"How much air?" I asked.

"This is a five-man pod," Drappler said inside the cramped space. Great. "If five men occupy it, enough for twenty days. The pod's distress call should get someone to it within that time. The pod will also point itself towards the nearest Fleet beacon, and use three-quarters of its fuel in a concentrated burst. If you are near either Sudoria or Brumal, it will send itself there and effect reentry using first its engine then a polymer parachute."

I thought all his estimates and suppositions overly optimistic. Right out here the nearest Fleet ships would be some weeks away, as were the nearest habitable worlds. Back up in the ship's corridor I shook his hand. "Earth custom," I told him after his initial startlement. "I want to thank you. I feel so much safer now."

His nostrils flared as he muttered something along the lines of, "Think nothing of it," then headed quickly away wiping his hand on his foamite suit. When I returned to my cabin I found Yishna waiting inside, seated on my mattress. Maybe she'd been the one lurking outside earlier—rather than that other dark illusory figure.

"They are so solicitous of my safety now, it's heartening," I told her.

She gave me a louche smile. "That could be due to the charges ranging from rank incompetence to attempted murder that Duras filed against Captain Inigis."

"Ah, I see. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Without more ado she said, "Tell me, if the Polity were to intercede here, what would be their policy on imprisoned sentients?"

It was such a simple question, but I sensed an underlying tension. For a moment the room distorted around me again, shadows appeared displaced and it seemed some other individual was listening intently. I wondered then if these effects were more to do with the war between the two viral forms occupying my body than with Inigis's rough scanning of me earlier.

"That depends. In the case of corrupt totalitarian regimes a full amnesty to prisoners is granted, though those guilty of capital crimes would be checked for socio- or psychopathic tendencies. Your regime is not such, so cases would be reviewed under Polity law and those found innocent of any crime would be released. But intercession is unlikely."

She was studying me very closely, her gaze intense as if trying to penetrate behind my eyes. In that moment it occurred to me that she had not said imprisoned 'people' or 'citizens' but 'sentients'. That put a whole new gloss on the reason behind her question, and I shivered. I think she noted that reaction. Glancing aside, she stood up, then faced me again, her gaze no longer so unnerving.

"I will perhaps ask you this again when you visit Corisanthe Main."

"Interesting place," I said, gesturing to her gift of the palm screen with attached control baton. "I would be most interested in seeing this Worm." I paused for a moment, because this was critical. "I am sure Polity scientists would be interested in anything you might be prepared to share with them concerning it, just as they would perfectly understand if you decided not to share anything at all." It was the diplomatic thing to say, yet I was still having trouble getting my head around the idea of Polity AIs taking a none-of-our-business attitude to a seriously weird piece of alien technology.

"Information is best shared," she said noncommittally. Now she gazed at me with a look I can only describe as prurient, and for the first time in many years I actually felt nervous in the presence of a woman.

"Was there anything else?" I asked.

She stood up from the mattress and ran her hands down from her neck to her thighs. "No, I think that's it." The atmosphere almost crackled. She stepped up to me and took hold of the fabric of my shirt, running it through long-nailed fingers. "Oh," she said briefly, abruptly turning and heading for the curtain. She shot one final coquettish look at me then departed.

It took me a moment to put my thoughts back into order. I realised I'd just been played, and that this last part of our encounter was the one I was supposed to remember. She was, I realised, not only dangerous physically—this evident from the way she had dealt with the guard in the hold upon my arrival aboard this ship—but clever and manipulative.

Yishna—to Corisanthe Main

"I knew your mother, you know," he said.

At twelve years old Yishna had managed to pass herself off as eighteen. Now, purportedly a twenty-year-old, everything she was working towards hung in the balance. Her documentation had been approved, her promotion confirmed, and her luggage was already aboard the interstation shuttle here on Corisanthe III, ready for the journey to Corisanthe Main. Now this: I knew your mother.

"Really," said Yishna, no clever get-out clauses occurring to her. She should have taken this eventuality into consideration. Her all-consuming aim to study the Worm aboard Corisanthe Main was, despite the size of that station and its population being in the tens of thousands, sure to put her in the way of some who had once known Elsever Strone.

"Please, take a seat." With a short pecking gesture with his forefinger and thumb pressed together, Oberon Gneiss, Director of Corisanthe Main, indicated the seats on the other side of the alcove. Once she did as he asked, he elbowed the wall control to slide out a table surface between them, then picked up a matt-black case and dumped it before him. As he studied her, she noticed how his yellow eyes, with their irises deeply delineated, almost spoked, somehow gave him an almost insentient look.

"A very clever and a very complex woman was Elsever Strone. She too earned her position on Corisanthe Main when quite young." He cocked his head at her queryingly. "But not as young as you, it would seem."

"Elsever Strone?" Yishna pouted thoughtfully. "I've heard the name, but I don't see the connection. My name is Deela Freeleng—perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else?" She smiled at him brightly.

He shook his head, more of a twitch really, as if to discourage an irritating insect. "All three of your siblings have been caught advancing themselves through the Sudorian education system faster than seemed possible. But upon review and retesting it was discovered that though they had altered their ages in their records, they had not cheated in respect of their qualifications. Your brother Harald was caught at the age of twelve, a year after Orduval and Rhodane. You have evaded detection because as well as your age in your record, you changed your name too."

Yishna sat still and quiet. She could have continued arguing that she was Deela Freeleng, but knew that a few simple tests would find her out. Her combat training would not help in this situation—she and her siblings had excelled at this regimen that had remained obligatory ever since its introduction during the War and it had helped them in many a tight corner. She wondered if using sex might get her out of this, having employed it ruthlessly since puberty, but now felt it somehow wrong to resort to that to attain her final goal. However, that was not the whole of it: there was something distinctly odd about Director Gneiss which made her suspect he would not be easy to manipulate. She could not read him as easily as she did others, which suggested he was either incredibly complex or that his motivations were not something she had encountered before.

"Have you been told how your mother died?" Gneiss asked.

"An accident aboard Corisanthe Main. She went outside without filing her plan and somehow put herself in the way of a com laser."

"Yes—her fault." Gneiss opened the case and took out a touch screen, switched it on and called something up, before sliding it across to her. "Perhaps you would like to read the real report of the 'accident'."