There’d been a voice coach in Des Moines, but he was dead now. Come to that, so was the MGM coder who’d constructed the vActor. The guards who’d held him in lock-down at Rikers were also gone, those who’d survived the riot. Doing the Lord’s work was sometimes a bloody and frightening business, but then, even the simplest reading of the Old Testament told you that.

Brother Michael couldn’t say he liked the new girl. There was a darkness behind her violet eyes and she held her body awkwardly, as if she was unhappy with who she was. The way she hunched forward suggested her changing body made her uncomfortable, and not just physically. And as for that hand she kept folded across her stomach... There was a violence about her too, an ungodliness.

All in all, decided Brother Michael, she’d be difficult to integrate with the other handmaidens. Which left him with two choices: to drop her quietly into space, or return her to a sender who might or might not be pleased to get her back.

The bracelet was real enough, though. The five-clawed celestial dragon circling a poppy mon had been on the battle flags of the General’s army. And now the bracelet circled Brother Michael’s wrist, dark and ancient. It was too big, too heavy and it hit against the keyboard when Brother Michael tried to key in instructions, but he was still reluctant to take it off.

He would have to, though, and sooner than he wanted. Sister Aaron had woken up from one of her periodic beauty-enhancing naps in cryo and found out about the bracelet from The Arc’s AI. Now she wanted it for herself. He’d give it to Sister Aaron, too. At a price... And the price would be her. It always was.

Brother Michael pulled the heavy silver circle off his wrist and put it by the keyboard. He might be tired, but he was never too tired to take what Sister Aaron only ever offered reluctantly. All the same, he made a mental note to swallow L’Argenine, sildenafil citrate and yohimbe before taking Sister Aaron the silver bracelet.

On Brother Michael’s screen was a grab of Anchee Que’s father, dressed in khaki uniform and staring hard at the cameraman, an Ishie probably. No one else would be insane enough to go after General Que. Brother Michael stared at the man’s face but there was nothing there to indicate anything but fury at being caught on camera. Still, contacting him had to be worth a try.

Brother Michael would keep the mutant boy, though. It hadn’t escaped Brother Michael’s notice how well Lars handled the animals and how much better natured Rachel was when the boy was around. Rachel and a sandrat... Sweet Jesus, it hurt just to imagine what their offspring would look like. So much so, it was almost worth breeding them to find out.

In the end, Brother Michael cancelled his vActor and sent the message as ASCII text, pure and simple, tagging on a videograb of himself as a file attachment. He didn’t bother to crypt the message, since there was no need to disguise where it came from. And he didn’t bother to make himself less attractive. Let the old bastard realize the temptations his precious daughter faced. From what Brother Michael had heard about the grand Shanghai families he’d feel obliged to have her returned, even if he then stripped the skin off her back with a whip.

Brother Michael would have liked to have kept the girl himself. But she was too big, too dangerous a prize even for him. This way was better.

Besides, it wasn’t a kidnapping and Brother Michael wasn’t demanding a ransom for her return, merely suggesting a donation to the Brotherhood might be in order for the trouble they’d taken to ensure the girl’s well-being.

It didn’t reach the desk of Anchee’s father, not at first and not for a while. Nothing did without first being filtered. And the semiTuring that plucked Brother Michael’s message from the in-basket would tie up its not-too-sophisticated MS OfficeSoft neural net for half a day, trying to balance the contents of Brother Michael’s message against St Lucius’s weekly update that reported Anchee happy and healthy. At the end of twelve hours it passed the problem up one Turing level to Mencius, the General’s house AI, and promptly forgot about the problem. The AI put out an all-points call for the General’s pet ballerina and then promptly did the same.

Jude stank of dried sweat. Mind you, Fixx probably smelt too, the erstwhile media star reminded himself. Ghost certainly did, of God knew what but Fixx could smell the kitten from where he stood at a half-shuttered window, staring intently through its gap into the narrow dusty street beyond. On the house opposite a fat iridescent gecko was glued to the whitewashed wall, half in daylight, half hidden in shade. Every so often the lizard leant forward and tongue-whipped a fly stupid enough to get too close.

The kitten wanted the gecko: it just couldn’t work out how to spring the trap.

“Handy for every occasion,” announced the box as Fixx grabbed another tissue. He tossed box and tissue into the bin. It had been two days since he’d last had a pressure shower and body wipes just didn’t do the job, whatever they told you. What Fixx really wanted to do was clean himself off, but he didn’t want to ask in case Jude couldn’t spare the water.

Fixx smiled and stretched lazily. It was amazing what sex could do to improve a situation. He’d come into the CasaNegro prepared to nanchuk it up, if that’s what it took to get the information he needed. Now he didn’t even want to waste the woman’s water. Not without paying, anyway.

“Hey,” said Fixx, turning back from the window to stare at Jude. “You got a water shower that works?”

Jude rolled over and smiled, half happy, half mocking. “Oh sweet honey. You t’k you finished...?”

Fixx grinned and moved back to the wooden bed, hand reaching for a full breast, resting metal fingers softly on its dark nipple, feeling it swell and grow taut. Electric sensors beneath his organic polymer skin relayed sensations of softness back to his brain.

He rolled on top of her, and then laughed as she rolled on top of him. Her full breasts felt good to Fixx so he kept on caressing them and playing with her nipples, and then he did it some more.

“Hey,” Jude said sulkily, “You going t’roll that between your fingers all day?” She took Fixx’s wrist and moved his hand down her body until he could reach between her legs. She was big. Not fat, just big. Nipples thick as thumbs, heavy breasts that one hand alone had no hope of cupping. Strong arms and heavy fists that looked like they could crack heads the way other people opened eggs.

Her thighs and legs he knew all about. When they’d reached round him earlier it had been like being gripped by steel.

“Geneered,” said Jude as she watched him examine her body. “Class geneering and a good full-gravity gym.”

Fixx nodded, looking up at her. Since he’d done aTetsuo, he’d got so used to dwarfing his partners that it felt good to be fucking someone his own size, like he didn’t have to hold back. Fixx slid his hand out from beneath Jude’s legs and reached for a can of Electric Soup.

Jude laughed. But then she’d laughed back at the beginning when Fixx had pulled a can out of her fridge and began to check its label. And she’d laughed again when he had loaded twenty neon-hued tubes into a crate and lugged it to her bedroom at the back of the bar.

She’d listed the ingredients for Fixx. Not that he’d believed her, at least not to start with. He did now, though. One look at the luminous edges to her velvet breasts told Fixx that it wasn’t just ethanol wreaking havoc with his synapses. And the problem was, stripped naked she looked like some vast Greek statue while he looked like some bit-part Tetsuo. Two false legs and one false arm grafted onto a body minced to gristle by a car bomb. Which all seemed cool with Jude, but didn’t change the fact the Fixx had started to hate his own reflection.