“Yeah,” said LizAlec, shrugging. “That’s Anchee. Except these days she’s got less teeth.”

The man suddenly looked interested. “So you really know her, she’s not just some name you grabbed from a rerun of My Fortune?”

LizAlec grinned, and if her hands hadn’t been cuffed to the front of the pulpit she’d have spread them, street-style. “Know Anchee? Hell, we’re sisters...”

It wasn’t what Brother Michael wanted to hear. He gripped LizAlec’s face, fingers pressing hard into her left cheek, his thumb hooked so hard into her right cheekbone LizAlec thought her jaw would break.

“I want the truth,” demanded Brother Michael.

“Really,” hissed LizAlec. “I thought you’d already settled for religion.” Brother Michael didn’t like that one either, but then he wasn’t meant to.

“You can tell me who you are,” said the preacher, “or I can toss you out of an airlock. Do you know what happens in a vacuum?” His voice was cold and his brown eyes were glass-hard, glittering.

Insane, LizAlec decided suddenly, straightening up. Everything made sense once you accepted the man was insane. “No,” LizAlec said coldly. “I don’t know. Why don’t you step into the airlock and show me?” She nodded at a heavy glass door. Behind it was a titanium grid, then a space, then another grid and then a steel door. Beyond that was nothing but vacuum and blackness.

Why it was there and just who Brother Michael expected to turn up and hear him preach LizAlec didn’t know: angels, probably. They looked at each other. LizAlec knew Brother Michael had the advantage. Pretty obvious, really, while she was chained to a pulpit like some... LizAlec finally remembered what being fastened there reminded her of — a vast painting in the Prince Imperial’s bedroom, a picture that showed a fat girl chained naked to a windswept rock, waiting to be rescued. Except there was no way LizAlec carried that amount of weight and as for waiting to be rescued, no chance. She was going to have to get out of this herself. There was no one else around to do it for her.

“Lars,” Brother Michael barked suddenly, stepping away from her. What about the little freak, LizAlec wondered and then realized the preacher was talking into his button mike.

“Bring me a goat.”

Somewhere out in a spar, Lars answered, and asked his own question.

“No,” the preacher said heavily, “I don’t mind which one. Yes, that’s fine, I’m sure Betty will do.” Brother Michael sighed and turned back to LizAlec. “That boy’s got the animal-empathy gene, you know. There were animals on the Moon, at first, but the tourists ate them.”

“Really? How interesting,” said LizAlec. “How really fascinating.”

They waited in cold silence and LizAlec had a good idea what they were waiting for, which didn’t improve her temper one little bit. Though what Brother Michael didn’t appear to have realized was that the slack-tongued little sandrat was going to like his plan even less than she did.

LizAlec gave the cuffs the lightest tug but, light or not, they tightened all the same, closing around her wrists until flesh bulged either side of their undulating red surface. Another pull like that and she’d have them burrowed down to the bone. There was a simple code key to remove them, there was bound to be. LizAlec’s problem was that she didn’t yet know how she was going to get it out of Brother Michael.

But she had to get it, just as she had to ditch that bioSemtex worm at the same time. Only LizAlec liked that idea even less.

Sex was out as a lever. The preacher wasn’t big on commitment. He’d no sooner fuck her than toss her aside, as he’d done with every other disciple. No, what she needed was to get under his skin, get unrestricted access to his mind. Up close and personal was what she had in mind. The only trouble was, getting there meant someone getting hurt and LizAlec just knew it was going to be her. Still, it was time to lose the worm.

“Hey, shit for brains,” LizAlec spat in Brother Michael’s direction. At first the preacher looked like he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard and then he looked like he believed it only too well.

“Yeah,” said LizAlec. “I was talking to you.” She waited, watching. Her arms pulled up above her head, her body open, defenceless. Brother Michael wasn’t going to pass up his chance to hurt her, he wasn’t the type.

“Hey,” LizAlec demanded. “You going to answer me, you dumb fuck?”

He did. The first slap caught her across the face, twisting her off to the side.

Sweet Jesus, LizAlec thought hazily, when she was back in a fit state to think anything. But it was too late to stop now.

“You’re pathetic,” LizAlec told him, through a mouthful of blood. “A pathetic, talentless...”

That was as far as she got before Brother Michael broke her nose with the palm of his hand and LizAlec almost blew everything by passing out with pain. Except she was Lady Elizabeth-fucking-Fabio, or maybe she wasn’t, LizAlec wasn’t sure, but whoever the fuck she was, she had built-in hyperfocus and it was on.

Fully functioning. Like her death wish.

LizAlec inhaled her own blood, as greedily as Fixx had ever sucked up the ice he kept offering her. She inhaled the warm liquid until it flooded her nasal cavity, almost choking as she tried to stop it backing up in her throat. Then she shook her head frantically from side to side and sucked in stale air through her mouth, pulling in dust, low-density sweat molecules, anything that would fill her lungs to bursting. And then, lungs full, she blew out hard, pushing blood and air through her swelling nose in a single snort, red liquid splattering across Brother Michael’s white shirt like buckshot.

The bioSemtex wriggled like a crippled slow-worm as it tumbled slowly across the interior of the cathedral and ricocheted gently off the floor before bouncing off a far wall. Brother Michael had done that for her, shaken the monstrosity loose and filled its hiding place with blood until the worm could no longer keep its grip.

The girl wondered if Brother Michael knew that — as of now — she owed him her life... Not that LizAlec was going to point that out. Especially since she was going to kill the man. And she was, much sooner than he realized.

“Brother Michael,” said a shocked voice. It was Lars, standing in the doorway of the lift, a large nanny goat clutched firmly in his arms. The sandrat was doing his best to look anywhere except at LizAlec. When he finally did, LizAlec grinned at him and Lars went rapidly back to petting his goat, which had been hobbled with polymer wire to stop it struggling.

“You wanted to see Betty?” Lars held out the goat, then thought better of it and started slowly unwinding the wire. When that was finished, he held the goat out again but Brother Michael made no attempt to take the animal. In fact, he made no effort to go near the goat at all.

“Open hatch,” Brother Michael said crossly and the glass door to the airlock swung slowly back, opening until it could go no further. “Grid,” Brother Michael demanded and the metal grille folded in on itself like the tendrils of a plant. Not sideways as LizAlec had expected, but from the bottom, folding up to almost nothing. So much for disapproving of nanetics.

“You,” Brother Michael said to Lars, “Put the goat in the airlock...”

Lars just looked at him.

“The airlock,” said Brother Michael tiredly.

Lars did nothing.

“Is there a problem?” The tall preacher gave up trying to clean blood off his shirt and stared hard at the boy.

“That’s an airlock,” Lars said.

“I know what it is,” said Brother Michael crossly.

“You want me to put Betty in there?” Lars sounded puzzled, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard the order correctly.

“Yes,” said Brother Michael. “I want you to put the goat in the airlock.” He could have been giving instructions to an idiot. From the pained expression on Brother Michael’s face it was obvious that was indeed how he saw it.