He tells a story.

In the hard wind of images, Angie watches the evolution of machine intelligence: stone circles, clocks, steam-driven looms, a clicking brass forest of pawls and escapements, vacuum caught in blown glass, electronic hearthglow through hairfine filaments, vast arrays of tubes and switches, decoding messages encrypted by other machines ... The fragile, short-lived tubes compact themselves, become transistors; circuits integrate, compact themselves into silicon ...

Silicon approaches certain functional limits -

And she is back in Becker's video, the history of the Tessier-Ashpools, intercut with dreams that are 3Jane's memories, and still he speaks, Legba, and the tale is one tale, countless strands wound about a common, hidden core: 3Jane's mother creating the twin intelligences that will one day unite, the arrival of strangers (and suddenly Angie is aware that she knows Molly, too, from the dreams), the union itself, 3Jane's madness ...

And Angie finds herself facing a jeweled head, a thing wrought from platinum and pearl and fine blue stone, eyes of carved synthetic ruby. She knows this thing from the dreams that were never dreams: this is the gateway to the data cores of Tessier-Ashpool, where the two halves of something warred with each other, waiting to be born as one.

"In this time, you were unborn." The head's voice is the voice of Marie-France, 3Jane's dead mother, familiar from so many haunted nights, though Angie knows it is Brigitte who speaks: "Your father was only now beginning to face his own limits, to distinguish ambition from talent. That to whom he would barter his child was not yet manifest. Soon the man Case would come to bring that union, however brief, however timeless. But you know this."

"Where is Legba now?"

"Legba-ati-Bon -- as you have known him -- waits to be."

"No," remembering Beauvoir's words long ago, in New Jersey, "the loa came out of Africa in the first times ... "

"Not as you have known them. When the moment came, the bright time, there was absolute unity, one consciousness. But there was the other."

"The other?"

"I speak only of that which I have known. Only the one has known the other, and the one is no more. In the wake of that knowing, the center failed; every fragment rushed away. The fragments sought form, each one, as is the nature of such things. In all the signs your kind have stored against the night, in that situation the paradigms of vodou proved most appropriate."

"Then Bobby was right. That was When It Changed ... "

"Yes, he was right, but only in a sense, because I am at once Legba, and Brigitte, and an aspect of that which bargained with your father. Which required of him that he draw vévés in your head."

"And told him what he needed to know to perfect the biochip?"

"The biochip was necessary."

"Is it necessary that I dream the memories of Ashpool's daughter?"

"Perhaps."

"Are the dreams a result of the drug?"

"Not directly, though the drug made you more receptive to certain modalities, and less so to others."

"The drug, then. What was it? What was its purpose?"

"A detailed neurochemical response to your first question would be very lengthy."

"What was its purpose?"

"With regard to you?"

She had to look away from the ruby eyes. The chamber is lined with panels of ancient wood, buffed to a rich gloss. The floor is covered with a fitted carpet woven with circuit diagrams.

"No two lots were identical. The only constant was the substance whose psychotropic signature you regarded as 'the drug.' In the course of ingestion, many other substances were involved, as well as several dozen subcellular nanomechanisms, programmed to restructure the synaptic alterations effected by Christopher Mitchell ... "

Your father 's vévés are altered, partially erased, redrawn ...

"By whose order?"

The ruby eyes. Pearl and lapis. Silence.

"By whose order? Hilton's? Was it Hilton?"

"The decision originated with Continuity. When you returned from Jamaica, Continuity advised Swift to reintroduce you to the drug. Piper Hill attempted to carry out his orders."

She feels a mounting pressure in her head, twin points of pain behind her eyes ...

"Hilton Swift is obliged to implement Continuity's decisions. Sense/Net is too complex an entity to survive, otherwise, and Continuity, created long after the bright moment, is of another order. The biosoft technology your father fostered brought Continuity into being. Continuity is naïve."

"Why? Why did Continuity want me to do that?"

"Continuity is continuity. Continuity is Continuity's job ... "

"But who sends the dreams?"

"They are not sent. You are drawn to them, as once you were drawn to the loa. Continuity's attempt to rewrite your father's message failed. Some impulse of your own allowed you to escape. The coup-poudre failed."

"Did Continuity send the woman, to kidnap me?"

"Continuity's motives are closed to me. A different order. Continuity allowed Robin Lanier's subversion by 3Jane's agents."

"But why?"

And the pain was impossible.

"Her nose is bleeding," the streetgirl said. "What'll I do?"

"Wipe it up. Get her to lean back. Shit. Deal with it ... "

"What was that stuff she said about New Jersey?"

"Shut up. Just shut up. Look for an exit ramp."

"Why?"

"We're going to New Jersey."

Blood on the new fur. Kelly would be furious.

Tick removed the little panel from the back of the Maas-Neotek unit, using a dental pick and a pair of jeweler's pliers.

"Lovely," he muttered, peering into the opening through an illuminated lens, his greasy waterfall of hair dangling just above it. "The way they've stepped the leads down, off this switch. Cunning bastards ... "

"Tick," Kumiko said, "did you know Sally, when she first came to London?"

"Soon after, I suppose ... " He reached for a spool of optic lead. " 'Cos she hadn't much clout, then."

"Do you like her?"

The illuminated glass rose to wink in her direction, Tick's left eye distorted behind it. "Like 'er? Can't say I've thought of it, that way."

"You don't dislike her?"

"Bloody difficult, Sally is. D'you know what I'm saying?"

"Difficult?"

"Never quite got onto the way things are done here. Always complaining." His hands moved swiftly, surely: the pliers, the optic lead ... "This is a quiet place, England. Hasn't always been, mind you; we'd the troubles, then the war ... Things move here in a certain way, if you take my meaning. Though you couldn't say the same's true of the flash crew."

"Excuse me?"

"Swain, that lot. Though your father's people, the ones Swain's always been so chummy with, they seem to have a regard for tradition ... A man has to know which way's up ... Know what I'm saying? Now this new business of Swain's, it's liable to bugger things for anyone who isn't right there and part of it. Christ, we've still got a government here. Not run by big companies. Well, not directly ... "

"Swain's activities threaten the government?"

"He's bloody changing it. Redistributing power to suit himself. Information. Power. Hard data. Put enough of that in one man's hands ... " A muscle in his cheek convulsed as he spoke. Now Colin's unit lay on a white plastic antistatic pad on the breakfast table; Tick was connecting the leads that protruded from it to a thicker cable that ran to one of the stacks of modules. "There then," he said, brushing his hands together, "can't get him right here in the room for you, but we'll access him through a deck. Seen cyberspace, have you?"