Melvyn’s electronic warfare blocks datavised a warning. He accessed the display. “What the hell?”

“I don’t want to alarm you guys,” Dick Keaton said. “But the people in the next car are giving us a real unfriendly look.”

“Huh?” Joshua glanced over.

“And they’re aiming a multiband sensor at us, too,” Melvyn said.

Joshua returned the hostile stare from the two ESA agents in the car parked beside them. “Oh, fucking wonderful.”

“She’s leaving,” one of the serjeants called.

“Jesus,” Joshua grumbled. “Melvyn, are you blocking that sensor?”

“Absolutely.” He gave the agents a broad toothy smile.

“Okay, we follow her. Let’s just hope she’s going somewhere I can have a civilized chat.”

The five embassy cars carrying Monica, Samuel, and a mixed crew of ESA and Edenist operatives disregarded the city’s new speed limit altogether as they raced for the hotel. All the security police did was follow and observe; they were anxious to see where this was all leading.

They were still a kilometre from the Mercedes Hotel when Adrian Redway datavised Monica to advise her that Mzu was on the move again. “There’s definitely only four people with her this time. The observation team launched a skyspy outside the hotel. It looks like there’s been some sort of fight in the penthouse. Do you want access?”

“Please.”

The image from the small synthetic bird hovering above the park filled her brain. Its artificial tissue wings were flapping constantly to hold it steady in the middle of the snowstorm, producing an awkward juddering. A visual-wavelength optical sensor was scanning across the penthouse’s broad windows. One of them had a large jagged hole in the middle.

“I can see a lot of glass on the carpet,” Monica datavised. “Something came in through that window, not out.”

“But what?” Adrian asked. “That’s the twenty-fifth floor.”

Monica continued her review. The living-room doors had been smashed open. Long black scorch marks were chiselled deep into the one lying on the floor.

Then she switched focus to a settee. There was a foot dangling over the armrest.

“No wonder Mzu was in a hurry to leave again,” she said out loud. “The possessed have tracked her down.”

“Her car isn’t heading for the spaceport,” Samuel said. “Could the two locals with her be possessed?”

“Possible,” Monica agreed hesitantly. “But the observation team said she seemed to be leading the others. They didn’t think she was being coerced.”

“Calvert has started following her,” Adrian datavised.

“Okay. Let’s see where they’re all so eager to get to.” She datavised the car’s control processor to catch up with the observation team’s vehicles.

“Someone else has now joined us,” Ngong said. His voice was split between amusement and surprise. “That makes over a dozen cars now.”

“And poor old Baranovich said to come alone,” Alkad said. “Is he in one of them?”

“I don’t know. One car certainly has some possessed in it.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Voi asked.

Alkad sank down deeper into her seat, getting herself comfortable. “Not really. This is like old times for me.”

“What if they stop us?”

“Gelai, what are the police thinking?”

“They’re curious, Doctor. Make that very curious.”

“That’s okay then; as long as they aren’t going to stop us we’re all right. I know the agencies, they will want to know where we’re going first before they make their move.”

“But Baranovich—”

“They’re his problem, not ours. If he doesn’t want me followed then it’s up to him to do something about it.”

Alkad’s car navigated itself along Harrisburg’s abandoned streets at a doggedly legal speed. Despite that, they made good progress, leaving the closely packed buildings of the city centre behind to venture out into the more industrial suburbs. Thirty minutes into the journey, the last of the urban clutter was discarded behind them. The slightly elevated roadway cut straight across a flat alluvial plain that was open all the way to the sea eighty kilometres away. It was a vast expanse of huge fallow fields from which tractor mechanoids and tailored bugs had eradicated any unauthorized vegetation. Trees were stunted and bent by the wind that blew in from the shore, standing hunched along the line of the drainage canals which had been dug to tame the rich black soil.

Nothing moved off the road, no animals or vehicles. They were driving across a snow desert. Large, stiff flakes were hurled horizontally against the car by the wind, taxing the guarantee of the lofriction windshield to stay clear. Even so, that didn’t prevent them from seeing the fifteen cars which were now following them, a convoy that made no attempt to hide itself.

Adrian Redway had settled himself into one of the chairs in the ESA’s operation centre and datavised his desktop processor for a filter program to access the station’s incoming information streams. Even with the filter he was almost overwhelmed by the quantity of data available. Neural nanonics assigned priority gradings. Sub-routines took over from his mind’s natural cross-indexing ability, leaving his consciousness free to absorb relevant details.

He focused on Mzu, principally through the observation team, then defined a peripheral activity key to alert him of any incoming factors which would affect her situation. The rate at which external events were developing on Nyvan made it unlikely he would be able to secure Monica much advance warning, but as a veteran of twenty-eight years ESA service he knew even seconds could change the entire outcome of a field operation.

“It has to be the ironberg foundry yard,” he datavised to Monica after they had been driving over the farmland for twenty uneventful minutes.

“We think so, too,” Monica replied. “Are the foundry’s landing pads equipped with beacon guidance? If she’s looking for a spaceplane pickup, they’ll need a controlled approach in this weather.”

“Unless they have military-grade sensors. But yes, the foundry’s pads have beacons. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their reliability, mind. I doubt they’ve been serviced since the day they were installed.”

“Okay, can you run a data sweep of the foundry? And if you can access it, a security sensor review would be helpful. I’d like to know if there’s anyone there waiting for her.”

“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re asking for, that foundry is big. But I’ll put a couple of my analysts on it. Just don’t expect too much.”

“Thanks.” She gave Samuel a forlorn look. “Something wrong?”

The Edenist had been accessing their exchange via his bitek processor block. “I am reminded of the time she left Tranquillity. We were all following after her rather like this, and look what happened that time. Possibly we should be the ones taking the initiative. If the foundry is her intended destination, she may well have a method of eluding us already in place.”

“Could be. But the only way of stopping her now is to shoot the car. That would bring the police storming in.”

Samuel accessed the ESA operations centre computer and reviewed the security police deployment status. “We are a long way from their designated reinforcements; and we can have the flyers here in minutes. Hurting the feelings of the Tonala government is an irrelevance compared to securing the Alchemist. Mzu has done us a favour by coming to such a remote place.”

“Yeah. Well, if you’re willing to bring your flyers in to evac us, I’m certainly prepared to commit our people. We’ve got enough firepower to stomp on the police if—” She broke off as Adrian datavised again.

“The city air defence network has just located those missing Organization spaceplanes,” he told her. “They’re heading right at you, Monica; three of them coming in over the sea at Mach five. Looks like you were right about the foundry being a pickup zone.”