Erlin shrugged. ‘I bow to your superior knowledge,’ she said.

‘And so you ought,’ said Ron, tipping Janer a wink.

As they left the cabin, Janer asked, ‘What now, when you find your sea captain?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Erlin. She looked Janer up and down. ‘It could be nothing has changed, and it could be everything has. I won’t know till I find him.’

Janer nodded. He wasn’t about to argue with her. So they’d had sex a few times: it had been fun, but nothing to get all emotional about. He liked Erlin and he found sex with her intensely stimulating, but there would be other Erlins and there would be other sex. Just a little more thought along those lines, and he felt sure he would convince himself.

Janer followed Erlin below decks, to the cabin where Keech lay strapped to his bunk. The monitor’s convulsions were less severe now. But perhaps he just didn’t have the energy to fight any more. Erlin stood over him and started to lift one of his eyelids. Both Keech’s eyes abruptly flicked open and he looked from one to the other of them.

‘Getting it,’ he managed, before the next convulsion hit.

Erlin checked the reading on her diagnosticer then plugged it into her drug manufactory. In a couple of seconds it provided her with a drug patch, which she slapped on Keech’s chest. He relaxed; his arched back settling to the bunk and his jaw unclenching.

‘How’s he doing?’ Janer asked.

‘Getting it, as he said. He seems to have control of his limbs now. I should think in another ten hours or so he’ll be able to get up and move about. If he lives that long,’ she replied.

‘Why the doubt?’

‘He took a hell of a risk using that nano-changer. They shouldn’t be used without AI supervision with full and constant scan. All it would take is one rogue factory in his bloodstream, and he could end up with nanites floating about doing untold damage. That could happen at any time in the next week or so, until the changer programme has run its course.’

‘He’s been dead before,’ Janer observed.

Erlin went on without acknowledging his comment, ‘The nanites could do anything. Rogue bone-repair nanites could ossify his entire body. Nanites building blood cells could turn him into a pool on the floor.’

‘You don’t have much confidence in them, I take it.’

‘I do not. The more miraculous a technology is, the more prone it is to catastrophic breakdown.’

Janer studied her very carefully. Sinking back into her didacticism, she had abruptly become distant from him. He considered taking her in his arms there and then, and rejected the idea. He didn’t really need the complications. Without a word, he left her alone to tend to Keech, and returned to his bunk in the crew quarters.

Once there, Janer pulled the box that Keech had delivered earlier from under his bunk. He studied it for a while, then pressed his fingertips against the touch-plate on its side. When nothing happened, he lay back on his bunk, holding the box up before his face.

‘Why here?’ he said.

There was no reply.

‘I could easily take this box and throw it over the side of this ship. I wouldn’t be killing anything, as no doubt the contents are in stasis. In fact, I think I’ll do that now,’ he said, and began to sit up.

‘Why not here?’ the mind asked him.

‘I can think of a number of reasons. This is a primitive world. Hornets have to be adapted to survive here… The main reason, of course, is that it’s not a Polity world and that you’d piss off an awful lot of people,’ said Janer.

‘Not half so many as on a Polity world,’ the mind replied.

‘OK, let me reiterate: why anywhere?’

‘Humans establish their colonies where they will. Why should I not?’

‘No answer to that, but it’s not often you establish a nest without a reason, beyond that of colonization… Tell me, the remaining hornet was successful here, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’

‘So you had it transfer its genetic imprint to our friend here in this box.’

‘I did.’

‘How long will this queen live?’

‘As long as any other. The adaptation completely prevents any invasion by the fibres. For that I took a snip from a glister — a creature that also exists here without the viral fibres in its body.’

‘So what’s the point?’ Janer asked, weighing the box in his hands.

The mind warned, ‘If you throw the box over the side I’ll have another brought in by another agent.’

‘You’re not going to tell me,’ said Janer.

‘Not yet.’

‘Now, why do I get the distinct feeling that you’re up to something you shouldn’t be up to?’

The mind did not reply, and Janer snorted, then reached over and placed the box on the floor beside his bed — before closing his eyes and settling down, intending to sleep. Before sleep could claim him though, he opened his eyes again.

‘The hornet with me possessed the pattern for survival here. OK, it’s imprinting the queen — but that’s not enough, is it? You have some other edge?’ he said.

‘You will be told eventually,’1 said the mind.

For a while, Janer stared at the bunk above him. It occurred to him that he might live to regret not throwing the box over the side, then reporting things to the Warden. It also occurred to him that the AI probably knew a lot more about what was going on here than he did. Soon, he slept.

From the promontory, Olian Tay watched the three ships slide over the horizon and come in to moorage beyond the reefs. She continued to watch for a while, expecting that once a rowing boat put out from one of them she would have plenty of time to wander down to meet it. That Sprage had come here for her was unsurprising to her, as they had been friends for many years and he was one of the few Captains ever to visit her and acquaint her with the doings of the rest of the Old Captains. That those same Captains had done nothing in which she felt interested for many years had never really interfered with their relationship. Now, of course, the Captains were involved in something very interesting. To capture coming events, Tay had all her portable recording equipment with her, hooked on her belt.

Still no rowing boats left the ships, and Tay was getting fidgety when she observed the sail circling above her. Soon it came lower and, with a booming of wings and a stirring of dust clouds, it landed further along the promontory. She knew that sails had landed here in the past. This fact was evinced by the scattering of broken glister shells, and the black spinal columns and articulated skulls of rhinoworms. She had only ever seen them from a distance, though, and they had always departed immediately at her approach.

This sail did no such thing. After folding its wings, it waddled over to her and gazed down upon her with its demonic eyes.

‘Sail, you have an augmentation,’ Tay said, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt.

‘The name’s Windcheater,’ said the sail, and Tay immediately clicked a switch on her belt. From the top of a flat rectangular box attached there, a device the shape and size of a candy bar launched into the air and began slowly to circle the two of them. The sail tracked the course of this device for a moment.

‘Remote holocorder,’ he declared. ‘X-ten-fifty, full spectrum plus anosmic, with a transmission range of five hundred kilometres. Why do you want to record me?’

‘Because you’re a legend, and obviously part of the whole story,’ Tay replied.

Windcheater shook his head. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Right, you ready?’

‘What?’

The sail made a low growling sound, then abruptly launched itself. Tay yelled in shock and closed her eyes against the dust. The next thing she knew, long bony claws had closed around her waist and her feet had left the ground.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’