She looked up. "Yes, it hurts."

"But it doesn't have to."

"And that is different to you in what way?"

It was true. Cormac did not even have to put up with his foot aching, and many troopers he knew now possessed pain-management systems installed in their bodies. In fact, it was possible for him to manage pain through his aug, but he had yet to study those functions. He nodded acquiescence, and felt a surge of disappointment when she pulled the waist of her leggings back up into position. She walked over and stood with her arms akimbo, gazing up into his face.

"You've got a little bit of a problem with Golem, haven't you?" she suggested.

"No problem, as such…"

"But we're machines?"

"Yes…"

"And you're not?"

"Well…"

"I was programmed by an AI that could run a human mind inside itself as a sub-programme," she said. "The way my mind operates is not any less human than yours just because its physical substance is a form of memory crystal. Honestly, Cormac, if you had not been told, you would never have known I was Golem."

He could have argued that point, but right then he didn't want to: his own particular male programming was responding to her despite the fact that she wasn't human. He felt some reservations—a seedy part of his mind telling him that sex with her would be more like VR porn than the real thing, but then, VR porn had felt just as good…

"Here." She reached up and pulled down her top to expose those all too perfect breasts, reached out, took hold of his hands, then pulled them up to her breasts. He squeezed gently, rubbed the nipples with his thumbs and she made a perfectly plausible little grunting sound. "Human enough for you?" she enquired.

They were warm and taut and certainly there was a part of his anatomy telling him there was no difference at all. She pushed closer to him, her expression coquettish as she undid his jeans and pulled them and his underwear down about his hips, then abruptly she slid down, took hold of his cock, ran her tongue around the end for a moment, then took it into her mouth, which felt sufficiently wet and warm.

"Is this part of my training?" he asked breathlessly.

She pulled away for a moment. "My programming AI told me not to speak with my mouth full." Then she abruptly stood, walked past him to the bed, where she stripped off her top and then her leggings, holding herself bent over for a moment and tugging at one buttock before clambering onto the bed and rolling onto her back. She reached down and with slow leisure began playing with herself, watching him enquiringly as he hurriedly stripped off his clothes and rushed over to join her.

Throughout the ensuing hours they both acquired a few more bruises.

The Sadist had only left U-space for a moment when the ship's AI informed Cormac, "I've got a message for you! It's from your mother!"

Cormac, who at that point had been lying on his bed studying pictures of their new surroundings on his viewing screen and wishing Crean would come and join him, abruptly sat up and paid attention. He had half expected there to be no reply.

"What format is it?"

"I've got a video transmission along with another large file that looks like mem-code," Sadist informed him.

He sat up even straighter then. Mem-code was how memories were stored, its format dependent on the human brain it had been extracted from or destined for. Did this ship have the kind of equipment he would require? It was certainly possible now to implant such code—to allow people to live the memories—but it usually had to be done under very controlled circumstances. There were also augs out there that could do it, the Sensic range, which were not recommended, but which had not been made illegal since the AI view was that if you were stupid enough to use one then that was your look-out. Many people did use them. Many people were addicted to experiencing other people's memories. There was also an illegal trade in memories extracted from people as they were tortured and murdered, though how some became addicted to that, Cormac had no idea.

"Can you transmit both files to my aug?" he enquired.

"I can transmit the video message to you, but not the mem-code," Sadist replied. "The code file would be too large for the storage in your aug."

"Is there any way I can… load this code?"

"It is possible. The initial file would have to be divided into three at preset chapter marks. I can then load them each to your aug through an adapter, though after each you will need to take a rest."

"Why?"

"If these are, as I suspect, memories that have been edited from your mind, when you re-experience them the contradictions will give you an extreme headache," Sadist explained. "They will not mesh with your mind—you'll experience them as actuality, but afterwards will certainly have trouble integrating them."

"I see."

"It will also be necessary for you to seek permission from Agent Spencer and your unit commander, since the process may affect your performance."

"Perhaps the video first?"

"To your augmentation or on your screen?"

"Send a copy to my aug, but also play it on the screen for me."

The screen blinked on to show a frozen picture of his mother, Hannah. After a moment she jerked into motion, raising a hand to rub her forehead as if she had a headache. Then she looked up.

"Cormac," she said, then paused for a long moment. "I'm still not used to calling you that and wonder if, after being in ECS now for a while, you have retained the habit of insisting people call you by your surname. Doubtless you have, since I rather suspect the habit was more firmly established in your mind by the editing process."

Again a long pause.

"Yes, I did have your mind edited. It was perhaps a foolish thing to do, but I wasn't thinking straight back then anyhow. And once it was done there was no way of putting those memories back. Even now, it is not really possible to put them back, especially when a lengthy period of time has passed. This is because everything you are now is a structure built upon what went before, and by altering the shape of a building's foundations you risk toppling it."

She smiled tiredly, and Cormac wished this was a direct link so he could point out how dependent a building was on its foundations and how, if you screwed with them in the first place, the same building might not be stable anyway. But he rather suspected she knew that.

"I took you into the editing suite shortly after Dax departed to Cheyne III, when you were eight years old. I had received the news about your father… we had both received the news about your father, and at that time, the way I was, it was difficult enough for me to handle my own grief. On his second session in the suite even Dax had those memories deleted because he did not want to deal with them then. As for you, it just seemed easier to relieve you of that pain. There is nothing advantageous about suffering—"

Cormac, having picked up the remote control, paused the video at that point and thought long and hard about what she had just said. At the end of the war he had understood that his father would not be coming home. This fact had penetrated his growing mind by some form of osmosis during the three years between his eighth and eleventh birthdays. Would it have been better if he had known at the time that his father had been killed? He thought yes. Here he utterly disagreed with his mother's assessment. Life, if you really wanted to live it, could be sometimes wonderful and sometimes hard, and he felt you couldn't fully appreciate the good stuff without experiencing the bad. He also felt that to get on in life, you also needed to acquire a few emotional calluses. She had been selfish and overprotective, but then, throughout history that had always seemed a parental prerogative. He started the recording running again.