Don’t worry, you’ll live if you do just exactly what I tell you. Also, you don’t really have much choice in the matter: you cannot remove Muse, so they will find you. And if you don’t follow instructions, they’ll take you away and peel your skull until there’s nothing left.

Outside in the blazing afternoon of the street Polly shaded her eyes and, once a gap appeared in the stream of hydrocars, headed across the road to the bar. The place had a reputation for being a bit retro, hence the sinister look of many of the alfresco patrons in their mirror shades and wrap-arounds. Finding a plastic chair that had been tucked under one of the outside tables, and so was not scalding to sit on, she took up a position with her back near the plate-glass window, where others gave her some cover and from where she had a view of the street. As soon as she sat down the table surface displayed a turning array of beer bottles and spirits. She tapped a bottle of Stella passing under her hand, then hit the edge of the display to turn it off. The table’s appearance returned to its customary granite finish.

The waitress who came out with her beer eyed her dubiously. ‘You know we don’t allow…’ began the girl, embarrassed.

‘It’s OK,’ said Polly, dropping a five euro on her tray. ‘I’m only here for the beer.’

The first swallow was rapture in that dusty heat. The breeze that suddenly began blowing was really nice as well. Polly tilted her head back to enjoy it and only then heard the low thrumming that accompanied it.

‘Willya lookit that!’ exclaimed the man at the table next to hers—the man who had been conspicuously not ogling her, since he was sitting opposite his wife or partner. A shadow drew across them and Polly opened her eyes to observe one of the new Ford Macrojets sliding across the sky above, its four turbines uncannily like eyes staring down into the street. The vehicle hovered for a while, then shot away to spiral down to the infrequently used connection platform up the hill and just off the High Street. It was predicted that in another ten years most traffic would have taken to the sky. This did not concern Polly as she had never accumulated enough money to afford even an electric scooter.

‘There it is again!’ said the man ten minutes later. ‘Just like Bluebird.’

Polly didn’t know what that meant but, as she observed the huge vehicle turning down from the High Street, even she was impressed. Such transport spoke of wealth she was sure she herself would never own. When it drew up in front of the bar, her instinct was to try and get herself into the car and hopefully get some taste of the riches it represented. But when she saw the four men who climbed out of it, she just wanted to run.

They were U-gov meat. Just like Nandru had said: they were straight out of the Agency in Brussels. They wore their grey suits and blue EU ties like a uniform, and what need had they of mirror shades when their eyes were mirrored? One of them, a blond-haired Adonis with an utterly blank expression, looked at the device in his hand, held it up for a moment, then abruptly pocketed it and walked over to Polly’s table. But for hair colour, the one who followed him was in appearance indistinguishable, as were the two standing by the car. Illegal net-sheets had men like this down as the product of some strange eugenics project involving cloning and augmentation. Of course all the official news organizations decried that as hysterical rubbish, but then they had to if they wanted to stay in business.

Already other drinkers in the bar were finding their reasons to be elsewhere. The couple at the next table gulped their drinks and quickly grabbed their shopping. The blond man sat down opposite Polly. He blinked the mirroring from his eyes to expose calm grey. With an almost apologetic smile he reached inside his jacket and removed a short, ugly, seeker gun. Pointing it at her he flipped up the frame sight and clicked a button on the side of the weapon, before putting it down on the table. Polly observed the flashing LED, and she had played in enough interactives to know the gun had acquired her.

Interdiction online. Tech-com unavailable, Muse informed her, leaving her none the wiser.

Ah, I see our friends have arrived, said Nandru.

See? thought Polly.

‘Where did you get that Muse?’ said the heavy sitting opposite, at last.

Polly glanced around. All the other outside tables were now unoccupied. The waitress stepped out, then quickly ducked back inside when she saw her new customers. There were still people inside the bar, standing well back from the window and observing the scene. No help there. The only possible rescue in a situation like this would be to have a few hundred thousand to slip to a eurocrat, and even then…

‘It was given to me by a Task Force soldier called Nandru Jurgens,’ she said.

The man nodded slowly then said, ‘And you’re linked to him now, I take it?’

Polly nodded.

‘Ask him how much,’ said the man.

Polly tilted her head as she listened to what Nandru told her. Her mouth went dry and it took her a moment to get enough spit to repeat his message, ‘Fifty million wired direct to Usbank account PX two hundred and three, two hundred and seven, forty. He also wants to know your name.’

The man now tilted his head for a moment, and Polly had no doubt that he was listening to voices inside it much like her own, for there was a small grey pill of an ear stud in his left lobe, and she doubted it was there for decoration.

‘My name is Tack,’ he said eventually. ‘He must understand that the transfer cannot be authorized until I have possession of the item.’

‘I’m to take you to it,’ said Polly.

Tack showed no change of expression and Polly thought: I’m going to die.

‘I find that unlikely,’ said Tack. ‘What is to stop us taking the item once we have it in sight?’

‘He says you’ll see when you see.’

Tack picked up his gun, rose, and gestured with it to the Macrojet. Polly tried to seem casual by finishing off her beer, but it was warm now and she had difficulty in swallowing. She stood up and moved ahead of the blond man towards the car. Climbing inside, she found herself trapped between walls of identical muscle. The one called Tack sat in the front passenger seat, while the driver wound up the turbines to a howl and took the car into the sky. Polly doubted the traffic police would be hitting on this vehicle. Questions of legality with people like these remained that: questions only.

The probe, Carloon thought, resembled a barbed arrowhead he had once seen in a museum, but one from an immense arrow. Mounted on the launch platform that hung geostationary above equatorial Africa, it now stood separate from the gantries and maintenance pylons, supported only by the fuelling towers that were pumping in the deuterium oxide used in its initial fusion burn, and personnel were leaving the platform in stratocars and supply ships. Suited against vacuum, Carloon floated high above the platform on a line attached to a control tower on the first giant displacement ring. He wanted to see this as directly as possible and there was nothing more to do inside the tower now. The launch would either be successful or not. The ‘not’ case was the reason his personnel were leaving the platform. He looked up to where he could just see the second ring a thousand kilometres out from Earth.

‘If we could use time travel, we could get the probe back before it went,’ Maxell observed laconically over com.

Carloon glanced across to the second figure floating a few metres away from him. That she had come to see this showed the importance of the project to the Heliothane Dominion.

‘But we can’t,’ was all he replied.

‘Explain to me the reason for that,’ Maxell instructed.