the skin on his back crawling.

'You can handle the targeting?' Pelter asked him.

Stanton hit the controls on the steering column, then from the roof he dropped down a targeting mask. As he did this, two polished cannons whined out of the bonnet of the car and swivelled from side to side.

'You just handle the target, I'll handle the targeting,' he said.

Pelter gave him a dead look, men returned his attention to the AGC with the corpses in it. It rose higher into the air, its turbines droned and it shot off away from the spaceport. Stanton lifted off and was quickly in behind it. Shortly the arcology came into view, with its great tower blocks looming behind.

'Let's get some attention,' said Stanton, and on the locked onboard computer he manually turned on the radio long enough to shout, 'We've got him! We've got him! It's Arian Pelter! In pursuit of Arian Pelter!' Then he turned it off. 'Now some fireworks,' he said.

Wisps of vapour came off the cannons as they warmed up, and laser light ignited the early morning mist. Pelter swerved the AGC they were apparently chasing, and had it screaming back towards the spaceport.

'A few more like diat, I dunk,' said Pelter, his voice strained.

More laser fire lit the night. The citizens of Gordon-stone were treated to the sight of an ECS Monitors' AGC blasting away at a citizen's AGC, and missing time and again. Many citizens cheered on the fugitive as he fled between the city blocks and over the roofs of the arcologies. They were then treated to the sight of more ECS and local police vehicles joining the chase, and speeding out towards the spaceport. It soon became impossible to see which one was the original pursuer…

'All warning shots,' said Stanton as he eased back on the control column and let the last of the other pursuers get ahead. 'Why bother shooting someone down who you know has to land and will most certainly be caught?'

Pelter did not answer. Stanton studied him and saw that fluid was seeping out round his optic link again. It was mixing with the sweat on his face.

'We're coming to the spaceport. Time to wrap it up, Arian.'

The AGC reputedly containing the fugitives Arian Pelter and John Stanton attempted a high-speed landing in the spaceport. It clipped the top of the fence and slewed violently to one side. Over the fence it clipped the grab claw of an old cometary mining ship, then went nose-first into the plascrete below an Apollo-replica insystem leisure craft. It somersaulted once, then hit the base of the Apollo and exploded. The criminals had to have been carrying explosives, as there was nothing explosive in the makeup of a normal AGC. Shortly after this explosion, all the pursuing craft came in to land in the spaceport.

Stanton brought the AGC down a good distance back from the flames and the flashing lights. Pelter turned and stared at Mr Crane, and all the bird motions ceased. The android tilted his head to one side, then quite meekly got out of the vehicle. It struck Stanton that he had the appearance of a cartoon businessman, standing there holding Pelter's briefcase, but really there was nothing about him to make children laugh. Stanton got out of the AGC shortly after Pelter, and the three of them moved off between the looming ships.

'It's right over the other side,' said Stanton, and then snorted at the sound of laughter from behind them. 'We should be halfway from the system by the time they find out they've been celebrating the wrong funeral.'

The three of them continued on through the mega-lithic shadows cast by the early sun breaking over the horizon. Soon they came in sight of the further fence. Stanton pointed to a ship that consisted of three spheres linked by tubes that were a third of their diameter; the triangle this construction formed was 100 metres along the side and enclosed a circular drive plate. The Lyric was one of the smaller ships here. Stanton led them to one of the thirty-metre spheres, where a ramp led to an open iris door, beyond which harsh light glared. Pelter halted him with a hand on his shoulder and made a sharp gesture with his other hand. Mr Crane strode on ahead, his heavy boots clunking on the ramp as he entered the ship. Pelter then pressed his hand to his optic link. Stanton wondered when Pelter would get used to it enough to stop doing that.

'OK,' said Pelter after a moment, and they followed the android in.

The hold was a disc cut right through the sphere, its walls the insulated skin of the ship itself. Circular lighting panels were set in, evenly, all around. To one side there were bundles and packages. In the centre of the hold, cylindrical cryopods were secured in an open framework. This framework ran from ceiling to floor and took up most of the space. From each of these pods skeins of optic cable and ribbed tubes ran to junction plugs in the floor. Two separate pods were bolted to the floor at the end of the framework. They too were linked into the ship's systems. On every pod was stencilled the words 'Oceana Foods Stock Item', and a number.

Stanton ignored Pelter's intake of breath and chose not to look at him.

'Fucking animals,' Pelter hissed.

Stanton did not want to correct him. It would perhaps be best if he did not know that this cargo mainly consisted of edible molluscs in cryostasis.

'They'll work for us. They've been adapted,' was all he said.

As soon as they were well into the hold, the ramp retracted behind them. Pelter turned to watch it, but Stanton kept his eye on Crane, who was just returning, having completed a circuit of the cargo framework. When Crane stopped and abruptly squatted down, he turned and watched the door iris shut on the dawn light. As the final dot was extinguished, an intercom crackled.

'You've got sleeping bags, food, water and a toilet,' a woman's voice told them. 'You can't see the toilet - I've linked it into the plumbing on the other side from you. The two cryopods, I suggest you use at the earliest opportunity, as supplies are limited. Now, the matter of payment.'

Pelter gestured to the briefcase Crane was holding. 'I have it here, Jarvellis. Just let me through and we'll complete the transaction,' he said.

'Arian Pelter, if you think I am going to open the bulkhead door with that thing on board, then you are more stupid than I gave you credit for,' said Jarvellis.

'There is, just for this kind of eventuality, a hatch in the bulkhead door, to your left.'

Stanton saw frustrated anger twist Pelter's face, then get quickly suppressed. The Separatist looked to Mr Crane, and the android stood up. Just at that moment mere was a lurch and Stanton felt his stomach twist. They were up and moving. They'd made it. Crane walked over, his head tilting as if he had an inner-ear problem. He handed the case to Pelter.

'Not yet, Pelter,' said Jarvellis.

'Why not? Don't you want your money?'

There was a surge of acceleration, inadequately compensated for in the hold. Ionic boosters.

'I say not yet because I am not entirely stupid. I open the access hatch and friend Crane there will have enough purchase to rip out the bulkhead door. I won't open the hatch until we're out of atmosphere. Then, if any attempt is made to break through a door, of which -I want you to be aware - there are two, I'll just open the hold to vacuum. Is that perfectly clear?'

'Clear,' said Pelter through gritted teeth.

'That is very unsociable of you, Jarv,' said Stanton.

'Sorry, John. I do like you, but this is business.'

Pelter looked at Stanton, his expression dead.

'Now,' said Jarvellis, 'I have a ship to fly'

The intercom crackled again.

'You know her well?' Pelter asked.

'She's probably still listening,' Stanton warned. 'AH that crackly intercom shit has to be a blind.'

'I asked if you know her well.'

'Yeah, I know her. You know her. I've had a few drinks with her. Don't matter. She opens that door and we're both out of it,' said Stanton.

Mr Crane froze again. Stanton reminded himself that you had to be damned careful around this kind of lunatic, even if you were on his side. Pelter stood as still almost as the android, then he let out a slow whistling breath. Mr Crane squatted and began to take out his toys. Stanton went to the supplies Jarvellis had provided for them, and found a six-pack of coffee. He pulled two off, handed one to Pelter, then went and sat on one of the rolled-up sleeping bags. He pulled the tab on his coffee and held it in his hand while it rapidly heated.

'You know, these edge-of-Polity worlds can get a litde rough,' he said.

'I am aware of that,' Pelter replied, then he stared down at the cup he was holding. He had not yet moved, or pulled the tab on it. Stanton wondered when the Separatist had last eaten or drunk anytüing, for he had not seen him do so. Eventually Pelter moved to the wall and sat down with his back against it. He pulled the tab on his coffee.

'Social order breaks down in the face of dictatorial takeover,' he said, widiout a great deal of conviction.

'It always seemed to me,' said Stanton, 'that you got whole worlds behaving like naughty children trying to cause as much mayhem in their classroom as possible before the teacher got mere.'

'An archaic image… The trudi is that their behaviour is a result of despair.'

Stanton sipped his coffee rather than disagree. Pelter was a committed Separatist and was blind to the realities. The Polity was something that could be described as a benevolent dictatorship in which all enjoyed tüeir portion of plenty. Separatists were always in the minority, like all terrorists, and were hugely resentful of what they considered the blind complacency of their fellow citizens. So far as he understood it, only two worlds had seceded, both for a period of less tüan ten solstan years. In bodi cases the Polity was called in to clear up the mess. In the case of one of diose worlds, that mess being large radioactive wastelands. Despair… ninety per cent of the population were having a party prior to subsumption.

'Huma can get a bit rough, you know,' he said, labouring to keep a conversation going.

'I do not think I will have a problem with rough,' Pelter replied, giving Mr Crane a meaningful glance.

'Yes… but you do realize that mere will be weapons mere that could destroy even Mr Crane. No Polity weapons proscription on Huma, and some pretty nasty characters.'

'That is why we are going,' said Pelter and sipped his coffee.

Stanton was groping around for something else to say when the intercom crackled.

'Time, I mink, to sort out the payment,' said Jarvellis.

Pelter stared into the air for a long time, before he put his coffee to one side and stood. Mr Crane began putting away his toys, until Pelter turned to look at him. The android men retrieved the ones he had put away, and continued sorting them as if playing some strange game of patience. Pelter stepped over to him, squatted by the briefcase, and opened it. From inside he tore a black strip with ten of the etched sapphires embedded in it. Stanton deliberately looked away as Pelter closed the case and stood up again. The Separatist leader was paranoid enough as it was; he didn't need to be made aware of Stanton's interest in etched sapphires.

Pelter took the strip round the racked cargo to the second bulkhead door. In the bottom of the door a circular hatch half a metre across irised open.

'Just toss them in,' said Jarvellis.

Pelter rolled the strip up and tossed it through- The hatch closed with a crack.

'Good to do business with you, Arian Pelter.'

Another crackle signified the exchange was over.

Stanton looked at Pelter and saw the deadness there. He knew this signified a craving to kill. The side-to-side movement of Pelter's head, as he scanned the hold for visible cameras, speakers or microphones, signified that he had not yet found something on which to focus that craving.

Beyond atmosphere, the stuttering of the Lyric's ion engines became a constant glare. Unlike the larger Polity ships it did not have ramscoop capability, and had to accelerate for some time before it reached what was sometimes referred to as 'grip speed'. This speed varied for the size of ship and the efficiency of its underspace engines. For the Lyric it was approximately 50,000 kilometres per hour: a speed it took the ship, with its limitations on fuel expenditure, twenty hours to reach. When it did, the underspace engines engaged, fields gripped the very substance of space and ripped something ineffable, and the ship dove into the wound. Stanton woke with a gasp at a sudden feeling of panic and groped for his pulse-gun. He opened his eyes and sat upright.

'This hold is not completely shielded,' said Pelter from where he was sitting cross-legged on a sleeping bag, facing Mr Crane, who was seated the same. He did not look round, but went on. 'A good job there is some shielding, else we both would've been screaming by now. Getting that close can drive a man insane.'

Stanton leant forward. A glimpse of underspace could certainly do that to a normal man. He wondered what it would do to Arian Pelter. Drive him sane?

'We should go under,' he said.

'Yes,' said Pelter. 'I have nearly finished with Mr Crane.'

'Finished what?'

'I do not want anything untoward happening while we are under. Mr Crane will watch for us. He has, after all, got the patience of a machine.'

'I shouldn't think she'd try anything.' Stanton stood up. 'She just doesn't want to get anywhere near him.' He walked over to the pods and stared down at them for a long moment. Abruptly he stooped down and slapped the touch-plate on one of them. The pod split down its lengdi to expose a metal interior impressed with a man's shape. 'Claustrophobic' seemed too weak a term to describe it. Jarvellis had not gone so far as to provide any padding, but then what padding did you need when you were all but dead? Either side of the neck were the junctions for the carotids and jugular arteries. From that point his blood would be replaced with a kind of antifreeze. At the base of the skull impression was a simple circular disc: the nerve-blocker. Inside the rest of both manshapes were pinholes only centimetres apart. Each, Stanton knew, contained a needle. The body had to be saturated with antifreeze to prevent terminal cell damage. Stanton swallowed dryly and began to undress. Shortly Pelter joined him and looked down into the pod.

'I've never done this before,' said Pelter.

'Nothing to it,' Stanton replied. 'Just get undressed and climb inside. The nerve-blocker hits before the lid closes, and that's all you know until you wake.'

Pelter nodded and began to remove his clothes. Before climbing into the pod, Stanton glanced back at Mr Crane. The android was sitting with Pelter's briefcase in its lap: it was sorting its toys again. As Stanton lay down in the cold metal, he wondered if that was all Mr Crane would do throughout the months of their journey.

Then, nothing.

A ball flung through a curtain of black cobwebs, the starship Hubris entered real space. For an instant, the starship, a kilometre-wide pearl, was poised ahead of spacial distortions like a mutilated finger, then the invisible wings of the ram-fields folded out, and caught-hydrogen phased to red and hid the ship. The pearl was lost in the flaw of some vast jewel, decelerating from dark, down into the system. Then, a pin-wheel of lasers striated a blood-drop of hydrogen and it became a different plasma: a fusion flame like an orange segment cut from a small sun, blasting against the same spacial distortions that collected the hydrogen. Into the gravity well, Hubris dropped: three-quarter light, half a light, then speeds measured in a mere few thousands of kilometres per second. The fields weakened as the quantity of hydrogen increased. Finally the hydrogen ceased to phase, and the ship became visible again. The fusion reaction shut down and was gone like a droplet of milk swirled away in water. The pearl that was the ship rolled round the edge of the gravity well: a ball cast into the roulette wheel that was the Andellan system.

Cormac stared out onto the cold emptiness, and felt it was mirrored in himself. What was it the shuttle pilot who had taken him from Minostra to the Hubris had said?

'You OK? You look half dead.'

Apposite - so very apposite. Cormac couldn't remember what his reply had been, something trivial, something unassured, verbal. There had been other exchanges, each trailing away into banality until he was glad of cold-sleep's oblivion. Now, two hours since thaw-up, feeling was really returning. He looked down at his hands, concentrated until the quiver stilled, and wondered. Was he feeling embarrassment now or some aspect of link withdrawal? Truly, how fucked up was he that he could not identify his own emotions? He lowered his hands to his sides. It was recorded somewhere. It had to be. He turned from the portal and studied the touch-console in the corner of his room. Yes, he did feel embarrassment. He recalled the look Chaline, the science officer in charge of re-establishing the runcible link, had given him when he had asked for instruction on the console's use. For thirty years he had been out of phase. Having instant access to information had stunted his ability to learn. He again lived through her patronizing explanation, then went over and studied the console. The touch-controls were stacked and very complicated, but there was always an easier way for less complex access.

'Hubris, display anything you have on gridlink withdrawal… please,' he said.

The screen flickered and one word appeared: Searching…

In a couple of seconds a number of file headings appeared. He sat down at the console and with unpractised fingers began to work through each file. What he read there only confirmed things he already knew: long-term linking was much like drug addiction, and like drug addiction it could be broken with willpower, with inner strength. The situation as it stood was unacceptable, and Cormac intended to rectify it. He sat with his fists clenched until there was a knock at the door. It might have been only a few seconds; it might have been for minutes. He unclenched his fists, wiped the screen and stood.

'Enter,' he said.

The woman who came through was tall and classically beautiful. She had luxuriant black hair, skin that seemed unnaturally white, a ripe and muscular figure only just covered with clinging body suit, thin but perfect features and striking green eyes. Only she was not a human woman.

'You are NG2765?' Cormac asked.

'I am Jane.'

'My apologies, I did not know your name… but you are a Golem Twenty-seven?'

Jane smiled evenly, and then looked with a raised eyebrow at the lurid pot plant Cormac had shoved behind the sofa. Cormac swallowed annoyance: the Golem series was too damned good. In a way he preferred the other makes; the ones that appeared less human and less than perfect.

'Yes, I am.'

'I require assistance. It was the science officer's suggestion that you be assigned to me.'

Damn it! Why did he feel so uncomfortable? He had to remember she was an Al-run machine, albeit an extremely sophisticated one.

'What kind of assistance do you require?'

Cormac took a slow breath and wondered if his hands were shaking again. He did not look. 'I wish you to accompany me to the surface. I am without information access and there are many questions…' He realized, even as he was saying it, that it was wrong.

'Have you considered an aug? Mika could fit you one.'

Cormac clamped down on a sudden surge of longing. No, an augmentation would be no good. It would be like having alcohol instead of heroin. He had to beat this. 'I will not have an aug,' he said.

Jane nodded thoughtfully, then said, 'You will be going down with the investigative team, I presume?'

'Yes.'

'Well, any questions you may wish to ask me might as easily be addressed to them. Many of them have augs, and Chaline has recently been gridlinked.'

Cormac shook his head. Chaline gridlinked? He did not want to get anywhere near how that made him feel. He focused on the problem at hand. How could he tell this… woman that without information access he found it difficult to talk to people? To real live people. He did not feel… superior. He had wanted a thinking machine, yet the only ones on the Hubris were the ship's AI and the Golem androids. There wasn't a lowly drone robot or metal-skinned android in sight. They were all stored away for emergency use.

'Please, hold yourself in readiness,' he said, his jaw locking up. "That will be all.'

Jane smiled, nodded, and left him. He stood there feeling gauche and confused. He had expected something else. She was too human.

Beyond the angled windows of the shuttle bay, Samarkand was a yellow onyx marble wrapped in filaments of white cloud and Andellan burned with a distant cold light. Thus would Sol appear from an orbit just beyond Jupiter. Only because this was a very uncrowded area of the galaxy could the sun be distinguished from the other faint stars. This was a remote place: a place where help would always come too late.

Cormac pulled on his coldsuit and wondered if he would find anything unexpected down there. Survivors, for example. Even from here the brownish ring of the ground-zero was visible at the centre of the planet - a cankerous iris - Hubris being poised over it, geostationary. He turned as Chaline came up beside him.

'For our initial study we're putting down outside the accident site. There's an undamaged heat-sink station on the edge of New Sea. We might be able to get some information from the submind there, though we get no response from it on the usual channels.'

She looked at him warily with wide green eyes as she tied back her curly black hair. Her features were very fine and her skin black as obsidian. When he first saw her, he thought her black skin a cosmetic effect or alteration. It came as a great surprise for him to discover it was natural, not even an extraterrestrial adaptation. It made a change from the olive-brown of the run of humanity, or the luridly dyed skins of members of the runcible culture, and it was unusual to come across any of the old-Earth racial types this far out. Blegg was an exception, in every area.

'Yes, OK,' he said, his thoughts still on the subject of 'race' and groping after answers from a link that was no longer there.

With the explosion of the human population across the stars, the gene pool had been thoroughly stirred.

There had been a song, something about 'chocolate-coloured people by the score'. Really ancient. Cormac had not understood it until he had learnt from his link what a 'score' was, and that chocolate had once come in only one colour. The song had been right in one sense: the 'melting pot' had occurred, but now, with adaptation and alteration, skin colour was spread across the spectrum and was the least of differences between human kinds.

'We can't bring down the runcible until we find out what happened to the one here. Your concern is who. My concern is how, as my command area is mostly runcible installation,' she said, studying him dubiously.

'Of course,' he said, and turned back to the window. He sensed her standing at his shoulder for a moment, then turning away to rejoin the others. Was he so short with her because she was linked? Was he that petty? Christ, where was his self-control?

Two of the group behind him were Earth Central soldiers. He could assume command of them whenever he needed, but for the moment he left them to operate independently. They had the training. Crisis would stratify the command structure. He wondered if the setup had been Blegg's idea: to give him time to readjust. He turned and surveyed them all as they fixed and clipped up their coldsuits, and he noted how the two women avoided his gaze. The soldiers seemed oblivious to his attention.

As the last seal was closed and hoods were pulled up, Jane entered the shuttle bay. She still wore her clinging bodysuit. For a moment Cormac had thought she might not be coming. Then he remembered: what need did she have of thermal protection? He strapped on his face-mask and put up his hood before joining her and the others. He felt more comfortable that way. People, damned people. He noticed Chaline give Jane a strange look.

'We can board now,' said Chaline.

The wing was a small carrier, its span only 150 metres or so. It sat on the polished floor of the bay like a grounded raptor. Once they had entered it and taken their places, Cormac was glad to see Jane move to the fore and take the pilot's chair. He felt foolish in her presence. She left the doors between the cockpit and passenger area open. This gave them all a good view through the chainglass screen. Cormac sat and Chaline sat down next to him. He noted that he was the only one wearing his mask. He removed it and studied the people with him - hardened himself against the urge to just shut them out.

The two soldiers were both big, fit-looking men. Brezhoy Gant, the one who was sitting beside the door, was either completely shaven or just naturally hairless. Cormac noted that his skin had a slightly purple tinge, and wondered if some ancestor had used adaptogens. He felt a return of that empty feeling when he realized that if he wanted to know he would have to ask - politely.

Patran Thorn was an evil-looking man with a Vandyke beard and hooked nose. Cormac thought he had an appearance more suitable to someone wielding a cutlass than the high-tech, cold-adapted weaponry he was carrying. Mika, the other member of the party, was crew. She was a medical and life-sciences officer, and was along in the unlikely event they might find survivors. She was a diminutive woman, who appeared little more than a girl, and was a complete contrast to Chaline. Her hair was pale orange and closely cropped, and her skin was very pale. Her eyes were the demonic red of an albino. She looked fragile, whereas Chaline looked vigorous. But Cormac had seen the tattoo on the palm of her hand and knew that she was Life-coven from Circe. She had his respect, as did all who graduated from that secretive place.

'I wonder why Jane isn't wearing survival gear?' Chaline asked of anyone.

This annoyed Cormac. She had a link; why didn't she use it?

'She has no need of it,' he said.

Chaline looked at him as if he was an idiot. Cormac was about to say more, but closed his mourn before he could cram his other foot in it. Of course, he should have realized. Androids normally tried very hard not to display what they were, so Jane was going down onto the surface dressed as she was, only for his sake - to give him the comfort and crutch of knowing he was with a machine. Cormac felt horribly embarrassed, then in turn extremely angry. It was about time he started thinking for himself, about time he regained some independence. What had he lost? Just a voice in his head that could answer a few questions - information as easily obtainable from any console. He no longer had that facility now, so he would make do with what he did have. He leant back in his seat and strapped himself in. The shuttle shuddered as the gravity in the bay went off, and they all lifted against their straps. Under air-blast impellers, the shuttle began to drift towards the irised door at the end of the bay.

'Chaline.' He turned and faced her directly. No more masks. 'Jane is not wearing survival gear so that I might be more aware of her unhumanity…'

Don't overplay it. This woman isn't an idiot.

'I was gridlinked, previously'

Chaline stared at him for a moment until realization hit her. 'I see… Hence the… console.'

Mika spoke up then. 'You were linked for a long time.'

It was a statement, not a question. Life-coven did not often need to ask questions.

'How long?' asked Chaline.

'Thirty years. You lose sight of humanity in that time - and certain manual skills.' He tried a tentative smile.

Chaline smiled back and nodded. 'The opinion was that, as an agent of Imperial Earth Central, you were too high and mighty to associate with mere runcible technicians and crew.'

'My apologies,' said Cormac. It was autonomous politeness, and he saw that it was taken as such.

Ahead of the shuttle, the door irised open on a shimmer-shield: a direct offshoot of Skaidon tech. The shuttle passed through it as if through the skin of a bubble.

'Acceleration,' said Jane. If she had listened in on the conversation, she showed no sign. The conversation had been low, but not beyond her hearing. Few sounds were.

The slight thrust pushed them back into their seats, and Samarkand slid to one side of the front screen. Andellan came into view, tracking a black spot across the screen as the chainglass reacted to blot out damaging UV.

Chaline spoke again, obviously a rehearsed speech. 'As acting science officer I am directing this, and you are along as an advisor, though I know you have veto and can assume command in a crisis. However, I would like to know, do you have any idea as to what we may find?'

Cormac considered for a moment. This was a thought that had been occupying him in those moments when he had not been feeling sorry for himself. He cleared his throat and concentrated on turning his unspoken thoughts into spoken words.

'Well, we might get something from the submind at the heat-sink station, but I doubt it. The destruction of the runcible AI will have… damaged it. That's the problem with centralized processing. Any information it might have retained will be badly scrambled. What we need to get a look at is the buffers, if there's anything left of them.'

'Sabotage?' wondered Gant.

Cormac looked across at him. 'That is considered likely'

Gant nodded ponderously and removed a packet from the top pocket of his coldsuit, and from that a thin white tube that he placed in his mouth. He held a small chrome device up to it and a small flame nickered into life. Cormac realized with a feeling of shock that the tube was a cigarette, and Gant was smoking. He had not seen anyone smoke since he was last on Earth, twelve years ago. It had been all the rage then. He noted that Mika and Chaline were eyeing the soldier with fascination. Gant was aware of them all watching him as he puffed out a fragrant cloud of tobacco smoke.

'Sorry.' He removed the packet and offered it. Mika and Chaline refused, not offensively - there was no social ostracism of those indulging in this now harmless habit - but with surprise. Obviously they had never been to Eardi. Cormac accepted both a cigarette and Gant's lighter to light it. It was only another method of communicating.

'Thank you.' He lit the cigarette and drew on it, then in a tight voice went on with, 'You know, out here these things are not often seen?' He held up the cigarette. Gant shrugged and leant back, after retrieving his lighter. The comment did not seem to bother him.

'I take it you come direct from Earth?' said Cormac.

Gant nodded. 'Yeah, Ukraine - fifteen hundred kilometres from the original Samarkand.'

'Fifteen hundred,' Cormac repeated.

'Yeah,' said Gant, studying the tip of his cigarette. 'You know it was established by Uzbeks and was a major stopping point on the Great Silk Road. That's why this place was named after it: it was also a stopping place, a way station. I always wanted to see what it was like.'

Cormac was not sure if he was talking about the ancient city or the planet. He also wondered what was buried underneath that rambling. He left it.

'Your friend?' Cormac looked across at Thorn, who was gazing out a window, his expression pensive.

'English.'

'A long way to come.'

Cormac drew on his cigarette and stifled a cough. A very long way to come. There was something more to these soldiers, if Central was prepared to send them all this way. He entertained a suspicion.

'You're Sparkind.'

Gant grinned at him, and Cormac repressed the urge to swear. Blegg had made this as difficult for him as he could without compromising the mission. It seemed that everything he needed to know he would have to learn. He suspected this might be Blegg's idea of a recovery programme from Cormac's gridlinking.

'What are Sparkind?' asked Chaline.

Gant's face fell.

Cormac explained, 'Kind of soldier. They have a certain reputation.'

Mika said, "They dealt with the situation on Darnis; twelve of them against a unit of cyborgs and a small army. The name is the same as that of an ancient race of fighters.' Her expression was blank.

Gant's smile returned. 'No, they were called Spartans - and we don't live like them,' he said.

Mika frowned. She obviously did not like to be found wrong.

'How many of you are there on the Hubris?' asked Cormac.

'Just one group,' replied Gant.

Four of them. Not inconsiderable. What was Blegg expecting?

Gant continued. 'The other two are Golem Thirties.' He was still smiling.

Cormac tried not to let his annoyance show. This was information he should have received long ago. Had he been gridlinked, of course, he would have already known. He also reckoned he would have directed things with all the sensitivity he had shown on Cheyne III. Damn Blegg.

Samarkand grew and grew until an arc of it filled the screen; frozen oceans of a sulphurous yellow edged with shores of pure malachite; rolling mountain ranges that seemed made of desert sand. Chaline pointed out a spreading stain of reddish-green across the surface of one ocean. It issued from one point on the shore.

'Heat-sink station,' she said. 'The colouring is from adapted algae. They should survive the freezing process and start oxygenating, once the seas thaw out.'

'That will take a lot of energy,' Cormac observed.

'Well, you've seen how much energy one human body can carry in.'

She looked to the side, where the brown ring at the edge of the blast-site could be seen. It was just coloration to the level ground and over a nearby range of hills, from fallout - from the heat flash. They all knew that nothing could have survived within it. Cormac pursed his lips in thought for a moment, then turned to the two Sparkind.

'What was your brief,' he asked, 'exactly?'

Thorn said, 'Quite simple, my friend, we are here to make sure nothing… military gets in the way of reestablishing runcible link. Beyond that, we were told to do whatever you tell us to do. There was a briefing that, for this initial survey, only Gant and I would be needed, and that further orders from you might be… lacking.'

He gave a crooked grin, to which Cormac could not help but respond.

'Anything else?' he asked.

'Only that the other two were to hold themselves in readiness. I suppose you don't need the big guns yet. Anyway, they were orders that were surprisingly lacking in detail. I hope that what detail there is doesn't conflict.'

'It won't,' said Cormac, and clamped down on his frustration. He had learnt nothing. Only two for the initial survey. Where or when would all four be needed? Cormac cursed Blegg's reticence. It seemed to him now he had only been sent here to learn something which was probably already known, and to be rehabilitated. He did not like playing this sort of game.

A dull droning sound told them they were entering the thin and frigid atmosphere. The droning grew to a roar as cloud whipped against the shutde. The shutde banked and spiralled down towards the planet. This noise precluded speech, but it seemed no time before they were hurding above a mountain range under a sky the colour of old brass, and before the roar became a dull and distant thunder.

'We'll be approaching the station shordy. The weather is very bad. Ground temperature one-seventy Kelvin. You'll need your suit heaters on, and full seal on your masks,' Jane told them.

'Those are the mountains the runcible energy-surplus used to heat. There was a line of big microwave dishes transmitting the surplus energy,' said Chaline. 'On a busy day the rock used to melt. The heat-sink stations at New Sea were intended for the next stage of terraform-ing. They had recently come into operation and were melting the seas.'

'It wasn't just algae they introduced. There were moulds, lichens and planktons round the station, and even adapted angel shrimp. Whoever did this wrecked much more man a runcible,' said Mika.

Yes, Cormac realized, what had happened here must seem doubly painful to someone trained on Circe. Not only had there been a huge loss of human life, but also the loss of a nascent ecology. There had probably been many from the Life-coven working here on Samarkand.

Soon the station came into sight. It had the appearance of an iron cathedral on the shore of the frozen sea. It had spires and arches in its makeup, but none of them were for decoration. The arching structures that clawed into the ground and the sea carried heavy-gauge superconductors and the spires and turrets were microwave receivers that employed field technology rather than the bulky dishes used heretofore. Jane guided the shuttle close over the structure itself, then down into the cleared area that ringed it. Here were parked private AGCs, and to one side was the wreck of a carrier. Perhaps it had just been landing or taking off when the blastwave hit. They all saw it, and made no comment. Without a doubt it contained bodies; but a fraction of the total dead.

The shutde settled a hundred metres from the doors of the station. As the rest of them unstrapped from their seats, Cormac remained where he was and stared thoughtfully at the carrier. It occurred to him then that the cold would not have returned here immediately. When Jane came up beside him he caught hold of her arm. Through his gloves it felt like any other arm.

'How long would it have taken?' he asked.

She looked at him with a quizzical expression.

'The cold. How long to get down to say… minus fifty?'

'Three solstan days.'

'That quick?'

'Yes, the installation here, all of it, might be equated to a very small speck of warm sand on an ice cube.'

'I see,' said Cormac, and then studied her closely. 'I realize I've been a prat.'

'It is something we all realize at one time or another.'

Yeah, like you'd ever do anything foolish.

'Let me put it another way then,' he continued. 'I miscalculated. Unless you feel you might be needed out here you can stay with the shutde.'

Jane smiled at him. 'I think I might as well come along. I might be of use.'

Cormac nodded and let her continue to the exit. Before he followed, he removed his shuriken holster from within his sleeve and strapped it on outside. He had already practised using it whilst wearing a thermal mask and gloves. Blegg might have expected little danger here at first, but that did not mean he should consider the place safe. When his life was at risk, Cormac never liked to rely on the judgement of others, even an immortal Japanese demigod. He placed his mask over his face and closed the seals that connected it to his hood. He knew it was fully sealed when a small LED went off just at the edge of his vision. Once that light disappeared, he allowed himself a small smile.

Outside it was like a harsh winter on Earth, only the snow blowing past them consisted of carbon-dioxide crystals, and the ice under their feet was water-ice as hard as iron. Cormac felt no hint of the cold. Had he done so, it would probably mean his suit was failing and that he would shortly be dead. Jane stood brushing the snow from her hair, as if it was flower blossom dropping on a spring day. In this setting, dressed in her thin bodysuit, she did look unhuman. There was no billowing cloud of vapour as she breathed. She did not flush, nor did she shiver.

They trudged through the snow to the main entrance. Off to one side Cormac observed the huge super-conductor ducts that led to heat-sinks under the frozen sea. From the shutde these ducts had appeared to be the thickness of old oaks. Here, now, he could see they were large enough to run a motorway along. There the surplus energy, converted from microwave beams transmitted from the runcible buffers, was conducted as electrical energy to the heat-sinks, where it was converted into terraforming heat. Fifteen months ago much of this sea had not been frozen, and, as Mika had said, angel shrimps had been introduced.

Once they reached the doors, Chaline hit the touch-plate. Nodüng happened. She and Gant pulled on the handles, which had probably never been used before.

'Dead, and frozen shut,' came her voice over the com. 'This place was powered by a bleed-off from received energy.' She turned her masked face to Jane. 'Can you do anydüng?'

Jane stepped forwards and took hold of the handle. She pulled and ice shattered under her feet. The door opened a little way, then the handle snapped off.

'The metal's recrystallizing with the cold,' she said, her voice coming to them with a radio echo. She stepped to the gap she had made, inserted her fingers, and pulled. The door ground open and a chunk snapped off in her hands, but it was wide enough open for them to enter. As he went through, Cormac glanced at the broken metal and realized that at these temperatures even Golem might be vulnerable. Their synthetic skins, he knew, could handle a wide temperature range and provided superb insulation, but he wondered just how close they would get to the lower limit of that range here.

Inside the building they walked down frost-coated corridors to a drop-shaft. Luckily there was an inspection ladder down one side of it. Jane checked it with a tug or two, then descended. It was thick ceramal welded to the side of the shaft, so was unlikely to give way. As it took her weight without cracking, they all soon followed her down to the bunker where the submind was kept.

'I'm getting something,' said Chaline, as they swung away from the shaft and into a dark corridor. Cormac flicked his goggles to infrared, but vision was even poorer. Someone switched on a torch. He saw it was Thorn, and that the torch was an integral part of the weapon he held. Gant had also drawn his gun. Perhaps they trusted Blegg's judgement as much as he did, Cormac thought. He turned to Chaline, who was peering at some kind of detector.

'Is it still active?'

'Seems to be, though its power source must be getting low. Perhaps that's why it didn't transmit,' she said, then added, 'I hope to link up the new runcible with these stations.'

Runcibles were obviously her favourite topic.

The end of the darkened corridor revealed a sliding door, which Jane opened with studied nonchalance. Beyond it lay a circular room that seemed to be lined with polished copper bricks.

'Let's see what we can get here,' said Chaline, then took another instrument from her belt and moved her fingers over the touch-pads. A voice spoke to them through their comunits.

'—the brick-red song each block is dried blood frozen in perspex the windows are a thousand stitched-together eyes house is pain lord of pain lord of nightmares—'

'Very poetic,' said Chaline dryly.

'Nuts,' said Gant.

Cormac was not so sure. 'Try it again. At least it's retained something.'

'—batshapes with translucent white teeth and eyes in fevered flesh swooping madness yelling hate itself sinter sinter burnt mounded bones—'

'Try transmitting to it here.'

'It should be able to hear us anyway. Jane?'

'I've tried. Seems completely internalized.'

'AI, respond!' shouted Cormac.

'—screaming shape fire green men lizards help me plague dogs war flung to our coasts night dark rats disembark with their translucent teeth—'

'No good,' said Chaline. 'Best we shut it down and get out of here.'

'—plinking rain hell dark spaces think something abyss gestation outcome—'

'No,' said Cormac. 'I veto that. We take the core brain and main memory with us.' Chaline turned her masked face to him. He was glad he could not see her expression.

Mika said, 'There was something…'

Chaline turned to her. 'What? This submind's crazy.'

'Stream of consciousness. It may reveal something.'

'OK… OK, no problem.'

Chaline moved to the centre of the room and lifted a circular cover. Ice-blue light glared out as she inserted another instrument from her belt. There was a number of strange clunks. She lifted the instrument out and attached to it was something metallic and lens-shaped. She detached it and tossed it to Cormac. He caught it.

'There's your core brain and main memory. It's only a submind, so they're all in one. Don't worry about dropping it. Nothing short of an atomic explosion will destroy it,' said Chaline. Then she realized what she had said. 'But, then, we are all well aware of that. It was the destruction of the main runcible mind that… internalized it.'

Cormac was glad to hear a little humour in her voice, even though it was somewhat acid. He did not need any enemies right now.

'Let's go. There's nothing more for us here,' she finished.

As soon as mey stepped beyond the shielding of the room, Jane halted and tilted her head. They all watched her, knowing she was receiving some message, and knowing that the tilt of her head was for their benefit. Abruptly she turned.

'That was from the Hubris. It's picked up some kind of heat source to the south of here.'

'People?' asked Cormac.

'Not determined.'