"It doesn't make one fuck of a lot of difference in the end, does it?"

Armstrong picked up a cybofax from the coffee-table and sat in the last remaining leather chair. "Think about it," he said knowingly. "Dwell on it. You might find your attitude adjusting. Neville, we'll begin now."

Turner opened a drawer in the rose-teak desk and extracted a spaghetti tangle of nylon straps and optical fibres. "Take off your shirt," he told Greg with a doctor's examining-room impartiality.

Greg thought about it. Refusing would be a rather trivial token, the shirt would only be cut or ripped off. Besides, he was thinking of being slung into that bottomless mud. God curse Armstrong. He shrugged out of the jacket and began on the shirt buttons. Flakes of dried blood wedged under his fingernails.

"Good," Armstrong said. "Quite an ironic twist for you, Mr. Mandel, I imagine. On the receiving end of a lie detector for once."

Turner Velcroed a strap around each of Greg's wrists. They prickled, minute needle-tipped sensors probing into his skin, tasting salinity, heat, conductivity, heart-rate. The St. Christopher was flicked to one side and another strap went round his neck, tightening noose-style.

Leopold Armstrong's fingers drummed on his cybofax. "I have a number of queries. And you'll answer each one honestly. For every lie you make we'll break a bone in Miss Thompson's body. The bigger the lie, the bigger the bone. Understand?" Again, there was no malice, Leopold Armstrong was just telling it the way it was.

"Yeah," Greg replied, as a tiara band was placed on his head. Turner pressed an infuser against his arm. There was a bee-sting of pain, turning to an ice-spot.

"Relaxant," Turner said, and began plugging the optical cables into a gear module which was already interfaced with the Olivetti deck. The cube lit with scrawling sine waves. He sat in the swivel chair behind the desk and began typing. Data rolled down an LCD display. "Name?" he asked.

The correlation went on for what seemed an age to Greg. The relaxant acted like a gentle influx of rosé wine, pleasantly inebriating, amplifying sounds like squeaking leather and rustling clothes, turning the air warm, drying his throat. Of course, he could still concentrate. If he wanted to.

They seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of his life stored in the Olivetti. Stuff he could barely remember:

Secondary school exam results, Army postings, nicknames of barrack mates, neighbours at the time-share estate. Nothing recent, though. Nothing from the last couple of years.

"He's ready," Turner shouted out eventually.

Armstrong consulted his cybofax. "One. Does anyone on the mainland suspect I am alive?"

Greg had worked out that this was a crux. To answer or not to answer? Watching Gabriel being systematically snapped apart before him. The noise of all those cracking bones would be deafening. But they were going to die anyway. It would be noble to confound Armstrong.

Decisions. Decisions. Gabriel was silent. Unhelpful as always.

The relaxant's health-spar glow had seeped through his entire body, levitating him. He was back in the womb again, warm, cosy, and untroubled.

"No," he said. "Nobody knows."

Leopold Armstrong's smile illuminated the whole world.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Ade O'Donal had discovered that hard cash had its own special weight. Yeah, like no weight at all. He'd filled two Alitalia flight bags with New Sterling and Eurofrancs; thick, hard wads of notes. Kilograms of them, stretching his arms as he walked down the stairs, but he could've carried them for ever. The bags were new, clean, and bright; when people saw them, their exotic foreign logo, they'd know he was for real. One shit-hot guy.

The crappy top stair creaked when he put his foot on it. That was all he needed—Sashy to hear him leaving. He'd waited until late afternoon before scooting, fewer eyes seeing what he was about, and she was still sleeping off an afternoon of majestic sex. It'd been one serious way of splitting. He'd been tempted to take her with him. Her compact brown body was the absolute best screw ever, like her brain was loaded with Kama Sutra software. But he was travelling light, 'Bat Out of Hell' time, breezing down the open road. A woman would hold him back; worse, Sashy was into family in a big way. Brothers, parents, cousins, hundreds of them. Daft girl spent half the day on the phone. She wouldn't understand, he had to get lost, out of here, like he'd never existed. Kick loose from the shit glitching his life right now—Wolf, the two Event Horizon bastards.

He'd spent a couple of days collecting the money from cashpoints after that hard guy and the fat slag had turned up, initially terrified they'd pull the money from his Cayman account because of the blitz. Psychics, fucking psychics! Un-humans. Ade O'Donal still got cold burn in his balls thinking about it. His mind being torn open like a paper bag, thoughts held up to the light and examined. That was heavy-duty shit. Wolf must've gone acid-crazy thinking they could get away with a burn against Event Horizon. That company was the biggest scene in England, even kombinates pissed themselves about Event Horizon.

Ade O'Donal had plugged himself but good into the circuit after the psychics had left; making serious connections, a cruise for any hard-core hotrod. Giga-conductor. New word. The circuit was ringing with it. The biggest deal in the known universe was going down, and Wolf had tried to run a spoiler. Shit. He could've been hurt. Hurt bad. Wasted!

The little patch of red blistered skin on his belly where the Event Horizon hardliner had zapped him with the Mulekick was still sore. A good memory. If he ever thought this was one giant curved syntho trip, that patch would set him straight. Might even be a scar. Girls like scars. Scars were macho.

There was a noise down below in the darkened hall. Footsteps clicking on the tiles.

"Brune? Hey, Brune, that you?"

He'd sent Brune out after lunch to top up the BMW, gas and watts. This was going to be one long flight. Cornwall, maybe. Ade O'Donal hadn't made plans. He'd figured just go with the flow was safest. That way no one could load a tracer on him.

Brune was staying here, Brune with his leg in a tube of quik-set polymer. The guy was out of hardlining for a month anyway. Even the BMW would get axed eventually. Then there'd be just him, the money, some of the memoxes, and the Burrows terminal. That Burrows terminal was going to turn him into the circuit's sexiest hotrod.

After the psychics had left Ade O'Donal had plugged the gate circuits into the Burrows to try and see how the flick they'd opened it without tripping the alarms. Fifty Richter disaster time. The Burrows had crashed, totally, the only thing left working was the power LED, not even the menu showed. Whatever had been in the gate circuit was hot enough to melt through the hardware core guardian programs Wolf had given him.

That convinced him he had plugged into the biggest underclass operation running. Cancer software that was better than Wolf's! When he settled down he was going to retro that Burrows, no matter what it took. Those bytes were going to earn him mega money, like what Wolf paid was just small change.

He'd go for a total reincarnation, plastique, sign on the circuit as a virgin, build a reputation from scratch. A genuine hotrod, not dependent on anyone. Pity about Tentimes, mind, it was a slick kind of handle, told the girls all they needed to know out front.

"Brune?"

There was a figure in the hall, bending over a large crumpled bundle on the tiles. It straightened up as he reached the bottom of the stairs. And something about it was mega-shit wrong. The hospital had shaved Brune's head, coating the back of his skull in dermal membrane. It looked like he was wearing a Jew's skull cap from a distance. Good for a piss-take.