Everything faded to black.

Feeling utter betrayal, Cormac opened his eyes.

"She drugged me," he said, just a second prior to an invisible dagger stabbing in through his forehead. He glanced at the side table and reached out to pick up the roll of patches, his biceps still stiff under the length of shellwear enwrapping it. He took one patch only this time, since he felt that using two last time might have contributed to his nausea, and stuck it on the side of his neck. Now familiar with this process he then took up a sick bag, and tried to order the detach sequence in his aug for the optic connection. It was a struggle, but this time he managed it. After a moment he reached up and pulled the fibre optic strands free, then glanced aside as the machine wound them in.

"I am not aware of what these mem-loads contain," said Sadist. "I would require your permission to load them myself."

Cormac wasn't sure how to react to the AI's evident curiosity, however, he really wanted to talk to someone about all this. Gazing about the room he half expected to find someone standing by his bed, then felt a sick sinking sensation in his stomach. The only one who might possibly have been there was Crean, but she had confined herself to her cabin ever since they boarded. Sadist, having now scanned much of the area around the blast, had reported finding only a heat-distorted ceramal blade belonging to Spencer, the surprisingly intact brass buckle from Gorman's belt, and Travis' legs. All three of Cormac's companions had been vaporized. Crean had survived only because a chainglass wall had peeled up and slammed into her, acting like a sail on the blast front and carrying her two miles from its hypocentre. Total unlikely luck, coincidence.

"I give you my permission to load them." He paused. "But for the last one—you can load that only when I do."

"Thank you," said the ship AI, then, "Done."

Cormac was only momentarily surprised; of course an AI could encompass those memories in a moment, it was a reminder of the difference between himself and the intelligences that ran the Polity, between himself and the likes of Crean too.

"I note that each chapter also has attachments and you have only been loading the chapters themselves," Sadist added.

"Attachments?"

"They are incompatible with your mind, apparently." Sadist paused. "They are cleaning-up exercises. It seems apparent to me that your mother at first did not think your initial encounter with the drone, out in Montana, of any significance, though she did think your more traumatic encounter with it outside your school should be edited out at once. After seeing Dax's problem with not fully editing his mind, she then decided to remove that earlier encounter from your mind as well."

"Cleaning-up exercises?" Cormac asked, though he had some intimation of what the ship AI was talking about.

"All those times you thought deeply about that encounter with the drone out in Montana, all those times you talked about it to others. Other less formative occasions were not removed, but the human mind tends to self-edit those memories that do not match up with the life's narrative."

Now that was a statement that would require some thought, and he wondered just how much that lay between his ears truly reflected reality even had it not been deliberately tampered with. But his head was aching, he again felt nauseous, and what had once been shock at the loss of his friends was turning to a deep sadness. Was it grief? he wondered. He did not know if it was, for «grief» was such a vague term. Did it require howling tears from him, irrational behaviour? He didn't know. But certainly he did know the feeling of betrayal.

"As you saw, she drugged me," he said.

"It seems extreme to have done so, just as it seems extreme to edit the mind of a child to prevent him knowing about the death of his father, but it was not so uncommon," said Sadist. "During the war, when pain was a frequent companion of many, many took the easy route of excising it from their minds."

Cormac sat upright, tightly clutching the sick bag. This time there seemed to be no visual effects, and despite the sudden surge in his nausea he did not vomit, but maybe that was because he had deliberately forgone eating anything for a day before doing this.

"But was it right?" he wondered.

"In itself there is nothing uplifting or virtuous about suffering," Sadist stated. "Whether it makes its recipient a better person often depends upon whether that person has the ability to change that way. There were those during the war who were turned into monsters by it."

"Do you think she did the right thing?"

"No, I cannot see how the death of a father you had not seen since you were five years old would be so damaging. Rather, I think she was transferring her own grief onto you. I also think that there is more involved here than mere death."

"What do you mean?"

"Her last statements to you, before you blacked out, seem to indicate this," said the AI. "If forced to guess, without seeing the last chapter of these mem-loads, I would say there is something about the manner of your father's death that is being concealed."

Cormac swung his legs off the surgical table and stood. He seemed to have gained some control over his insides and so discarded the sick bag before leaving the room. He would have liked to have taken on the next mem-load, but knew Sadist would not allow it. Walking slowly he returned to his cabin, lay down on his bunk.

The attack ship had left the orbit of that ruined world over twenty hours ago now, and struggling to mesh with the ship server he discovered that they were in transit through U-space, though where to, he had no idea. Doubtless, information would become available.

Cormac abruptly glanced towards his cabin door, feeling the oddest sensation that Gorman had just stepped inside to chivvy him out of bed. No one there. Phantom presences of the dead—a sign of grief. Cormac could feel something leaden in his chest and tight in his throat. He felt on the edge of tears yet, as had occurred two or three times before, they just did not surface and ebbed into a cold and distant sorrow. His headache was definitely fading now and he wondered if his mind was becoming accustomed to the mem-loading process. He sat upright.

"I've been mooning around in this ship so wrapped up in my own concerns," he said abruptly. "How is Crean now?"

"Crean has ceased to communicate," Sadist replied. "As is her right."

"Where are we going now?"

"I am to deliver you both to the nearest Polity world, where you are to rest and recuperate for a period not less that three months, after which you will be reassigned."

"What?"

"Was that not sufficiently clear for you?"

"What about Carl Thrace?"

"Did you think ECS would allow you, a new recruit to the Sparkind who has just lost most of his unit, and a Golem that looks likely to self-destruct, to continue the pursuit of this criminal?"

"I… don't know."

Sadist continued, "For you, the trail after Carl Thrace ended with that explosion. It is possible he is still hiding on that world but, if so, it would take a massive search to find him—one that ECS AIs consider a waste of resources. It is more likely he boarded one of the seven ships departing that world during the time between his and our arrival there."

"Do we… does ECS know the destinations of those ships?"

"It is understood, from information obtained by Adsel, that two of the ships are heading for unknown destinations within the Graveyard and five are heading to a selection of three Polity worlds. Carl could be on any one of them, and there is no guarantee that their intended destinations are their actual ones. ECS personnel are watching for those ships, and for Carl. Your involvement in this is now at an end."