“No,” said Fixx. “No idea.”

The AI said nothing. Just made its avatar scowl some more. Which didn’t improve Fixx’s temper any. The only problem was he needed LISA and he wasn’t good with needing people. In fact, he had a nasty habit of cutting the ground from under them before they could chop the legs out from under him. It wasn’t sensible but it was instinct. Apologizing wasn’t, but he made himself try anyway.

“Look,” said Fixx, taking a deep breath. “I screwed up, okay? LizAlec’s camped out on that fucking Arc, I’m hooked up with some ninja, I haven’t a fucking idea what the fuck’s going on here and as for at home...” Fixx sighed: as apologies went it wasn’t much, but it was better than he usually managed.

“Home?” the woman in brown asked and then winked out, leaving a vague after-image behind his eyes, all edges and black space. In her place Fixx got a voice, LISA’s, sounding almost sympathetic. “You mean Paris?”

Fixx nodded. Yeah, that was exactly what he meant. That first month when he’d landed from Chrysler he’d loathed the city and its arrogant, anal residents, its spindly trees and dead Sundays.

Now the thought of the Reich and the Black Hundreds ripping through the narrow streets of the Marais, the old Jewish district, ate Fixx up inside, until his misery felt like a snake sliding through his intestines.

“I don’t know,” said LISA, “not exactly. It’s hard to tell.” Both of them knew just what an admission that was for her. Knowledge didn’t just want to be free, it wanted to be known — scrambling its way through optic lines of information, spewing out in satellite sprays of information — and knowing it was what LISA was there for.

Oh, the optic fibre was still in place, satellites still hung in low orbit, modems must still be gurgling to themselves somewhere, even if only in Alaska, but many of the links were gone, broken. Iron was such a basic element not even LISA had thought what might happen if someone took it away.

For most of Europe there was no power. A horse was now worth more than the newest Seraphim four-track, a simple zydel blade worth more than any steel-barrelled Colt. The rains had come and so had the Reich. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time. LizAlec was alive and probably safer where she was than in Paris. He, however... “I need to get back,” Fixx told LISA firmly. “Lady Clare’s had her pound of flesh. I need to get back now...”

“Flights to Europe are banned,” the AI replied from habit. “And even if they weren’t, not even Niponshi would hire you a shuttle so you could turn it to worthless oxide. Besides, you’re not really finished yet, are you...?”

The voice in his head was soft, sympathetic. So sympathetic that Fixx was immediately suspicious. As he was right to be. Into his head came an image of LizAlec, looking brave but crying, tears leaving track marks down her cheeks as she chewed at one corner of her bottom lip.

This was a picture Fixx hadn’t seen. He strongly suspected it was a Kodak from the Arrivals Hall, one she hadn’t sent. LizAlec would have hated it: brave but tired and tearful wasn’t how LizAlec thought of herself at all.

“How did you...” Fixx started to ask, and then realized how stupid he sounded. LISA controlled all of Luna’s electronic data exchange. And what was a Kodak moment, if not data?

“Someone’s busy trawling, started yesterday,” said LISA. “Another AI. It has a picture — two girls, a head shot — and it’s trying to match both girls against data from the Arrivals Hall. A subroutine woke me up when it eventually spotted what was happening...” LISA sounded cross but mildly impressed, which meant whoever it was must be very good indeed. Mind you, she had a whole other problem with Arrivals Hall data supposedly going missing but she wasn’t about to go into that with Fixx.

“And you’re not the only one who’s come out here after that girl,” LISA added.

“Two clones,” Fixx said.

“Two...”

“One now,” said Fixx, cutting LISA off before she could get started. “One got killed at a bar out in Fracture.” Fixx thought of Jude and smiled. “Give you good odds that one’s already been recycled. Last time I saw the other it was folded double, taped up and dumped in a left luggage depot at Planetside Departures. Probably pissed itself by now...”

“Cut its throat and then get out of here,” said LISA. “Go get LizAlec and do it now, before the LDPD work out your sweet little butt hasn’t been murdered.”

“I can’t just kill someone in cold blood,” Fixx said, sounding offended.

LISA sighed heavily. Okay, so Fixx knew that sometime, way back when, an IBM coder had fed in two dozen human sighs and an emotional equation that allowed LISA to vary their use. But the sigh seemed real enough to him, probably because it sounded the way his old manager Bernie used to, every time Fixx announced that actually, no, he really wasn’t quite ready to do this leg of the tour... But it wasn’t Fixx she was sighing about, not really.

“You know what we’ve had in here in the last week or so, apart from you?”

Of course he didn’t.

“Two clones aboard a shielded cargo carrier and before that a fourth-generation Xan fighter that vanished off the screen almost before it came in range.” So Shiori could pilot her own plane... Fixx nodded. He should have wondered how she was getting to Planetside.

“Fifty-eight years without a single black landing and then I suddenly get three of the fuckers, including you...” LISA sounded almost aggrieved. “And you always were a shitload of trouble.”

“But you love me anyway,” said Fixx. LISA didn’t even bother to answer that one, which was probably just as well. “Look,” Fixx added hurriedly, “it stands to reason. Put up a blockade and someone’s bound to run it. That’s inevitable...”

“Yeah,” said LISA, “but when the Xan belongs to China’s most powerful industrialist and the two clones travel on cartes issued to the Napoleonic corps noblique. Then you’ve...”

“The clones had cartes?” Fixx exclaimed, then bit back his words when one of the girls turned to stare at him. Clones were illegal on Planetside, and as for cartes... People with cartes didn’t holiday at LunaWorld, not even as refugees. They flew out to Elysian in private shuttles.

“Cartes Nobliques? Fixx took care to speak softly, letting his throat mike pick up the startled question. He was shocked, really shocked, the kick-in-the-guts kind. That Lady Clare should mistrust him made sense — he sure as hell didn’t trust her — but that the bitch should sick clones on him...

But then maybe it wasn’t Lady Clare. Fixx drummed his nails on the edge of the cheap plastic deck and thought about it. “You know who sent the clones?” he asked finally. There was silence as LISA vanished, leaving a low hiss like wind in his ears and behind his eyes the pop and crackle of neural feedback. Fixx surfaced to take a quick peek at himself in a nearby screen and went back inside his head. It was less depressing.

The silence stretched out until Fixx thought LISA was gone entirely and then she was back. “They came in ready-cleared. Apparently I didn’t register the fact because I already knew.” She sounded irritated, even troubled, not that Fixx had time to notice. He was too busy fretting, unable to shake the feeling he’d been set up; that maybe he had never been meant to find LizAlec in the first place, that maybe he was the distraction, Lady Clare’s sleight of hand... Either that, or he was just some sad fuck on the wrong side of crystalMeth comedown.

“Was it Lady Clare?” Fixx demanded.

“I don’t know,” said LISA apologetically. “There’s no record of their landing, only echoes. Though given time I could collect the echoes, reconstruct the code sequences.”

“Then do it,” Fixx suggested crossly.

Inside his head, LISA shook hers. “Not even for you, gorgeous. It’s too dangerous.”