‘I expect they’ll enrich them eventually. Right now, why would youwant to come here and cheat people?’

‘Good point.’

Paula stabbed a slice of meat with a wooden prong she’d been given in the kitchen. ‘I’m more worried about the lack of vegetables. I know they had them in Makkathran. The whole Iguru Plain was a giant fruit and vegetable nursery.’

‘Did you get any crackling? I didn’t get any crackling.’

‘You’d think after two thousand years they’d have a better diet.’

Nigel gave her a curious look. ‘Would you really turn down the chance to join a colony?’

Paula chewed on the meat, which she had to admit was rather good. ‘You’re not exasperated with the Commonwealth. It’s your greatest triumph to date. It’s a spectacular triumph for our whole species, actually. But you are flawed by your insatiable drive. People think I’m obsessive, but I’m an amateur compared to you. Founding a whole new society is a challenge that’s just about worthy of you. Plus there’s the opportunity to explore a new galaxy – I assume that’s where you are heading?’

He tipped his head. ‘Of course.’

‘And then there’s this ego trip.’

‘This?’

‘The Raiel, guardians of the galaxy – a race so advanced they probably know more than a post-physical species – flummoxed by the Void. And who do they turn to for help? Yeah, you could turn that request down so easily.’

‘Just like you could.’

‘Granted.’ She closed her eyes to study her exovision map closely. ‘Ah, interesting. There’s a very secure room right behind Inigo’s private chambers. It has a lot of shielding.’ She studied the telemetry from the microdrones which were starting to cluster around the room, combining their fieldscan. The room’s shielding was high-level, brought in from the Central worlds, but Paula’s microdrones were custom made by the Serious Crime Directorate’s technical division based on ANA’s designs. ‘It’s got a confluence nest inside,’ she reported.

‘Now why would a messiah who shares his precious gift openly and honestly need a private confluence nest?’

‘That isn’t actually contributing to Makkathran2’s gaiafield,’ Paula concluded as she studied the data.

They turned to look at Inigo again. He had just finished his meal and started saying his goodbyes. A final wave, and he was walking back to the bridge that led over Outer Circle Canal. He was accompanied by five of the wannabe-noblewomen, who giggled and chattered contentedly as they went. The whole group was giving off a very definite carnal vibe into the gaiafield.

‘Oh, that takes me back to the good old days,’ Nigel said wistfully.

‘I thought you were happily monogamous now?’

‘I am. But a guy can remember his youth, can’t he?’

‘Men.’ Paula shook her head in disapproval.

They waited another hour then started walking round the Outer Circle Canal, eventually coming to the small pool which joined it to Second Canal, which curved inwards alongside Anemone. They were out of sight from just about everyone on Golden Park. It was a dark area, and very silent. Paula activated a scan distortion effect in her biononics. To visual sensors and anyone watching, she would have faded from view as the air around her thickened into a dark haze. To a biononic fieldscan, she would simply have vanished.

‘Ready?’ she asked.

The indistinct patch of dark air which was Nigel said: ‘Yes.’

Paula activated her biononic force-field function, and slipped over the side of the pool. She sank straight to the bottom. For such a short immersion she didn’t bother with a breather gill; her biononics could supplement her blood oxygenation for hours if necessary.

Even her enriched retinas were useless in the water, apart from showing her a wavering infrared image of her arms as she used them as ineffective paddles. She had to use her biononic fieldscan function to sense her surroundings properly. Nigel was dropping down the concrete wall behind her. Once he reached the slimy bottom, they both started walking towards the other side of the pool, then carried on along Second Canal. Even with the force field reinforcing her limb movements, it was slow going.

Second Canal ended at an even smaller pool, which connected it to Centre Circle Canal. Paula inflated the force field out into a four-metre sphere and simply bobbed to the surface. Both of them stepped out onto a pavement that boarded the rear of the Orchard Palace. Her force field switched off, leaving her standing there in perfectly dry clothes, looking up at the scaffolding which clung to the wall in front of her. Loud clanking sounds were coming from the bots high above as they dismantled the struts. Over to her left, a huge set of perron steps curved up to a high arching doorway that was the main entrance from this side. She slipped through the chunky mesh of struts up to the wall where there was an ordinary door.

Her u-shadow took care of the lock codes, and the door swung inwards. It opened into a corridor. The lights were all off in readiness for their covert exploration. She checked her u-shadow’s subroutines had taken care of the alarms as well, and stepped inside.

‘Cool,’ Nigel said. ‘This is so much better than sitting in my office telling people what to do all day.’

Paula sighed. ‘Until we get caught. This isn’t a game, Nigel.’

‘Would you have to arrest yourself?’

‘We’re on a legitimate intelligence-gathering operation, so no. But it would be damn embarrassing.’

‘Enough to make you leave the Commonwealth?’

‘Nigel!’

They walked unseen through the Orchard Palace, going up two floors and approaching Inigo’s private suite of rooms from the back. Paula unlocked a room which wasn’t used for anything. Once they were inside, they shimmered back into view. She went over to the rear wall and took a couple of small plastic rectangles from her satchel. She placed them on the wall, above conduits that ran inside the composite. The modules sent active fibres worming their way through the composite to penetrate the conduits; tips insinuated themselves into the delicate optical data cables.

‘Good protection,’ she murmured as she read the alarm schematics building up in her exovision. A batch of subversive routines were dispatched, neutralizing the various sensor webs that covered the private room. ‘Here we go.’

She stood next to the wall and ordered her biononics to produce a valency disrupter effect, focusing the energy flow into a neat ring on the composite. Behind her, Nigel started humming cheerfully.

‘What the hell? Nigel!’

He gave her a roguish smile. ‘Sorry. It’s the theme tune from Mission: Impossible. It just seemed appropriate.’

‘What?’

‘Way before your time. It’s only us true oldies that—’

‘Nigel. Either behave or go wait outside.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

She let out another exasperated sigh, and concentrated on the disrupter effect. A two-metre circle of wall came loose. She caught it and rolled it to one side.

Inigo’s private vault didn’t contain much. An old wooden chest, which a quick fieldscan revealed contained clothes along with a lot of infusers loaded with various semi-legal sensory booster drugs, and some old-style memory kubes. The confluence nest sat in the middle of the room, a plain burnished aluminium cylinder a metre and a half high, and sixty centimetres in diameter.

‘Are you going to cut that open as well?’ Nigel asked.

‘No.’ Her u-shadow broke the service lock, and the top of the cylinder rose up silently.

The confluence nest was mostly biotech, consisting of eight long segments like desiccated muscle tissue connected with a tangle of small tubes and fibres. Its routines remained closed to every stimulus Paula directed at it from her gaiamotes. So she took the syphon from her satchel. It looked like a liver, with a slick glistening dark-red surface that pulsated slowly. She stuck it on one of the nest’s segments. Its cells began to bond with the artificial neurones of the nest segment, leaching out the contents directly.