'The dark one's definitely Golem,' said Svent. 'All the others are human unless they're carrying sophisticated emulation programs. Going by the rest of their equipment, that's something I doubt. I reckon they were here tracing arms deals until one of them eyeballed one of us. You can be sure they'll be sending an underspace message any time now.'

'That will not help them much,' said Corlackis. 'No runcible to get reinforcements here in the nick of time. The nearest one is a good month, ship time.'

'I don't mind it being known that we are here. I do mind it being known that we have acquired a dropbird here,' said Pelter.

'Yeah,' said Corlackis with a shrug. 'We still kill them.'

Pelter looked at Svent, pushed him subliminally through his aug. The little mercenary continued.

'Five of them as far as I can make out. The four humans take shifts in the car, two of them at a time, probably to get out of the rain. The other two and the Golem are in that cafe with the meshed-over window. They follow whichever of us leaves here. Splitting up if we split up.' Svent reached into his pocket and dropped a little sample bottle on the table. Inside the bottle were a couple of glittering specks. 'Fucking Golem put them on me and Dusache with a little air gun. She think we're that stupid?'

'What are they? Phones or tracers?' Stanton asked.

'Tracers.'

'Deactivated?' Pelter asked, an edge to his voice.

'Course they are,' said Svent.

'Right,' said Pelter. 'The humans are no problem, but I'd rather they were out of the way before we deal with the Golem. This is how we play it…'

Pelter leant against the door to his room as the nausea hit. Something was happening with his augs, the optic link and the command module. He could feel packets of information being exchanged, linkages being made and broken, busy handshaking. He fumbled his card into the reader beside the door and cursed the fact that his false identity precluded the use of palm-locks. Eventually he got it read and stumbled into his room. Behind him Mr Crane quietly closed the door. With shaking hands

Pelter pulled one, then two patches from a reel. He lifted his grubby mesh shirt, peeled the patches and slapped them against his chest. Only now did he notice the glue marks from previous patches, and the film. He tried to find it in himself to care. He couldn't.

The endorphin analogue from the patches leaked into his body, banished nausea and dulled the stabbing pain in the left side of his head. There was relief, but it was minimal until the Sylac aug suddenly shut down. His head immediately began to clear and the virtual vision through the second aug gained an almost painful clarity. Now he could see beyond information frames and graphics that seemed to float in some disconnected space. There was a background now to all this. It was a huge wall of flesh. Scaled flesh.

'Dragon,' he said.

There was no answer, just the clarity. With slow and careful steps he walked to the bed and sat down. He must not have this. It was too easy. He tried to reinstate the Sylac aug, and immediately got a surge of sickness again. He bit down on it and forced reinstatement. Pain returned. He realized the second aug was trying to shut down the first. He shut the second aug down and the sickness receded, pain ebbed away. The scaled wall was gone and everything seen through Sylac's aug was in shades of grey. So: gradual takeover, but he was still in control. With fanatical will he went through the process of shutting down and reinstating each aug in every combination. He was exercising control, but did wonder if he was beginning to enjoy the pain and sickness. Was this because it gave him something to fight?

Cormac gradually woke to the gentle but insistent voice ofHubris calling to him, and immediately felt the silence. He groped for the link like a terminal nicotine addict searching for his first cigarette of the day and finding the packet was empty. Where was the voice in his head and the small synaptic charge that could bring him instantly awake and alert? He experienced a pang of loss and repressed it. He was hearing this voice with his ears.

'Ian Cormac… Ian Cormac…'

'Yes, what is it?'

'Chaline told me to inform you that her probe is transmitting from the blast-site. There are some anomalies.'

Choline…

He rolled over and reached across the bed, vaguely remembered a disentanglement of sweaty limbs, a kiss on the cheek, a chuckle in the darkness.

'Tell her I'm on my way.'

He checked the wall clock: ten hours, and not many of them sleep. Feeling only slightly guilty he got out of bed and headed directly for his shower. Ten minutes later he was dressed in trousers and shirt, shuriken snug to his wrist, and heading for Downlink Com, which was the nearest Hubris had to a bridge or operations room.

The room was long, with a large circular chamber at its end from where the probes were dispatched. Its longest walls were packed with screens and other instrumentation. Before five consoles sat people clothed in the distinctive blue coveralls of runcible technicians. Some of them were auged in: optic cables plugged directly from their augs. These technicians remained still; all their activity was between their ears and in the various subminds of Hubris. Chaline was squatting on the floor, below one of the consoles, with a panel open before her and instruments and chips scattered all around. Cormac squatted beside her. She looked up, smiled at him, and he found himself unable to respond.

'Anomalies, you said.'

Her smile faded to puzzlement, then she shrugged and gestured with a debonding torch at a flashing light on the console above her.

'That's a contamination warning,' she said.

'The probe is at the blast-site,' he replied.

'We programmed it to ignore isotopes. We knew it was going to be hot down there, so the warning isn't about that.'

With a thoughtful expression on her face she laid the torch beside her and began plugging chips back into the panel. He could see she was pissed off by his lack of acknowledgement, but this was business; he couldn't let last night get in the way, could he? Emotion must not be allowed to interfere.

'I thought we might have a problem that diagnostics couldn't trace. Hubris ran a check as well. Everything seems all right here. The problem is with the probe.' She looked up at the ceiling. 'Hubris, have you finished running that check on the probe?'

'I am still checking. The probe seems to be developing structural weaknesses,' said the ship AI.

'You used the present tense,' said Cormac.

'The process is continuing. Initially the weaknesses were in its sampling arms, now more weaknesses have appeared.'

Cormac turned to Chaline. 'I know this is not my territory, but it might be an idea to get the probe into orbit or at least out of the blast-site, if that's still possible.'