‘There’s a small cat about fifteen kloms out,’ Chaldor replied. ‘Tell your men to stay alert.’

‘What’s it doing?’

‘Nothing as yet.’

‘Probably just an otter hunter.’ Evans glanced along the beach to where two of his men were invisible in the low scrub of creosote bushes just back from the jetty. He had groups of five men spaced at intervals of a hundred metres all around the island. All of them were bored with waiting and itching for a fight, but he suspected there would be no fight here, and that the final showdown would be in Gordonstone. He turned from the sea, intending to head over and speak to his men, but just then, out of the corner of his eye, spotted something in the water.

‘What in hell’s name?’ He swivelled and peered directly at the object. At first, it appeared to be merely the top of a post revealed by one of the quick ebb tides generated by the fast transit of the moon, Cereb. But it kept rising as it headed inshore till a rim became identifiable. It took a moment for Evans to admit to himself that what he was seeing was a large, wide-brimmed hat. He lowered his pulse-rifle into position by his hip, and set it whining as it topped up the charge in its capacitor.

‘What is it, Evans?’ Chaldor asked him over com.

‘A hat, ah… with a head underneath it.’

Evans felt his skin crawl as the huge man rose higher and higher out of the waves. He wore no breathing gear, and his skin looked rubbery—false. Had Semper actually been telling the truth? Evans pulled his flare goggles down over his eyes and, as soon as the man was out to his waist, he fired. The goggles prevented the strobing flash from blinding him, thus allowing him to see the flames and the glowing impact of each shot in turn. But the big man just came on.

‘Shit, Semper was telling the truth—we’ve got one big-fuck Golem coming ashore!’

Evans fired again, holding the firing button down. Suddenly the Golem was up onto a ledge and taking huge strides through shallows scattered with pearl crabs, leaving milky footprints behind as he crushed the myriad creatures. Evans turned to run back towards his men. Perhaps more firepower might… A heavy thumping tread behind him—he couldn’t believe it; this was wrong, too quick…

Evans’s men heard the scream—and turned just in time to see the Golem discarding something ripped and bloody. They came out of cover, confidently aiming their pulse-rifles.

Guilt, Mika found, was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion for which her Life-coven training had ill prepared her—and now she felt doubly guilty. She reached out to touch a finger to the hard-field that overlay the chainglass window, and found it slippery to the touch. Beyond the window, the asteroid was held central in the vast containment sphere by gravplates generating antigravity mounted all around the sphere interior, countering the minimal gravity of the asteroid itself. In the intervening space the vacuum swarmed with machines and suited figures, skinless Golem and complex telefactors operated by the Jerusalem AI. Already Jerusalem had separated the bridge pod of the Occam Razor from the surface, and sometime hence it would eject the asteroid into space in order to destroy it with an imploder missile.

‘He will not be pleased,’ she said.

The voice that replied was mild and conversational, but then you didn’t need to shout when you were a demigod. ‘Ian Cormac’s requirement for an expert in matters concerning the Jain and Dragon is not of prime concern. His singular mission is to catch and/or destroy a criminal. Our concern is to contain and understand a technology that could obliterate the Polity. Your abilities, as you surmised, will be more usefully employed here.’

Mika turned and surveyed the quarantine pod she had been allotted, with its intrusive scanning gear and the huge cowled surgical robot poised over a slab with drain channels around its edges, and felt a sudden lethargy overcome her. The nerve blockers and analgesics were not so effective now, and soon it would be time. Whether or not she would survive was open to question. The reports received from the medical team on Masada told her Apis had not yet revived, and that they were still removing further mycelial growths from him but, on the plus side, he had not yet died.

‘I’ve uploaded the recording of the operation.’ she stated.

‘I have,’ Jerusalem replied, ‘studied it in detail, Asselis Mika, and will be able to make some improvements. Presently I am designing T-cell nanobots for the finer work.’

Mika gritted her teeth and asked, ‘Will I be clear then?’

‘This method has a good chance of success. Disconnected filaments of the mycelium will not be able to transmit defensive information to each other, and so the nanobots should be able to destroy them. They will work in the same manner as the counteragent still being used to rid Samarkand of the ceramal-eating mycelium there.’

‘Disconnected filaments?’

‘The mycelium is killing you, so immediate surgery is necessary. However, I am capable of more invasive surgery than you performed on the outlinker, so I should be able to remove more of it.’

Mika shuddered. She wasn’t usually squeamish about such things, but she did not intend to ask the AI just how invasive it intended to get. The result, she suspected, would look rather like an explosion in an abattoir.

‘Might it not have been better to have Thorn here as well?’

‘The procedure I am about to undertake can also be carried out aboard the Jack Ketch. Thorn can then be kept in cold sleep until such a time as the nanobots can be conveyed to that vessel.’ Jerusalem paused. ‘There is, Mika Asselis, no further reason for delay.’

Mika knew she was procrastinating, and was doing so because she was scared. She discarded her robe, walked over to the surgical slab and sat naked on the edge of it. It was very cold. As she lay back and the surgical robot raised a nerve blocker to her neck, she thought that perhaps, like Thorn had intended, she should have had a memplant installed so that the step over death and into artificial life would be available to her too, but it was too late for that now.

On the Jack Ketch itself, with two analgesic patches on his chest and a nerve blocker now numbing his leg where earlier it had felt as if the mycelium had taken a hacksaw to his hipbone, Thorn limped out into the corridor adjoining Medical, and thought how weird. This seemed more like the inside of some old Renaissance chateau than a high-tech warship, what with the carpets, the plaster mouldings on the ceiling, the ornate dangling light fittings. But more disconcerting was that none of this stuff had been here a couple of hours ago, when he had entered Medical to be checked over.

The dropshaft was reassuringly high-tech, however, though it shifted while he was in transit. Gripping the handles fitted at his departure point, he stepped out at an angle onto the floor of the bridge. Momentarily, the changed angle of gravity fields disorientated him, and the fact that seemingly nothing stood between him and starlit vacuum was disconcerting. He lowered his gaze to study the bridge’s strange decor, then its other occupants—just as Jack said, ‘He will speak to you momentarily.’

Cormac was pacing the rug, obviously angry; Gant lolled nonchalantly, with his shoulder against one of the cast-iron street lamps; while Jack’s mechanical avatar sat in one of the club chairs, an ankle resting on one knee, the fingertips of each hand pressing against each other to form a cage below his chin, his eyes invisible. Thorn went over to join his friend.

‘This should be interesting,’ Gant muttered.

Thorn made no comment, his gaze straying to the antique execution devices for which Jack seemed to have developed a penchant. ‘That’s a new one.’ He pointed out a big brass statue of a bull.