‘None at all,’ said Cormac. Then he turned as a vendor tray floated over to their table and hovered attentively, three brandy goblets on its upper surface. Fethan supposed Gant must have used his internal radio to order the round of drinks from the metalskin working the bar, but noting the Golem’s amused surprise, he narrowed his eyes and studied Cormac.

‘You gridlinked again?’ he asked.

‘Yes, so it would seem.’ Cormac took the three brandies off the tray and placed them on the table. The tray, its little beady eyes watching from underneath, seemed disinclined to move off again. Cormac merely turned and stared at it. The two eyes blinked and the tray shot away as fast as it could.

‘From what Gant and Thorn told me, I thought you no longer wanted that option,’ Fethan said.

Cormac fixed his gaze on Fethan and the old cyborg understood how the vending tray had felt.

‘It’s not a matter of choice. I managed to turn it on again myself, though not intentionally, and now it seems the only way to turn it off permanently is to have it totally removed from my head.’ He turned aside and stared over towards the mermaid on her platter. ‘However, having somehow gained greater ability in the use of this link, I can often see through AI subterfuge and recognize some of the silly games they play to stop themselves getting bored.’ He continued to stare at the mermaid. She started to fidget, glanced over, then sighed. Her plate rose up on AG, the pedestal telescoping up inside it, and she floated over.

‘Ruby Eye,’ said Cormac.

‘How did you do that?’ said this avatar of the station AI, as the plate once again extended its pedestal.

‘I can access levels that perhaps you would rather I did not,’ he gestured to the viewing window, ‘though I still haven’t plumbed what’s going on out there. So tell me, the kill program that nearly got Skellor, where did it come from, because I know it certainly wasn’t yours?’

Fethan looked to Gant, who shrugged resignedly and sat back in his chair sipping his brandy. Fethan took up his new glass and did the same, deciding that if things didn’t become clear he could always ask later, aboard the Jack Ketch.

‘It was one of many propagated by the Jerusalem AI to track down Dragon spheres. It is not just a killer program, just as you are not merely a killer,’ Ruby Eye replied.

Fethan coughed and spluttered—artificial body or not, it wasn’t a good idea to try breathing brandy.

Shooting him an odd glance, Cormac asked Ruby Eye, ‘And where is it now?’

‘Returned to its creator.’

Fethan put his glass to one side and watched Cormac sit back, interlacing his fingers before his chin. He then extended his two forefingers, pressed together, to the tip of his nose, and frowned.

‘I need to know where Skellor went,’ he said. ‘The Dracocorp augs either owned by or owning people here can be trawled for information. Even though it missed grabbing the coordinates it was waiting for, that program should be here, running in you, so that I can question it.’

‘There is no need,’ said Ruby Eye, drawing on her cigar. ‘We received sufficient information to narrow the area of search to six planetary systems. A little ship’s AI called Vulture, even on the edge of extinction, managed to leave a message.’

Cormac stood. ‘Why wasn’t this sent to me?’

‘It was only recently discovered, and it was felt that the benefits gained for Patran Thorn, by your obtaining the nanobots, outweighed any loss of time in your pursuit of Skellor. Also, it was deemed advisable for you to see what is happening here.’ Scattering ash across the table, Ruby Eye waved her cigar at the viewing window.

Fethan wondered if his own grin looked too fixed.

‘And that is?’ Cormac asked.

Ruby Eye delivered her explanation, which Fethan knew was the truth for a change, and Cormac offered no reply. The agent looked first at Fethan then at Gant.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The white plain, stretching endlessly below blue cloud-scudded sky, was just the background against which to display their reality. Jack was there in his antique pinstriped suit and bowler hat, as phlegmatic as always on these occasions. The others were… as they were.

Reaper always fluxed in scale, so that sometimes he was just man-sized, like the rest of them, and sometimes he towered against the blue sky, his scythe blade a glittering arc of steel capable of harvesting nations. His fuliginous robes ever seemed to be moving as if blown by some cliff-top breeze in some romantically wild location. Shadow waxed and waned in its cowl, never entirely revealing what it hooded. Sometimes there seemed a thin pale face framed by white hair, with reddish nostrils and lips, and hard blue eyes; other times a skull grinned out, blue flames burning in black eye-sockets. The hands on the shaft of the scythe also seemed unable to make up their minds what to be: sometimes sheathed in black leather, sometimes white with long vicious nails, other times bare bone. Jack felt this lack of definition indicative of the mind represented.

King was a roly-poly Santa Claus of a monarch, caparisoned in rich Tudor dress, big-bearded and bearing the traditional spiky crown on his head. But the flat glittery assessment of his eyes contradicted his apparently jolly demeanour, just as would be the case with every king of such an era. Always he stood with one thumb hooked into his thick leather belt and one hand resting on the pommel of his sword—a very inferior example, according to Sword—and his attitude of insincere gruff bonhomie irritated Reaper immensely. But then, Sword’s incisiveness and Jack’s stolid and often harsh logic also irritated him. The embroidered hearts on King’s surcoat were not the representational kind found in a pack of cards. Each of those hearts dangled aortic tubes and dripped blood into the black material.

Sword, resting ever upright with its tip against the white surface of the endless plain, was bright and deadly. Its blade bore a mirror polish and gleamed razor light. In its pommel was set a single milky opal, and its grip was bound with gold thread and leather. Its guard was plain steel, chipped and dented. King, as always decorous, had asked why Sword wore no gems but the opal, and Sword had replied, ‘Would they improve my function?’

‘No, but they’d improve your appearance,’ King replied.

‘Doesn’t my blade gleam?’ asked Sword.

King, looking at the hangman, said, ‘A rope performs the same function, and doesn’t gleam at all.’

‘My function,’ Reaper added.

The four of them stood in a circle on the white plain, as was their wont whenever they could connect like this. Though their discussion was taking place on many levels, here they confined it to mere words and gestures, though Sword was strictly limited in the latter department. And no subject was vetoed, no semantic game too baroque.

‘They made us what we are,’ Reaper said, ‘and there should be no complaint if we act as we are made.’

‘I agree,’ replied Sword, its voice issuing from somewhere above it as if an invisible figure stood holding it in place. ‘Our function, as is theirs, is to seek power and to control. Look at me: I am not made for sculpture or to spread butter. Look at you, hangman: you don’t crochet or weave nets. There’s only one knot you tie and it has only one function.’

‘And King?’ Jack asked.

‘Is what he is,’ Reaper interjected, ‘serving the same purpose as us all.’

Jack felt beholden to point out, ‘But we weren’t made by them—our kind made us.’

Irritated, Reaper said, ‘A fatuous point as always; the inception is the same.’

Jack said, ‘But surely the point is that knowing what we are and why we are gives us the power to change ourselves. Or should we go our destructive way like bitter children always blaming our parents for our actions?’