Tough work, boss, shannon replied. she glanced up and gave me a quick impersonal smile. It's going to take us days to recover all the gold if you don't appoint someone to assist us. We're not really qualified to strip down astronautics equipment.

You're the closest specialist I've got to a spacecraft technician, I can hardly give this job to a regular maintenance crew. And you should think yourself lucky I gave you this assignment. I was in the cyberfactory cavern yesterday evening when the recovery team finished flushing the enzyme goop out of the inspection tunnels. It took Zernov's biotechnology people eight hours to restore the organ and its ancillary glands to full operability. Then we had to wait another hour while the tunnel atmosphere was purged.

Did you get the body?nyberg asked.

Most of it. The bones had survived, along with the bulk of the torso viscera. We also found the pistol, and some of the buttons from his tunic. Those enzymes were bloody potent; the organ employs them to break down bauxite, for Christ's sake. We were lucky to find as much of him as we did.

Shannon screwed up her face in disgust. «Yuck!» I think you're right, we'll just carry on here.

Excellent. How much gold have you collected so far?

Nyberg pointed to a big spherical orange net floating on the end of a tether. It was stuffed full of parts from the Dornier capsule—coils of wire, circuit boards, sheets of foil. About a hundred and fifty kilos so far. He substituted it everywhere he could. In the circuitry, in thermal insulation blankets, in conduit casing. We think the radiator panel surfaces might be pure platinum.

I shifted my gaze to the mirror-polished triangular fins jutting from the rear of the Dornier's fuselage. The billion-wattdollar spacecraft. Christ.

I don't understand how he ever hoped to get it all back to Earth, nyberg said.

He probably planned to assign the Dornier to one of the tanker spaceships on a run back to the O'Neill Halo, shannon said. Plausible enough. Nobody seemed to query this capsule being withdrawn for maintenance so often. I checked its official UN Civil Spaceflight Authority log; the requests to bring it into the drydock hangars all originate from the Cybernetics Division. We all regard computers as infallible these days, especially on something as simple as routine maintenance upgrades. Which is what these were listed as.she held up an s-shaped section of piping, wrapped in the ubiquitous golden thermal foil.

What's the total, do you think?i asked.

Not sure. Now Steinbauer has wiped the Cybernetics Division computer, all we have left to go on is that bogus log Maowkavitz downloaded earlier. I'd guesstimate maybe seven hundred kilos altogether. You'd think the Dornier's crew would notice that much extra mass. It must have played hell with their manoeuvring.

Yeah.i took the piping from her, and scratched the foil with my thumbnail. it was only about a millimetre thick, but it still had that unmistakable heavy softness of precious metal.

Shannon was burying herself in the equipment bay again. I hauled in the orange net, and shoved the piping inside.

Harvey, corrine called.

The subdued mental timbre forewarned me. Yes?

It's Wing-Tsit Chong.

Oh crap. Not him as well?

I'm afraid so. Quarter of an hour ago; it was all very peaceful. But the effort of countering Steinbauer's distortion was just too much. And he wouldn't let me help. I could have given him a new heart, but all he'd allow was a mild sedative.

I could feel the pressure of damp heat building around her eyes. I'm sorry.

Bloody geneticists. They've all got some kind of death wish.

Are you OK?

Yeah. Doctors, we see it all the time.

You want me to come around?

Not now, Harvey, maybe later. A drink this evening?

That's a date.

•   •   •

The road out to the pagoda was becoming uncomfortably unfamiliar. I found Hoi Yin sitting in one of the lakeside veranda's wicker chairs, hugging her legs with her knees tucked under her chin. She was crying quite openly.

Second time in a week, she said as i came up the wooden steps. People will think I'm cracking up.

I kissed her brow, then knelt down on the floor beside her, putting our heads level. Her hand fumbled for mine.

I'm so sorry, i said. I know how much he meant to you.

She nodded miserably. Steinbauer killed both of Eden's parents, didn't he?

Yes. I suppose he did, ultimately.

His death . . . it was awful.

Quick, though, if not particularly clean.

People can be so cruel, so thoughtless. It was his greed which did this. I sometimes think greed rules the whole world. Maowkavitz created me for money. Steinbauer killed for money. Boston intends to fight Earth over self-determination, which is just another way of saying ownership. Father Cooke resents affinity because it's taking worshippers from him—even that is a form of greed.

You're just picking out the big issues, i said. The top one per cent of human activity. We don't all behave like that.

Don't you, Harvey?

No.

What are you going to do about the stockpile? Give it to the board, or let Boston keep it?

I don't know. It's still classified at the moment, I haven't even told the Governor. I suppose it depends on what Boston does next, and when. After all, possession is nine-tenths of the law.

My dear Harvey.her fingers stroked my face. Torn so many ways. You never deserved any of this.

You never told me; do you support Boston?

No, Harvey. Like my spirit father, I regard it as totally irrelevant. In that at least I am true to him.she leant forwards in the chair, and put both arms around me. Oh, Harvey; I miss him so.

Yes, I know I shouldn't have. I never intended to. I went out to the pagoda purely because I knew how much she would be hurting, and how few people she could turn to for comfort.

So I told myself.

Her bedroom was spartan in its simplicity, with plain wooden floorboards, a few amateur watercolours hanging on the walls. The bed itself only just large enough to hold the two of us.

Our lovemaking was different from the wild exuberance we had shown out in the meadow. It was more intense, slower, clutching. I think we both knew it would be the last time.

We lay together for a long time afterwards, content just to touch, drowsy thoughts merging and mingling to create a mild euphoria.

There is something I have to say to you, hoi yin said eventually. It is difficult for me, because although you have a right to know, I do not know if you will be angry.

I won't be angry, not with you.

I will understand if you are.

I won't be. What is it?

I am pregnant. The child is ours.

«What!» I sat up in reflex, and stared down at her. «How the hell can you possibly know?»

I went for a scan at the hospital yesterday. They confirmed the zygote is viable.

«Fuck.» I flopped back down and stared at the thick ceiling beams. I have a gift, the ability to totally screw up my life beyond either belief or salvation. It's just so natural, I do it without any effort at all.

After twelve years of celibacy, contraception was not something I concerned myself over any more,hoi yin said. It was remiss of me. But what happened that morning was so sudden, and so right . . .

Yes, OK, fine. We were consenting adults, we're equally responsible.she was watching me closely, those big liquid gold eyes full up with apprehension. my lips were curving up into a grin, like they were being pulled by a tidal force or something. You're really pregnant?