Courtney rubbed her cheek along his dick, eyes closed in dreamy admiration. “I want to watch.”

“You can.” He beckoned. She was taken up against the wall, hands pinned above her head. A loutish violation of hard thrusts, energistically strengthened muscles overcoming any hindrance to pummel his body against hers. In his mind he let it be Banneth, enhancing the pleasure.

Halfway through, when Quinn’s orgasm was building, Billy-Joe knocked tentatively on the door. “Get in here, you little shit,” Quinn yelled. “Wait. Watch us.”

Billy-Joe did as he was told. Standing well out of the way. Keeping still, but with inflamed eyes following every aspect of Courtney’s contortions. Quinn finished with her, and let go. She sank to the floor, propped up clumsily against the wall, shivering heavily. Her hands stroked gingerly over her body, touching the fresh bruises.

“What do you want?” Quinn asked.

“It’s one of the possessed come to see you,” Billy-Joe said. “He’s one of the new ones. Come from the Lacombe sect. Says he’s got to see you. It’s like real urgent, he says.”

“Shit.” Quinn’s skin dried; his robe materialized around him. “Hey! You want any of those healed up?”

“It’s all right, Quinn,” Courtney said thickly. “I’ve got some cream and stuff to rub on. I’m fine.”

“This better be fucking important,” Quinn said. “I told you dickheads not to move around the arcology. The police are going to be watching for you.”

“I was careful,” the possessed man said. His name was Duffy. He’d taken over the Lacombe coven’s magus. Unlike the magus, Quinn judged him devout enough to God’s Brother. Duffy had been left in charge of the coven, organizing several successful strikes against Edmonton’s infrastructure.

Quinn sat down in one of the lounge’s fraying leather armchairs, and let his mind wander through the Chatsworth and its neighbouring buildings. They were only a couple of blocks away from Banneth’s headquarters, a location perfect in every respect.

There were no suspicious minds anywhere near. If Duffy had been spotted and followed, then the police were keeping well back. Quinn resisted the impulse to go over to the window and pull back one of the tatty curtains to peer down onto the street. “Okay, you haven’t completely fucked up. What is it?”

“This magus, Vientus, I been squeezing him. He ain’t a magus, not a real one. Doesn’t believe in God’s Brother.”

“Big deal. None of those shits ever did, not really.”

Duffy played with his hands, wretchedly nervous. Nobody liked the idea of telling Quinn what to do—like shut up and listen —but this was vital.

“All right,” Quinn grunted. “Go on.”

“He’s some kind of secret police informer. Has been for years. Every night he makes a report to some kind of supervisor about what the coven’s been doing and what’s going down on the street.”

“That’s impossible,” Quinn said automatically. “If the police had that kind of information they would have raided the coven.”

“I don’t think the supervisor’s that kind of police, Quinn. Not like you get in the local precinct house. Vientus never met them, he just datavised the information to some eddress each night. There was other stuff going on, too. Vientus sometimes got told to target people for this supervisor, local business people, buildings that needed to be firebombed. And they’d talk about what other gangs were doing, and if they needed to be chopped back. Real detailed shit like that. It was almost like the supervisor was running the coven, not Vientus.”

“Anything else?” Quinn was listening, but not really paying attention. He was too involved thinking through the implication, and with that came a growing sense of alarm.

“This supervisor must have had some influence with the cops. Quite a bit, I guess. There were times when Vientus got useful sect members released from custody. All he had to do was ask the supervisor for them, and the cops would let them go. Easy bail, or community work sentence, some shit like that.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said quietly. That recollection was one of the most bitter he owned. Waiting in Edmonton’s Justice Hall for days with the dwindling prospect that Banneth would get him released. Banneth could make the whole legal system do tricks for her, like every judge owed her a favour. Murder suspects out on parole within an hour. Stim suppliers given house arrest sentences.

“Er.” Duffy was sweating badly now. “And, er . . . the supervisor had told Vientus to look out for you.”

“Me? The supervisor used my name?”

“Yes. There was a visual file on you and everything. The supervisor said you were using the possessed to take over sect covens, and they thought you’d try to kill Banneth.”

“Shit!” Quinn stood up, and sprinted for the door. Halfway across the lounge he shifted into the ghost realm, running through the closed door without breaking stride.

Half past two Edmonton local time, and the arcology was at its quietest. Solaris tubes suspended underneath the elevated roads between the uptown skyscrapers shone down on deserted streets. Hologram adverts swarmed up the frontage of the ground level shops, bright fantasy worlds and beautiful people shining enticingly. An army of municipal mechanoids crawled along the pavements in front of them, spraying their solvents on tacky patches and guzzling down fast food wrappers. The only pedestrians left to avoid were a few late night stimheads thrown out of clubs by the bouncers, and romantic youthful couples slowly strolling the long route home.

Quinn adopted Erhard’s image as he hustled along the street. Not an exact replicant, but a reasonable facsimile of the pathetic ghost. Good enough to deceive any characteristics recognition program scanning pedestrian faces through the street monitor sensors for a glimpse of Quinn Dexter. He stopped by the taxi rank a full block from the Chatsworth, and the barrier slid down. One of the sleek silver Perseus cabs glided up out of the subway garage, opening its door for him.

Quinn pulled the seatbelt on with one hand, keying in his destination on the central control column with the other. He transferred the displayed fee from his bank disk and the little vehicle sped off along the street.

It all made a frightening amount of sense. He remembered the High Magus in New York; who obviously knew too much to risk being possessed. And back in Edmonton when he’d been a junior acolyte; the way everyone on a sect gig had to tell their sergeant acolyte all the crap that was going down on the street. It happened every single day. The sergeants would report to the senior acolytes, who in turn reported to Banneth. An uncompromising routine, drilled in to Quinn along with all the others right from their initiation. Information is the weapon which wins all wars. We need to know what the gangs are doing, what the police patrols are doing, what the locals are doing. Every coven was the same, in every arcology. The sect knew the moves of every downtown illegal on the whole planet.

“Perfect!” Quinn shouted. He thumped his fist into the seat cushion. “Fucking perfect.” The taxi was starting to rise up a ramp to the elevated express-road. Vertical lines of blanked windows zipped past as they increased speed, then curved round to a horizontal blur. Thousands of slumbering minds slipstreamed through his consciousness. Restful and content. Just as they were supposed to be. As they had to be.

Arcologies were the social equivalents of nukes. Half a billion people crammed into a couple of hundred square kilometres; an impossibility of human nature. The only society which could conceivably hang together in those circumstances was a total-control dictatorship. Everything licensed and regulated with no tolerance of dissent or rebellion. Anarchy and libertarian freedoms didn’t work here, because arcologies were machines. They had to keep working smoothly, and the same way. Everything interlocked. If one unit fucked up, then every other unit would suffer. That couldn’t be allowed. Which was a paradox, because you couldn’t keep the jackboot stamping down forever. However benign a dictatorship, some generation down the line will rebel. So somebody, centuries ago, had worked out how to keep the lid screwed down tight. An old enough idea, never quite managed in practice. Until now. A government department that quietly and secretly takes control of society’s lowest strata. Criminals and radical insurgents actually working for the very people whose existence they threaten.