Gridlinked

2

Strobing red and green lights came in from every direction. A police cruiser with its external impact cushions inflated, and its retinue droids zipping along behind it like a scattering of large silver bubbles, shot past them to the right. The two officers inside the cruiser glanced across, but kept going. Stanton guessed they were reacting, but had no idea yet what they were reacting to. Jesus, gunfights on roofports and satellite strikes. A real secret and undercover cell this one. It had to be blown here.

'We'll dump this and get another, then I'll get us to Dr Carl,' he said, and did not expect a reply. Pelter had another two patches on his neck, so had to be out of it. The one patch he had on for his arm was already making things a bit hazy for him.

'We go to the Norver Bank,' said Pelter, and turned to look at Stanton.

'Arian, you're in a bad way. You need to get fixed up.'

'We go to the Norver Bank, then we go to Sylac.'

'Arian…'

'If… they don't know who we are now, they will soon enough. ECS will tell them and there'll be warrants out for us. We go to the Norver Bank first.'

Stanton absorbed that as, one-handed, he guided the AGC down to one of the arcology ports. There he knew he would be able to find a less easily traceable AGC. It took him another second to take in something else Pelter had said.

'Sylac! Are you crazy?'

He instantly regretted saying that when Pelter turned to him again. It was that dead look. He had seen it many times before, and always prior to a killing.

He quickly went on. 'Why Sylac? You know what he's into. That cyber shit will fuck you up bad, Arian.'

Pelter stared through the side window as Stanton brought the AGC in to land. He sounded tired when he spoke next, which was a better sign. 'When I want your opinion I'll ask for it, John. Just do what I pay you for and get me there,' he said.

Stanton could not help adding, 'You can bet he's being watched. ECS barely tolerates him. You wanted him hit a year back.'

'Nevertheless - Sylac.'

Stanton switched off the AGC and climbed out, as the single turbine wound down. He glanced around. This carport was positioned between the side of a five-storey arcology and a forested playground. Below the black oaks and spliced fruit trees he could see kids roaring about on AG scooters. The vehicles here were not so new as those on the Trust House Tower. Many of them, even though they retained the city-control option and were entirely legal, were unregistered. He saw a likely choice close by. This AGC was under a roofed-over section of the port, and 100 metres in, which was precisely what he wanted. It had gang colours painted over corrosion, stubby glide wings and a turbine that obviously did not belong to it. It was the same on many other worlds where the Polity was not well liked. People wanted to retain as much independence as they could, but it made them an easy mark. Cradling his arm, Stanton nodded to himself and moved round to the passenger side as Arian popped his door. Arian refused his offer of assistance. There was fluid pouring from the burn on his face and he looked hideous.

'This should give us an hour, maybe more. I blew the onboard comp, so they'll have to use a satellite trace if there's one available,' said Stanton, then pointed to his choice of AGC. 'They won't know we took that one until it's reported.'

Pelter said nothing. He just began walking in the direction indicated. Stanton walked at his side in readiness. It was only when they were under the roofing that Pelter staggered and nearly collapsed. Stanton supported him with his good arm, letting his broken one hang at his side. It was swollen to twice its normal size, and despite the patch it hurt like hell. But if Pelter could take what had happened to him… When they reached the second car, Stanton did not need to shoot out the lock nor use his chip card. They were lucky in this. He wondered if they had been lucky in all else. It wouldn't appear so, but they were alive.

Cormac did not see the strange looks he was getting as he walked up the boarding ramp of the delta-wing shuttle. Yes, he was sweat-stained and a little frayed about the edges, but many of them were of a considerably weirder appearance. Perhaps it was his fixed and utterly emotionless expression; a rigidity of control that appeared dangerously fragile. Many would have been interested to hear his internal monologue.

Runcible AI, lam at the shuttle.

Still there was no reply. Cormac tried a non-verbal access direct to the AI and it was blocked. This puzzled him. It was almost as if the AI was behaving irrationally, which was, of course, impossible.

I need to know to what your inference pertained… Why was it necessary for me to have an emotional response? I do not understand.

He halted at the small queue waiting at the head of the ramp and gazed out across the acres of plascrete on which stood hundreds of different ships. The AI was just not going to speak to him. Very well, who was he to judge it? There had to be reasons. This was not a gland-oriented human he was dealing with here. He shut down on that line of action and concentrated on the ships he was looking at.

The designs of these vessels were weird and various, with often no concessions made to wind resistance. It was one of these that had been bringing in weapons for the Cheyne III Separatists, and now he would probably never know which one. It wouldn't be any of the small insystem ships, but it had to be something with under-space engines that could get it Out-Polity, where such weapons could be easily purchased. And what weapons, too. The Cheyne III Separatists were the best armed of their sort he had come across in twenty years. They were rumoured to have obtained something really special, something almost unthinkable. What could possibly be more important than tracking—

'Sir… Sir?'

Cormac blinked and turned his attention to the stewardess. With a surge of irritation he pressed his hand down on the palm-reader she was holding. How inefficient human beings were. Whose ridiculous idea was it to staff the shuttles with them? Angelina had mistaken him for an android. He considered that a compliment. Machines always had perfectly logical reasons for doing the things they did.

'Ah yes, Ian Cormac, I am afraid there has been an error concerning your seat booking.'

Cormac stared at her bland smile and chromed teeth, trying to connect what she had just said to any kind of reality he knew. He quickly accessed bookings and speed-read down the passenger manifest. There was his name, in the wrong place. He replayed, word for word, the request he had routed through the city AI, as the runcible AI had not been speaking to him. There could be no error.

'What do you mean?' he asked, when he could think of nothing else appropriate.

'You requested a privacy seat. Unfortunately you were assigned to a public section. Your seat is D16.'

Runcible AI, there is some problem with my seat booking.

No reply. He tried elsewhere.

City A I, there is some problem with my seat booking.

Again there was no reply.

'Yes…' said Cormac to the stewardess. He took his card and was taken to his seat by a grinning steward. Was this some kind of joke?

'Here you are, sir.'

Cormac sat down.

The city AI made a mistake?

He looked around. Sitting right next to him was a grey-haired old man in wrinkled businesswear. Some people considered it dignified to appear old; Cormac had never understood why. The man had narrow eyes and a look Cormac felt he ought to recognize. He accessed and bounced. No connection. He tried again and this time got a download before even posing his question:

The look is Japanese for the moment.

'Heading for Cereb?'

Cormac stared at the old man as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening with his link. Had he damaged it? How was that possible? It was inside his skull and he would need to suffer something of an order of magnitude greater than concussion to damage it. He continued staring at the old man. What had he said? Cereb? He could think of no suitable reply. The shutde was going to Cereb, the moon with the runcible installation. It did not go anywhere else.

The old man leant forward. 'I said, y'heading for Cereb?'

He said it very loudly. Other passengers turned to see what the commotion was.

'Yes,' said Cormac acidly. 'I am heading for Cereb.'

He felt ridiculous.

'Don't like the place myself. Damned AIs - a man needs to think for himself.'

Cormac turned away from him. A finger like an iron bar prodded him in the ribs.

'Whaty'think?'

Cormac snapped, 'AIs are efficient. Without them we would—'

'Belt.'

'I beg your pardon?'

The old man pointed down at Cormac's seat belt. Cormac fastened it across. You did not need belts in executive class; shockfields did that job. You did not have to put up with obnoxious old men either. He lay back and breathed a controlling breath, tried access again and got a sluggish response. Schematics of some sort of engine flashed up in his visual cortex. He had not asked for that. He opened his eyes again when he felt the distinctive twisting in his inner ear as the AG of the delta-wing engaged and it lifted from the ground. He listened to the rushing of wind as the wing shot forwards and immediately began to tilt up. Through the elliptical portal on the front surface of the wing, before their seating section, he saw grey cloud coming at them like a falling wall. Viewed through the portal behind, control towers dropped away as the wing turned up to forty-five degrees. AG re-aligned and the acceleration increased. The shuttle punched dirough the wall of cloud.

'Now this is what I call technology!'

Cormac glanced at the old man, hoping he was not being addressed this time.

'Better than a bunch of moronic nanocircuits!'

Cormac closed his eyes.

RuncibleAI. I am in transit. Please reply.

There was that inexplicable delay, but this time he received his reply.

Horace Blegg will brief you once the shuttle is out of the well. He will contact you.

Cormac kept his eyes closed. He did not want to open them. Horace Blegg: the prime human agent of Earth Central, AI and government. He was called 'Prime Cause', and he only turned up when something critical was happening. Cormac clicked a few key facts together. Blegg was reputed to be Japanese. There were not many of them to be seen since the great 'quakes had sunk the islands. The story went that Blegg was a naturally occurring immortal from the pre-space age, that he was apparently the survivor of one of the first fission explosions on Earth. Rumour and fantasy stuck to the man like burrs to a dog. He was a legend.

Cormac opened his eyes and glanced at the old man. The old man winked at him.

with one hand shoved in his pocket and his damaged arm held as steady as possible, Stanton walked through the sliding glass doors into the medshop. To his left a number of motorized trolleys had been abandoned and had yet to take themselves off to their various niches in the wall behind. Each trolley was wheeled - AG was perhaps too expensive for this shop - and had a basket at waist height and a control box on the back that some advertising executive must have thought amusing to devise in the shape of an old-fashioned tin first-aid kit. Stanton ignored the credit-card slot in the top of his box; instead he dropped a handful of New Carth shillings into the tray below it. The tray tilted and the box swallowed his money. A read-out next to the card slot nickered up to show him his credit. As he walked on down the aisles of the shop, the trolley followed like a pet dog.

The shop offered everything an injured man might want, from aspirin and synthiskin sprays up to cell-welding units. Far at the back he could even see the chromed glitter of racked surgical robots. Stanton made his selection of temporary dressings and bandages, syn-thiskin and some long plastic spatulas he could use as splints, a drug injector and drugs that carried all sorts of warnings and disclaimers, as well as a couple of saline kits. As he tossed them into the trolley, the read-out quickly dropped towards zero. Glancing round he noticed that most of the people here were probably not Cheyne III residents. The people who bought such supplies were either seasoned runcible travellers or the crews or single owners of spaceships. When he had finished he hurriedly left the shop. The trolley went with him.

Outside the shop was an arcade with walled flowerbeds running down its middle. The perfume issuing from the blooms was almost sickly in its intensity. Above, the street was roofed over, from the tops of the arcology buildings on either side, with hexagons of pink glass. Below this hung globular security drones on thick power cables. None of these seemed to be paying him attention. As he walked to the end of the arcade, past the many shops, cafes and arched entrances to leisure complexes, Stanton kept a wary eye out for other watchers. He saw none, however. The people here were oblivious to him, so intent were they on hedonistic pursuits. Soon he stepped from the arcology onto a ground-level AGC park. Amethyst gravel crunched underfoot and numerous AGCs were parked in single bays in a labyrinth bounded by squat conifer hedges with foliage more blue than green. When he reached their stolen AGC Stanton peered inside. Pelter was still unconscious, the drug patches and his injuries having finally taken their toll. Stanton opened the driver's door and quickly tossed his purchases onto the seat. The trolley spat his change into its tray, and waited.

'Keep it,' Stanton said, and the trolley rolled off almost jauntily.

First his own injury. Inside the car Stanton loaded the injector, rolled up his sleeve, and applied the device to his forearm. In seconds that arm was just a cold, numb lump. With his other hand he pulled it from his pocket and laboriously splinted it. For good measure he slapped another patch on the bicep. Once he was sure that broken bone could not move, he reached across and turned Pelter's head towards him. He hissed between his teeth at what he was seeing, and reached for the can of synthiskin. When he finished covering that side of the Separatist's head, he pulled the patches from the man's neck and applied a stick-on dressing over the whole mess. Nothing more he could do about it, really. Pelter needed some serious reconstruction. This done, Stanton stabbed the tube from one of the saline packets into a vein in Pelter's lower arm, tilted it until the air bubbled up out of the pipe to the surface of the saline, and then squeezed the packet to inject the liquid. When that packet was empty he stuck the other one to the roof of the AGC, connected up a long tube and stabbed that in too. He shot a cocktail of drugs the manufacturers would have warned against directly into Pelter's throat. Within a minute the man gasped, opened his eyes and sat forwards.

'How long?' he croaked.

'About an hour,' Stanton told him.

'Well, get moving. We may already be too late.'

Pelter studied the drip and the tube, and anger flashed across his features. He seemed about to tear the tube out, but then the anger faded and he sat back.

'That was risky, John,' he said.

Stanton nodded as he engaged power, then lifted the cup control of the car. With a deep hum it rose into the air. He thumbed the guide ball in the cup and the vehicle slid forwards over the park. Pelter was silent for a moment. When he spoke again it was through gritted teeth.

'We'll have to be ready to move quick. Even if the withdrawal isn't refused, a Polity AI'll be on it soon after,' he said

Stanton nodded again. The pain was returning to his arm and he wanted it bone-welded sooner rather than later. He thumbed the ball further forward and swung the AGC fast round the edge of the arcology. Here. The arcade was just a side-shoot from the main complex. He brought the car down to a second park at the centre of a complex of singular buildings. Here the wealthier corporations had their bases built specifically for them. They did not need to rent space from the arcology.

'If an AI is on it now, we won't get out of here,' he said.

Without replying Pelter opened the door and got out. He was still angry at Stanton's disobedience, but was moving OK now. The saline infusion and the drugs had given him an energy Stanton knew Pelter would pay for later. Stanton got out and followed him.

The booth for auto transactions protruded from the side of the Norver Bank building like a Victorian conservatory. The building itself was a domed affair, much like a mosque, at the edge of one of the arcology parks. Pelter walked through the sliding door and straight up to one of the cash machines. Stanton stayed by the entrance and watched as Pelter placed his hand on the palm-reader and put his remaining eye up against the retinal scanner.

'Identified. What do you require, Arian Pelter?' the machine asked him in its silky voice.

'I wish to make a cash withdrawal,' Pelter replied.

Stanton noted other customers casting glances in both his and Pelter's directions. It didn't surprise him. He would have noticed the pair of them too.

'Please key in the required amount and confirm,' the machine instructed.

Pelter tapped away for a moment, then placed his palm and his eye again. A low note sounded in the air, and Stanton could see Pelter speaking, but could not hear him. A soundfield had come on and the bank machine was no doubt asking Pelter if he required the services of bank security. Stanton looked up and saw the eye in the ceiling swivelling to observe him. He heard the door lock itself behind him. Pelter continued talking. After a moment the door lock clicked off again. Pelter stepped back as a hatch slid open in the base of the cash machine. He reached in and took up the briefcase the bank had provided him for his withdrawal, probably at no extra charge. Pelter and Stanton quickly exited the building.

'How much?' Stanton asked once they were airborne again. Pelter opened the briefcase and exposed its contents. Stanton whistled at the little eyes that glittered back at him from black velvet.

'That's four million New Carth shillings in a hundred thousand units,' said Pelter.

'What kind?'

'Etched sapphires, scan-enabled. They're redeemable anywhere, even Out-Polity. Stay with me, John, and ten of them are yours. Try to take them from me and I'll kill you.'

'I don't work like that,' said Stanton. 'You know that.'

'Yes… now get us to Sylac'

'As you say, Arian.'

Sylac was a surgeon of a kind that was frowned on in the Polity. There was not much that humans could do to themselves that was disallowed, including cosmetic alteration, genetic adaptation and cyber-implants and alterations. What the Polity did frown upon was people who carried out the aforementioned without sufficient qualification, or those who liked experimenting, and for whom the human body was a testing ground, even a playground. But so long as no one complained there was nothing that could be done about these people. No one complained about what Sylac did to them. In nearly every case they came to him for something other, more reputable surgeons would refuse to handle.

Stanton neither liked nor trusted the man, and he could not understand Arian wanting to be here. He studied his surroundings. The operating theatre was cutting edge, in more ways than the metaphorical. A surgical robot, looking something like a giant chrome cockroach, was crouched over the operating table. The devices lining one wall had labels on them like 'Bone-weld Inc.', 'Cell Fuser' and 'Nervectonic'. Below these, in row upon row of cryogenic cylinders, were things he knew he would not really want to study too closely. Spares or leftovers, probably.

A long workbench on the other side of the theatre was strewn with devices of which Stanton had only scant recognition. There he saw selections of cerebral augmentations, booster-joint motors, nerve links and synaptic plugs, and those were but a small portion of what lay there. Stanton realized that many of these items were intended for those wanting to go further than mere physical boosting or cerebral augmentation. Some people, he knew, actually wanted to lose their humanity and go completely cyborg.

'Well?' said Sylac. He turned around to them and crossed his arms, all four of them.

Sylac was his own advertisement. He was apparently human up to the waist, but thereafter things started to go drastically wrong. From his waistline there protruded two double-jointed arms, which would have looked more suitable on the surgical robot. The extremities of these two arms bore no resemblance to human hands. They were a confetti of blades and esoteric instruments. His torso was keel-shaped so as to support this set of additional appendages. His head, set above perfectly normal shoulders and arms, had a half hemisphere on one side of it, as if a cannonball was in the process of obliterating it.

'Glad you could see us,' said Pelter.

Sylac looked at the both of them. 'Your usual doctor retired?' He smirked.

Pelter walked unsteadily forward to the operating table. Sylac retained his smirk as he watched. Stanton knew the surgeon had every reason to feel confident; neither Separatists nor ECS had been able to do anything about him for some time. His augmentation had taken him not far from the level of a Polity AI, and the technology with which he surrounded himself made it unlikely that anything less than a tactical strike could take him out, and even that…

Pelter placed four etched sapphires down on the table.

'Rather excessive for a few repairs,' said Sylac.

Pelter undipped an object like a small black pebble from his belt, which he placed next to the sapphires.

'Ah,' said Sylac.

'You can do my friend first,' said Pelter. 'What I want is going to take a litde longer.'

Stanton hesitated when Pelter looked towards him, then moved further into the theatre. Sylac watched him for a moment, then glanced towards the operating table. At that same glance the surgical robot straightened up and began moving some of its instrument arms in a manner that could only be described as eager. Sylac moved over to the table and swept up the sapphires and the other object Pelter had deposited mere. A second after this the table motors hummed gently as it folded in a number of places. In moments it had become a chair with a headrest and arms. Sylac gestured to the chair with one of his metal arms. The gesture was graceful, which made it all the more unnerving. Stanton moved across and sat. He looked at Sylac, but the cybersurgeon had turned away and was walking to his side bench. Instead of Sylac, the robot moved round beside Stanton. A thin arm darted out and sliced cleanly through his sling.

'Wait a minute!' Stanton cried.

Two padded clamps darted out, pulled his arm aside and pinned it to the chair arm. He felt the broken bone grinding inside and yelled more in shock than in pain.

Sylac looked round at him. 'I do have other things to do, man. You only have a broken arm,' he said.

A sharp pain in his shoulder, and Stanton looked around at the disc now pressed there. His arm went completely dead: nerve-blocker. Stanton looked over at

Arian, but me Separatist had his concentration fixed on Sylac, who was inspecting the black device.

'What do you want with this, Pelter?' he asked.

'I want it connected into a military aug, and I want that interfaced with my optic nerve,' said Pelter, and so saying he peeled the dressing from his face.

Sylac looked at the ruin of his face with something like disinterest. 'I'll have to do some grafting there, but your payment covers that,' he said.

Pelter went on. 'I also want my finger and handprints removed and my retinal print changed.'

Fascinated as he was by this exchange, Stanton could not concentrate on it. The robot now removed the splint and bandages from his arm with a scuttling of curved scalpels. This would have been bad enough in a proper hospital, but here? It then split his shirt sleeve and parted it… only, Stanton suddenly realized, it wasn't just his shirt that the machine had opened. He looked away quickly from the neatly snapped bone he could see mere, and cringed at the sound of small tubes sucking away the blood that started to well up. There was movement next, but no pain, then came the reassuring drone of a bone welder. Stanton could not say he was impressed with Sylac's bedside manner.

'What will you be linking to?' Sylac asked Pelter, the pebble object now held up close to his eye.

'That is my concern.'

Sylac shrugged and held out the object. 'This control unit I can slot inside your skull widiout creating too much pressure,' he said, then turned and picked up a grey aug from the bench. It was the shape of a kidney bean and about five centimetres long. He continued.

'This is a big ugly piece of hardware, Arian Pelter, and you're not going to look pretty with that optic interface.'

'I don't really care, just make sure it works,' Pelter replied.

Stanton looked at him. This was not the Pelter he knew. Where was his acclaimed vanity? The man had spent a fortune on cosmetic alterations during the time Stanton had known him. He looked to Sylac to find the surgeon gazing back at him. He felt a sudden tug at his shoulder and a deep ache returned to his damaged arm. He glanced down and saw that the wound had now been welded shut.

'I have work to do,' said Sylac, 'so I'd rather you did not sit there all day.'

Keeping a wary eye on the robot, Stanton slid from the chair. He flexed his fingers expecting more pain, but found none. Pelter moved to occupy the chair in his place as Sylac walked over, his cyber-arms opening out, the complex glittering fingers of their hands revolving. Pelter turned to Stanton. 'There's something I need to do, John. Meet you in the Starport Boulevard in two days, at the Saone, usual time. When I meet you there, I'll want to know who he was and where he went,' he added.

So that was it. 'You'll be all right?' asked Stanton.

Pelter just stared at him for a moment, then turned away. Of course he would be all right. If Sylac had wanted them dead, they would never have got this far, and if he had wanted to kill them here, there was nothing John could do to prevent it. He watched for a moment as the robot shoved the nerve-blocker up against Pelter's neck. Then he turned away and got out of there, wishing

Gridl inked he could close his ears to the sounds that then proceeded.

Once free of Cheyne III, the shuttle's antigravity was displaced by the dirust of ionic boosters. Through the portals, star-strewn space faded in to replace the last orange-and-blue phosphorescence of atmosphere. Cormac felt himself slowly sag into his seat as gravity of one G was eased on for the benefit of the passengers.

'Come on, get that belt off. Time for a drink.'

Cormac released his belt and woodenly followed Blegg to the shuttle bar. As he watched the old man elbow other passengers from his path, he just stood back and waited. He was finding it difficult to keep himself under control, for he had suddenly acquired the almost overpowering urge to ask Blegg why he had such a ridiculous name.

'I'll have a large Scotch,' said Blegg, then, turning to Cormac, asked, 'You?'

'Albion water, please.'

'Barman! Two large Scotches!'

Cormac shook his head and studied the interior of the shuttle. The bar stood at the rear of this particular wing. Ten metres to his left was the bulkhead, behind which engines purred and the shutde's AI that controlled the craft with but a fraction of its ability. Beyond that bulkhead was the other thick-sectioned wing containing another thousand passengers. Too many lives here to entrust to a mere human pilot. Cormac returned his attention to the bar and watched as webbed hands poured out their drinks. A machine could have done that so much more efficiendy. He took the drink Blegg handed him, and followed him back to their seats. As they sat down, Blegg gestured to the barman, a seadapt.

'You know, a machine could do that job much more efficiently, but why should the shuttle company pay for the expensive hardware when people like him are prepared to do the job for the fun of it, for the free passage?'

Cormac stared at Blegg with deep suspicion. 'I was told you are to brief me.'

'Your arse is so tight I'm surprised you bother eating.'

Cormac sipped some of his Scotch to stifle his desire to reply.

'Briefing,' said Blegg.

Cormac looked at him and suddenly found himself gazing into eyes resembling nailheads. Suddenly the sounds all around him receded, and something cold touched his spine. A new voice then spoke in his mind.

There has been a buffer failure at the Samarkand runcible facility.

Cormac drank more of his Scotch.

Is that you?

'Of course it was me,' said Blegg. 'Did it sound like the usual silicon moron? Now think about what I just told you.'

Cormac immediately accessed a runcible tech site and began downloading figures. Something black encroached at the edges of his vision, and everything he had been pulling in was corrupted. He saw files just fading out and draining away. Then something thumped inside his head, and the connection was gone. He experienced an hallucination, part visual and part tactile. A twisted illusion. He was groping about inside his own head, lost and panicking. A hand slapped on his shoulder and pulled him back.

'I said, 'said Blegg, 'think about what I just told you. Think.'

Cormac stared again into those eyes. He felt the tug of power there and he made an effort of will.

Stupid to panic. Use your mind.

He did as Blegg suggested, and applied the simple mental calculating techniques he'd been taught longer ago than he cared to remember. Figures started to come up and, after rechecking, he started to put together a nightmare scenario. And somehow, because he had worked this out for himself, it all seemed more real.

'Anyone coming through would have done so at near light speed,' he said, and in his mind's eye - that facet he normally used for downloaded images - he saw what must have happened.

It is called imagination, Ian Cormac.

Cormac looked at Blegg, but Blegg had turned away from him, watching as one of the other passengers walked by. As he began his reply, he slowly swung his gaze back to Cormac.

'Before it was destroyed, the Samarkand runcible AI managed to transmit for point three seconds. Major structural breakdown, not detected in time to prevent reception. A runcible technician by the name of Freeman came through. He most certainly would have known nothing about it. Thirty megatons, conservative.'

'Sabotage?' said Cormac, as those nailhead eyes locked on him.

'It seems likely. You're aware of runcible safety parameters?'

Cormac nodded, then asked, 'Are we talking mega-death here?'

'No, the Samarkand runcible was upside and located on a cold world.'

'What sort of figures?'

'There were ten thousand nine hundred and five people on Samarkand, including AIs. The few Golem androids there would have been close to the explosion, and would almost certainly have been destroyed along with the runcible AI. As for the rest… the world was being terraformed by bleed-off from the runcible buffers. It will almost have returned to its original state by the time you get there.'

Cormac nodded and absorbed that information. There might be survivors. There might. 'Did Samarkand serve a colonized world?'

'Not really. The nearest colonized world is the planet Minostra: twelve light-years away, with its own planet-based runcible. Samarkand is a way-station world for the influx to the centre of the Polity. We were lucky in that, if in little else.'

'My mission?'

'One of investigation. You'll travel from Minostra on a starship that has the unfortunate name Hubris. It's going there to set up a stage-one runcible to bring the rest of the runcibles through, and to search for survivors, though it's unlikely there'll be any. We have to know what happened there. I don't have to tell you how important this is.'

'I know. If someone has found a way to sabotage runcibles… Could it be Separatists?'

'There's that possibility.'

Cormac leant back in his seat, sipped at his Scotch, but found he had finished it. Blegg took his glass.

'No, I…'

'Ian Cormac, it is time you learnt what it is to be human again.'

Blegg went to the bar and Cormac turned to watch him. The seadapt barman served him immediately, even though there was a crowd waiting. Blegg said something to him and the barman laughed, the gill slits on each side of his neck opening and closing as he did so. Blegg shortly returned with two fresh drinks. Cormac took his and stared into it doubtfully.

'It's said you do not have internal augmentation -that you link with AIs in some other manner,' he said, without looking up.

Horace Blegg chuckled. 'A lot is said about me, but don't concern yourself. Your primary concern is this mission. For its duration you'll be without direct information access.'

Cormac felt something lurch inside him. It was a confirmation of something he had been expecting, something that was overdue, yet it was something he could not visualize at this moment.

'Why… surely there will be a transmitter on the ship?' he said, perhaps trying to delay the inevitable.

Blegg shook his head. 'In the service of Earth and the Human Polity you have been gridlinked for thirty years now. Studies show that nearer twenty years is the safe limit psychologically. Your ability to comprehend the spectrum of human emotion has been impaired, and it is imperative that it should not be. Without it, your usefulness becomes… less.'

'I am becoming dehumanized, is that what you're telling me?'

'Your recent mission has shown this.'

Cormac considered his complete misjudgement of the situation with Angelina. He reached almost instinctively for access. It flooded through the wiring in his skull, with all its reassuring excess of information.

'I see,' he said, suddenly feeling more confident. 'But by taking away my information access, do you not impair my efficiency another way?'

'It's our opinion we're removing an impairment.'

'Wouldn't someone else be better?'

Blegg smiled. 'You're just right for this mission.'

Cormac sat back in his seat and studied the man. It was said he was immortal, a telepath, and that he could wear any guise. Cormac was completely aware that he was being manipulated, but how he just could not see. He reckoned that when he did find out, the surprise would be a nasty one. That was how it usually went. He closed his eyes and tried to bring some stillness to himself, before asking his next question.

'Sleep,' said Blegg, almost as if reading his mind. 'These shuttles run slowly for our purposes, but at least there will be time for you to rest, and to consider.'

Who the hell are you telling to sleep?

He managed to ask that one question before blackness came down on him like a falling wall.