Standing outside the house Lawrence took his time looking around. There was the neat little front garden with its wrought-iron fence, just as Hal described. It guarded a squat white stone facade, with big windows, the paintwork clean and bright. Like all the others along the street, a home for the upper-middle classes. Lawrence activated his bracelet pearl and called up his Prime. A complex indigo image slid across his optronic membranes as the quasi-sentient program decompressed from its storage block. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed brighter than the bracelet pearl's standard icons.

He opened a link into Memu Bay's datapool and told the Prime to trawl the household AS and the local traffic logs. Information began to scroll up almost at once. Whatever software the KillBoy resistance group used to cover their tracks, it was excellent, which strengthened his suspicions that they had compromised e-alpha.

Number eighteen's household AS told him nothing, because it had been inactive for over a week. The system was still waiting repair. Smaller independent sections of the house's network were functioning on autonomous backup mode, but they didn't have memory logs. Strangest of all, the security system was also offline; its sensors weren't even drawing power.

Minster Avenue's road traffic logs confirmed there had been very few vehicles driving along the street during the night Hal claimed he'd visited. Certainly no taxi had pulled up outside number eighteen. But the Prime dug deeper into the local transport network. Between 1:48 and 2:10 the network dataflow had increased by a small percentage.

After Hal had left.

There was nothing in the logs to account for the increase.

"Shutting up shop," Lawrence muttered to himself. The minute data abnormality wouldn't convince a court that had Hal's DNA sample taken off the girl. He wasn't even sure if it would be admissible in court. But it was good enough for him: an electronic graffiti roughly equivalent to spraying KillBoy was here across the front of the house.

Lawrence walked over the road and rang the brass bell. It took a minute before the black front door swung open. A woman in an apron stood in the hallway, giving him a suspicious stare. "Yes?"

"Elena Melchett?"

"Yes? Who are you?"

"Lawrence Newton. I'm covering the alien rape case."

Elena Melchett didn't look as if she wanted to cooperate with the media. "So?"

"Ah, the alien suspect claims he was somewhere in this street when the incident happened. It's his alibi. I was wondering if you had seen anything?"

"Mr. Newton, that obscene crime took place at one o'clock in the morning. I was in bed asleep. I certainly didn't see any alien thug hanging around outside."

"I didn't think so, thank you. Er..." He fished around in his pockets while Elena Melchett grew increasingly impatient. He found his media card and activated a visual file. "Sorry to be such a pain, but do you recognize this man?" The card's screen showed a picture of Hal.

Elena Melchett studied it. "No."

"Really? That's odd."

"What do you mean?"

Lawrence told the card to switch to another file. "This is a blueprint of your hall, isn't it?" He peered past the woman at the big staircase that curved up to the second-floor landing.

This time Elena Melchett barely glanced at the image. "It's similar."

"I'd say it's identical. Even down to the marble tiling."

"What do you want, Mr. Newton?"

"That alien suspect, he put this image together with an architect program. How would he know what your hallway looked like if he'd never been here? You did say you didn't recognize him, didn't you?"

"Get out!" Elena Melchett ordered him in a strident voice. "Out, and don't come back. If I see you around here again, I'll call the police." The glossy door slammed shut.

The prosecution had got Hal up on the witness stand. Lawrence could finally appreciate the saying about someone being his own worst enemy. It wasn't going well. In fact it was excruciating just being in the same room.

The prosecution wanted to know why he'd jumped curfew.

Hal—good old honest fresh-from-the-farm Hal—said he did it because he was desperate for sex.

The prosecution wanted to know where he'd gone that night to hunt for sex.

Hal told them the brothel on Minster Avenue, doggedly sticking to his version of events. Lawrence presumed it was because his mother had always told him to tell the truth.

The prosecution tore that version of the fateful night to shreds, and there wasn't any evidence that Lieutenant Bra-low could produce to back Hal up. Then they went on to ask about the genetic samples. Hal claimed the girl was a whore, and that the rest of it—the rape allegation, the nonexistent brothel—was all a setup by KillBoy.

It didn't go down well. Francine Hazeldine's haunting statement had already been played back to the court. Lawrence had watched the presiding officers as her fragile voice had described what happened that night, detail by agonizing detail.

The more the farce carried on, the more Lawrence admired KillBoy's strategy and resourcefulness, and the more angry he became. Hal was just too easy. He wanted to stand up in the banqueting suite and face the locals, asking: "Why don't you try this one with me?" But then, the devastating effect that the trial would have on Z-B's morale was the final triumph of that elegant strategy.

He was also haunted by the terrible specter of responsibility. There should have been a trial very similar to this last time he was on Thallspring. The fact that it had never happened was in no small part due to him. Justice then had been circumvented rather than served. Now justice was coming back to strike them with a vengeance.

Lawrence spent most of the time wondering if the two could possibly be connected.

Only by a God with a very twisted sense of humor, he decided.

After five hours of testimony and witness examination, the presiding officers recessed the court so they might consider their verdict. They took ninety minutes, which Lawrence thought was a diplomatic enough length of time given that they'd already decided that verdict before the court-martial even began.

Hal stood in front of the dais facing the presiding officers, his shoulders squared, as Ebrey Zhang announced the findings.

On the charge of disobeying a direct order and breaking curfew: guilty.

On the charge of misleading the local police: guilty.

On the charge of assault and rape of a minor: guilty.