The two looked similar, with their winter tans, their straight white teeth, graphite-black hair, and heavy shades. The first thing they told him was that they weren’t going to kill him. For some reason, he believed it. He was happy to believe them.

“Frankly, we would prefer to,” one of them said as the car weaved northward up Edgware Road toward the orbital. “However, someone might start asking awkward questions if you were to disappear. Your little kylie at OzNet has been rather indiscreet, I’m sorry to say. Now other people know about you and, well, you’re going to be something of a celebrity. The Man Who Stalked the Ripper. Better be ready for the journalists tomorrow, my Lord.” The title was uttered with a sneer. “Not to mention the Met police.”

“Would you care for some?” The speakers colleague was already opening the wafer-thin case with its rows of small gray chips.

“No thank you.” Geraint said. “My mother told me never to accept drugs from murderers.”

“Suit yourself.” The man exhaled his pleasure as the chip began to work on his nervous system. He leaned back, relaxed. “Well, after we monitored you making those transaction checks we knew you’d get the right answer pretty quickly. You’d have found out eventually, of course, but by then it would have been yesterday’s news. Hence the need for our little talk now.”

“In case you were wondering, we’ll have our people remove all the surveillance instruments from your flat whenever it’s convenient for you. You see, we really aren’t going to kill you.”

“Your what? But I had the place-”

“Well, of course you did, dear boy, of course you did. I must confess that Risk Minimizers is a very good client of ours. Very rarely do we ask them for a favor. On this occasion, however, we had to cash in.”

Geraint was dumbfounded. Wasn’t there anyone left he could trust?

“So, would you like the big picture first or the details? It’ll make life easier to give you the big picture, I think. Then you can ask us any questions, if you’re so inclined.” The man was behaving like a teacher explaining something very simple to a willfully dim-witted child.

As they headed through Wood Green, Geraint learned about the attempts to buy out Transys. The corp was secretive, tightly controlled, and not an easy nut to crack.

“We had some people on the inside, obviously. Disaffected elements who weren’t happy with the way the company was going, bright people who saw research opportunities going astray. Then, of course, we had a sleeper or two in Transys.”

“Like Smith and Jones?” Geraint’s voice was little more than a croak.

“Oh, those berks. Yes, they were ours. Pity about them, really, hut it did tie up a loose end.”

So that’s what murder is, Geraint thought. Tying up loose ends. I’m stuck in the back of the most expensive limo on earth with a pair of complete psychopaths.

“We had hoped to break into the corp last year after they lost that wacko star decker of theirs in the Edinburgh business. Quicksilver, wasn’t it? Unfortunately, the new chairman of the board was a tough fellow. not someone who’d let us exercise the control we wanted. So we decided it was time for Plan B. Was it Plan B?” he inquired casually of the other suit.

“Hmm. Plan C, I think.” His fellow added nothing else by way of explanation.

“Well, there you have it. Plan C it was. The good old ploy of discrediting a company, shooting its stock value to drek, and then buying it up for nothing. Trouble is, with Transys it proved very difficult indeed. They’re infuriatingly moral for a megacorporation, you know. The bad stuff they get up to, well, it’s small potatoes like dumping hazardous drug stocks on the third world. You know the score, I’m sure. Dodgy experiments on kiddies in what’s left of Bangladesh, that sort of monkeying around. Problem is, nobody in the civilized world gives a toss, quite honestly.”

The civilized world, oh yes. Geraint thought grimly. That’s the one you people belong to, right?

“That wouldn’t be scandal enough for the media. It had to be something closer to home. So, we really had to engineer it ourselves. Fortunately, one of the less scrupulous Brazilian subsidiaries of Transys was beginning to get somewhere with cloning technology. One renegade emigre scientist did some excellent work. Cloning from early fetal cell tissue isn't too hard, but trying to clone from adult DNA samples, well, that’s another flaskful ot enzymes entirely. The mad boffin, as our wonderful free press will no doubt dub him, made some startling advances in that department.”

“From what we heard, he sounded like a real Mengele.” the other man commented laconically, before lapsing back into silence.

The first man flicked the intercom to the ork chauffeur. Lets take a drive around the orbital, my good man. Thank you.” He closed the link. “Rakkin’ baldrick.” The two men exchanged grins that evidenced their vast debt to cosmetic dentistry.

The main mouthpiece resumed his explanation as Geraint sat patiently. “After a while, however, that lab boy got rather crazy and became something of a security risk, so we terminated him and changed the data a bit. When the Transys head people got to it, it looked like a crock. Then we had to sit on it for a white, another couple of years before we could get the Cambridge sideline opened up, nice and quiet. Purely experimental biotech, no pressure, no snooping from the high-ups in Transys when the turds hit the tumble dryer over the Quicksilver business.”

“By then, our people there had the cloning down to a fine art-except for one problem. Clones developed from adult DNA samples turned out to be mentally unstable, hopelessly so. Seems there’s something in the morphologic fields of the brain during development that doesn’t go quite right. The forced growth and development of a complete clone imposes too much train on those delicate neural circuits. Ain't it a shame? The good thing is that the old data will prove that Transys has been playing with cloning for quite a while. We arranged for the story to be released to the media around five this afternoon. Last nail in the coffin for Transys.”

He lit a cigarette. “Care for one? Very soothing gamma-yohimbine extract. Relaxes the body, really mellows an edge.”

Geraint accepted the cigarette, Why not? He wasn’t having much input into all this.

“But we always believe that a problem should be seen as an opportunity. That’s our motto, you know. So, we thought: why don’t we clone someone who’s a complete flutter? Then, if he’s completely deranged we can pin it on Transys. The friendly company that has been cloning madmen. That would do the trick.” He exhaled a perfect smoke ring.

“Dear Jack was just the ticket. Everyone’s heard of lack the Ripper. Top news ratings guaranteed. Transys shafted good and proper. After that, it was really down to the details. There was an extra advantage when Transys got involved in the Global-Hollywood business with that pathetic Ripper chip affair. We were delighted when the elf found out about that, though it was unexpected. That jaunt back to Manhattan threw us a curve, but we had contingencies for feeding that information to you. Anyway, we needed truly independent exposure of the horror of it all, this terrible new Ripper stalking London’s streets again.”

“So we picked the right people.”

“The four of us.” Geraint had questions, but he wanted to hear out his enemies first.

“Good God, no. Not that little slag of a baldrick.” He spat out the insulting term for an ork like it was poison. “That was pure coincidence. That you met her again after Smith and Jones spammed her over the Fuchi job was a chance in a million. Wouldn’t have made any difference if you hadn’t. Again, we had contingencies planned. We had one or two more people up our sleeve that we never needed to bring into the frame, in the end.”