“I don’t care who you are; what are you doing spying on me and my cousin?”

“A necessary subterfuge, dear lady, to ensure that I had the relevant personages-namely yourself and Count Geis correctly identified. Also, having unintentionally found myself in such close proximity to your conference, I thought it prudent and indeed only polite to delay making myself known to you until the said noble gentleman had bade you farewell, as considerations of good manners apart-my instructions are to reveal myself to you and you alone, initially at any rate.”

“You’re hellish talkative for a beachcomber.”

“Ah, dear lady, let not this rude appearance deceive you; beneath my tatterdemalion disguise lurk several brand spanking new components of a Suprotector (TradeMark) Personal Escort Suite, Mark Seventeen, Class Five, certified civil space legal in all but a handful of jurisdictions and battlefield limited to the remainder. And I-that is the aforesaid system, in full, combined with the services of various highly trained human operatives am at your service, my lady, exclusively, for as long as you may desire.”

“Really?” She sounded warily amused.

“Indeed,” said the machine. “A mere beachcomber-for example-would not be able to tell you that the gun which you are currently holding in the left hand pocket of your jacket, with your index finger on the trigger and your thumb ready to flick the safety catch, is a silenced FrintArms ten-millimetre HandCannon with eleven ten-seven coaxial depleted-uranium-casing mercury-core general-purpose rounds in the magazine plus one in the breech, and that you have another-double-ended-magazine in the opposite pocket, containing five armour-piercing and six wire-flechette rounds.”

Sharrow laughed out loud, taking her hand from her pocket and swivelling on her heel. She walked away down the beach. The machine lumbered after her, keeping a handful of paces behind.

“And I feel I must point out,” the machine continued, “that FrintArms Inc. strongly recommends that its hand weapons are never carried with a round in the breech.”

“The gun has,” she said tartly, glancing behind as she walked, “a safety catch.”

“Yes, but I think if you read the Instruction Manual-”

“So,” she interrupted. “You’re mine to command, are you?” she said.

“…Absolutely.”

“Wonderful. So who are you working for?”

“Why, you, mistress!”

“Yes, but who hired you?”

“Ah, dear lady, it is with the greatest embarrassment that I have to confess that in this matter I must-with a degree of anguish you may well find hard to credit-relinquish my absolute commitment to the fulfilment of your every whim. Put plainly, I am not at liberty to divulge that information. There, it is said. Let us quickly move on from this unfortunate quantum of dissonance to the ground-state of accord which I trust will inform our future relationship.”

“So you’re not going to tell me.” Sharrow nodded.

“My dear lady,” the machine said, continuing to trundle after her. “Without saying so in so many words… correct.”

“Right.”

“May I take it that you do wish my services?”

“Thanks, but I don’t really need any help when it comes to looking after myself.”

“Well,” the machine chimed, with what sounded like amusement in its voice, “you did hire an escort unit the last time you visited the city of Arkosseur, and you do have a contract with a commercial army concern to guard your dwelling house on Jorve.”

She glanced back at the machine. “Well, aren’t we well informed.”

“Thank you; I like to think so.”

“So what’s my favourite colour?”

“Ultraviolet, you once told one of your tutors.”

She stopped; so did the machine. She turned and looked up at the beachcomber’s battered casing. She shook her head. “Shit, even I’d forgotten I said that.” She looked down at the glass beach. “Ultraviolet, eh? Huh, so I did.” She shrugged. “That’s almost witty.”

She turned and walked on, the beachcomber at her heel. “You seem to know me better than I do myself, machine,” she said. “Anything else about me you think I should know? I mean, just in case I’ve forgotten.”

“Your name is Sharrow.”

“No, I rarely forget that.”

“-of the first house of Dascen Major, Golterian. You were born in 9965, in house Tzant, on the estate of the same name, since sold along with most of the rest of the Dascen Major fortune following the settlement required by the World Court after the dismemberment of your grandfather Gorko’s unhappily illegal-commercial network, rumoured to be the greatest of its day.”

“We’ve always thought big, as a family. Especially when it comes to disasters.”

“Following the unfortunate death of your mother-”

“Murder, I think, is the technical term.” She slowed her pace and clasped her hands behind her back.

“-murdered by Huhsz zealots, you were brought up by your father in a… peripatetic existence, I think one might fairly say.”

“When we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves at the homes of rich relations, it was equal parts casinos and courts; father had an obsession with screwing money out of one of them. Mostly they did it to him.”

“You had… various tutors-”

“Singularly lacking in a sense of humour, all of them.”

“-and what might most charitably be called a chequered school history.”

“A lot of those records really shouldn’t be trusted.”

“Yes, there is a quite remarkable disparity between the written reports and most of the associated computer files. Several of the institutions you attended seemed to feel there might be a causal link between this phenomenon and your uncharacteristic keenness for the subject of computing.”

“Coincidence; they couldn’t prove a thing.”

“Indeed, I don’t think I’ve heard of anybody suing a school yearbook before.”

“A matter of principle; family honour was at stake. And anyway, litigiousness runs in our family. Gorko issued a writ against his father for more pocket money when he was five and Geis has almost sued himself several times.”

“At your finishing schools in Claav you developed an interest in politics, and became… popular with the local young men.”

She shrugged. “I’d been a difficult child; I became an easy adolescent.!”

“To the surprise of everybody except, apparently yourself, you won entrance to the diplomatic faculty of the University of Yadayeypon, but left after two years, on the outbreak of the Five Per Cent War.”

“Another coincidence; the professor I was fucking to get good grades died on me and I couldn’t be bothered starting again from scratch.”

“You crewed on an anti-Tax cruiser operating out of TP 105, a moon of Roaval, then-along with a group of seven other junior officers-became one of the first humans for three hundred years to take the then newly re-released symbiovirus SNBv3. With you as leader, you and your fellow synchroneurobondees flew a squadron of single-seat modified excise clippers out of HomeAtLast, a military-commercial habitat stationed in near-Miykenns orbit, becoming the most successful squadron of the seventeen operating in the midsystem.”

“Please; I’m blushing.”

“Three of your team died in your last action, at the very end of the war while the surrender was being negotiated. Your own craft was seriously damaged and you crash-landed on Nachtel’s Ghost, suffering near-fatal injuries on top of the extreme irradiation and already serious wounds you had sustained during the original engagement.”

“Nothing by halves; should be the family motto.”

“You were cut from the wreck and treated under the warinternment regulations in the Tax-neutral hospital of a mining concern on Nachtel’s Ghost-”

“Ghastly food.”

“- where you lost the fetus of the child you were carrying by another of your team, Miz Gattse Ensil Kuma.”

She stopped for a moment and looked up to see the hydrofoil, twenty metres away. She pursed her lips, breathed deeply and walked slowly on. “Yes; terribly complicated way of going about getting an abortion. But then I was sterilised at the same time, so it was practically a bargain.”