“That’s a bad habit, which is why no one has done it for five centuries. Govcentral even refused an export licence for nicotine DNA.”

A sly, sulky smile. “After my time, señor.”

“What’s your name?”

“Santiago Vargas.”

“Lying little bastard,” Cathal Fitzgerald said. “We ran an ident check. He’s Hank Doyle, distribution supervisor for Moyce’s.”

“Interesting,” Ralph said. “Skibbow claimed to be someone else when he was caught: Kingsford Garrigan. Is that what the virus is programmed to do?”

“Don’t know, señor. Don’t know any virus.”

“Where does it come from? Where do you come from?”

“Me, señor? I come from Barcelona. A beautiful city. I show you around sometime. I lived there many years. Some happy years, and some with my wife. I died there.”

The cigarette glow lit up watery eyes which watched Ralph shrewdly.

“You died there?”

“Sí, señor.”

“This is bullshit. We need information, and fast. What’s the maximum range of that white fire weapon?”

“Don’t know, señor.”

“Then I suggest you run a quick memory check,” Ralph said coldly. “Because you’re no use to me otherwise. It’ll be straight into zero-tau with you.”

Santiago Vargas stubbed his cigarette out on the grass. “You want me to see how far I can throw it for you?”

“Sure.”

“Okay.” He climbed to his feet with indolent slowness.

Ralph gestured out over the deserted reaches of the park. Santiago Vargas closed his eyes and extended his arm. His hand blazed with light, and a bolt of white fire sizzled away. It streaked over the grass flinging out a multitude of tiny sparks as it went. At a hundred metres it started to expand and dim, slowing down. At a hundred and twenty metres it was a tenuous luminescent haze. It never reached a hundred and thirty metres, evaporating in midair.

Santiago Vargas wore a happy smile. “All right! Pretty good, eh, señor? I practice, I maybe get better.”

“Believe me, you won’t have the opportunity,” Ralph told him.

“Okay.” He seemed unconcerned.

“How do you generate it?”

“Don’t know, señor. I just think about it, and it happens.”

“Then let’s try another tack. Why do you fire it?”

“I don’t. That was the first time.”

“Your friends didn’t have any of your inhibitions.”

“No.”

“So why didn’t you join them? Why didn’t you fight us?”

“I have no quarrel with you, señor. It is the ones with passion , they fight your soldiers. They bring back many more souls so they can be strong together.”

“They’ve infected others?”

“Sí.”

“How many?”

Santiago Vargas offered up his hands, palms upwards. “I don’t think anyone in the shop escaped possession. Sorry, señor.”

“Shit.” Ralph glanced back at the burning building, just in time to see another section of roof collapse. “Landon?” he datavised. “We’ll need a full list of staff on the nighttime shift. How many there were. Where they live.”

“Coming up,” the commissioner replied.

“How many of the infected left before we arrived?” he asked Santiago Vargas.

“Not sure, señor. There were many trucks.”

“They left on the delivery lorries?”

“Sí. They sit in the back. You don’t have no driver’s seat these days. All mechanical. Very clever.”

Ralph stared in dismay at the sullen man.

“We’ve been concentrating on stopping passenger vehicles,” Diana Tiernan datavised. “Cargo traffic was only a secondary concern.”

“Oh, Christ, if they got on to the motorways they could be halfway across the continent by now,” Ralph said.

“I’ll reassign the AI vehicle search priority now.”

“If you find any of Moyce’s lorries that are still moving, target them with the SD platforms. We don’t have any other choice.”

“I agree,” Admiral Farquar datavised.

“Ralph, ask him which of the embassy pair was in Moyce’s, please,” Roche Skark datavised.

Ralph pulled a processor block from his belt, and ordered it to display pictures of Jacob Tremarco and Angeline Gallagher. He thrust it towards Vargas. “Did you see either of these people in the shop?”

The man took his time. “Him. I think.”

“So we’ve still got to find Angeline Gallagher,” Ralph said. “Any more city traffic with glitched processors?”

“Three possibles,” Diana datavised. “We’ve already got two of them located. Both taxis from the spaceport.”

“Okay, assign an AT Squad to each taxi. And make sure there are experienced personnel in both of them. What was the third trace?”

“A Longhound bus which left the airport ten minutes after the embassy trio landed; it was a scheduled southern route, right down to the tip of Mortonridge. We’re working on its current location.”

“Right, I’m coming back to the police headquarters. We’re finished here.”

“What about him?” Nelson Akroid asked, jerking a thumb at the captive.

Ralph glanced back. Santiago Vargas had found another cigarette from somewhere and was smoking it quietly. He smiled. “Can I go now, señor?” he asked hopefully.

Ralph returned the smile with equal honesty. “Have the zero-tau pods from Ekwan arrived yet?” he datavised.

“The first batch are due to arrive at Pasto spaceport in twelve minutes,” Vicky Keogh replied.

“Cathal,” Ralph said out loud. “See if Mr Vargas here will cooperate with us for just a little longer. I’d like to know the limits of the electronic warfare field, and that illusion effect of theirs.”

“Yes, boss.”

“After that, take him and the others on a sightseeing trip to the spaceport. No exceptions.”

“My pleasure.”

•   •   •

The Loyola Hall was one of San Angeles’s more prestigious live-event venues. It seated twenty-five thousand under a domed roof which could be retracted when the weather was balmy, as it so frequently was in that city. There were excellent access routes to the nearby elevated autoway; the subway station was a nexus for six of the lines which ran beneath the city; it even had seven landing pads for VIP aircraft. There were five-star restaurants and snack bars, hundreds of rest rooms. Stewards were experienced and friendly. Police and promoters handled over two hundred events a year.

The whole site was an operation which functioned with silicon efficiency. Until today.

Eager kids had been arriving since six o’clock in the morning. It was now half past seven in the evening. Around the walls they were thronging twenty deep; scrums outside the various public doors needed police mechanoids to maintain a loose kind of order, and even they were in danger of being overwhelmed. The kids had a lot of fun spraying them with soft drinks and smearing ice creams over the sensors.

Inside the hall every seat was taken, the tickets bought months ago. The aisles were filled with people, too, though how they had got in past the processor-regulated turnstiles was anyone’s guess. Touts were becoming overnight millionaires, those that weren’t being arrested or mugged by gangs of motivated fourteen-year-olds.

It was the last night of Jezzibella’s Moral Bankruptcy tour. The New California system had endured five weeks of relentless media saturation as she swept across the asteroid settlements and down to the planetary surface. Rumour, of AV projectors broadcasting illegal activent patterns during her concerts to stimulate orgasms in the audience (not true, said the official press release, Jezzibella has abundant sexuality of her own, she doesn’t need artificial aids to boost the Mood Fantasy she emotes). Hyperbole, about the President’s youngest daughter being completely infatuated after meeting her, then sneaking out of the Blue Palace to go backstage at her concert (Jezzibella was delighted and deeply honoured to meet all members of the First Family, and we are not aware of any unauthorized entry to a concert). Scandal, when two of the band, Bruno and Busch, were arrested for violating public decency laws in front of a senior citizens holiday group, their bail posted at one million New California dollars (Bruno and Busch were engaged in a very wonderful, sensitive, and private act of love; and that bunch of filthy old perverts used enhanced retinas to spy on them). Straight hype, when Jezzibella visited (as a private citizen—so no sensevises, please) a children’s ward in a poor district of town, and donated half a million fuseodollars to the hospital’s germ-line treatment fund. Editorial shock at the way she flaunted her thirteen-year-old male companion, Emmerson (Mr Emmerson is Jezzibella’s second cousin, and his passport clearly states he is sixteen). A lot of spectator fun, and official police cautions, derived from the extraordinarily violent fights between her entourage’s security team and rover reporters. The storm of libel writs issued by Leroy Octavius, her manager, every time anyone suggested she was older than twenty-eight.