Rachel knotted her fingers together. “Tell me it isn’t calling at New Dresden next?”

“It’s not. It’s en route to Septagon Four — but first port of call after that is New Dresden, sure enough. We should get there a couple of weeks ahead of it. And that’s basically why I wanted you on board. We’ll show up as a special diplomatic team tasked with demonstrating that the Dresdener governments’ hands are clean. You will be attached to our team — that’s your cover story — but your real job will be to set up a trap in which you body double for Ambassador Morrow, a week before our killer turns up. And when they try to take you out, we’ll have them. And then” — his expression was fierce — “let’s hope we can get to the bottom of this before the assassins murder 800 million people.”

Wednesday was so busy working on a better way of expressing her rage that she didn’t notice when the walls around her recliner softened and flowed, containerizing her in a lozenge of dark foam and dropping her through the floor of the terminal into the cargo mesh of an intrasystem freighter bound for Centris Noctis. “Stupid brainless unplanned intelligence, no, stupid brainless unplanned stupid — what?”

Her itinerary cleared its throat again: “Please hold on tight! Departure in three hundred seconds! Departure in—”

“I heard you the first time, fuckmonster.” Anger was better than the gaping hole in her life, the absolute bitter despair she was trying so hard to ignore. The walls, flowing past and re-forming into the shape of a compact hexagonal cabin, did nothing to soothe her. “How long am I in transit?”

“Eep! Don’t hurt me! TransVirtual TravelWays welcomes all passengers to the transit shuttle Hieronymus B., departing Centris Magna hab four port authority bay sixteen for Centris Noctis hab eleven port authority bay sixty-two in four minutes and thirty seconds. Please familiarize yourself with our flight profile and safety briefing. After a few seconds of free fall, we will be under continuous acceleration at one-tenth of gee standard for eight hours, dropping to—”

Wednesday shut it out, nodding along vaguely and watching the blurred images in the wall through a thin haze of angry tears with her arms wrapped around her legs. Fuckmonsters, she thought vacantly. Following me, vaccing out the apartment, Mom, Dad, Jerm — The concrete horrors of the vision rubbed it all in, forcing it home. People chasing her, Herman admitting a mistake, unimaginable. Her credit balance when she’d checked it, This has got to be a mistake: there was enough money to buy a house, a good-sized cubic in an upmarket swing zone, never mind a ticket out of town on the next shuttle. “Give you a job.” Yeah, hut how much use is it? She’d give it all back in an instant to have the past day to run again with a different outcome. Just to be able to have that chat with Dad.

“How long?” she asked through her misery.

“Total transit time to Centris Noctis, currently six point one million kilometers distant, is sixteen hours and forty-one minutes. We hope you enjoy your flight and choose TransVirtual TravelWays again!”

The itinerary froze, motionless. Wednesday sighed. “Sixteen hours?” I should have caught the high-delta service, she realized. Not that she was used to flying anywhere at all, but this would take almost a day. “What shipboard facilities are available? Am I stuck in here for the whole trip?”

“Passengers are invited to remain in their seats for the duration of path injection maneuvering. Your seat is equipped to protect you from the consequences of local vertical variances. Eep! Please do not damage company assets willfully as these items are chargeable to your account. When the ‘thrust’ light is extinguished you may release your safety belt and walk around the ship. You are on A deck. B deck, C deck, and D deck are the other passenger decks on this flight. F deck provides a choice of entertainment arcades and the food court—”

“Enough.” Wednesday’s stomach lurched; she looked up in time to see the stylized thrust light in the ceiling flash urgently. Loops of safety webbing crawled out from the sides of her chair, wrapping around her securely as the gravity failed. “Oh, shit. Uh, how many other people are on this flight?”

“The manifest for this flight shows a total of forty-six passengers! You are one of five lucky Sybarite-class travelers! Below you in space, comfort, privacy, and our estimate are six Comfort class business passengers! The remainder are making use of our Basic-class package in common—”

“Shut up.” Wednesday squeezed her eyes shut tiredly. “I’m trying to think. I should be thinking.” Memories of lessons, way back in her early teens when Herman had first tempted her with strange adventure games. Playing at spy versus spy? She wouldn’t put anything beyond him: clearly Herman wasn’t simply a pet invisible friend, and equally clearly he had fingers in a lot of pies. All that stuff about evasion and tailing, how to locate surveillance nets and make use of blind spots, how to break relational integrity by finding camera overlaps and spoofing just one of them so the system interpolated an error … Wear the black hat. I’m chasing me, Wednesday. Just killed — her train of thought faltered for a moment, teetering on the edge — and now I’m after her. Who, how, where, what? “Can you stop listening until I call your name, ticket?”

“Madam is now in full privacy! All speech commands will be ignored until you unlock your suite. Call for ‘Wendigo’ when you want to discontinue privacy.”

“Uh-huh.” She glanced at the itinerary; it curled up, gripping the end of her recliner, and mimed mammalian sleep. “Hmm. At least two bad guys. If I’m lucky they think I was in the apartment when they, when they—” Don’t think about that. “If not, what will they do? Worst case: they’re covering the transit ferries so there’s one aboard right now. Or they’ve got friends waiting for me at the other end. I can’t evade that. But if they’re limited to following me, then, then…”

She sighed. Shit. The prospect of spending nearly seventeen hours trapped in the recliner was already beginning to seem like hell. There was a quiet chime, and the thrust light went out. “Oh.” It seemed to be taunting her. “Maybe they didn’t cover the port. Maybe.” She stared at it for another minute, then reached for the quick release on her safety belts and picked up her itinerary, stuffing it into a jacket pocket. “Wendigo. Open the door. There’s a manual outside? Okay, close the door and go back to full privacy mode as soon as I’ve gone.”

Outside the door of her room she found herself in a narrow circular corridor, with cabin doors spaced around the circumference and a twisting circular staircase leading down to the other decks. The ship hummed quietly beneath her as she took the steps six at a time, floating effortlessly down. The two lower passenger decks looked like open-plan seating, rows of recliners bolted side by side. As she passed she saw that most of them were empty. Business must be down, she decided.

The food court turned out to be a cramped circle of tables in the middle of a ring of food fabs programmed for different cuisines, a belt of arms waiting overhead to take orders. Wednesday found a small table at the edge and tapped it for the menu. She was just beginning to figure out her way around it when somebody sat down opposite her.

“Hi.” She looked up, startled. He smiled shyly at her. Wow! Two meters tall, he had blue eyes, blond hair that looked so real it had to be a family heirloom — tied back in a ponytail — diamond earrings, not too much muscle or makeup, skin like — “I couldn’t help noticing you. Are you traveling alone?”