‘Look to the north,’ it said.

Janer did so, and observed a red glow sheeting up behind cloud, wavering like an aurora.

‘What is it?’

‘An antimatter explosion. The Warden is most reticent about its source,’ said the mind.

‘Antimatter?’

The mind was silent for a while before continuing.

‘I will be with you soon. Keech is coming. Tell Erlin to prepare her equipment.’

‘What do you mean, Keech?’ Janer looked in confusion from the light in the sky back to the activity on the deck.

Others were gazing out at the redness and talking to each other in muted tones. But already the light was beginning to disperse, to fade. The buzzing that had accompanied the mind’s message faded also, and it gave no reply. Janer looked at Goss again, then he looked up at Erlin. He called to her.

‘What did it mean “Keech is coming”?’ Erlin asked him, once Janer had related the mind’s message.

‘I can only think he’s in trouble, if it means you’ll need your medical equipment,’ said Janer.

‘What the hell am I supposed to be able to do for him?’

‘He is a little past your services, I have to admit.’ Janer shrugged and grinned at her. ‘Perhaps we should prepare anyhow. The mind doesn’t normally get things wrong.’

‘OK. I suppose you’re right.’

Erlin headed for the deck hatch and Janer watched her for a moment.

‘Let me help you. I’m a bit of a spare wheel here anyhow.’

Erlin gestured for him to follow.

Once below decks, Erlin pulled one of her cases from a storage locker, then put it on the floor and opened it. Janer looked at the mass of gleaming apparatus neatly packed inside. He recognized a nanoscope, portable autodoc, and one or two other items.

Erlin pointed at the autodoc. ‘You know how to assemble that?’ she asked.

Janer pulled the doc out of the case and proceeded to clip together the hooded cowling and the insectile surgical arms. Erlin allowed a little surprise to enter her expression, nodded an acknowledgement to him, then turned to something else. She took out a flat box with a gun-shaped object fixed in its upper surface. Janer immediately identified the ‘gun’ as a hand-diagnosticer, and the box it was plugged into as a portable drug-manufactory.

‘Oh hell,’ said Erlin. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’

‘Let’s just be as ready as we can,’ said Janer.

They got ready.

Windcheater flew in a world constructed of information. Eyes crossed and toes clenched he gazed with wonder on a virtual galaxy dwarfing the incontestably vast Human Polity. There was so much to know, so much to see — great minds moved past the sail like sun-bright leviathans, and the financial systems of worlds were complex hives he could lose himself in for centuries. It was wonderful: there was so much to do, so much to have. But Windcheater, with a self-discipline and intelligence beyond that of his brothers and sisters, gradually shut all that out and concentrated on the specific. He curled his lip and growled when he located the minuscule antiquities site based on Coram and surveyed the price list. Perhaps Sniper believed the sail would be too dazzled to pick up on things like that.

‘Windcheater.’

The voice came from close by and Windcheater uncrossed his eyes and looked around. His fellow sails were all gathered at the other side of The Flint, watching him warily. It had not been one of those that had spoken.

‘Sail, I’m speaking to you through your aug. Do you understand me?’ asked the voice.

‘I hear you,’ said the sail. ‘But I don’t know who you are.’

‘Of course… you’ve never heard my voice. I am the Warden.’

‘Ah,’ Windcheater managed. He noticed then that his fellows were edging even further away from him and were observing him all the more warily. There was nothing he could do about that just now.

‘Well, what do you think of the human virtual world?’ the Warden resumed.

‘It is… useful,’ replied the sail. ‘What do you want?’ it then asked, thinking it might be less disconcerting for his fellows if he quickly terminated this conversation. He did not want them thinking him any crazier than they did already.

‘Like yourself I want many things — and like yourself I understand that there is little to be had without paying a price,’ said the Warden.

Windcheater showed his teeth and waited. The Warden continued.

‘I see that your business arrangements with Sniper have provided you with some income. I see no reason to prevent that arrangement continuing. It could easily be argued that any artefacts accessible to you are legitimately the property of your people…’

‘Our property?’ Windcheater asked.

‘You are, after all, the autochthons of this world,’ the Warden observed.

‘Does that mean we own it?’ the sail asked, a couple of strange ideas occurring to him all at once.

‘That is something we can discuss at a later time,’ said the Warden. ‘For now I just want to know if you would like to augment that minor income.’

Windcheater considered the offer for all of a couple of seconds, quickly forgetting his concerns about how his fellow sails might view him. That ‘minor income’ was the only income he had, and there was so much to have.

‘Tell me about it,’ the sail said.

‘I need a pair of eyes, but a pair of eyes in a natural form of this world. Not so much undetectable as unnoticed.’

‘What for?’

‘You saw the light in the sky to the north?’

Windcheater nodded, then realizing the Warden would have no way of seeing this, replied in the affirmative.

The Warden continued, ‘I want you to go and take a look in that area and report to me anything unusual.’

‘Like what?’

‘Just anything unusual.’

Windcheater considered again: Why not? He could do with the extra credit.

‘How much?’ the sail asked.

‘One thousand shillings for each day.’

By the time the Warden had reached the word ‘day’, Windcheater was already airborne. His fellows, after watching him depart, turned to each other in great puzzlement and there was much confused shrugging.

As Ambel rested, the Treader drifted up behind and nudged the back of the rowing boat. As it did this, he dipped the oars and rowed again for a few minutes. Slowly the ship drifted into a sheltered cove whose visible bottom was smeared with leeches and pinioned by the stalks of sea-cane, which at the surface opened into tangles of reddish tendrils that were kept afloat by chequered gourd-like fruits. An islet, no bigger than the ship itself, slid past to the right of them, and from this the stalked eyes of frog whelks tracked their progress, their grey and yellow shells clattering together in their agitation. Boris turned the helm so that the ship drifted away from these, and Ambel allowed the rowing boat to come back against the side of the ship.

‘All right, Pland!’ he shouted.

At the bows, Pland, Sild and Gollow heaved the anchor over the side and dropped it into the shallows, where it thumped down, still visible, raising a cloud of black silt. Taking the usual precautions for mooring in island waters, Pland had greased the anchor chain some hours before. The grease wouldn’t stop prill as they — should they have the inclination — could scale the wooden sides of the ship using the tips of their sharp legs like pitons, but it would deter frog and hammer whelks, and other of the more common annoyances. Anne lowered a ladder to Ambel while he hitched the boat to the side of the ship and secured his oars inside. As he climbed back aboard, Peck looked down at him disconsolately from the nest.

‘Still time to get a worm or two to tempt a sail. Fresh meat’s always best,’ said Ambel, nodding towards stony beaches and the island with its narrow crown of blue-green dingle.