"Yes; in the archives, almost permanently. But there are a lot of archives and he moves around a lot, and there are always guards."

"Okay," he told her. "If you want to do something useful, try finding something that the university might want."

Sma shrugged. "It's a capitalist society. How about money?"

"I'll be doing that myself…" he paused, looked suspicious. "I will be allowed plenty of discretion in that area, won't I?"

"Unlimited expenses," Sma nodded.

He smiled. "Wonderful." He paused. "What source? A tonne of platinum? Sack of diamonds? My own bank?"

"Well, more or less your own bank, yes," Sma said. "We've beea building up something called the Vanguard Foundation since the last war; commercial empire, comparatively ethical, expanding quietly. That's where your unlimited expenses will come from."

"Well, with my unlimited expenses I'll probably try offering this university lots of money; but it would be better if there was some actual thing we could tempt them with."

"All right," she said, nodding. Then her brow wrinkled. She indicated the combat suit." What did you call that thing?"

He looked puzzled, then said, "Oh; it's an FYT suit."

"Yes; a serious FYT suit; that's what you said. But I thought I knew all the nomenclature; I've never heard that acronym before. What does it stand for?"

"It stands for a serious fuck-you-too suit." He grinned.

Sma made a clicking noise with her tongue. "Should have known better than to ask, shouldn't I?"

Two days later, they stood in the hangar of the Xenophobe. The very fast picket had left the GSV a day earlier, slung at the Voerenhutz cluster. It had accelerated hard, and now it was braking hard. He was packing the gear he would need into a capsule that would take him down to the surface of the planet where Tsoldrin Beychae was; the initial stage of his in-system journey would be on a fast three-person module; it would loiter in the atmosphere of a nearby gas-giant planet. The Xenophobe itself would wait in interstellar space, ready to provide support if needed.

"Are you positive you don't want Skaffen-Amtiskaw to come with you?"

"Absolutely positive; keep that air-borne asshole to yourself."

"Some other drone?"

"No."

"A knife missile?"

"Diziet; no! I don't want Skaffen-Amtiskaw or anything else that thinks it can think for itself."

"Hey; just refer to me as though I'm not here," Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.

"Wishful thinking, drone."

"Better than none at all, so above par for you," the machine said.

He looked at the drone. "You sure they didn't issue a factory-recall on your batch number?"

"Myself," said the drone, sniffily, "I have never been able to see what virtue there could be in something that was eighty per cent water."

"Anyway," Sma said. "You know all the relevant stuff, yes?"

"Yes," he said tiredly. The man's tanned, smoothly muscled body rippled as he bent, securing the plasma rifle in the capsule. He wore a pair of briefs. Sma — hair still tousled from bed, for this was early morning by ship time — wore a jellaba.

"You know the people to contact?" she fretted. "And who's in charge and on what side…"

"And what to do if my credit facilities are suddenly withdrawn? Yes; everything."

"If — when you get him out — you head for…"

"The enchanting, sunny system of Impren," he said tiredly, in a sing-song voice, "Where there are lots of friendly natives in a variety of ecologically sound space Habitats. Which are neutral."

"Zakalwe," Sma said suddenly, taking his face in both hands and kissing him. "I hope this all works out."

"Me too, funnily enough," he said. He kissed Sma back; she pulled away eventually. He shook his head, running his gaze down and up the woman's body, grinning. "Ah… one day, Diziet."

She shook her head and smiled insincerely. "Not unless I'm unconscious or dead, Cheradenine."

"Oh. I can still hope, then?"

Sma slapped his backside. "On your way, Zakalwe."

He stepped into the armoured combat suit. It closed around him. He flipped the helmet back.

He looked suddenly serious. "You just make sure you know where —»

"We know where she is," Sma said quickly.

He looked at the floor of the hanger for a moment, then smiled back into Sma's eyes.

"Good." He clapped his gloves together. "Great; I'll be off. See you later, with any luck." He stepped into the capsule.

"Take care, Cheradenine," Sma said.

"Yes; look after your disgusting cloven butt," Skaffen-Amtiskaw said.

"Depend on it," he said, and blew both of them a kiss.

From General Systems Vehicle to very fast picker to small module to the lobbed capsule to the suit that stood in the cold desert dust with a man encased inside it.

He looked out through the open faceplate, and wiped a little sweat from his brow. It was dusk over the plateau. A few metres away, by the light of two moons and a fading sun, he could see the rimrock, frost-whitened. Beyond was the great gash in the desert which provided the setting for the ancient, half-empty city where Tsoldrin Beychae now lived.

Clouds drifted, and the dust collected.

"Well," he sighed, to no-one in particular, and looked up into yet another alien sky. "Here we are again."

VIII

The man stood on a tiny spur of clay and watched the roots of the huge tree as they were uncovered and washed bare by a gurgling wash of dun-coloured water. Rain swarmed through the air; the broad brown swell of rushing water tearing at the roots of the tree leapt with thrashing spray. The rain alone had brought visibility down to a couple of hundred metres and had long since soaked the man in the uniform to the skin. The uniform was meant to be grey, but the rain and the mud had turned it dark brown. It had been a fine, well-fitting uniform, but the rain and the mud had reduced it to a flopping rag.

The tree tipped and fell, crashing back into the brown torrent and spraying mud over the man, who stepped back, and lifted his face to the dull grey sky, to let the incessant rain wash the mud from his skin. The great tree blocked the thundering stream of brown slurry and forced some of it over the clay spur, forcing the man further back, along a crude stone wall to a high lintel of ancient concrete, which stretched, cracked and uneven, up to a small ugly cottage squatting near the crown of the concrete hill. He stayed, watching the long brown bruise of the swollen river as it flowed over and ate into the little isthmus of clay; then the spur collapsed, the tree lost its anchorage on that side of the river, and was turned round and turned over and transported bodily on the back of the tumbling waters, heading into the sodden valley and the low hills beyond. The man looked at the crumbling bank on the other side of the flood, where the great tree's roots protruded from the earth like ripped cables, then he turned and walked heavily up towards the little cottage.

He walked round it. The vast square concrete plinth, nearly a half-kilometre to a side, was still surrounded by water; brown waves washed its edges on every side. The towering hulks of ancient metal structures, long since fallen into disrepair, loomed through the haze of rain, squatting on the pitted and cracked surface of the concrete like forgotten pieces in some enormous game. The cottage — already made ridiculous by the expanse of concrete around it — looked somehow even more grotesque than the abandoned machines, just because of their proximity.

The man looked all about as he walked round the building, but saw nothing that he wanted to see. He went into the cottage.

The assassin flinched as he threw open the door. The chair she was tied to — a small wooden thing — was balanced precariously against a thick set of drawers, and when she jerked, its legs rasped on the stone floor and sent chair and girl sliding to the ground with a whack. She hit her head on the flagstones and cried out.