“Yes, well, this wouldn’t have happened if you’d taken my original advice about changing ships at Turku,” Svengali said waspishly. “Traffic analysis is always a problem. Like attempts to sever connections and evade obligations on the part of employers. Did you think I worked alone?”

“No,” Franz said evenly, “but my boss may take some convincing. ‘Bring me the head of Svengali the clown,’ she said. I think you’ll agree that’s pretty fucking stupid on the face of it, which is why I decided to interpret her orders creatively and have a little chat with you first. Then maybe you can carry your head in to see her while it’s still attached to your body.”

“Hmm.” Svengali looked thoughtful, insofar as Franz could see any expression at all under the layers of pseudoflesh. “Yes, well I think I’ll take you up on the offer, and thank you for making it. The sooner this is sorted out, the better.”

“I’m glad you agree.” Franz straightened up. “We walk out of here together after I signal my backup. I take it your backup is aboard the ship?”

“Believe whatever you want.” Svengali shrugged. “Send your signal, pretty boy.”

“Sure.” Franz held up his mobile and squeezed the speed button. Idiot, he thought disgustedly. Svengali had screwed up, making the fatal assumption that having a friend aboard to keep watch would be sufficient unto the day. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might be unable to deliver any damning evidence for rather a long time if the entire ship disappeared. Or that the ReMastered might not want a professional assassin running around while they were trying to sort everything out. Then he gestured at the door. “After you?”

“You first.”

“All right.” Franz walked through the door back into the corridor. “Who was the kid?” he asked curiously.

“Who, Jen? Oh, she’s just a Lolita from childcare. Helping out with the party.”

“Party? What ideology are they?” Franz added, sounding puzzled.

“Not ideology, birthday. Don’t you have any idea—”

One moment the clown was two paces behind Franz, the small box held loosely in his right hand. The next instant he was flattened against the wall and bringing the gun up to bear on Franz, his lips pulled back with a rictus of hate. Then he twitched violently, a shudder rippling all the way through him from head to toes. He collapsed like a discarded glove puppet.

Franz turned round slowly. “Took your time,” he said.

“Not really. I had to get into position without alerting him.” Strasser bent over the clown and put his weapon away. “Come and help me move this before it bleeds out and makes a mess on the carpet.”

Franz joined him. Together they lifted the body. Whatever Strasser had shot him with had turned Svengali’s eyes ruby red from burst blood vessels. He felt like a warm sack of meat.

“Let’s get him into one of the lifts,” Franz volunteered. “The boss wants to see his head. I reckon we ought to oblige her.”

Martin was still piling the contents of the walk-in closet up against the newly fitted partition when the passenger liaison net came back up. It made its presence known in several ways — with a flood of ultrawideband radiation, a loud chime, and a human voice broadcast throughout the ship.

“Your attention, please. Passenger liaison is now fully reconstructed and accepting requests. I am Lieutenant Commander Max Fromm, acting Captain. I would like to apologize for the loss of service. Two hours ago, a technical glitch in our drive control circuit exposed the occupants of the flight deck and other engineering spaces to a temporary overgee load. A number of the crew have been incapacitated. As the senior line officer, I have moved control to the auxiliary bridge, and we are diverting to the nearest station with repair facilities. We will arrive there in thirty-two hours and will probably be able to proceed on our scheduled voyage approximately two days later.

“I regret to inform you that it is believed that this incident may not have been accidental. It has been reported that our passenger manifest includes a pair of individuals belonging to a terrorist group identified with revanchist Muscovite nationalism. Crew and deputies drawn from the ReMastered youth leadership cadre aboard this vessel are combing the ship as I speak, and we expect to have the killers in custody shortly. In the meantime, the privacy blocks provided by WhiteStar for your comfort are being temporarily suspended to facilitate the search.

“Please stay in your cabins if at all possible. Please enable your communications nodes at all times. Before leaving your cabins, please contact passenger liaison and let us know why. I will announce the all clear in due course, but your cooperation would be appreciated while the emergency is in effect.”

“Corpsefuckers!” Wednesday stood up and paced over to the main door, like a restless cat. “What do they—”

“Anita,” Rachel said warningly.

Wednesday sighed. “Yes, Mom?”

Martin finished shoving the big diplomatic fab trunk up against the panels and turned round. She’s got the exasperated adolescent bit down perfectly, he noted approvingly. And she’d managed to change her appearance completely. Her hair was a mass of blond ringlets and she’d switched from black leather and tight leggings to a femme dress that rustled when she moved. The bows in her hair made her look about five years younger, but the pout was the same, and with the work Rachel had done on her cheeks and fingerprints — let’s just hope they crashed the liaison system hard enough that they don’t pay too much attention to the biometric tags, he thought grimly. Because—

“Sit down, girl. You’re making me dizzy.”

“Aw, Mom!” She pulled a face.

Rachel pulled a face right back. “We need to look like a family,” she’d pointed out half an hour earlier, while Martin was walling Steffi and a three-day supply of consumables into the priest’s hole. “There’s a chunk of familial backbiting, and a chunk of consistency, and we want you to look as unlike the Victoria Strowger they’re hunting for as possible. Wednesday wears black and is extremely spiky. So you’re going to wear pink, and be fluffy and frilly. At least for a while.”

“Three fucking days?” Wednesday complained.

“They’ve crashed the liaison network,” Rachel pointed out, “and crashed it hard. That’s the only edge we’ve got, because when they bring it up again they’ll be able to configure it as celldar — every ultrawideband node in the ship’s corridors and staterooms will be acting as a teraherz radar transmitter. With the right software loaded into the nodes they’ll be able to see right through your clothing, in the dark, and track you wherever you go to within millimeters. We have to act as if we’re under surveillance the whole time once the net comes back up, because if they’re remotely competent — and they must be if they’ve just hijacked a liner with complete surprise — it’ll give them total control over the ship and total surveillance over everybody they can see.”

“Except someone hidden at the back of a closet inside a Faraday cage,” Martin murmured as he slotted another panel into place, still stinking of hot plastic and metal from the military fabricator’s output hopper.

“Yes, Mom.” Wednesday paced back to the armchair and dropped into it in a sea of lace. “Do you think they’ll—”

The door chimed — then opened without pause. “Excuse us, sir and ladies.” Three crewmen walked in without waiting, wearing the uniforms and peaked caps of the purser’s office. The man in the lead had a neatly trimmed beard and dead eyes. “I am Lieutenant Commander Fromm and I apologize for the lack of warning. Are you Rachel Mansour? And Martin Springfield?” He spoke like an automaton, voice almost devoid of inflection, and Martin noted a bruise near the hairline on his left temple, almost concealed by his cap.