Stanton left Semper to go over to where wrecked computers and other equipment had been stacked in a corner of the room. Himself, he did not intend to turn his back on the room’s other occupant. The Golem had pulled a chair up in front of a table. It wore a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Before it on the table, several objects were laid out as if it was involved in some intricate game of chess with an unseen opponent. Those objects consisted of various tools and pieces of hardware, a small rubber dog and two other gruesome items. While Stanton watched, the Golem reached out one brass hand, clad in a blood-crusted fingerless woollen glove, and carefully turned the head of the aviapt so that it faced Stalek’s head. It then looked up and gazed at Stanton with midnight eyes.

‘Found it.’ Semper came over and handed a small console to Angelina.

The woman’s hand was shaking, Stanton noted, as she took the console and detached from it the small black pebble of a control module. She closed her eyes for a second, concentrating, then slipped the module into one of her belt pouches.

‘Stand up… Mr Crane,’ she said finally.

The Golem stood and stepped aside, as if ready to come around the table. Stanton took a step back. Jesus, the thing was big! Standing there, it seemed to fill the entire room. Stanton estimated it to be at least two and a half metres tall.

‘Hold it there!’ Angelina yelled.

The Golem froze.

‘You will follow us, doing no more than I instruct,’ she said, with enforced calm in her voice. She turned to Stanton. ‘Put that mine of yours on its chest, over its brain case.’

Stanton was not so sure he wanted to get that close, but he obeyed. As he stepped in, the Golem abruptly reached up and undid the top buttons on its coat, exposing its brassy chest. Stanton placed the mine carefully, hoping that hand movement had been at Angelina’s behest. The Golem buttoned up its coat again.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ she said.

The Golem reached down and closed its hand over one of the severed heads.

‘Leave that!’

The hand closed and the head imploded with a dull thud, spewing bloody gobbets of brain across the table-top.

‘Follow!’

As Angelina turned away, Stanton saw the Golem’s hand snap out and take up the small rubber dog, which it slipped quickly into its pocket. He made no comment on this, nor when the Golem turned its face towards him and half closed one eye in what might have been a wink. With Semper at his side, he just followed the killing machine out, glad that the thing was walking at Angelina’s back rather than his own.

‘A message in a bottle would be the nearest analogy.’

Cormac chewed over the words as they crossed the now empty chamber to the Flint runcible. Before reaching the dais, he halted and glanced round at his companions. Gant stood beside Mika, as if ready to prevent her escape. Perhaps that was because it had taken so long to get her moving. The result of this delay was now stacked on a gravsled that Thorn guided by a remote-control device: the woman’s luggage.

The Flint AI had already emptied the place, and Cormac knew that it was training just about every detector available on his companions. It had shut down all computer access other than the voice link to itself, and there were no robots present—nothing that Jain technology could subvert.

‘But there’s no record of the Vulture having landed there?’ he suggested.

‘No record of that ship’s presence, true,’ replied the Flint AI. ‘But three ships did land that could easily have been the Vulture. Also, Viridian did detect a U-space signature unrelated to any ships that landed in the designated areas. The most likely explanation is that Skellor has installed chameleonware on the Vulture, and brought it down somewhere else.’

‘And the essence of the message?’

‘Vulture is managing to retain some independence by shifting herself into a memory sector not occupied by a Jain thrall program. Each time she does this and initiates some independent action, the program occupies that sector, forcing Vulture to move on. Obviously there is a limit to how many times she can do this. She also detailed the events on the asteroid—which we had already surmised.’

‘Is there anything to suggest where Skellor is going?’

‘All she knew was that he went to Viridian to obtain a “pathetic metalskin” to “complete”. These are Vulture’s words, though I gather the information was obtained by translating Jain code bleeding directly from Skellor’s nonverbal thought processes.’

Cormac was surprised. He had expected the pursuit to be a ship-borne one rather than one through the Polity runcible network, because if it was true that Skellor was after the Dragon spheres, he’d more likely find them on the Polity border or beyond.

‘You can get hold of metalskins anywhere in the Polity,’ said Gant.

‘Viridian seems an unlikely place to go looking for one,’ Thorn added.

Cormac looked at Mika, waiting for her opinion. She appeared ill to him, but perhaps that was imagination after all that she had told him.

In measured tones she said, ‘Viridian is where we encountered the Maker. It is also where you killed Arian Pelter. There was a metalskin Golem there with Pelter — that brass killer of his called Mr Crane.’

‘That’s true,’ said Thorn, ‘but Cento and Aiden seriously fucked up that one.’

Cormac glanced at him. ‘You’re right, they tore it apart and then shattered its mind. There should be nothing there for Skellor. However…’ He turned and looked towards the runcible. ‘Flint, I need you to reset to Viridian. I have to go there to find out what this is all about.’

‘Unfortunately I cannot do this until after your companions have departed. They must go to Elysium, where precautions have been taken, and then on to the Jack Ketch.’

It made sense: Mika or Thorn could rush at the interface, once it was reset, and end up on a world where no precautions had yet been made against Jain-tech subversion. Earth Central was now taking precautions over anyone who had merely come in contact with that tech, but those two, who definitely carried it inside them, the AI was treating like possible plague carriers.

‘Okay.’ Cormac turned to his companions. ‘Mika, once you’re on the Jack Ketch, get aboard what you require—it can be sent by robotic craft from the Jerusalem. Make sure you get everything, as we’ll likely be in for a long haul afterwards, without further physical contact with any Polity worlds.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘The Jerusalem?’

‘It’s there at Elysium, grabbing anything Jain-related—I’ll explain later.’ He turned to Thorn, who also, he thought, looked unwell. ‘Thorn, no fuck-ups during transit, as I’ll bet that any breach of the precautions will result in atomic sterilization.’

Thorn nodded.

‘Flint, is there any restriction on trooper Gant?’

‘None that I am aware of. Like yourself he has been scanned and found to contain nothing… anomalous.’

‘Okay. Gant, you’ll come with me.’

Cormac stepped to one side and waved the others ahead of him. Gant moved to his side and watched them go. Mika glanced round, still looking thoughtful, then stepped up onto the dais and approached the shimmer of the Skaidon warp contained between the bull’s horns of the runcible. She stepped through it and was gone. Thorn then guided the gravsled ahead of him, causing it to rise higher and positioning it centrally to the warp. Before sending it through, he gave Gant a meaningful look.

‘I’ll get Mika to memplant me on the Jack Ketch, but I don’t suppose we’ll be celebrating in Elysium,’ he said.

‘If she thinks it advisable,’ Gant replied woodenly. ‘But it might be better to wait until your mycelium is removed.’