In minutes they came to a broken-down chainlink fence. In the pig-apple trees beyond this, blade beetles were rattling their razor wing-cases. The sound made Stanton's arm itch even more than it already did. At least the wasps were somnolent at night.

'If one of them hits you, be very certain you do not yell out,' Pelter said.

Stanton remembered the last time such a beetle had hit him in me face. He had required the services of a cell-welder then, too. He folded up his collar as high as he could and ducked his head into it. These insects could kill people, not deliberately, but with the accidental brush of a wing across a vein when medical help was far away. In some areas a kind of armour had to be worn for fruit picking.

'How far is it?' he asked. It seemed to him that they must be getting a bit too close to the residence and the flashing lights. Knowing the beetles liked light, he hoped the cops were having a bad time of it.

'No further,' muttered Pelter, and pointed ahead.

A few metres ahead of them stood the statue of a bearded gentleman clad in impact armour and holding some weapon horizontally across his stomach.

'My grandfather. He served in the Prador war,' he explained.

'Here?' asked Stanton.

'Earth, I think. He left here a century ago.'

So saying, Pelter turned back towards the statue and pressed one hand to the side of his head. It was obvious that he was new to using augs and internal control mechanisms. Stanton shook his head and thought he might tell him about it - sometime.

Somewhere an engine started, and with a low grating noise the statue slid to one side. Exposed now was a square entrance and steps leading down. Pelter gestured and Stanton followed him below. It was dark, even for enhanced vision, especially when the statue slid back into place. Once it had stopped sliding, a greenish light flickered on. They were in what appeared to be a small wine cellar bounded by three walls racked with wine bottles and one wall of stone inset with an armoured door.

'I didn't answer your question about getting him to come out to us,' said Pelter.

'Are you going to answer it now?' Stanton asked.

'Yes.' Pelter walked to one wall of wine bottles. He studied it for a moment, then stepped aside as a vertical section, four bottles wide, slid out. In a moment a set of shelves was revealed. From one shelf he removed two slim square cases. He ignored the various weapons and makings of explosive devices that occupied the other shelves, and held up just the pair of cases.

'We had to come here for our new identities,' he explained.

He lowered the cases and nodded towards the armoured door. This action initiated four loud thumps as locks disengaged. The door opened silently. Stanton thought it would be more appropriate for the door to creak.

'Even Crane would have a problem wiui that door,' Pelter commented.

Stanton looked inside the room beyond and wondered just how true that statement was.

They called him Crane because he was so very tall. They called him Mr Crane because he was so very prone to dismembering people. However, even politeness did not work. Mr Crane would kill people as ordered by the holder of his control module, though occasionally he killed people for reasons that were inscrutably his own. John Stanton stared at him and felt the urge to just turn and go. Mr Crane was two and a half metres tall, so appeared slightly ridiculous sitting in a normal-sized camp chair. He was also utterly still. Over his attenuated frame he wore a coat that stretched right down to his much-patched, beloved lace-up boots. A hat wiui a wide droopy brim hid his features. Stanton noticed there was mould on the brim of that hat, just as there was on Mr Crane's overcoat. Not surprising, as it was damp down here.

'How long's he been here?' he whispered.

'Two years,' Pelter replied, and his hand moved up to the metal on the side of his head. This gesture now confirmed for Stanton the antecedents of the module Pelter had caused Sylac to implant in his skull.

'It was that hit out on the island, wasn't it? You sent him there to kill one man… and how many was it he killed in the end?' he asked.

Pelter said, 'Don't push it, John. You're a lot more dispensable than he is.'

Stanton bit off any more comments and just watched them. What were they saying to each other, he wondered. What did their little electrical conversation entail?

'Come on, Crane. Time to wake up,' Pelter said, aloud.

Mr Crane stood up in one abrupt movement. Stanton took in the black glitter of eyes now open below the brim of the hat. Crane's head turned toward Pelter, and he took one long pace forward. Pelter stepped back, his hand pressing harder against the side of his head, and an expression of intense concentration on his face. Crane did not move further; instead he reached up and removed his hat to expose a totally bald head, a thin-featured face and those completely black eyes. 'That's better,' said Pelter.

Stanton reflected how Crane's artificial skin looked just that: artificial. It had been previously suggested that his skin should be changed, but no one ever wanted to get that close. Stanton supposed the skin must serve the purpose of preventing blood getting into Mr Crane's workings. He made sure he kept well out of reach as Crane emerged from his prison. Pelter lowered his hand, then turned for the stairs. Crane walked just a pace behind him, taking dainty little steps to hold the same position. Stanton picked up the two cases, followed, and wished he were somewhere else.

Cormac glanced up through the transparent roof, then back at the mirrored containment sphere. It seemed that there was a hand closing tighter in his chest for every moment he went without linking in. Maybe he had made the wrong move? Maybe it would be better to have stayed linked and got out of ECS? Immediately upon thinking these questions, which since leaving the shuttle he had been asking himself with greater regularity, he felt an angry self-contempt.

ECS had been Cormac's life for so very long, and he truly believed in what he was doing. He looked ahead at the short queues before the various embarkation gates. There was an example of what he had been defending: those queues never became very long. There were no papers to be handed over, no passports, and no lengthy customs bureaucracy to bypass. Polity citizens travelled in absolute freedom from world to world. The only restriction was on proscribed weaponry, and even that did not prevent travel. If said weaponry was registered and deactivated, you could take it along with you. Even if you did not register it, you could still travel, only the weapon would be dust at your destination; disintegrated by the autoproscription device the runcibles had inbuilt. To travel distances once inconceivable, all you had to do was book your place and pay a fee, register your identity with the runcible AI when you arrived at the sphere, and walk on through. So bloody damned simple. These people here with their daft cosmetic alterations and pos- sibly brain-scrambling augs, they just had no idea, no idea at all.

Cormac stared down at his hands, unclenched them and flexed his fingers. OK - it was going to be OK.

I will remain calm.

He began walking again before people started to wonder why he was standing still in the middle of the embarkation lounge staring up at the sphere. All he needed now was some Samaritan to come up to him and tell him not to be frightened of it. He smiled tightly to himself as he walked along, then, before he reached the row of gates, he turned towards one of the wide and ornately cast synthestone pillars that ostensibly supported the chainglass roof. At one of the four consoles, in the base of the pillar, he halted and slapped his hand down on the reader. He blinked on a momentary flash of red as the reader scanned his retinal pattern.