At a quarter to four, Slvasta and Javier arrived at the Wellfield market, ostensibly to pick up the carts to take them to Plessey station as usual. As they drew closer, they could pick up the furious ’path shouts that were flying about under the long parallel roofs. Three sheriff’s cabs were drawn up outside the main eastern side entrance. Two senior sheriffs were surrounded by a group of stallholders, all of whom were trying to shout over each other. Yalseed oil lamps on the iron pillars cast weak pools of illumination, revealing the corpses of several mod-apes lying in the aisles. When Slvasta followed up with a sweep of ex-sight, he perceived dozens more corpses lying in stall buildings and aisles right across the market. None of them had any surface injuries. They looked as if they were sleeping.

‘Thank Giu you’re here,’ Pabel said, coming out to greet them. ‘This is bad. Really bad.’

‘What’s happened?’ Javier asked.

Slvasta was impressed. Not only did Javier sound puzzled, he even managed to affect considerable concern and interest.

‘It’s terrible,’ Pabel said, leaking dismay into the aether. ‘Someone’s murdered all the market’s mod-apes.’

‘What?’

‘It’s true. A whole bunch of them ran through the market last night. They used teekay to kill every mod they could find, jabbed ’em inside the heart or the brain. It’s . . . It’s like . . .’

‘A slaughterhouse?’ Slvasta asked innocently.

Javier flashed a glare at him. ‘Did they get our mod-apes?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t turn up till after it’d happened. There was nothing I could do.’

‘All right. Come on; let’s see what the sheriffs have to say.’

The senior sheriffs were having a tough time saying anything. Even Ryszard, who ran the Wellfield’s Meatcutter Guild, was having trouble getting the stallholders to calm down.

‘Has anyone been threatened recently?’ one of the sheriffs shouted.

Nobody had.

‘Did the killers ’path anything when they came through? Anything that could identify them? A reason?’

They hadn’t.

‘Did anyone recognize any of them?’

All of the killers had been heavily fuzzed.

The sheriffs didn’t seem to know what else to do or say.

‘What do we do?’ a stallholder called Calik asked Ryszard.

‘We came through the train delivery crisis just fine,’ Ryszard ’pathed strongly. ‘This is no problem. We work a little harder ourselves this morning, and by tonight we’ll all have ordered new mod-apes from the adaptor stables.’

‘Will the guild insurance cover us for the cost of replacements?’ Javier demanded.

‘I, er . . .’ a nervous Ryszard stammered. ‘That will have to be looked into, but obviously all claims will be given a great deal of sympathy.’

‘That’s no answer,’ someone else shouted.

‘I pay my dues,’ Javier said. ‘We all do. What are they for if not for calamities like this?’

Ryszard gave him a glance of pure hatred. ‘Can we all just keep calm, please? I’ve lost mod-apes, like everyone else.’

‘Then give us the guild insurance.’

‘I will do everything I can. And I will also be meeting with the chief sheriff to urge him to do whatever he can to catch these criminals.’

‘Urge?’ came a derisory ’path.

‘Insist!’ Ryszard sucked down an anxious breath. ‘Now I am off to Plessey to collect my meat. I will not let this heinous crime beat me. And neither should you.’

‘Politician,’ Javier grumbled loudly as the guild leader hurried off towards his stall. Several of his fellow stallholders heard and muttered agreement.

Without mod-apes, everyone struggled to cut their orders in time. Clients turned up, dismayed to see the mod-ape corpses lying round, but waited stoically for their orders to be completed.

Then men started to appear, asking if anyone wanted to employ them to help. Javier took on two, promising them work for a week. But first he sent them to Bryan-Anthony, the leader of the newly formed Wellfield union, to sign on with the organization. Other stallholders grumbled about him setting a bad example. Few followed his lead. By mid-morning, several stallholders had gone off to visit nearby adaptor stables and buy themselves new mod-apes. That was when they received their second shock of the day.

*

‘Every adaptor stable?’ Captain Philious asked in astonishment. He was standing in the garden room at the rear of the palace. It resembled a small Hellenic temple, but with glass sheets filling the gaps between the pillars, then curving back and merging to form a seamless roof. That glass was supposedly the last thing ever manufactured by the ship’s machines before they failed. Philious believed that; the glass was ancient, yet still stronger than any metal made in Bienvenido’s foundries today.

‘Yes, sir,’ Trevene replied. ‘The owners have been keeping very quiet about it, of course. But once the first couple of rumours leaked out, I had my people investigate thoroughly. The Adaptor Guild was reluctant to cooperate, but I insisted. There isn’t a neut in the city that hasn’t been sterilized.’

‘Crud!’ Philious made an effort to keep his temper. He looked out across the lawns where the annual afternoon garden party was underway. Varlan’s aristocracy and wealthiest merchants, all dressed in their finery, sipping tea as they waited for the Captain’s family to walk among them and murmur thanks for supporting the regimental widows and orphans fund. ‘How could such a thing happen? Is it a disease?’

‘No. This is deliberate. Three separate vets confirm it. Teekay destroyed their ovaries.’

‘Every one?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘But there must be thousands.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Crud.’ Philious stopped gazing at all the society girls with their colourful dresses cut to show off cleavage and legs. ‘Who did it?’

‘I’m investigating that.’

‘Investigating? That’s it? That’s your reply? There’s never been a crime this big before. You’re the chief of my police, for fuck’s sake! How can you not know? There must have been something? Dammit, half this city spies for you; the other half is terrified of you. You must know!’

‘This is something new, something different.’

‘What do you mean?’

Trevene pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘It could be a rival adaptor guild, Uracus knows there’s no love lost between any of them. But, as you rightly pointed out, the level of this goes beyond anything we’ve seen before. I can’t believe this is the work of jealous competitors seeking to take advantage of the city stables’ misfortune with high prices. I believe this has to be political.’

‘Political? Are you serious? The radicals at the university are dumb middle-class children playing at being important. As soon as they get their degrees they go home to work for daddy. And Shanty-dwellers are thicker than mod-ape shit. They couldn’t organize a fuck in a brothel, let alone this.’

‘Indeed. As I said, sir, this is different.’

‘Crud!’ Philious’s anger drained away as fast as it had risen. ‘So who are we left with?’

‘There are new workers’ unions springing up across town. And yesterday a team of unknowns rampaged though the Wellfield market, killing all the mods. Every one of them. It was butchery, plain and simple. An interesting coincidence, considering the people who will most benefit from the shortage of new mods will be the working class.’

‘And the Wellfield is unionized now?’

‘One of the first, yes.’

Philious realized he was actually smiling. ‘Clever. It would seem we have someone dissatisfied with my rule.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A hundred years since Jasmine Avenue, too. Which speaks to me of small minds with big memories. How very apt. This is going to be interesting.’

‘I expect so,’ Trevene said impassively.

‘Right. I want to know who they are. Do you understand? You infiltrate them, you find their names and what they’re planning next. Giu, this attack on neuts is going to hit the city’s economy hard. That’s all we need right after the Josi bridge disaster.’ He gave Trevene a sharp glance. ‘Was that part of this?’