Even Gelai and Ngong were daunted by the tone, but then they could sense the thoughts powering her.

“As Baranovich made quite clear, the Omuta option is now closed to me,” Alkad said. “Worthless piece of trash though he is, he happens to be right. You cannot begin to imagine how much I resent that, because it means the one thing I never allowed myself to think in thirty years has become real. Our vengeance has become irrelevant.”

“Nonsense,” Voi said. “You can still hit the Omutans before the possessed do.”

“Please don’t display your ignorance in public, it’s offensive.”

“Ignorance, you bitch. Mary, you’re giving the Alchemist to Capone. Giving it! You think I’m going to keep quiet about that?”

Alkad squared her shoulders; with an immense effort she spoke in a level voice to the ireful girl. “You are a simple immature child, with an equally childish fixation. You have never once thought through the consequences should your wish be granted, the suffering it will cause. For thirty years I have thought of nothing else. I created the Alchemist, Mary have mercy on me. I understand the full reality of what it can do. The responsibility for that machine is mine alone. I have never, nor will ever, shirk that. To do so would be to divorce myself from what remains of my humanity. And the consequences of the possessed obtaining it are very bad indeed. Therefore I will accept Baranovich’s offer to leave this doomed planet. I will lead Capone’s forces to the Alchemist. And I will then activate it. It will never be available for anyone to study and duplicate.”

“But—” Voi looked around the others for support. “If you activate it, surely . . .”

“I will die. Oh, yes. And with me will die the one man I ever loved. We’ve been separated for thirty years, and I still love him. That purely human entanglement doesn’t matter. I will even sacrifice him for this. Now do you understand my commitment and responsibility? Maybe I will come back as a possessor, or maybe I will stay in the beyond. Whatever my fate, it will be no different to any other human being. I am afraid of that, but I don’t reject it. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can cheat our ultimate destination.

“Gelai and Ngong have shown me that we do retain our basic personality. That’s good, because if I do come back in someone else’s body, my resolve will remain intact. I will not build another Alchemist. Its reason for being is gone, it must go too.”

Voi bent her knees slightly so her eyes were closer to Alkad’s face, as if that would give her a deeper insight into the physicist’s mind. “You really will, won’t you? You’ll kill yourself.”

“I think kamikaze is a more appropriate term. But don’t worry, I’m not going to dragoon you two along. I don’t even consider this to be your fight, I never did. You’re not Garissans, not really; you have no reason to dip your hands into blood this deep. Now be quiet and pray to Mother Mary that we can save something from this pile of shit, and get the pair of you as well as Lodi out of here. But be assured, I still consider you expendable to my goal.” She turned to Gelai. “If either of you have any objection to this, then speak now, please.”

“No, Doctor,” Gelai said. There was the faintest smile on her lips. “I don’t object. In fact, I’m rather glad it won’t be used against a planet by you or Capone. But believe me, you don’t want to kill yourself; once you’ve known the beyond, the pressure Capone can exert by promising you a body is going to be extraordinary.”

“I know,” Alkad said. “But choice has never played a large part in my life.”

Tonala’s state of emergency had drastically reduced the volume of road traffic in the capital. Normally, the churning wheels of the afternoon gridlock would turn the snow to mush and spray it over the pedestrians. Now, however, the big flakes were beginning to accumulate on the roads. Harrisburg’s civic mechanoids were losing their battle to clear it away.

The transport department considered the effects such an icy blanket would have on brake response time, and ordered a general speed reduction to avoid accidents. The proscription was datavised into the control processor of individual vehicles.

“You want me to neutralize the order for this car?” Dick Keaton asked. Joshua gave the data security expert an edgy glance as he tried to decide. The answer was yes, but he said, “No,” anyway, because speeding when you’re a suspect foreigner in a nation on the brink of war and being followed by two local police cars is an essentially dumb thing to do.

Thanks to the general lack of cars, their tail was a prominent one, keeping a precise fifty metres behind. Its presence didn’t have much effect on Joshua and his companions. The two serjeants were as vigilant as mechanoids, while Melvyn stared out at the city covered in its crisp grey mantle, the opposite of Dahybi who sat hunched up in his seat, hands clasped and paying no attention to their surroundings, almost as if he were at prayer. Dick Keaton was enjoying the ride, a pre-teen excitement which Joshua found annoying. He was trying to balance mission priorities at the same time as he reviewed what he was going to say to Mzu. A sincere but insistent invitation to return to Tranquillity, point out the shit she was in, how he had a starship waiting. It wasn’t that he was bad with words, but these were just so damn important. Exactly how do you tell the semi-psychotic owner of a doomsday device to come along quietly and not make any fuss?

His communications block accepted Ashly’s secure datavise and relayed it straight into his neural nanonics.

“New development,” Ashly reported. “The Edenist flyers just activated their ion fields.”

“Are they leaving?”

“No sign of that yet. They’re still on the ground, but they’re in a rapid response condition. Their agents must be close to Mzu.”

“Bugger. Any news from orbit?”

“Not a thing. Lady Macbeth isn’t due above the horizon for another eight minutes, but the spaceplane sensors haven’t detected any low-orbit weapons activity yet.”

“Okay. Stand by, we’re approaching the hotel now. I might need you in a hurry.”

“Do my best. But if these flyers don’t want me to lift off, it could get tricky.”

“Lady Mac is your last resort. She can take them out. Use her if you have to.”

“Understood.”

Dahybi was leaning forward in his seat to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes Hotel as the car swept along the last two hundred metres of road.

“That park would make a handy landing spot for Ashly,” Melvyn commented.

“Acknowledged,” Joshua said. He squinted through the windscreen as the car turned onto the loop of road which led to the hotel’s broad portico. There was a car already parked in front of the doors.

Joshua datavised a halt order into their car’s control processor, then directed it to one of the parking slots outside the portico. Tyres crunched on the virgin snow as they pulled in.

The two police cars stopped on the road outside.

“What is it?” Dick Keaton asked, he was almost whispering.

Joshua pointed a forefinger at the car under the portico. Several people were climbing in.

“That’s Mzu,” one of the serjeants said.

After so long on the trail, so much endured, Joshua felt something akin to awe now he could finally see her. Mzu hadn’t changed much from the visual file stored in his neural nanonics during their one brief encounter. Features and hair the same, and she was wrapped up well in a thick navy-blue coat, but the flaky professor act had been dumped. This woman carried a deadly confidence.

If he’d ever doubted the Alchemist and Mzu’s connection to it, that ended now.

“What do you want to do?” Dahybi asked. “We can stop her car. Make our pitch now.”

Joshua held up a hand for silence. He’d just noticed the last two people getting into the car with Mzu. It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain. “Oh, Jesus.”