“Here?”

Regulo shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. This place doesn’t have the facilities we need. Come on out to Atlantis. I’ll show you around, and you’ll get an idea what a good place to live looks like. Cornelia can make all the arrangements to get you there.”

He took Rob’s hand as though to shake it, then lifted it higher and held it in both of his. He examined it curiously, turning it over and studying the nails, fingers and palms. “Remarkable,” he said at last. “It even feels right. It’s at body temperature, or close to it, and the texture could pass for skin. How sensitive are the fingers?”

Rob flexed them, then held both his hands out in front of him. “Better than human. I can feel a hair under a sheet of paper, or the year on a coin.”

“And strength?”

“They’ll do. They’re probably twice as strong as my own would have been.”

“Aye.” Regulo rubbed his thumb thoughtfully along the back of Rob’s hand. “Quite a job they did, all things considered. Frostbite, wasn’t it? I’m surprised they didn’t re-grow them.”

“They couldn’t. I’m one of the unlucky two percent that can’t regenerate.” Rob met Regulo’s bright eyes. “How did you know about the frostbite?”

“The same way I knew that your hands were artificial.” Regulo was unabashed. “Didn’t you think I would do a thorough background check, before I ever asked Cornelia to contact you? I’m like you, I want to know who I’ll be working with. Don’t worry, though, I’m not one to pry into private affairs. I was interested in those hands as a first-rate piece of precision engineering, that’s all. How long did it take the cyber crew to get the settings right?”

“Too long.” Rob grimaced at the memory. “I had the final pair fitted eight years ago, on my nineteenth birthday. They decided that I’d finished growing by then. But I had twelve temporary sets as I was getting bigger.”

Regulo was nodding his head sympathetically. “There must have been one hell of a lot of operations. I’ve had my share, and more, so I have some idea what you’ve been through.” He lifted his head as though to say more, then appeared to change his mind.

“Sixty-two operations, according to the hospital records,” Rob said after a moment’s silence. “Of course, I was too young to remember anything about the first few. Anyway, I only bother to count the ones where they actually fitted new hands. They could use anesthetics for all the others, because they didn’t need to play games to get exact nerve connections.”

Regulo looked suddenly upset by the subject of their conversation. He nodded, patted Rob lightly on the shoulder, and went slowly back into the big office.

Rob stood alone in the corridor, wondering if he was reading expressions from Regulo’s scarred face that had never been there.

In the room along the corridor, Rob found Corrie deep in conversation with a burly, florid-faced man in a white tunic. He was standing in profile, showing blond hair cut close to his scalp above a bulging forehead and a sharp, jutting nose. Rob noticed the thickness of the shoulders and the depth of the heavy chest. The man was talking to Corrie in a soft voice and she seemed to be listening avidly to his words. As Rob entered the room, the talk ceased abruptly. There was a sudden awkward silence.

“All right, Corrie,” Rob said at last, when neither of the others seemed inclined to speak. “Regulo and I are all finished. We can take the Tug back to Earth.” He turned to the man. “You must be Joseph Morel. If you’re finished here, Regulo said he would like to have a word with you.”

The other man turned a pair of cold gray eyes towards Rob and bowed slightly, with a curiously dated and formal movement from the hips. “My apologies that I did not introduce myself when you entered. Cornelia and I had become engrossed in our discussion, to the point where I forgot the common civilities. I am Joseph Morel, as you surmised. We have never met, but many years ago I knew your father, Gregor.” He smiled. “You have something of the same cast of features.”

Merlin looked at Joseph Morel with increased interest. The scars were there, at temple and neck, the sure evidence of a rejuvenation treatment. Assuming it had been done once only, that would make Morel about sixty years old — slightly younger than Gregor Merlin would have been by now.

“At Göttingen,” went on Morel. “We were students together. I was sorry to hear about his unfortunate accident.”

The three of them began to walk back towards Regulo’s office. “He was a scientist of great promise,” Morel continued. He shook his head sadly. “I regret that he did not live to achieve his full potential.”

He glanced sideways at Rob. “I understand from Darius Regulo that you have inherited his talents, although you choose to apply yourself to a different field of endeavor. Regulo has a high regard for your abilities.”

He nodded briefly and stepped through into the study, leaving Rob and Corrie to continue along the corridor towards the Tug. Inside the room, Regulo had again switched on the big display, showing Moon, Earth and skyhook in an endless complex pattern of rotation. Morel walked over to the big desk and stood directly in front of it.

“I gather from Merlin’s comments to me that you intend to proceed,” he said stiffly. “May I remind you again that Caliban has suggested — three times — that a relationship with Merlin is undesirable? Perhaps even dangerous.”

Regulo grunted. He was leaning back in his chair, gazing vacantly at the animated display against its dark-blue background. “I hear you, Joseph. I heard you last time.” He swivelled in his chair towards the man standing before him. “And I know exactly what Caliban said. But I don’t have your faith in that damned oracle, and I really need Merlin and the Spider. What makes you so sure that you’re interpreting Caliban correctly? You keep telling me that his outputs are always ambiguous. Are you sure that they are really warnings to us?”

Morel pursed his lips. They were full and very red, framing a small, prim mouth. “It should not be necessary for me to reiterate this. You know as well as I do that the outputs are difficult to interpret. That is no reflection on their validity. For all that we know, most of Caliban’s messages originate with Sycorax, since all the displays and transformations of his messages are created there. All this is irrelevant. There has been a warning, which you seem to ignore. Yet you have given me no compelling reason for Merlin’s involvement in the activities of Regulo Enterprises. You have not convinced me that you need Merlin at all.”

Regulo nodded. “And I don’t think I’ll try,” he said brusquely. “Look, Joseph, you concentrate on your work, and let me worry about the general development of Regulo Enterprises. You don’t understand the space transportation business, but I’m telling you, we must have the skyhook. If we don’t build a beanstalk, somebody else will — and once one is working, the number of rocket launches will drop to zero. That’s the source of more than half our income. Don’t you think that the United Space Federation would just love a chance to cut us down to size? The only way we can beat their bureaucracy is to keep one step ahead of them technically, so all the new restrictions they put on us are never quite enough to bring us down. If you want the resources to keep your experiments going, then remember that we all need the beanstalk.”

Morel’s face had flushed slightly while Regulo was talking, bringing a patch of bright red to each prominent cheekbone. “So we need to build the skyhook,” he said sullenly. “I will grant that. However, you have not convinced me that we need Merlin. Presumably Sala Keino is still on your payroll?”

“He is. And we’ll be using him. But the beanstalk needs the Spider, and the only way we’ll get that is through Rob Merlin.” Regulo stood up, switched off the display, and came slowly around the desk to stand at Morel’s side. He put a hand gently on the other man’s heavy shoulder. “What’s the problem, Joseph? You sound almost as though you are afraid of Merlin.”