“But hold on, Fran! You’ve been in their system. haven’t you? What did it look like?”

She shook her head in reply. “I hardly saw anything apart from that thing. If I suffered any disorientation from being in a sculptured system. it was part of the general trauma. Hell, Geraint, make damn sure you protect me with your attacks and whatever you’ve got in that frame of yours. Are you sure we don’t want my frame on attacking options?” It was something they’d been arguing about in the car most of the journey. Francesca was understandably paranoid about meeting the murderous persona that had nearly killed her once before. Geraint disagreed with her.

“We've got enough punch. Anyway, the flatlining jackout options you’ve been working on really should handle that. The only way we could get total insurance now would be to wait for Serrin to get back or have a friend of mine here sit around to pull the jacks if we get toasted. Besides. I really don’t want to risk anyone else knowing what we’re up to, and it’s too long to wait for Serrin. Or Rani. First sight of anything that looks like that thing of yours and we’re out of there. Promise.”

They went over every last detail again and again, reviewing the possibilities for IC constructs opposing them, how to deal with hostile deckers. contingency arrangements, and finally they ran some simulations. Though ii wasn’t the real thing. it made them both sweat and showed that they could work together well enough. By the fourth run they’d gotten good. They jacked out together, full of smiles.

“Geraint. you really creamed that IC construct.”

“The Black Knight? What did he have up his sleeve?”

“I'll check. It’s a quasi-random IC construct with, let’s see. Red-4 node, killer, blaster, jammer. Oh. well, maybe if he’d had an acid program instead of a jammer. you wouldn’t have fared so well.”

“My dear lady, I didn't even need the frame.” Full tilt with a simple attack program had gone right through the Black Knight’s shield and chain mail, skewering him. All Geraint needed was to ride over him to keep the IC suppressed.

They had one final, tricky decision to make. Should they head straight into the System to carry out their mission, or should they go in for an initial snoop first? The advantage of the former was that it preserved for them the clement of surprise. The advantage of the latter strategy was that they’d know better what they were getting into, and would be able to configure their own personas accordingly.

Francesca was arguing hard for the second option.

“Look, we both go in using evasion mode. Heavy on masking and deception. We just see what the sculpture is like. We don’t go near IC, we invade almost nothing past the SAN. We analyze and download and look it at our leisure. Our chances of triggering even a passive alert are minimal if we use the right operational modes.” This made good sense and Geraint had to agree with her.

“We’ve done all we can,” Francesca said. Tonight at eleven, then. “Absolutely no alcohol at all until afterward. Not even a sherry with your old college friends.

She looked almost stern. “Come on, we’ve got an hour before I have to wheel you over to the infirmary. I'm hungry. We may not be able to drink, but we can sure get something decent to eat.”

“Exactly what’s in those vials?” She was suspicious, looking askance at Geraint as he gleefully pored over the small case of multicolored liquids and oily emulsions. He grinned conspiratorially. He was feeling great.

At the Radcliffe. he’d gotten deep laser treatment and growth stimulators, differentiation regulators, modulated hemostatic complexes and a dozen other agents Francesca couldn’t even remember the acronyms for, let alone their full names. All that mattered was that within an hour Geraint was walking on a leg that would be as good as new by the next morning. save for a need to avoid straining it for a few days. He had gladly downloaded charitable contributions to the hospital’s welfare and research funds-all tax-deductible, of course.

Francesca had politely declined the lecherous attentions of Geraint’s medical friend, whose hands had shown as much interest in her as in his patient. Somehow, in the guise of showing her what he was doing, the octopus seemed to get an arm around her waist or fingers fluttering along her arms. She had hidden her distaste and allowed her accumulated irritation to explode in anger at a smug and healthy-looking Geraint in the parking garage. He suffered the onslaught quietly and then they’d moved on to the research labs. It was the fruits of that visit he was reviewing with such glee now. Another charitable donation had been in order, of course, but that was the price one had to pay for cutting-edge experimental materials that got mysteriously used up in the cause of science. That, and another expensive dinner at Oxford’s best restaurant for Professor Michaels the following evening.

“Oh, this is Lovely, Fran. Perfect dopamine agent here, colloidal, and the slow gamma-aminobutyric acid modulators in the complex keep you from crashing afterward. Slight effect in the nigro-striatal ascending fibers, keep it to the D4 large neurons, but the major hit is in the ascending mesocortical, in the DA3 subcomplex, the vesicular…” He stopped in mid-flow as he saw she wasn’t taking in a single word.

“Sorry, Fran. It’s not jargon, really. What this stuff will do is the question. Some of it makes you smart, some of it makes you fast, some of it makes you alert, some of it keeps fatigue at bay, and if you keep the doses sensible, you won't have to pay for it later. I want to use the association cortex agents myself during our decking runs. It’ll definitely boost my awareness of threat and the ability to respond to it. For those poor souls like you who can’t whack this stuff straight into your brain,” he said, fingering the cannula implant on his neck, the options are more limited. Mind you, Edward did give me a peripheral that is absolutely guaranteed to enhance your enjoyment of, er, certain acts. He’s been supplying me with that for years. Not that I ever, not with, I mean…”

“Not when you were bedding me?” She was half-amused and half-livid. Who wanted to think that desire and its consummation were the playthings of some academic pharmacologist?

“No.” He smiled, ever so slightly apologetic. “Anyway, he gave it to me because I think he fancied you some.”

She scowled; two lechers in one day. That was annoying.

“Forget it, We’ve got work to do. I need ten minutes.”

He applied the yellow vial to the cannula, triple-clicked the security seals, and felt the steely rush begin to spread over his scalp. The slight edge of paranoia that followed was normal, and soon he could feel the sounds and colors and vividness of it all. She was already setting up the decks.

“All right, Viviane.” He grinned at her lack of understanding. “In my reality, I’m Taliesin. and you’re going to be Viviane. That way we both look like harmless folks in simple robes. We should be able to get away with that, no matter what form the system sculpture takes.”

“Away to London!” he called delightedly, and they were off.

27

They woke in the separate bedrooms of their suite at much the same time, then glumly shared coffee and what claimed to be a continental breakfast from room service. In the end it had all been rather anticlimactic.

“Well, at least we know the details of the system sculpture system now” Geraint summed up. “I must admit that it surprised me, Very pastoral, nothing organic. Nothing that we encountered, that is. We got away fine as the wizard-bard and the priestess.” He was trying to be optimistic, constructive.