Nigel gave her a quick hug. ‘That’s my girl. Wow, but you’re growing up.’

‘No choice.’

Demitri and Russell picked up Proval’s inert body and carried him over to the cart.

‘So?’ Nigel asked. ‘Does he qualify?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘He’s actually proud of what he’s done, what he is. I . . . I wasn’t expecting that.’

‘I keep telling you, there are a lot of bad people in this universe.’

‘You did, yes.’

‘You’re mad about it? Don’t be. I’m always right, you know that.’

‘I’m not sure what I’m more worried about,’ Kysandra said. ‘The fact that Proval exists, or that you knew how to find him.’

‘Come on, it’s hardly been easy. You’ve been dressed like that, parading up and down towns for a week now.’

‘But you knew which towns he’d probably be in.’

‘Patterns,’ Nigel said. ‘Everything is down to patterns. Once you have them, you can predict what’s going to happen. Back in the day, the financial sector turned pattern recognition into a science. Entire national economies were gambled on it.’

‘And the sheriff records gave you that,’ she said in admiration. ‘Amazing.’

‘They gave me generalizations. You did the rest. Don’t be modest about your part.’

She watched Demitri and Russell dump Proval in the back of the cart and pull a canvas sheet over him. Demitri hopped down. Russell paused, gazing intently at her, then saw she was watching him. He looked away hurriedly, strengthening his shell to block out the tweak of guilt. Irrefutably loyal to Nigel though he was, domination didn’t suppress all his instincts.

Kysandra glanced down at her chest, sighed, and began buttoning up her blouse. ‘What did you call this thing?’

‘The plunge push-up, more commonly known as a Wonder-bra,’ Nigel said. ‘Invented by a man, I believe.’

‘No kidding.’

‘They started making them before even I was born. Imagine that, thousands of years old, yet still popular the galaxy over.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t quite understand how it does it. I’m not actually this . . . big.’ She shook her head in irritation, knowing her cheeks would be red.

‘You can get rid of it as soon as we reach home.’

‘Yes. Right. I’ll probably do that, then.’ Kysandra narrowed her eyes in suspicion and scowled at Nigel’s horribly smug grin.

*

Two days’ travel brought them back to Blair Farm. They put Proval in the medical capsule as soon as they arrived. It repaired his hand to a degree, cauterizing the flesh and repairing the two remaining fingers. Growing replacements for the ones he’d lost would have taken at least a fortnight, even if that had been possible in the Void. Nigel didn’t care to find out.

Kysandra looked down at the bandit/rapist/murderer she’d captured, his body half covered in the silver tendrils the capsule extruded, like weird restraints. The kind of thing you’d use to hold down a monster.

‘So?’ Nigel asked her.

She glanced at him over the capsule. ‘You’re really asking for my approval?’

‘It would be nice.’

‘Do it,’ she said firmly. Bienvenido would be a better place without Proval. No matter how squeamish she was about what they were doing, that was unarguable.

Nigel gave the medical cabinet a series of instructions. More silver tendrils snaked out around Proval’s head and began to infiltrate his skull.

‘Just like the egg,’ she muttered.

‘Disturbingly so,’ he agreed, and ordered the capsule’s surface to close. The malmetal contracted shut.

Kysandra didn’t bother to use her ex-sense to see what was happening inside it. She knew. Personality erasure was an old Commonwealth ability, though rarely employed by the courts in recent times, Nigel assured her.

The medical chamber would infiltrate Proval’s brain, its active biononic filaments seeking out the neurones that contained his memory. Slowly and inexorably, with chemical manipulation, narcomeme subversion and direct physical neurone penetration, his memories would be exorcized. With that, his identity would evaporate. Proval, as a distinct entity, would cease to be. The process would leave nothing but a collection of organs and bones orchestrated by autonomic reflex. A living corpse.

*

One day later, the naked insensate body stood beside the Faller egg in Barn Seven, an eerie replay of Demitri’s disastrous attempt at being eggsumed. Indeed, it was Demitri who stood beside the body, his ’path feeding continual instructions into the empty brain, activating the correct muscles to allow the body to stand.

He opened the cage and mentally puppeted the body through the door. The brass key was turned in the Ysdom lock. Following ’pathed instructions, the body turned slowly to face the curving surface of the egg. Its feet shuffled apart, and it held its arms up to assume a spread-eagle pose. Demitri allowed the ankles to hinge forward, and it hit the surface of the egg – torso, arms, thighs immediately sticking fast.

Up on the walkway rim between the two pits, Kysandra shuddered exactly as she had last time. It took the egg forty minutes to fully absorb the body. Sensors followed as much of the process as they could, ultrasound and density scans tracking the body’s simultaneous disintegration and mimicked reassembly. Ex-sight gleaned a few extra facts – the way the yolk swirled and mutated, how the Faller’s thoughts coalesced out of the wisps of awareness which permeated the yolk.

Five hours after Proval’s body sank into the egg, the shell began to lose cohesion. It sagged and began to split. Yolk fluid poured out of the fissures as they tore open. A gooey wave sloshed out across the metal basin, and the final shreds of the flaccid shell split apart around the solid core that now stood upright in the centre.

A perfect replica of Proval’s body glistened in the fluid, and drew a deep loud breath. Its psychic shell was strong and resolute, concealing whatever thoughts were flowing within its duplicated brain. Eyes opened. A hand with two fingers wiped the thick fluid away from its face. The head turned slowly, following the probing fan of ex-sight it generated, sweeping round the pit. Then it focused on Nigel and Kysandra and the two ANAdroids standing above.

Nigel smiled thinly. ‘Welcome to hell,’ he said.

The Faller screeched – an incoherent blast of sound that was too loud for a genuine human throat to produce. It ran at the cage bars, slamming into them. Rebounding. Another screech, and it gripped the bars, tugging furiously.

Kysandra thought the iron might actually have bent slightly. But no way was she going in for a closer look to confirm that.

Demitri and Fergus jumped down into the pit. The Faller dropped to a half-crouch and watched them intently.

‘Interesting,’ Nigel mused. ‘That’s a very human defence posture. I guess we didn’t vacuum Proval’s subconscious as clean as I wanted.’

Kysandra was barely aware of breathing. She watched fearfully as Demitri unlocked the cage door and swung it open. The Faller walked through it, switching its attention from one ANAdroid to the other, ready for them to attack.

Fergus raised a fat metal tube, and shot it with a tangle net. The Faller tried to jump aside, its teekay lashing out to deflect the seething dark cloud of cables. Demitri’s teekay was instantly reaching for it, and the Faller hardened its shell defensively, teekay diverted long enough for the net cable to whip round it with a flurry of whistling air. It tumbled to the ground, thrashing against the cables which slowly and relentlessly tightened their grip. After a few seconds, it was reduced to an immobile bundle on the slippery floor. But still very conscious. A strong teekay began to assault the net cables, gnawing at their individual strands.

Demitri stepped up, and slapped a charge-patch on the back of the Faller’s neck. Fifty thousand volts slammed through him. His reaction was extremely human – muscles convulsing, teeth clenched, air forced from his lungs in a drawn-out groan of pain.