In an attempt to shut the more unwelcome manifestations of cybernature out, he sits under the shade of an apple tree and marshals his worlds around him. "When is my grandmother arriving?" he asks one of them, speaking into an antique telephone in the world of servants, where everything is obedient and knows its place. The city humors him, for its own reasons.

"She is still containerized, but aerobraking is nearly over. Her body will be arriving down-well in less than two megaseconds." The city's avatar in this machinima is a discreet Victorian butler, stony-faced and respectful. Sirhan eschews intrusive memory interfaces; for an eighteen-year-old, he's conservative to the point of affectation, favoring voice commands and anthropomorphic agents over the invisible splicing of virtual neural nets.

"You're certain she's transferred successfully?" Sirhan asks anxiously. He heard a lot about his grandmama when he was young, very little of it complimentary. Nevertheless, the old bat must be a lot more flexible than his mother ever gave her credit for, to be subjecting herself to this kind of treatment for the first time at her current age.

"I'm as certain as I can be, young master, for anyone who insists on sticking to their original phenotype without benefit of off-line backup or medical implants. I regret that omniscience is not within my remit. Would you like me to make further specific inquiries?"

"No." Sirhan peers up at the bright flare of laser light, visible even through the soap-bubble membrane that holds in the breathable gas mix, and the trillions of liters of hot hydrogen in the canopy above it. "As long as you're sure she'll arrive before the ship?" Tuning his eyes to ultraviolet, he watches the emission spikes, sees the slow strobing of the low-bandwidth AM modulation that's all the starship can manage by way of downlink communication until it comes within range of the system manifold. It's sending the same tiresomely repetitive question about why it's being redirected to Saturn that it's been putting out for the past week, querying the refusal to supply terawatts of propulsion energy on credit.

"Unless there's a spike in their power beam, you can be certain of that," City replies reassuringly. "And you can be certain also that your grandmother will revive comfortably."

"One may hope so." To undertake the interplanetary voyage in corporeal person, at her age, without any upgrades or augmentation, must take courage, he decides. "When she wakes up, if I'm not around, ask her for an interview slot on my behalf. For the archives, of course."

"It will be my pleasure." City bobs his head politely.

"That will be all," Sirhan says dismissively, and the window into servantspace closes. Then he looks back up at the pinprick of glaring blue laser light near the zenith. Tough luck, Mom , he subvocalizes for his journal cache. Most of his attention is forked at present, focused on the rich historical windfall from the depths of the singularity that is coming his way, in the form of the thirty-year-old starwhisp's Cartesian theatre. But he can still spare some schadenfreude for the family fortunes. All your assets belong to me, now. He smiles, inwardly. I'll just have to make sure they're put to a sensible use this time.

"I don't see why they're diverting us toward Saturn. It's not as if they can possibly have dismantled Jupiter already, is it?" asks Pierre, rolling the chilled beer bottle thoughtfully between fingers and thumb.

"Why not you ask Amber?" replies the velociraptor squatting beside the log table. (Boris's Ukrainian accent is unimpeded by the dromaeosaurid's larynx; in point of fact, it's an affectation, one he could easily fix by sideloading an English pronunciation patch if he wanted to.)

"Well." Pierre shakes his head. "She's spending all her time with that Slug, no multiplicity access, privacy ackles locked right down. I could get jealous." His voice doesn't suggest any deep concern.

"What's to get jealous about? Just ask to fork instance to talk to you, make love, show boyfriend good time, whatever."

"Hah!" Pierre chuckles grimly, then drains the last drops from the bottle into his mouth. He throws it away in the direction of a clump of cycads, then snaps his fingers; another one appears in its place.

"Are two megaseconds out from Saturn in any case," Boris points out, then pauses to sharpen his inch-long incisors on one end of the table. Fangs crunch through timber like wet cardboard. "Grrrrn. Am seeing most peculiar emission spectra from inner solar system. Foggy flying down bottom of gravity well. Am wondering, does ensmartening of dumb matter extend past Jovian orbit now?"

"Hmm." Pierre takes a swig from the bottle and puts it down. "That might explain the diversion. But why haven't they powered up the lasers on the Ring for us? You missed that, too." For reasons unknown, the huge battery of launch lasers had shut down, some millions of seconds after the crew of the Field Circus had entered the router, leaving it adrift in the cold darkness.

"Don't know why are not talking." Boris shrugged. "At least are still alive there, as can tell from the 'set course for Saturn, following thus-and-such orbital elements' bit. Someone is paying attention. Am telling you from beginning, though, turning entire solar system into computronium is real bad idea, long-term. Who knows how far has gone already?"

"Hmm, again." Pierre draws a circle in the air. "Aineko," he calls, "are you listening?"

"Don't bug me." A faint green smile appears in the circle, just the suggestion of fangs and needle-sharp whiskers. "I had an idea I was sleeping furiously."

Boris rolls one turreted eye and drools on the tabletop. "Munch munch," he growls, allowing his saurian body-brain to put in a word.

"What do you need to sleep for? This is a fucking sim, in case you hadn't noticed."

"I enjoy sleeping," replies the cat, irritably lashing its just-now-becoming-visible tail. "What do you want? Fleas?"

"No thanks," Pierre says hastily. Last time he called Aineko's bluff the cat had filled three entire pocket universes with scurrying gray mice. One of the disadvantages of flying aboard a starship the size of a baked bean can full of smart matter was the risk that some of the passengers could get rather too creative with the reality control system. This Cretaceous kaffee klatsch was just Boris's entertainment partition; compared to some of the other simulation spaces aboard the Field Circus, it was downright conservative. "Look, do you have any updates on what's going on down-well? We're only twenty objective days out from orbital insertion, and there's so little to see —"

"They're not sending us power." Aineko materializes fully now, a large orange-and-white cat with a swirl of brown fur in the shape on an @-symbol covering her ribs. For whatever reason, she plants herself on the table tauntingly close to Boris's velociraptor body's nose. "No propulsion laser means insufficient bandwidth. They're talking in Latin-1 text at 1200 baud, if you care to know." (Which is an insult, given the ship's multi-avabit storage capacity – one avabit is Avogadro's number of bits; about 1023 bytes, several billion times the size of the Internet in 2001 – and outrageous communications bandwidth.) "Amber says, come and see her now. Audience chamber. Informal, of course. I think she wants to discuss it."

"Informal? Am all right without change bodies?"

The cat sniffs. "I'm wearing a real fur coat," it declares haughtily, "but no knickers." Then blinks out a fraction of a second ahead of the snicker-snack of Bandersnatch-like jaws.

"Come on," says Pierre, standing up. "Time to see what Her Majesty wants with us today."