"Nothing."

"You mustn't be angry with us, Kumiko. We're protecting you."

"Thank you. May I go to my room now?"

"Of course. You must be very tired."

Petal followed her from the room, carrying her bag, his gray suit creased and wrinkled from the flight. She was careful not to glance up as they passed beneath the blank gaze of the marble bust where the Maas-Neotek unit might still be hidden, though with Swain and Petal in the room she could think of no way to retrieve it.

There was a new sense of movement in the house, brisk and muted: voices, footsteps, the rattle of the lift, the chattering of pipes as someone drew a bath.

She sat at the foot of the huge bed, staring at the black marble tub. Residual images of New York seemed to hover at the borders of her vision; if she closed her eyes, she found herself back in the alley, squatting beside Sally. Sally, who'd sent her away. Who hadn't looked back. Sally, whose name had once been Molly, or Misty, or both. Again, her unworthiness. Sumida, her mother adrift in black water. Her father. Sally.

Moments later, driven by a curiosity that pushed aside her shame, she rose from where she lay, brushed her hair, zipped her feet into thin black rubber toe-socks with ridged plastic soles, and went very quietly out into the corridor. When the lift arrived, it stank of cigarette smoke.

Red-face was pacing the blue-carpeted foyer when she emerged from the lift, his hands in the pockets of his tight black jacket. " 'Ere," he said, raising his eyebrows, "you need something?"

"I'm hungry," she said, in Japanese. "I'm going to the kitchen."

" 'Ere," he said, removing his hands from his pockets and straightening the front of his jacket, "you speak English?"

"No," she said, and walked straight past him down the corridor and around the corner. " 'Ere," she heard him say, rather more urgently, but she was already groping behind the white bust.

She managed to slip the unit into her pocket as he rounded the corner. He surveyed the room automatically, hands held loosely at his sides, in a way that suddenly reminded her of her father's secretaries.

"I'm hungry," she said, in English.

Five minutes later, she'd returned to her room with a large and very British-looking orange; the English seemed to place no special value on the symmetry of fruit. Closing the door behind her, she put the orange on the wide flat rim of the black tub and took the Maas-Neotek unit from her pocket.

"Quickly now," Colin said, tossing his forelock as he came into focus, "open it and reset the A/B throw to A. The new regime has a technician making the rounds, scanning for bugs. Once you've changed that setting, it shouldn't read as a listening device." She did as he said, using a hairpin.

"What do you mean," she asked, mouthing the words without voicing them, "'the new regime'?"

"Haven't you noticed? There are at least a dozen staff now, not to mention numerous visitors. Well, I suppose it's less a new regime than an upgrading of procedure. Your Mr. Swain is quite a social man, in his covert way. You've one conversation there, Swain and the deputy head of Special Branch, that I imagine numerous people would kill for, not least of them the aforementioned official."

"Special Branch?"

"The secret police. Bloody odd company he keeps, Swain: Buck House types, czars from the East End rookeries, senior police officers ... "

"Buck House?"

"The Palace. Not to mention merchant bankers from the City, a simstim star, a drove or two of expensive panders and drug merchants ... "

"A simstim star?"

"Lanier, Robin Lanier."

"Robin Lanier? He was here?"

"Morning after your precipitous departure."

She looked into Colin's transparent green eyes. "Are you telling me the truth?"

"Yes."

"Do you always?"

"To the extent that I know it, yes."

"What are you?"

"A Maas-Neotek biochip personality-base programmed to aid and advise the Japanese visitor in the United Kingdom." He winked at her.

"Why did you wink?"

"Why d'you think?"

"Answer the question!" Her voice loud in the mirrored room.

The ghost touched his lips with a slim forefinger. "I'm something else as well, yes. I do display a bit too much initiative for a mere guide program. Though the model I'm based on is top of the line, extremely sophisticated. I can't tell you exactly what I am, though, because I don't know."

"You don't know?" Again subvocally, carefully.

"I know all sorts of things," he said, and went to one of the dormer windows. "I know that a serving table in Middle Temple Hall is said to be made from the timbers of the Golden Hind; that you climb one hundred and twenty-eight steps to the walkways of Tower Bridge; that in Wood Street, right of Cheapside, is a plane tree thought to have been the one in which Wordsworth's thrush sang loud ... " He spun suddenly to face her. "It isn't, though, because the current tree was cloned from the original in 1998. I know all that, you see, and more, a very great deal more. I could, for instance, teach you the rudiments of snooker. That is what I am, or rather what I was intended to be, originally. But I'm something else as well, and very likely something to do with you. I don't know what. I really don't."

"You were a gift from my father. Do you communicate with him?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"You didn't inform him of my departure?"

"You don't understand," he said. "I wasn't aware of your having been away, until you activated me a moment ago."

"But you've been recording ... "

"Yes, but not aware of it. I'm only 'here' when you activate me. Then I evaluate the current data ... One thing you can be fairly certain of, though, is that it simply isn't possible to broadcast any sort of signal from this house without Swain's snoops detecting it immediately."

"Could there be more of you, I mean another one, in the same unit?"

"Interesting idea, but no, barring some harrowing secret breakthrough in technology. I'm pushing the current envelope a bit as it is, considering the size of my hardware. I know that from my store of general background information."

She looked down at the unit in her hand. "Lanier," she said. "Tell me."

"Ten/twenty-five/sixteen: A.M.," he said. Her head filled with disembodied voices ...

PETAL: If you'll follow me please, sir ...

SWAIN: Come into the billiard room.

THIRD VOICE: You'd better have a reason for this, Swain. There are three Net men waiting in the car. Security will have your address in their database until hell freezes over.

PETAL: Lovely car that is, sir, the Daimler. Take your coat?

THIRD VOICE: What is it, Swain? Why couldn't we meet at Brown's?

SWAIN: Take your coat off, Robin. She's gone.

THIRD VOICE: Gone?

SWAIN: To the Sprawl. Early this morning.

THIRD VOICE: But it isn't time ...

SWAIN: You think I sent her there?

The man's reply was hollow, indistinct, lost behind a closing door. "That was Lanier?" Kumiko asked silently.

"Yes," Colin replied. "Petal mentioned him by name in an earlier conversation. Swain and Lanier spent twenty-five minutes together."

Sound of a latch, movement.

SWAIN: Bloody cock-up, not mine. I warned you about her, told you to warn them. Born killer, probably psychopathic ...

LANIER: And your problem, not mine. You need their product and my cooperation.

SWAIN: And what's your problem, Lanier? Why are you in this? Just to get Mitchell out of the way?

LANIER: Where's my coat?

SWAIN: Petal, Mr. Lanier's bloody coat.

PETAL: Sir.

LANIER: I have the impression they want your razorgirl as badly as they want Angie. She's definitely part of the payoff. They'll be taking her, too.

SWAIN: Good luck to them, then. She's already in position, in the Sprawl. Spoke with her on the phone an hour ago. I'll be putting her together with my man over there, the one who's been arranging for the ... girl. And you'll be going back over yourself?