Pelter was not good at waiting. He sat in a form chair by the window of his room and stared at the storm. It was like staring into a deep green fish-tank. He accessed the local server to see what he could find out about this weather that the people here so readily accepted. As with any aug, the information scrolled up on his visual cortex. It was like having a third eye directed at a computer screen, and it took some getting used to. The background of this screen, unlike for other augs, was now a vast wall tegulated with hand-sized scales.

The information he was viewing was not what he wanted. He did not want to know how many thousands of litres were hitting the ground every second, nor did he want to know about the giant fire far to the south which was feeding the weather system. With a thought he initiated one of the aug's search engines, and, with another thought, primed it and sent it on its way. The information he wanted clicked up: a few numbers on a white background. Two hours, then. He closed off the link to the server and began to disconnect from the aug.

If you are gridlinked, the information is downloaded directly into your mind.

'Who said that?'

No need to speak out loud, Arian. I can hear your thoughts.

'Dragon,' Pelter said. He did not want to just think what he had to say; that was too intimate.

Yes.

'I've been waiting for this. Is he still on Samarkand?'

He is, but that is not where you must go.

'I go where I choose.'

Hubris is at Samarkand. Do you think you could avoid being detected?

Pelter crushed the rage that rose up inside him. The storm - the green beyond the window - was taking on shape. It now had scales.

'What would you suggest then?'

/ will tell you where you can wait for him. Where, when the time is right, you may kill him.

'When the time is right?'

/ too have a purpose.

Somewhere a pterosaur head was speaking against red light. The smell of cloves, so strong it made Pelter wince, invaded his room. Behind him he heard Mr Crane move.

'Your purpose is to see him dead?'

Of course.

The hesitation was fractional, but Pelter was too close to miss it. Almost instinctively he activated Sylac's aug and his connection to Crane. Something had been touching that connection. He knew it just as someone knows when a thief has been in their private residence. The scales before him, he now realized, were the other augs, close and intimately linked.

'Where should I wait?'

Again that hesitation. Viridian. Ian Cormac will come, eventually, to Viridian. You will wait for him there.

'Thank you. Do you know what he will be doing there?'

He will be going to kill someone.

'Who?'

That is not your concern, Arian. Just let him complete his mission, then you can kill him.

Pelter used Sylac's aug to interpret the chaos of scales. A sorting program gave him the form of a web. At the centre of that web was an obese shape, a human taking on the form of his master. From this shape he felt the controlling link and the force of alien personality.

'What forces will he have with him? Do you know that much?'

There may be four Sparkind. Perhaps he will have others, but they are inconsequential.

'Sparkind are not.'

You have substantial weaponry. You also have Mr Crane.

'Don't worry. When he sets foot out of the runcible installation he is a dead man.'

On Viridian, Arian Pelter, I want you to wait. Let him do what he has come to do.

'Merely an expression. He will be a walking dead man. I will hold back for you, for all that you've told me. But tell me, how is it that you know all this?' The scales were fading now and Pelter could see his own bitter expression reflected back at him. The reply he got now was faint.

Their runcible AIs, Arian Pelter, so arrogant and so sure that they cannot be overheard. I listen to them all the time and, sometimes, I find things even they have missed. I wish I had found it earlier. Samarkand would not have been… necessary…

The personality turned away. The pterosaur head faded. But the links, all through, remained. Pelter summoned up an image of a thin-gun pointed at his face, and used it as an anchor. It took a huge effort of will as he fought the cold pain in the side of his head and disconnected from the Dragon aug. Scales faded, links that had been growing ever stronger faded. He snorted the smell of cloves from his nostrils and stood.

'Like hell I will,' he said, and walked over to his bedside table. There he picked up his comunit and made a particular connection.

'Arian,' Grendel said to him. 'Do you have what you… need now?'

'In one respect, yes. In others, no.'

'I do not understand.'

'It's a matter of hardware again,' said Pelter. 'Can you meet me at the warehouse.'

'The storm…'

'This is important, Grendel, and the storm's nearly over.'

'Very well. I'll see you there in an hour or so?'

Pelter clicked off the unit and turned to Mr Crane. 'Nobody controls me, and nobody controls you but me. Did they think I was so stupid?'

He gazed through the window. His problem did not lie in the aug, but in the force of the personality behind it. Dragon, he knew, could swamp him with a direct connection. Here, of course, the connection was not direct. Dragon was somewhere deep in the Polity. The link was an obese man who called himself Grendel.

The muted roar had been constant over the last fifty solstan hours. Storm gullies in the old hydrocar streets could barely contain the consequent torrents, and a long night had come to Huma. Occasionally, when the wind parted the curtains of rain, you could see the layer of cloud poised above like a ceiling made of old green jade. Stanton looked down. A hydrocar was edging across the AGC park. He saw that there were few AGCs left there, and that those remaining had been secured with the car clamps that had so puzzled him. Under each of those covers, about which he had asked the drunk outside The Sharrow, was a grav coil that interacted with the car's AG. It effectively stuck the car to the ground. A precaution he understood perfectly when he saw a driver-less AGC being shunted down one of the streets by the wind. He stepped back from the window.

'Come back to bed,' Jarvellis said.

'You know,' he said, 'I'm getting impatient. And I would reckon Arian is probably spitting magma by now. This is bad. We don't need this, not after wiping out a covert ECS group here.'

Jarvellis sat up and slid back so she was resting against the headboard. Almost without thinking about it she started playing with her right nipple. Stanton had been in battles that were less exhausting than twenty hours in a room with this ship captain.

'Bad,' she said. 'You didn't have to close up one of the Lyric's holds, then clear out a few thousand litres of water and storm sludge. I've had more fun—' An abrupt beeping stilled her tirade for a moment. 'What the fuck is diat?' she said, releasing her nipple and scratching at her belly.

Stanton walked over to the bed, reached under the pillow and pulled out his small comunit.

'You bring it to bed?' Jarvellis said, her voice rising.

Stanton held his finger to his lips and pressed his diumb to the pad on the side of the unit.

'In the bar, five minutes,' said Pelter.

Stanton removed his diumb and dropped the unit on the bed.

'Woof, woof,' said Jarvellis.

Stanton gave her a dirty look. 'Any more of that and I can always tell him you're here. Even though he's agreed to your extortionate price, I'm sure he'd still like to talk about it.'

'He is not getting anywhere near me, nor is that lump of homicidal scrap.'

Stanton grinned and began pulling on his clothes.