Cormac opened his bag and took out his p-top, quickly calling up a site he had found earlier that covered in lengthy detail the effects of PTSD, which throughout this war was aggravated by alien environment shock, sometimes given the antiquated term "shell shock" but which referred to some of the effects upon soldiers of certain esoteric weapons deployed across the front, and the other stresses resulting from the numerous protective inoculations and nano-technologies running in a soldier's bloodstream. He understood that Dax was suffering from something that came under the general term "battle stress." He hadn't read through much of the site, but he knew now that these aftereffects could kill, in many different ways.

His mother poked her head into his room. "Are you ready?"

Cormac closed his p-top and hooked it on his belt. He moved to follow her out, but had to pause for a moment while the Loyalty Luggage entered and settled on the floor.

"I'm ready." He followed her out into the corridor.

Dax was smoking again, and he chain-smoked all the way out of the hotel and along the streets of Tritonia until they arrived at the clinic. The building frontages here were little different from those of other streets, with bubble windows, stone façades and pressure doors. However, down the side of one entire street the bubble windows were blanked out so they looked like blind white eyes, the actual pressure doors had been removed and cams were mounted above each entrance, and there were electronic noticeboards scattered at intervals all the way along. Cormac realised at once that "the clinic" occupied the whole side of this street, which was also crowded with a high proportion of people wearing ECS uniforms, many of whom where either leaving or entering the clinic.

Before they themselves entered the third door, they had to wait for someone else to come out from inside. The man was a soldier clad in desert fatigues, but Cormac recognised the discrete military decorations of a Sparkind. There was something vague and dreamy about his expression, which seemed in contrast to the burn scarring on the side of his face and his ceramal artificial hand. He nodded to them pleasantly, then moved off into the crowded street.

"Why the hand and no cosmetic surgery?" their mother wondered.

Dax glanced at her. "Resources get stretched a bit thin out there, sometimes a hand like that is more useful than one of flesh."

"But his face?"

Dax shook his head as he stepped through the doorway. "Some retain their scars in memory of lost comrades." He bowed his head, leaning against what had been the interior of a pressure lock, suddenly panting for a moment. "Sometimes, out there, a scar like that means more than medals or military rank." He shook his head, trying to dispel something, then continued inside.

They walked into a huge and crowded waiting room; the people here occupying row upon row of comfortable chairs, all with personal entertainment or net access systems, or the private booths along the side walls. Along the far wall was inset a row of bland-looking numbered doors, doubtless leading to where the clinic's work was done. On either side of the aisle leading across this room stood pedestal-mounted palm readers. Dax pressed his hand down against one of these. After a moment it beeped, then issued him an electronic plaque from a slot below.

"Does it tell you how long you have to wait?" Hannah asked.

He peered at the plaque. "No, but I don't expect I'll have to wait as long as some here."

"Why not?"

He gazed at her with something like pity in his expression. "Because one soldier at the line is just one soldier, whereas one medic in the same place can put soldiers back together and keep them fighting."

"About saving lives," she said, the irony evident in her voice even to Cormac.

"Yeah, sure."

They found three seats at the end of a row, next to a woman who had a VR band across her eyes and a virtual glove on one of her hands. She was utterly motionless and there were tears running down from under the eye-band. Gazing around, Cormac saw that many were using the entertainment or information access systems. Very few people were talking. The far doors opened intermittently either to admit people or to let them out. It was noticeable how those coming out did so faster and with much more ebullience than those who went it. Those leaving quickly departed the clinic, without looking back.

"Here we go." Dax, who had just lit up another cigarette, showed them his plaque, which now displayed the number eight. They stood to head for the relevant door.

"You only just came in," came a flat voice from behind.

They looked round at a beefy boosted man in worn green fatigues and a wide-brimmed, camouflage-patterned hat. Dax pointed to the ECS Medical logo printed on the flap of his shirt pocket. The man rubbed at the side of his nose and nodded tiredly.

"Of course," he said.

As they continued towards the doors, Hannah noted, "You don't argue with someone who might be plugging holes in your body next week."

"Precisely," said Dax.

Waiting beyond Door Eight was a very attractive, but strangely doll-like woman dressed in a nurse's uniform. The room she occupied was a vestibule containing a few chairs and a vending machine for food and drink. It took Cormac a moment to realise she was a Golem—one of the early series with the less realistic syntheflesh.

"If you would like to come through," she said, gesturing to another door behind her. "Would you like your family to be present?"

Dax, who had already started for the next door, paused and glanced round at Cormac and their mother. "Yeah, why not?" He continued through.

Hannah reached down and took hold of Cormac's hand, towing him in after her. Gazing at the aseptic surroundings Cormac recognised a nanoscope, an independent autodoc, a nano-assembler, netlink and an old-style bench-mounted diagnosticer on the worktops mounted around the walls. In the centre of the room rested a surgical chair with the required hydraulics to turn it into a surgical table, beside which stood the ubiquitous pedestal autodoc.

"Please," the nurse gestured to the chair.

Dax looked around for somewhere to put out his latest cigarette. The nurse held out a hand and he passed it to her. She closed her hand on it, snuffing it out, then tossed it down in the corner of the room. Immediately a beetlebot cleaner came out of its little home set in the skirting board and gobbled up the cigarette butt, before scuttling out of sight again.

Dax turned and lowered himself into the chair, his movements slow and palsied like those of an old man in another age. Resting his head back against the support he sighed and closed his eyes.

"So how does it go now?" he asked.

The nurse moved the pedestal autodoc beside him and, after a pause, its top half, which looked like a chromed horseshoe crab, rose on a hinged arm.

"When the connections are made, you must remember what you want to forget," said a voice from a source somewhere above.

The autodoc delicately reached out with one jointed limb to a point underneath Dax at the nape of his neck, and as his body abruptly became still, it was only then that Cormac realised how much Dax had been fidgeting. The doc then lifted and swivelled round until it was squatting directly over his head. Now many of its limbs folded down, some of them bloodlessly penetrating his temples and scalp. Cormac felt his mother's hand tighten on his own, but he was too fascinated by the spectacle to concern himself about it.

"It will of course be impossible to completely remove all memories related to the relevant incidents. Rather, I will trim synaptic connections to reduce their importance to you so that when the events themselves are deleted their absence will not concern you so much."