“Okay, we’ll follow if we can. Kieran’s hired some cars for us.”

“Good luck in that traffic.”

The sun was starting to sink below the horizon when eight large cars came out of the precinct garage, traveling in fast convoy. They didn’t have sirens and strobes on, but the civic traffic management arrays were obviously shunting cars and trucks out of their way.

Jenny drained the last of her iced tea. “Let’s go,” she told the others.

***

It was a warm evening again, though the vanishing sun seemed to take the humidity with it. Mellanie traveled with Murdo on the monorail to a station just half a block away from Greenford Tower. The bars and clubs along Allwyn Street were just setting up for the night trade, as yet they had few customers. Even the traffic seemed lighter than usual.

Murdo led her across the Greenford’s plaza where the fountains were pumping their jets high into the darkening sky. Far above them, the airship docked to the top of the tower was preparing for its flight; the lights on the observation deck were shining brightly as servicebots and waiters laid the tables ready for the Michelin-starred meal to be served as it soared over the jungle.

The Saffron Clinic’s private door opened for Murdo as soon as he put his hand on the sensor. It was a small narrow lobby inside, with a single elevator.

Mellanie started to key some inserts as they rose up to the thirty-eighth floor, allowing her to review the electronic environment she was moving through. The elevator had several systems, none of them new or elaborate, dating back to the tower net’s last refurbishment fifteen years ago. Above her, she could sense the clinic’s sophisticated and powerful e-shield. She deactivated all but the most elementary OCtattoos and inserts; the SI’s systems were very hard to detect when they were inert, so it had promised her.

The elevator rose through the e-shield. It stopped and the doors slid open. Mellanie was abruptly the center of a deep scan. It was a bare hallway outside, with pipes running along the walls and bright polyphoto strips on the ceiling. A couple of bored human guards, both of them armed, sat at a desk beside the elevator doors.

“Who’s this?” one of them asked curtly, nodding at Mellanie. He didn’t bother getting up. The deep scan couldn’t have revealed anything about her.

“New trainee,” Murdo said. “I cleared her with personnel this afternoon.”

The guard grunted. “You’re Saskia?”

“Yes,” she said anxiously.

“Okay.” He propelled a handheld array across the top of the desk. “Put your palm on that, we need a biometric. You’re not cleared for the medical levels yet, understand? You don’t go off this floor.”

“Yes.”

“If you try to go up there we shoot you. You do not discuss anything you see in here with anybody from outside. If you do, we shoot you. You do not bring anything into the clinic other than yourself and the clothes you are wearing. You will be issued with a uniform. If you bring anything in, like a sensor, we shoot you.”

Mellanie nodded anxiously. The guards grinned at each other.

“Ignore this lame-ass bullshit,” Murdo said. “These two dickbrains couldn’t hit the side of a skyscraper from twenty paces.”

The guard showed him a vigorous hand gesture.

Murdo gave him the finger in return; he and Mellanie walked off down the corridor. He steered her into a locker room. Three nurses were getting changed to go on shift. They stopped talking at the sight of Murdo and one of them scowled.

“Most of the staff use this place to change,” Murdo said. “Except for the doctors and management; they just wear their own suits.” He walked along one of the locker rows. “This one’s yours. Use your thumb on the scanner to open it. Those morons on the desk should have updated the network by now.”

Mellanie pressed her thumb to the small scanner patch, and the locker opened. It was empty. “I thought I got a uniform?”

“I’ll requisition one from supply. Just wait a minute.” He walked away around the end of the row.

Mellanie took a good look around the locker room while Murdo got changed, bringing her inserts on-line one at a time. There was no active sensor, only a couple of cameras looking down from the ceiling. She fed a scrutineer program into the locker room’s array, cautiously examining the structure of the clinic’s internal net. There were an impressive number of security systems and programs, especially on the upper floors. They were all protected by encrypted gates that she didn’t have the skill to circumvent. However, the reception array with its open connection to the Illuminatus cybersphere was easy to access. Her e-butler rode in on a Trojan finance transfer, and began to search admission records for five days on either side of the date that Michelangelo said the lawyers had arrived.

The three nurses all left. Mellanie instructed the scrutineer to follow their progress and record what it could of the security protocols as they went upstairs.

“Hey, Saskia, come around here, I’ve got your uniform,” Murdo said. “I knew I had a spare somewhere.”

Mellanie was intrigued by the way he’d waited until the nurses had left. She held her hand up, palm outward toward the locker doors as she walked along the row. Her basic scan revealed some very interesting items stored inside.

Murdo was wearing a dark red boiler suit with his name on the chest pocket. “Put this on,” he said. One hand held up a small garment of some shiny black fabric, while the other had a frilly white apron.

French maid’s outfit, Mellanie realized. She almost laughed. Murdo wasn’t just a stereotype, he was an absolute cliché.

“I have located three possible admissions compatible with your search parameters,” her e-butler said. The files popped up into her virtual vision; there was no reference to the nature of the treatments they were receiving, only the cost, which surprised even her. Each file did include the room they’d been allocated, for billing purposes.

“Come on, my dear, this is what all cleaning staff trainees wear,” Murdo said in a reasonable tone.

Mellanie activated a second batch of OCtattoos, then infiltrated a restriction order into the room’s array, preventing anyone from using its communications function. “Humm. I don’t think so.”

She clicked her fingers. One of the lockers she’d just passed popped open.

***

The scenic cable car station was at the eastern end of the Northern Crossquay. Alic, Lucius Lee, and Marhol escorted Robin Beard through the ticket hall and onto the embarkation platform. They didn’t manhandle him, nor did they say a word, but he was always in the center of the little triangle they formed. If the Agent was as good as Beard claimed, he would have observers in the crowds heading out to Treetops restaurant.

The platform was raised several meters above the top of Northern Crossquay, a simple metal mesh with the cables running above, which intruded against a huge tree whose boughs curved overhead. Alic could look back and see Tridelta City gleaming a few kilometers away on the other side of the river.

A cable car slid out of the radiant jungle, pausing briefly on the disembarkation platform opposite, where a couple of staff hopped out. Then it disappeared into the engine house that loomed above the station, before reappearing a few moments later and coming to a halt in front of the little group of passengers. It swung in slow pendulum motion from the carbon cable as the door slid open. Then the stewards were ushering everyone inside.

There were seats for ten people arranged in a ring around the central load girder. Alic took the one closest to the door. Beard sat next to him.

When all ten seats were filled the steward shut the door, and gave a thumbs-up. The carrier wheels above engaged the cable with a loud grumbling, and the car lurched away into the jungle.