“And in the meantime, start looking for a suitable starship. There ought to be one in dock. It’s a shame I let the Samaku go. It would have suited us.”

“But there’s a Confederation-wide quarantine . . .”

“Not where we’re going there isn’t. And you’re a member of the Dorados council, you can arrange for the government to authorize our departure.”

“I can’t do that!”

“Ikela, look at me very closely. I am not playing games with you. You have endangered both my life and the mission you swore to undertake when you took the oath to serve your naval commission. As far as I am concerned, that amounts to treason. Now if an agency grabs me before I can retrieve the Alchemist, I am going to make damn sure they know where the money came from to help you start up T’Opingtu all those years ago. I’m sure you remember exactly what the Confederation law has to say about antimatter, don’t you?”

He bowed his head. “Yes.”

“Good. Now start datavising the partizans.”

“All right.”

Alkad regarded him with a mixture of contempt and worry. That the others would falter had never occurred to her. They were all Garissan navy. Thirty years ago she had secretly suspected that if anyone was destined to be the weak link it would be her.

“I’ve been moving around a lot since I docked,” she said. “But I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon in your apartment. I need to clean up, and that’s the one place I can be sure you won’t tip anyone off about. There’d be too many questions.”

Ikela recouped some of his old forcefulness. “I don’t want you there. My daughter’s living with me.”

“So?”

“I don’t want her involved.”

“The sooner you get my starship prepared, the sooner I’ll be gone.” She hoisted the backpack’s strap over her shoulder and went out into the anteroom.

Lomie glanced up from behind her desk, curiosity haunting her narrow features. Alkad ignored her, and datavised the lift processor for a ride to the lobby. The doors opened, revealing a girl inside. She was in her early twenties, a lot taller than Mzu, with a crown of short dreadlocks at the top of a shaven skull. First impression was that someone had attempted to geneer an elf into existence her torso was so slim, her limbs were disproportionately long. Her face could have been pretty if her personality wasn’t so stern.

“I’m Voi,” she said after the doors shut.

Alkad nodded in acknowledgement, facing the doors and wishing the lift could go faster.

All movement stopped, the floor indicator frozen between four and three.

“And you’re Dr Alkad Mzu.”

“There’s a nervejam projector in this bag, and its control processor is activated.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re not walking around unprotected.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Ikela’s daughter. Check my public record file, if you like.”

Alkad did, datavising the lift’s net processor for a link to Ayacucho’s civil administration computer. If Voi was some kind of agency plant, they’d made a very good job of ghosting details. Besides, if she was from an agency, the last thing they’d be doing was talking. “Restart the lift, please.”

“Will you talk to me?”

“Restart the lift.”

Voi datavised the lift’s control processor, and they started to descend. “We want to help you.”

“Who’s we?” Alkad asked.

“My friends; there are quite a few of us now. The partizans you belong to have done nothing for years. They are soft and old and afraid of making waves.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Was my father helpful?”

“We made progress.”

“They won’t help you. Not when it comes to action. We will.”

“How did you find out who I am?”

“From my father. He shouldn’t have told me, but he did. He’s so weak.”

“How much do you know?”

“That the partizans were supposed to prepare for you. That you were bringing something to finally give us our revenge against Omuta. Logically it has to be some kind of powerful weapon. Possibly even a planet-buster. He was always afraid of you, they all were. Have they made the proper preparations? I bet they haven’t.”

“As I said, I don’t know you.”

Voi leaned over her, furiously intent. “We have money. We’re organized. We have people who aren’t afraid. We won’t let you down. We’d never let you down. Tell us what you want, we’ll provide it.”

“How did you know I was seeing your father?”

“Lomie, of course. She’s not one of us, not a core member, but she’s a friend. It’s always useful for me to know what my father is doing. As I said, we’re properly organized.”

“So are children’s day clubs.” For a moment Alkad thought the girl was going to strike her.

“All right,” Voi said with a calm that could only have been induced by neural nanonic overrides. “You’re being sensible, not trusting a stranger with the last hope our culture owns. I can accept that. It’s rational.”

“Thank you.”

“But we can help. Just give us the chance. Please.” And please was obviously not a word which came easy from that mouth.

The lift doors opened. A lobby of polished black stone and curving white metal glinted under large silver light spires. A thirty-year-old unarmed combat program reviewed the image from Alkad’s retinal implants, deciding nobody was lurking suspiciously. She looked up at the tall, anorexically proportioned girl, trying to decide what to do. “Your father invited me to stay at his apartment. We can talk more when we get there.”

Voi gave a shark’s smile. “It would be an honour, Doctor.”

•   •   •

It was the woman sitting up at the bar wearing a red shirt who caught Joshua’s attention. The red was very red, a bright, effervescent scarlet. And the style of the shirt was odd, though he’d be hard pressed to define exactly what was wrong with the cut, it lacked . . . smoothness. The clincher was the fact it had buttons down the front, not a seal.

“Don’t look,” he murmured to Beaulieu and Dahybi. “But I think she’s a possessed.” He datavised his retinal image file to them.

They both turned and looked. In Beaulieu’s case it was quite a performance, twisting her bulk around in the too-small chair, streamers of light slithering around the contours of her shiny body.

“Jesus! Show some professionalism.”

The woman gave the three of them a demurely inquisitive glance.

“You sure?” Dahybi asked.

“Think so. There’s something wrong with her, anyway.”

Dahybi said nothing; he’d experienced Joshua’s intuition at work before.

“We can soon check,” Beaulieu said. “Go over to her and see if any of our blocks start glitching.”

“No.” Joshua was slowly scanning the rest of the teeming bar. It was a wide room cut square into the rock of Kilifi asteroid’s habitation section, with a mixed clientele mostly taken from ships’ crews and industrial station staff. He was anonymous here, as much as he could be (five people had so far recognized “Lagrange Calvert”). And Kilifi had been a good cover, it manufactured the kind of components he was supposed to be buying for Tranquillity’s defences. Sarha and Ashly were handling the dummy negotiations with local companies; and so far no one had questioned why they’d flown all the way to Narok rather than a closer star system.

He saw a couple more suspicious people drinking in solitude, then another three crammed around a table with sullen sly expressions. I’m getting too paranoid.

“We have to concentrate on our mission,” he said. “If Kilifi isn’t enforcing its screening procedures properly, that’s their problem. We can’t risk any sort of confrontation. Besides, if the possessed are wandering around this freely it must mean their infiltration is quite advanced.”

Dahybi hunched his shoulders and played with his drink, trying not to look anxious. “There are navy ships docked here, and most of the independent traders are combat-capable. If the asteroid falls, the possessed will get them.”