Immanence clattered his mandibles as if applauding. He knew that right now the processes of cerebral connection and flash-freezing were taking place. In a minute or so base programming would initiate, and then Vagule would obey absolutely without the need for pheromonal control. At the last, movement within Vagule's own carapace finally ceased as his body expired.

"Bring me some of that," Immanence ordered.

Scrabbler leant over the carapace and snipped out the organ that served the purpose of a liver in the Prador and held it up to his father. As Immanence crunched and chewed his way through the delicacy, all around his children grew still, watching him. Upon swallowing the last mouthful, he magnanimously waved his claw.

"Enjoy."

A riot ensued. By the end of it the carapace rested up against one wall, completely scraped clean, and all the limbs lay broken open with the meat winnowed out. Ship lice began venturing from their crevices to snatch up stray gobbets, and Prador burps puttered in the air. Then the spherical drone shell abruptly powered up, lights flicking on and off within various pits in its surface: the barrels of rail-guns extruding momentarily, missile hatches opening and closing. It righted itself, then with a low humming rose from the floor and spun to face Immanence.

"Take your position in the drone cache along with the others and await orders," the captain told it.

It swung round, second-children scattering from its path, floated across the sanctum and into the corridor, turned and motored out of sight.

Most satisfactory.

"You have two hundred humans with which to improve on Vagule's results," Immanence told Gnores. "Be on your way."

Gnores moved off with assertive eagerness.

That would soon change.

Short jumping within a planetary system was not exactly the healthiest of occupations, since the presence of massive bodies, like suns, tended to over-complicate the vectors and result in the ship concerned being forced from U-space in very small pieces. This was why most spaceships surfaced a safe distance from any gravity well and approached their destination under conventional drives. Besides sheer convenience, this was why the runcible superseded ships for transportation within the Polity. Also, the resulting lack of ships within the Polity prevented ECS from mounting a creditable defence against the Prador. Strapped into her acceleration chair—for the ride might be bumpy during this short jump—Moria considered that for a moment. Huge shipyards, currently under construction, were racing to rectify that lack, and she reckoned that should the Polity survive this conflict, such a lack would never again be allowed. This probably meant death to the cargo runcible idea. She unstrapped herself.

The weird sensation of something twisting out of kilter finally passed. The vessel surfaced into the real, intact. She relaxed for a moment, considering the quandary of runcibles and ships. Though for the latter surfacing near gravity wells held dangers, the former were often positioned on planets—right in those wells. It all devolved down to the fast calculations required at the interface, the surfacing point, and to modelling. With a fixed runcible on the surface of a planet, the AI held in its mind a model of the surrounding system—all the space-time maps including those venturing beyond the event horizon of the warp—so it did not need to calculate those. Also an AI lay at each end, making the connection. The nearest analogy she could think of was to ocean travel between two islands. The spaceships were like old-fashioned submarines that needed to surface to see where they were going so they could motor into port without smashing into something. The runcible, however, was a transit tube laid along the ocean bed and whatever used it, be that humans or cargo, could not deviate from its course—entry and exit points were nailed down. Perhaps that was it! Perhaps the problem with the recent test related to drift in the spatial positions of the cargo runcibles! That the tube mouths were not sufficiently nailed down?

"George?" she turned towards him. "Could it be simply spatial drift?" As she said it she winced, realising the AI would have calculated for that and the solution to the problem could not be anything so simple.

No reply from George, however. He remained utterly still, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, still strapped into his seat. Drool ran down his chin.

"George?"

A slight flick of the eyes. Slowly he raised his hand and wiped the back of it across his mouth. He turned his head slightly, focusing on her.

"One for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow," he said.

"What?"

He gave a puzzled frown, then raised his fingers to his mouth and touched his lips as if they betrayed him. "Fine words butter no parsnips," he decided.

Something was seriously wrong.

"What you don't know can't hurt you." He reached out and tapped her aug.

Moria stayed very still for a moment. Necessarily offline throughout the U-jump, her aug had not reinstated now that this ship travelled through realspace towards the cargo runcible. She tried reconnection and there came almost a hesitation, then, via a server on the runcible, she routed into the chaotic Trajeen network. Fragments of news stories reached her first, but she kept getting knocked out of the network and receiving all sorts of strange error messages. Something bad was happening: Separatists… an explosion. Then:

EDDRESS REQUEST >

OFFLINE EDDRESS REQUEST?

ACCEPT?

Moria began to review the information attached to the eddress request, but just stopped at the name:

JEBEL KRONG.

What the hell is he doing here? But then she immediately answered her own question. She knew about Jebel Krong and his Avalonians: stories about him were much relished by the newsnet services, since they were part of the small amount of good news coming from the front. He was here because the Prador were coming. But why did he want to communicate with her? Only one way to find out. She gave permission for her eddress to be used—activating voice and image com.

"Moria Salem" stated the requester.

"Well, I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Jebel Krong, but why are you talking to me?"

The connection hardened now—she rather suspected military com software to be involved—and his image appeared in her visual cortex. She took in the chameleon-cloth fatigues with their black webbing, the famous crab buttons, and the austere face with his V-shaped scar.

"Big hole in the networks at the present, so I rather suspect you don't have the full story. That hole was once occupied by the one known as George."

"What?"

Moria blinked, looked at her companion—the image of Jebel still retained.

George said, "What's done cannot be undone," and she understood him.

"My god, what happened?"

"Separatists attacked here, and though they did not manage to take control, they did manage to murder the AI."

"But I still don't understand why you have contacted me. Is it because of George here?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Some confusion, I think. The Trajeen Cargo Runcible AI has a submind…an avatar. Part of its mind resides in a vat-grown human body presently sitting beside me spouting proverbs."

"I see… no, I am not contacting you because of that, though that particular George may be of some use to you. I am contacting you because you are now apparently in charge of the cargo runcible project. In the instants before it was destroyed the AI ordered this. I'm not sure I entirely understand the reasons why, since I have just received orders that both runcibles must be destroyed to prevent the Prador getting hold of them."