As the other intruder moved inquisitively around the room, a second slender guide light briefly picked out the head of the one who was threatening Lisa, outlining an almost-featureless oval helmet. Lisa knew that the two must be dressed in matte black, probably in one-piece smartsuits whose unbreakable tissue-repellent fibers would leave no clues for forensic analysis. In order to be a successful burglar in the age of scientific detection, you had to be extremely careful to leave no traces. That wasn’t the purpose of smart textiles, but it was a happy side effect as far as the criminal classes were concerned.

“What are you looking for?” Lisa asked. Because it was such a clich, the question seemed far more foolish than it was. She had nothing worth stealing—nothing, at any rate, that justified the kind of risk the burglars were taking or the kind of expertise they must have employed to hack her unhackable locks.

“I think you know exactly what we want, Dr. Friemann,” the distorted voice replied. The bedroom walls had neither eyes nor ears, but the other room was fully fitted and the bedroom door was still open. The speaker obviously didn’t care about the possibility that the pickups in the other room would record the voice for analysis by Lisa’s colleagues in Sight & Sound. Presumably, therefore, the voice distorter was no mere frequency modulator.

Do I know what they want?Lisa wondered. If they’re professionals, it must be work, but I don’t bring work home, Anyway, I don’t have anything to do with AV Defence, or even with industrial espionage. Even if there is a war on, I’m a noncombatant.Her eyes tracked the movements of the second intruder, whose attention was now concentrated on the desk fitted into the corner to the left of the window. That was her main homestation. Her flat had only two rooms, apart from the kitchenette and the bathroom, and contemporary fashion dictated that if there wasn’t an already allocated space, the best site for the main homestation was in the bedroom, not the “reception room.” Having been brought up before the turn of the millennium, Lisa—who had little need for a room in which to receive visitors—always thought of her other room as the “living room,” although the siting of the homestation ensured that she spent far more time in the bedroom.

The second intruder was already pulling wafers and sequins off the unit’s shelves, sweeping them into a plastic sack without making any attempt to discriminate between them. A few old-fashioned DVD’s went with them. Most of the stored information was entertainment, and most of the text and software was public-domain material that Lisa had downloaded for convenience in the days when downloading had been convenient. It was all replaceable, given time and effort, but some of it was personal, and much of that was private enough not to be stored in the unit’s web-connected well or duplicated in Backup City. It wasn’t the sort of stuff for which people kept remote backups—not even people who were far more conscientious about such things than Lisa was.

When the shelves had been swept clean, the searcher started poking in the cubbyholes and emptying the drawers.

“None of it’s worth anything,” Lisa said. The comment was as much discovery as complaint, because she realized as she watched the hidden corners of her life history disappearing into the sack that there was very little whose loss she had much cause to regret. She had never been the kind of person to attach sentimental value to digital images or documents.

“Be good, now,” said the robotic voice, contriving to sound bitter and angry in spite of its manifest artificiality. “Stay quiet and stay alive. Play up and you might not.”

“Why?” Lisa asked softly. She was genuinely puzzled. Even as an agent of the state, Lisa had rarely roused anyone to bitterness or anger; only one person had ever threatened to kill her, although her testimony in court had convicted more than a dozen murderers and more than a score of rapists. Save for that one exception, the convicted and condemned had always recognized that she was only reporting what the evidence revealed. Hardly anyone nowadays blamed messengers for the news they brought, although it was conceivable that the national paranoia that was increasing day by day while the Containment Commission dithered might yet bring back the bad old days.

“You’ll work it out,” her adversary informed her. “If we don’t have what we need, we’ll be back, and next time—”

Lisa never got to hear what would happen next time if the burglars didn’t have what they needed, because the speaker was abruptly cut off by the telephone bell. It wasn’t a particularly strident bell—Lisa never needed much waking up—but the tension of the situation made it sound louder than it was.

Lisa’s eyes were immediately drawn to the screen, where the caller’s number was displayed in red above and to the left of the time. She recognized the number immediately—and so did the person on the other end of the gun.

“It’s Grundy’s mobile,” the robotic voice reported to the busy searcher. “Probably headed for the university.”

“If I don’t answer it,” Lisa pointed out, “he’ll know that something’s wrong.”

“He already knows,” the distorted voice told her. “Fifteen minutes more and he’ll know exactly how much is wrong. Believe me, Dr. Friemann, when I tell you that you won’t be very high on his list of priorities.”

That’s what you think!Lisa retorted silently.

The telephone continued ringing.

“Finished,” the searcher reported. “If it’s here, I’ve got it.”

Lisa didn’t make any conscious decision to be brave. If she’d made a conscious decision at all, she’d have taken into account what the gun wielder had already told her about the possibility that playing up might put her life at risk. It was something deeper, something more reflexively desperate, that made her lunge for the handset and snatch it from its cradle.

“Help me, Mike!” she yelled. “Intruders on premises. Now, Mike, now!”

“Shit,” said the searcher again.

“He’s at least four miles away,” said the burglar with the gun. The artificial voice still sounded bitter, but there was more contempt in it than anger. “The first three miles of that are in the blackout. The routine patrols have all been diverted. No help can reach you in time, Dr. Friemann.”

Lisa was still holding the handset to her mouth. Mike Grundy was saying something, but he must have been holding his own handset too far away for a decent pickup, perhaps because he needed both hands to drive. He seemed to be cursing, but the word “blackout” leaped out of the incoherent stream like a weird echo.

“I need help, Mike,” Lisa repeated, speaking more calmly now that it seemed she wasn’t about to be shot. “Alert the station. The burglars are armed. They must have a vehicle downstairs, but for the moment, they’re still here, taking time out to sneer.”

Some movement of the weapon or a slight change of the dark figure’s attitude must have spoken directly to Lisa’s subconscious mind, because she jerked her face back, away from the handset, a full second before the gun went off.

The bullet hit the earpiece.

The impact plucked the handset from her loosening grip without breaking any of her fingers, but Lisa felt plastic shards scoring the flap of flesh between her thumb and forefinger and drawing jagged slits along her inner forearm. She saw the blood spurting even before she felt the shock. The pain must have been intense, if only for a moment, but she was far more aware of the fact of pain than of any actual feeling, and the fact seemed trivial by comparison with frank wonder that she had turned her head out of the way in time.

She had no time to curse before the gun fired again.

The screen beside the headboard shattered. Then the weapon fired twice more, its wielder having swiveled through a hundred and forty degrees. The entire homestation seemed to explode—but Lisa was still conscious, still very much alive.