Drugged? But the police had taken a blood sample.

The first stirring of panic began to creep over his body, like immersion in a cold lake. Suppose he couldn't prove it? Suppose a jury did find him guilty?

There was a state he could sometimes reach, one where the external world became a fable, irrelevant, leaving his mind free to concentrate on problems. Like yoga, he always imagined, except yoga was for contemplating spiritually. He dealt with hard facts, that was all he knew.

"I didn't do it," he said. "Therefore somebody else did. That somebody also framed me. And they framed me in a spectacularly clever fashion. They even have me doubting. So in order to prove my innocence, we have to find them."

He knew Lisa Collier thought he was crazy. Mood changes, from retarded child to punctilious cyborg. Who wouldn't think it of him? It didn't matter, because she could never get him out, not by herself. But she was a lawyer, she had to abide by the rules.

"Yes, Nicholas," she said. "But how are you going to find him?"

"I'm not. I'm not good enough, I admit that. We need a professional detective."

"Who?"

"The best." It was so simple; sneaky, perhaps even underhand, but practical. And the last thing he could afford right now was scruples. At the back of his mind the image of Edward Kitchener nodded approvingly. He relished the endorsement. Nicholas Beswick finally twigging human emotions, what made people tick. How about that? "And I know how to get him." He gave Lisa Collier a rapturous grin, and pointed at her cybofax. "Am I allowed a phone call?"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There was a crescent of dun-coloured fur partially obscured by the tall spires of grass on the edge of the orange grove. The picture dominated Greg's optical nerves, fed to him by his Heckler and Koch hunting rifle's targeting imager. A fan of nearly invisible pink laser light swept across his vision from left to right, producing minute sparkles when it touched the dewdrops clinging to the grass. A grid of red neon materialized in its wake. The discrimination program cut in, analysing the shape behind the tussock from the tenuous laser return, and the grid began to fold, shrink-wrapping around the rabbit. Cartoon-blue target circles materialized, and Greg shifted the rifle slightly, his finger on the trigger.

The infra-red laser pulse drilled the rabbit straight through its cranium. A tiny wisp of blue smoke curled up from the five-millimetre circle of singed fur. It rolled over without any fuss.

I hope it fucking hurt, you fur-clad locust bastard.

Eleanor hadn't slept much for the last few nights. Snuggled up in his arms, quiet face shaded by sporadic glints of moonlight. She wouldn't voice her fear, so he kept his peace, and let her hold him for the reassurance she needed.

Even he, hardened by Turkey and the inevitable propensity towards murderous fury by some squaddies, had found Nicholas Beswick's profanity difficult to exorcise.

A rabbit was squatting on its haunches at the base of an orange sapling, wet nose sniffing the air, whiskers vibrating eagerly. Thanks to the target imager's enhancement its melancholic liquid eye was thirty centimetres across. The laser speared the shiny little vermin straight through its pupil.

How his espersense could miss such an abominable maelstrom of insanity in the boy's unruly thoughts was impossible to comprehend. He knew minds, from the sad and pathetic to the most dangerous brooding psychotic. He could tell, instantly. Engaging Liam Bursken's mind had been a horrendous feat—there had not, could never be, any common ground with such a demented personality. But Nicholas Beswick, he was so appealing, with his timidity and rashness, a humorous reminder of Greg's own adolescent shortcomings, an amplification of all the angst and fervour so wonderfully endemic to that age group.

I liked him.

To be so wrong, so blind, was to invite a fundamental disbelief in his entire empathic ability. But there had been nothing, no hint.

Two rabbits were frolicking together, a big old buck and a frisky doe. He took the buck first, then cooked the doe's brain as she quivered in confused distress.

Fifteen down, a thousand lucky charms to go.

Ranasfari had been badly upset. Shocked that a fellow Launde acolyte could do such a thing to his old mentor. Hiding his grief behind a flimsy gruffness, saying he was perturbed that there had been no alternates in the past. It didn't fit the theories. Gabriel had taken him home, for once subdued and sympathetic herself.

The alternative universe notion was something Greg had clung to for a brief hopeful moment. Suppose Eleanor, untutored, on her first neurohormone infusion, had wandered sideways into one of those timelines where Hitler's grandchildren governed the world from a gleaming Berlin metropolis, where their Nicholas Beswick was certifiably deranged. That would give him the out he needed, that would mean he could carry on liking the boy.

But, as always, there was the knife. Here, in real time, real history. And so many peripheral details, the timing of the shower, Isabel, a possible complicity with the Randon company, the implausibility of a tekmerc penetration mission.

Only his ineptitude had failed to spot the psychopath. And intuition. It couldn't be him, not that boy.

He slammed the rifle over to rapid fire, and sent a barrage of laser pulses streaking into the long grass. Rabbits toppled over, small flashes of orange flame mushroomed from the dead undergrowth. The entire warren began to flee, bounding through the grass. Half the ground seemed to be on the move.

Fucking vegan rodents.

"Greg."

It was Eleanor's voice.

He plucked the target imager's monocle from his face, a ring of skin around his eye tingling as it peeled free. He had been leaning against the wooden bar fence around the grove for some support. Now he saw it had left smears of damp algae across the front of his jeans and black sweatshirt. He made a half-hearted attempt to brush it off, holding the rifle in one hand.

There were three people with Eleanor, walking towards him from the farmyard. A middle-aged couple and a young girl. The woman had a heavily drawn face, sun ripened and lined; her curly brown hair flecked with lighter strands, not yet grey, but on the verge. Her ankle-length dress was a dun brown, a decade-old Sunday best, smart but fading slightly, the hem and neck fraying. Her husband—they were so obviously married—was as tall as Greg, but leaner, arms and legs sinuous, large labourer's hands mottled with blue veins. He was in a suit, trousers with a multitude of iron creases down the front, never quite managing to fold down the same line, his grey shirt open at the neck, showing a V of tanned skin. The colour of his thinning sandy red hair was unpleasantly familiar. Greg felt his churlish anger at the rabbits grounding out, opening up a dark void inside.

Eleanor gave him a soulful look, her hands gripped in front of her, fingers knotting in agitation. "Greg, this is Derek and Maria Beswick." She gave the girl a hesitant smile. "And it's Emma, isn't it?"

The girl nodded shyly, her eyes wide, staring at Greg's hunting rifle in trepidation. She was about thirteen, holding her mother's hand. Not a pretty girl, nor destined ever to be one, Greg thought, her cheeks were too plump, a bulge of cellulite already building up under her weak chin. Her blouse and skirt looked handmade, a green and blue print, with a generous cut.

Back when Mindstar was starting up, the specialists and generals had talked of educing a teleport faculty in some recruits. Flipping around the world, from country to country, over oceans, in zero time; just think of a location and zip you were there. Like all the rest of Mindstar's brochure promises it had come to nothing. Which was a great pity, because right now Greg wanted to be anywhere else on the planet—a dungeon in Teheran, an African republic police cell.