'Visas are eight shillings per person. You will of course need three,' he said.

'Three? Why do we need a visa and a permit for Mr Crane?' Stanton asked.

'Just pay him,' said Pelter.

Stanton shook his head. It was the wrong thing to do. You gave people like this any leeway and they'd have you. Nevertheless he pulled out four ten shilling notes and handed them over. The man folded them and put them in his pocket.

'That's six shillings change,' said Stanton.

The man made no move to search for any change. 'I will need to look in the briefcase,' he said.

Abruptly Mr Crane stepped forwards and raised his head, which until then had been bowed. The man took an involuntary step back. He licked his lips. Stanton thought that, though Mr Crane's marbles were scattered far and wide, he did 'menacing' very well.

'You will not need to look in the briefcase, and we will not require change,' said Pelter.

The man was obviously riled by this. 'Just one word and I can have ten men here with proton guns,' he said.

Pelter's face went dead. 'I don't even have to speak. It would take a second for Mr Crane to rip you in half. Now get out of our way'

The man bridled and the woman slapped her hand on his arm.

'Jarl, leave it,' she said.

'But—'

'Jarl!'

The woman and Pelter were staring hard at each other again. Stanton wondered what the hell all that was about. She pulled at Jarl's arm and gestured to another ship that was landing over the other side of the field.

'Another one coming in,' she said, then glanced towards a gate in the far fence where some uniformed guards were lounging. To Pelter she said, 'There will be no trouble over there, Arian Pelter. They'll let you through.' She pulled at Jarl and they moved away.

'What the hell was that all about?' Stanton asked Pelter. Pelter's dead face had now taken on an expression of puzzlement. He looked at the retreating woman, then back towards the Lyric.

'How much would Jarvellis have told them here?' he asked.

'She wouldn't have said anything more than that she had some passengers. I know her, Arian, and she does stick to her word. I specifically asked her not to say anything, because if they'd run some sort of search on us they'd know to ask for bigger bribes.'

'How did that woman know my name then?'

Stanton was at a loss. He too looked towards the Lyric again.

Pelter continued. 'I was going to charter her for the trip back out of here. It's best to stay with those you know so long as they don't get too greedy.'

Stanton wondered what double meanings there were in that comment. He said, 'You want me to talk to her? She'll wait until we're well clear - ' he glanced meaning- fully at Mr Crane ' - before she'll come out, but I can guess where to find her.'

'Yes, do that.'

They started walking.

'But before you do that,' Pelter continued, 'see if you can find the boys.' He turned to Crane, and in response the android opened the briefcase, extracted a single sapphire, closed the case and held out the gem in the palm of his brass hand. 'This will be payment to them on account.' Pelter continued staring at Mr Crane, and then abruptly lost patience. 'Give it to him!' Mr Crane's hand jerked and the gem shot towards Stanton's face. He snatched it from the air.

'What will you do?' he asked, pocketing the gem.

'I will find a dealer.'

Stanton glanced at the position in the sky of the lemon sun, and then he pointed to the urban sprawl in the distance. Between the fence and the town was a wasteland scattered with adapted acacia trees and low silvery sages. Amongst these were the corroding parts of star-ships and the occasional ruined AGC. The town began with the low spread of three-storey arcology buildings. Beyond them were city blocks and onion-shaped spires as from some Scheherazade tale; but AGCs flew among them, rather than magic carpets. How much of a difference was there? Stanton wondered.

'There's a place called The Sharrow at the centre of Port Lock. I'm told it's still open, and little changed from when I was last here. Shall we meet there this evening?'

'Yes, I'll find it,' said Pelter.

Stanton left it at that and looked with puzzlement at the guards at the gate. They all just stared at Pelter and made no move to block them or extract bribes. Each of them also had one of those strange scaled augs. Beyond the gate three AGCs of dubious safety were parked in a row. Three drivers came over to make their pitch. Two of the drivers were lucky. The third just went back to his vehicle and waited; there would soon be someone else. Ships were landing here and taking off with increasing regularity.

Mennecken, Corlackis, Dusache and Svent were not so similar in appearance as they were in inclination. The four of them liked danger, liked violence, and liked money. They were not at the metrotel where they had said they would be. Stanton was totally unsurprised to find them at the arena. As he came from the entrance tunnel between the tiered seating areas, he looked down into the ring and saw that a match was about to commence. A huge man with boosted musculature, twin augs linked by a sensory band across his eyes and a ceramal skull exposed above his ears was up against a smaller man with bluish skin. The boosted man was armed with fist blades. The blue man had a long commando knife and a hook. They were circling, checking each other out. The four mercenaries were lounging in seats close to the ring itself - what were called the wet seats, for obvious reasons. Stanton made his way down to them.

'Bit uneven,' he said, sitting behind the four men. Casually, all four of them looked round at him. Mennecken and Corlackis were twins. Both of them looked neat in their businesswear suits, chrome augs and cropped black hair. The only distinguishing feature between them was that Mennecken was built like a weightlifter and Corlackis was slim. Neither of them was boosted. Boosting, they felt, led to overconfidence; it dulled their edge. Dusache had black curly hair, was boosted and tended to dress in leather and denim, but normally he went without an aug, though he had one now. Svent had a new aug too. The weaselly little killer liked every mechanical advantage he could get hold of and considered any kind of biological advantage a waste of time. He seemed small and weak, but Stanton knew this not to be the case. Svent had reinforced bones and cyber-motors at his joints. He was easily as capable of tearing your arm off as Dusache was, though he would be inclined to do it more slowly.

Dusache nodded to the opponents in the arena. 'Blake there wanted to make himself some money. He's made a mistake. The little guy is a Hooper from Spat-terjay. Easy to underestimate,' he said.

Stanton studied the litde man more closely now. He saw that the blue coloration was due to thousands of blue ring-shaped scars all over his body. He returned his attention to the mercenaries and pointed to Dusache and Svent.

'Those augs, what's the story?'

The two men simultaneously reached up and touched the scaly organic augs nestling behind their ears. Stanton thought there was something creepy about this twinned response.

'Good tech,' said Svent. 'You can access just about any server real fast, even get in a little on AI nets, damned near a gridlink, and these little dears ain't far off AI themselves. About a hundred New Yen, plus fitting. Made by Dragoncorp.'

'They look like biotech.'

'Nah,' said Svent. 'You should know me better than that. I wouldn't drop a Yen on that shit.'

'Speaking of Yen,' said Corlackis softly, and gazed at Stanton with tired patience. Stanton reached into his pocket and took out the sapphire. He tossed it to Corlackis. The mercenary's hand snapped up cobra fast and caught the gem. He studied it for a moment, then dropped it in his top pocket.