"Sure. I got my money's worth. I keep telling you. She's the one. I was there in the whorehouse with her last night."

There was another moment of silence. The detective appeared almost embarrassed.

"Mr. Grabowski, did you notice anything out of the ordinary about Avril?"

"Like what?" Hal wasn't committing himself. There was something badly wrong about this, he knew it. Damn but he wanted the sarge to be here.

"Did she, for instance, have a collateral necklace fitted?"

The question surprised him. "No. No way."

"You're sure about that?"

"Hey, I got to see a damn sight more than her neck, man. She wasn't wearing no necklace. What is this crap?"

"I think I've heard all I need to at this point, thank you," Galliani said. "We'll take a break. And I really think you need to have a long talk with your lawyer, Mr. Grabowski."

"Just what the hell is going on?" Hal demanded. "Okay, so I fucked some whore. That's not a crime. She wasn't even much good. I should have had a refund, man."

Someone in the office roared wildly. Hal searched around for the noise, just in time to see the man in the expensive suit charging at him. His face was red and contorted in feral rage, arms held out straight in front of him, hands ready to tear and throttle. He jumped at Hal, who didn't have time to move aside. The two of them crashed to the floor, thrashing about. Then Galliani and the senior policeman were pulling him off. Bralow hung on to Hal, who was game for getting back up and decking the old maniac.

"What the fuck..." he shouted.

The man was quickly hustled out of the door. He was sobbing now, a wretched gulping sound that was clearly audible even after the door was shut.

"This place is a fucking loony bin," Hal announced. "What the hell is going on here?"

Bralow sat down, sighed, then pulled the desktop pearl toward him. The girl's face was still on its pane. "She's the... the alleged victim," he said.

"Avril? No way, man. No goddamn way. I paid for her!"

"That's not her name."

Hal looked at the closed door, suddenly curious. "Who was that? The guy that went for me?"

"Her father. The mayor of Memu Bay. And she does have a collateral necklace. Ebrey Zhang put it on her himself."

"Oh, Jesus fuck," Hal whispered. He sat down heavily beside Bralow as real fright took hold. None of this was making any sense, goddamnit. "Lieutenant, you've got to get me out of this."

"That might be difficult now."

* * *

The Norvelle was in a thousand-kilometer orbit around Thallspring, its inclination of five degrees providing it with line of sight on Durrell each time it passed through the planet's prime meridian. At ten-fifteen in the morning it rose above the capital city's horizon. As the sensors acquired the sprawl of buildings, a low-power laser was fired from one of the huge vehicle's five communications bays, seeking out the East Wing of the Eagle Manor. It was detected by a small electronic receiver unit on the roof, which immediately sent an answering laser pulse back to the starship. With the beams locked on their respective sensors, their width reduced until it was less than two centimeters at the target point, providing a link that could not be intercepted. The rooftop receiver unit was connected to a module in Simon Roderick's office by an armored fiber optic cable. Again, splicing into the cable was impossible. The system provided him with the most secure link possible to the starship. Only five people knew of its existence. Simon had been waiting for the call since he arrived at the office that morning. His usual routine of administrative work had been delegated to his assistants and personal AS. Instead, his time had been spent reviewing information filed under the generic name "The Opposition." As he ran through it all he conjured up probable attack scenarios, which grew steadily more exuberant as the morning progressed. It didn't matter how fanciful he made them, he still couldn't determine what they were actually planning. Nothing quite fit into what was clearly an impressive capability. The more he went over it, the more he was convinced they were holding back, waiting to deliver the hammer blow.

The secure communication module chimed melodically, and a sheet screen on the wall lit up, showing one of the Norvelle's cabins. A man was sitting in front of a freefall work bench, with straps holding him down in the light gravity field. He looked into the camera and gave it a thin smile. "Good morning. It looks very sunny and warm down there today."

Simon settled back behind his desk and looked at the face on the screen. It was his own, but fifteen years older. That particular batch of clones, the SF9s, were notorious for their phlegmatic temperament. Each generation tended to have its own quirk, which they put down to the individuality of the crиche nursing staff and the inevitable influence they exerted during the clones' formative years. The SK2 batch, to which the Simon in the study belonged, were often regarded as the more peppery of the breed. Although they were positively mild compared to the short-tempered SC5s (whose proclivity had sparked a wholesale review of crиche staff screening procedures). But whatever their behavioral nuances, they were all totally dedicated to the company that they controlled.

"Morning," the SK2 Simon replied. "So what's the result?"

"Well, the good news is it wasn't a bomb."

"I never expected it would be. Far too coarse for our friends."

"Young Braddock Raines was most thorough. The space-plane cabin was scanned and analyzed down to a molecular level. He also had the accessible systems removed and reviewed in the starship's lab. There was no detectable foreign genetic residue. However, somebody had opened an access panel. There were metal traces in the Allen screws. The alloy doesn't correspond with the tools issued to our maintenance people."

"Thank heavens for that I was beginning to think they were almost infallible."

"Quite. The panel gives access to several electronic components, including a major network junction. None of the components had any trace of tampering, except the junction. And that took some finding. The nuclear macroscan revealed some very peculiar stress patterns in the casing's molecular structure. Our so-called solid state physics experts are apparently baffled. They don't know what could have caused it"

"Interesting."

"The word is alarming. I don't like the idea of Thallspring having technologies that we don't understand. Especially when they're being used against us."

"Their development has been very well hidden. We've run all the usual financial audits through the Treasury network. They couldn't spot any kind of government funds being diverted for clandestine technology projects in the last ten years."