Frank leaned forward, frowning. “I’m going to check your passport, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Do you?” He held out a hand. Martin thought for a moment, then reluctantly handed the white-spined tablet over. Beside him the woman leaned over to look at it. Frank glanced at the passport then snapped his fingers for a privacy cone and said something muffled to the ship’s passenger liaison network. After a moment he nodded and snapped his fingers again. “Okay,” he said, and handed the passport back. “I’ll talk to you.”

Martin nodded, his initial apprehension subsiding. Frank was going to be reasonable — and having an experienced journalist’s view of affairs would be good. He pulled out a small voice recorder and put it on the low table between them. “This is an auditing recorder, write-once. Martin Springfield interviewing—”

“Wait. Your name is Martin Springfield?” It was the young woman, sitting straight up and staring at him.

“Wednesday—” The big guy started.

“Yeah. I’m Martin Springfield. Why?”

The girl licked her lips. “Are you a friend of Herman?”

Martin blanked for a moment. What the fuck? A myriad of memories churned up all at once, a hollow voice whispering by dead of night over illicit smuggled causal channels. “I’ve worked for him,” Martin heard himself admitting as his heart gave a lurch. “Where did you hear the name?”

“I do stuff for him, too.” She licked her lips.

“Wednesday.” Frank glared at Martin. “Shit. You don’t want to go telling everyone about—”

“It’s okay,” said Martin. He raised his recorder. “Recorder. Command delete. Execute.” He put it down. What the fuck is going on here? He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. This couldn’t be a coincidence, and if Herman was involved, it meant the whole diplomatic ball of string had just gotten a lot knottier. “Ship, can you put a privacy cone around this table? Key override red koala greenback.”

“Override acknowledged. Privacy cone in place.” All the sounds from outside the magic circle became faint and muffled.

“What are you doing here?” Wednesday asked, tensing. Martin glanced from her to Frank and back. He frowned; their body language told its own story. “Back downside—” she swallowed. “Were they after me?”

“You?” Martin blinked. “What makes you think you were the target of a bombing?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” rumbled Frank. He looked at Martin warningly. “She’s a refugee from Moscow, one of the survivors of the peripheral stations. She settled in Septagon, except someone murdered her family, apparently for something she’d taken, or left behind, or something. And they tried to follow her here.”

Martin felt his face freeze, a sudden bolt of excitement stabbing through him. “Did Herman send you here?” he asked her directly.

“Yes.” She crossed her arms defensively. “I’m beginning to think listening to him is a very bad idea.”

You and me both, Martin agreed silently. “In my experience Herman never does anything at random. Did he tell you my name?” She nodded. “Well, then. It looks like Herman believes your problem and my problem are connected — and they’re part of something that interests him.” He looked at Frank. “This isn’t news to you. Where do you come in?”

Frank scratched his head, his expression distant. “Y’know, that’s a very good question. I’m roving diplomatic correspondent for the Times. This trip I was basically doing a tour of the trouble spots in the Moscow/Dresden crisis. She just walked up and dumped her story in my lap.” He looked sideways at Wednesday.

She shuffled. “Herman told me to find you,” she said slowly. “Said that if you broadcast what was going on, the people hunting me would probably lay off.”

“Which is true, up to a point,” Martin murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. “What else?” he demanded.

Wednesday took a deep breath. “I grew up on one of Moscow’s outlying stations. Just before the evacuation, Herman had me go check something out. I found a, a body. In the Customs section. He’d been murdered. Herman had me hide some documents near there, stuff from the Captain’s cabin of the evac ship. I got away with it; nobody noticed that bit.” She shuddered, clearly unhappy about something. “Then, a couple of weeks ago, someone murdered my family and tried to kill me.” She clung to Frank like a drowning woman to a life raft.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Martin said slowly, the sweat in the small of his back freezing. Herman’s involved in this. A dead certainty, and frightening enough that his palms were clammy. Herman was the cover name that an agent — human or otherwise — of the Eschaton had used when it sent him on lucrative errands in the past. So there’s something really serious following her around. Wait till I tell Rachel! She’ll shit a brick! He caught Wednesday’s gaze. “Listen, I’d like you to talk to my wife as soon as possible. She’s — you probably saw her on stage. At the embassy.” He swallowed. “She’s the expert in dealing with murderous bampots. Between us we can make sure you’re safe. Meanwhile, do you have any idea who’s after you? Because if we could narrow it down or confirm it’s the same bunch who’re after the Muscovite diplomatic corps, it would make things much easier—”

“Sure I do.” Wednesday nodded. “Herman told me last night. It’s a faction of the ReMastered. There’s a group of them aboard this ship, traveling to Newpeace. He reckons they’re going to do something drastic after the first jump.” She grimaced. “We were just trying to figure out what to do…”

Franz was snared.

Some time ago he’d heard a story about wild animals — he wasn’t sure what species — which, when snared, would chew a leg off to escape the hunter’s trap. It was a comforting myth, but clearly false in his estimate: because when you got down to it, when your own hand was wedged in the steel jaws of a dilemma, you learned to make do with what you’d got.

Hoechst had come up from the depths of the Directorate like a ravening black widow, carrying away Erica and menacing him with the poisoned chalice of her acquisitive desire. His own survival was at stake: I wasn’t expecting that. But he’d done as she told him, and she hadn’t lied. She hadn’t bitten his head off and nibbled daintily at the pulsing stump of his neck as she consummated her desire. Even though his trapped conscience hurt as violently as a physical limb. Her luggage included almost fifty grams of memory diamond, loaded with the souls and genomes of everyone in U. Scott’s network who’d failed her purge. Each morning he awakened with his heart racing, panting with the knowledge that he was walking along the lip of a seething crater. Knowing that death at her hands would be a purely temporary experience, that he’d awaken with his lover and uncounted billions more in the simulation spaces of the unborn god, did not make it easier to bear. For one thing, the unborn god had to be built — and that meant the destruction of the enemy. And for seconds …

Falling in love was like losing your religion. They were two sides of a coin that Franz and Erica had flipped some years ago, out among the feral humans. He was no longer sure what he believed. The idea of the unborn god picking over the bones of his human fallibility made his skin crawl. But this was foreshadowed: when the ReMastered finally destroyed the Eschaton and began their monumental task of reimplementation, the deity they’d build in their own image would hardly be a merciful and forgiving one. Perhaps it would be better to die the permanent death than to meet his share in the collective creation, down at the omega point at the end of time. But the more he contemplated it, the more he found that he couldn’t quite bring himself to pick one horn of the dilemma — either to chew away the restraining grip of his conscience and flee alone, or to force the black widow to execute him out of sheer disgust.