During their descent, the drones swung into upright positions on either side of the aerofan, so that when Stanton finally stepped from it, the appearance given was of a man stepping between two pillars — only these pillars advanced with him as he approached Lellan.

"Not a good uniform to wear around here," she said to him when he was close enough for her to see he was dressed as a proctor.

"I'll change in a minute," he replied, nodding towards her carrier. "But first let me introduce to you CEDs Forty-two and Forty-three."

Lellan felt a bit uncomfortable being required to address two armed and armoured cylinders that showed no characteristics of life, but then she was not so well travelled as her brother.

"I don't like that," she said. Then, when her brother gazed at her questioningly, "Forty-two and Forty-three. If these are AI, and accepted as being alive, then they should have names." She stepped forwards. "Which is which?"

The drones had now settled to the ground on either side of Stanton. He glanced at each of them, then shrugged. "I don't rightly know."

Lellan studied the one to her right, trying to find some feature on it to focus on in place of a face. Eventually she focused on a collection of lenses and antennae clustered below the panpipes missile-launcher on its end-cap. "You will henceforth be known as Romulus," she said, then turning to the other drone, "And you will be known as…" she hesitated, a twist to her mouth, "Ramus."

"Very funny," muttered Stanton.

Ignoring him, Lellan said, "Welcome, Ram and Rom," wondering if she should be welcoming what looked to be the future of warfare.

Disgusted at his own excess — at his uncontrolled feeding and growth — Skellor concentrated on organizing his resources and properly preparing himself. The underspace package the ship's automatic systems had intercepted whilst he had been growing, and to which he had given his dissembling reply, he metaphorically put to one side. Thereafter he refined his internal structures and created storage like giant fat cells for excess materials; he burnt out waste and honed down systems to their optimum efficiency. It was while he was collating and cataloguing all useful sources of information inside the ship, to incorporate them into himself, that he found Mika's database and inspected it with fascination. Gazing through Jain structure, he then recognized the corpse of his calloraptor/human hybrid and immediately knew what to do with some of the excess he now contained — and plunged Jain filaments into the hybrid corpse.

Incorporating human DNA had been a mistake brought about by lack of imagination and resources, but now, utilizing the complex calloraptor trihelix, he knew he could make something much more useful. Isolating what he required was the work of a moment, as were the subsequent processes of meiosis and recombination. Almost with a shrug he tore out the walls of Medical, and expanded the space there to take a huge polyhedral framework of Jain structural members. To the junctures of polyhedra he pumped raw materials and, in their passage through nanotubes and nanofactories, they knitted into complex organic molecules. Small pearls sprouted and grew as they were pumped full of the required nutrients. Then, at the last, Skellor opened nanotubes into microtubes to transfer the already well-developed zygotes he had grown into the awaiting eggs. Raptly watching the growth of this army of his creatures, he found himself more reluctant to disengage from the process than he had been before. With slow grinding force of will he forced his awareness out from the warm internals of the ship and himself, out to his interface with the harshness of space. Here he observed the system and what he had done.

The planet itself could have been the twin of Neptune, and now would bear a closer resemblance as the debris from the shattered moonlet spread as it followed the moonlet's original orbit. Coldly, Skellor calculated that this debris would form a complete ring in one hundred and twenty years solstan — the five largest surviving chunks of the moonlet acting as its shepherds. But what did any of that matter? With that same grinding strength of will he forced himself into a higher awareness of the present, and realized it was time for him to stop playing with the power he now possessed, and to use it. Employing the conventional ion manoeuvring thrusters, he drew the Occam Razor away from the debris and closer into the sun itself. For a time he felt as one great beast wallowing in the harsh radiation, then he forced his attention back to the underspace package he had earlier put aside. Once again he felt something like dry laughter echoing inside himself — knowing where this communication was from.

Five thousand hours of secret holocording, filming, and depositions — in fact recordings in every medium available to humanity. Those same hours, which he viewed in less than one hour realtime, told him a lot about his destination, but it took him a while to understand the purpose of the transmission. Subsequent communications from someone called Lellan, and transmissions of realtime events on the surface of the planet, brought home to him what it was all about. As did the meticulously recorded ballot of the indigenous population, which clearly made their wishes known. The five thousand hours detailed atrocities and the unjust rule of a Theocracy. This was a cry for help directed towards the Polity. These people wanted Polity intervention.

Annoyingly, the signal might already have got through to the Polity — but no more. His reply to it and his offer to act as a signal-boosting station had been immediately accepted, and someone called Polas was grateful in the belief that the signal was now being relayed into the heart worlds of the Polity. This would all give Skellor time to get a lot closer, where he could more easily employ the signal-blocking technology of this ship. Chuckling to himself — inside, for his face no longer had the ability to show expression — Skellor gave his instructions, and smooth as a snake the Occam Razor slid into underspace. They would certainly get intervention on this world called Masada — but he didn't think they would like it.

Certain now that the boy was deeply asleep, the woman tiptoed away to her seat in front of the screen and reopened the book. She did not like to act the censor, but this picture book was definitely now out of the realm of Disney and into that of some psychotic relative of the brothers Grimm, and she suspected that some of the later stories had a greater potential for bloody distortion. The one she chose now was entitled 'Four Brothers in the Valley' and the initial picture was far from ominous, displaying as it did the four good Brothers themselves making ready for their journey.

"Yeah, right," said the woman, wondering if there might be a hint of AI to this book. She reached out and touched the top of the text column, and the Brothers moved now — talking to each other and laughing. The woman cleared her throat — slightly embarrassed to be speaking to herself — and began to read.

"Four good Brothers set out upon a journey to find and bring finally to justice the Hooded One. Brother Stenophalis wore armour of aluminium and carried a thrower of iron. Brother Pegrum wore armour of brass and carried a sword of light. Brother Egris wore armour of iron and carried the caster of thunderbolts. And Brother Nebbish wore his armour of faith and carried in his right hand the Word of God and His Prophet."

The woman paused as the book clad each of the brothers in the required garb, and set them on their way. It all seemed like a happy scene from some wonderful tale in which right and justice would triumph. She tried fast-forwarding the text but it just wouldn't move.