'Sabotage?' said Cormac, as those nailhead eyes locked on him.

'It seems likely. You're aware of runcible safety parameters?'

Cormac nodded, then asked, 'Are we talking mega-death here?'

'No, the Samarkand runcible was upside and located on a cold world.'

'What sort of figures?'

'There were ten thousand nine hundred and five people on Samarkand, including AIs. The few Golem androids there would have been close to the explosion, and would almost certainly have been destroyed along with the runcible AI. As for the rest… the world was being terraformed by bleed-off from the runcible buffers. It will almost have returned to its original state by the time you get there.'

Cormac nodded and absorbed that information. There might be survivors. There might. 'Did Samarkand serve a colonized world?'

'Not really. The nearest colonized world is the planet Minostra: twelve light-years away, with its own planet-based runcible. Samarkand is a way-station world for the influx to the centre of the Polity. We were lucky in that, if in little else.'

'My mission?'

'One of investigation. You'll travel from Minostra on a starship that has the unfortunate name Hubris. It's going there to set up a stage-one runcible to bring the rest of the runcibles through, and to search for survivors, though it's unlikely there'll be any. We have to know what happened there. I don't have to tell you how important this is.'

'I know. If someone has found a way to sabotage runcibles… Could it be Separatists?'

'There's that possibility.'

Cormac leant back in his seat, sipped at his Scotch, but found he had finished it. Blegg took his glass.

'No, I…'

'Ian Cormac, it is time you learnt what it is to be human again.'

Blegg went to the bar and Cormac turned to watch him. The seadapt barman served him immediately, even though there was a crowd waiting. Blegg said something to him and the barman laughed, the gill slits on each side of his neck opening and closing as he did so. Blegg shortly returned with two fresh drinks. Cormac took his and stared into it doubtfully.

'It's said you do not have internal augmentation -that you link with AIs in some other manner,' he said, without looking up.

Horace Blegg chuckled. 'A lot is said about me, but don't concern yourself. Your primary concern is this mission. For its duration you'll be without direct information access.'

Cormac felt something lurch inside him. It was a confirmation of something he had been expecting, something that was overdue, yet it was something he could not visualize at this moment.

'Why… surely there will be a transmitter on the ship?' he said, perhaps trying to delay the inevitable.

Blegg shook his head. 'In the service of Earth and the Human Polity you have been gridlinked for thirty years now. Studies show that nearer twenty years is the safe limit psychologically. Your ability to comprehend the spectrum of human emotion has been impaired, and it is imperative that it should not be. Without it, your usefulness becomes… less.'

'I am becoming dehumanized, is that what you're telling me?'

'Your recent mission has shown this.'

Cormac considered his complete misjudgement of the situation with Angelina. He reached almost instinctively for access. It flooded through the wiring in his skull, with all its reassuring excess of information.

'I see,' he said, suddenly feeling more confident. 'But by taking away my information access, do you not impair my efficiency another way?'

'It's our opinion we're removing an impairment.'

'Wouldn't someone else be better?'

Blegg smiled. 'You're just right for this mission.'

Cormac sat back in his seat and studied the man. It was said he was immortal, a telepath, and that he could wear any guise. Cormac was completely aware that he was being manipulated, but how he just could not see. He reckoned that when he did find out, the surprise would be a nasty one. That was how it usually went. He closed his eyes and tried to bring some stillness to himself, before asking his next question.

'Sleep,' said Blegg, almost as if reading his mind. 'These shuttles run slowly for our purposes, but at least there will be time for you to rest, and to consider.'

Who the hell are you telling to sleep?

He managed to ask that one question before blackness came down on him like a falling wall.

The Meercat was too heavy for the AG units it was carrying, but that made for an exhilarating ride. The catamaran smacked wave-tops and left a scudding machine-gun wake as the shuttle turbine mounted between the hulls got it up to speed. The cabin, mounted just above and ahead of this ancient engine, was an elongated ellipse secured by struts made of the same carbon fibre as the hulls and the rest of the structure. The bottom half of it was opaque and the top half a dome of welded-together panes of chainglass. Overall the vessel was the same dull grey as the waves it sped over, a deliberate effect created by the photoactive paint smeared thickly on every surface. It was a cheaper alternative to chameleonware, and the choice of many who did not want their activities scrutinized.

Inside the cabin there was a distinctly unpleasant atmosphere. Arian Pelter was a both depressing and threatening presence seated in one of the acceleration chairs. Captain Veltz would have rather not taken on this job, but he knew what happened to people who refused the likes of the Separatist leader. He had often enough found their remains inside the dark otters he caught.

'This should be the area,' he said with a glance at Geneve. He hoped to Christ she'd keep her mouth shut now. She'd already pissed Pelter off by asking too much about the source of the transponder signal and he now looked ready to kill.

'I still have no signal,' Pelter said through gritted teeth.

Veltz shut down the throttle, then eased off the AG -no point in wasting power. It would be a waiting game for a little while yet. He turned and looked at Pelter, trying again not to show any reaction to what he was seeing.

A square-section pipe protruded from Pelter's left eye, curved round back on itself to lie along the side of his head, above his ear, where it connected to an ugly grey aug, anchored behind the ear itself. Around that eye the skin was pink and new and obviously a graft. His eyelids were sealed round the pipe

'As I said, 'said Veltz, after clearing his throat, 'those egg-bearers go deep, and can stay down for half a day or more. We just have to wait. You won't get the transponder signal at that depth, and even if you did we wouldn't be able to do anything about it.'

Pelter looked at him with his remaining violet eye. Veltz wondered just what sort of mill he had been put through. Pelter was scarcely the kind to get into anything dangerous without a train of his thugs to back him up. Maybe there was a power struggle going on amongst the Separatists. Maybe Veltz was making a bad move here by helping Pelter out. It had just seemed a good idea not to refuse at the time.