She whacked the machine with one fist. "Calm down, dammit."

"Sma," the drone said, voice almost languid, "I am calm. I'm just trying to communicate to you the enormity of the planetary cock-up Zakalwe has managed to concoct here. The Very Little Gravitas Indeed has blown a fuse; even as we talk, Contact Minds in an ever-expanding sphere centred right here are clearing their intellectual decks and trying to work out what the hell to do to tidy this stunningly ghastly mess. If that GSV hadn't been on its way here anyway, they'd have diverted it because of this. An asteroid belt-sized pile of shit is about to hit a fan exactly the size of this planet, thanks to Zakalwe's ludicrous good-guy schemes, and Contact is going to have to try and field all of it." It hesitated. "Yeah; I just got the word." It sounded relieved. "You have a day to haul Zakalwe's loop-eyed ass out of here, otherwise we snatch him; emergency displace, no holds barred."

Sma took a very deep breath. "Apart from that… everything all right?"

"This, Ms Sma, is no time for levity," the drone said, soberly. Then; "Shit!"

"What now?"

"Meeting's over, but Zakalwe the Insane isn't taking his car; he's heading for the elevator down to the tube system. Destination… naval base. There's a submarine waiting for him."

Sma stood. "Submarine, eh?" She smoothed the culottes. "Back to the docks, agree?"

"Agreed."

She hefted the drone, started walking, looking for a cab. "I've asked the Very Little Gravitas Indeed to fake a radio message," Skaffen-Amtiskaw told her. "A cab should pull up here momentarily."

"And they say there's never one around when you need one."

"You're worrying me, Sma. You're taking all this far too calmly."

"Oh, I'll panic later." Sma took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Could that be the cab?"

"I believe it is."

"What's "To the docks"?"

The drone told her, and she said it. The cab sped off through the largely military traffic.

Six hours later they were still following the submarine, as it whined and whirred and gurgled its way through the layers of ocean, heading for the equatorial sea.

"Sixty klicks an hour," fumed the drone. "Sixty klicks an hour!"

"To them it's fast; don't be so unsympathetic to your fellow machines." Sma watched the screen as the vessel a kilometre in front of them burrowed its way through the ocean. The abyssal plain was kilometres below.

"It isn't one of us, Sma," the drone said wearily. "It's just a submarine; the smartest thing inside it is the human captain. I rest my case."

"Any idea where it's heading yet?"

"No. The captain's orders are to take Zakalwe wherever he wants to go, and after giving him this general heading, Zakalwe's kept quiet. There's a whole heap of islands and atolls he could be making for, or — several days travel away at this crawl — thousands of kilometres of coastline, on another continent."

"Check out the islands, and that coastline. There must be a reason he's heading this way."

"It's being checked out!" the drone snapped.

Sma looked at it. Skaffen-Amtiskaw flashed a delicate shade of purple, intimating contrition. "Sma; this… man… totally blew it the last time; we're five or six million down on that last job, all because he wouldn't break out of the Winter Palace and balance things out. I could show you scenes of the terror there that would blanch your hair. Now he's come very close indeed to instigating a global catastrophe here. Since the guy suffered what happened to him on Fohls — since he started trying to be a good guy in his own right — he's been a disaster. If we do get him, and can get him to Voerenhutz, I just worry what sort of chaos he'll engender there. The man's bad news. Never mind outing Beychae; offing Zakalwe would be doing everybody a favour."

Sma looked into the centre of the drone's sensory band. "One;" she said, "don't talk about human lives as though they're just collateral." She breathed deeply. "Two; remember the massacre, in the courtyard of that inn?" she asked calmly. "The guys through the walls, and your knife missile let off the leash?"

"One; sorry to have offended your mammalian sensibilities. Two; Sma, will you ever let me forget it?"

"Remember what I said would happen if you ever tried anything like that again?"

"Sma," the drone said tiredly, "if you are seriously trying to imply that I might kill Zakalwe, all I can say is; don't be ridiculous."

"Just remember." She watched the slowly scrolling screen. "We have our orders."

"Agreed on courses of action, Sma. We don't have orders, remember?"

Sma nodded. "We have our agreed on courses of action. We lift Mr Zakalwe and take him to Voerenhutz. If at any stage you disagree, you can always butt out. I'll be given another offensive drone."

Skaffen-Amtiskaw was silent for a second, then said, "Sma, that is probably the most hurtful thing you have ever said to me — which is saying a lot — but I'll ignore it, I think, because we are both under a lot of stress at the moment. Let my actions speak. As you say; we lift the planetfucker and drop him in Voerenhutz. Though, if this voyage goes on too much longer, it'll all be taken out of our hands — or fields, as the case may be — and Zakalwe will wake up on Xenophobe or the GCU, wondering what happened. All we can do is wait and see."

The drone paused then. "Looks like it could be those equatorial islands we're heading for," it told her. "Zakalwe owns half of them."

Sma nodded silently, watching the distant submarine creep through the ocean. She scratched at her lower abdomen after a while, and turned to the drone. "You sure you didn't record anything from that, umm, sort of orgy, first night on the Xenophobe?

"Positive."

She frowned back at the screen. "Huh. Pity."

The submarine spent nine hours underwater, then surfaced near an atoll; an inflatable went ashore. Sma and the drone watched the single figure walk up the golden, sunlit beach towards a complex of low buildings; an exclusive hotel for the ruling class of the country he'd left.

"What's Zakalwe doing?" Sma said, after he'd been ashore for ten minutes or so. The submarine had dived again as soon as it recovered its inflatable, and taken a course back to the port it had departed from.

"He's saying goodbye to a girl," sighed the drone.

"Is that it?"

"That would appear to be the only thing to draw him here."

"Shit! Couldn't he have taken a plane?"

"Hmm. No; no airstrip, but anyway, this is a fairly sensitive demilitarised zone; no unexpected flights of any sort allowed, and the next seaplane isn't for a couple of days. The sub was actually the fastest way of…"

The drone fell silent.

"Skaffen-Amtiskaw?" Sma said.

"Well," the drone said slowly, "the doxy just smashed a lot of ornaments and a couple of pieces of very valuable furniture, and then ran off and buried herself in her bed, weeping… but apart from that, Zakalwe just sat down in the middle of the lounge with a large drink and said (and I quote), "Okay; if that's you, Sma, come and talk to me.""

Sma looked at the view on the screen. It showed the small atoll, the central island lying green and squashed looking between the vibrant blues and greens of ocean and sky.

"You know," she said, "I think I would like to kill Zakalwe."

"There's a queue. Surface?"

"Surface. Let's go see the asshole."