An airlock lay before them, not a pressure lock, for the chainglass doors were too thin and the seals and fittings too flimsy. Twisting a simple manual handle Spencer opened the first door and they all stepped inside. When Cormac closed that door behind them Spencer then opened the inner door into the interior.

"Slight pressure differential," she said. "Lower inside than out so they don't lose air—contamination with nitrogen is no problem. Okay, we can take off our masks now."

When he took off his mask Cormac immediately felt some relief. Perhaps there had been a bit of a problem with his breather gear? No, he was kidding himself—he was still feeling the aftereffects of recently acquired memory. He took a couple of deep breaths, a moist smell of burgeoning greenery in his nostrils. The pain faded further and the black spot in his eye winked out to leave a vague blurriness. He tried to invest more in what was going on, tried not to focus too much on the dull ache in his head since that seemed to emphasise it.

Glancing around, he realised that, though from the outside the cycads and palms had looked decorative, that was not their purpose. The palms were date palms and the cycads were a splicing that budded pineapple-like fruits along the edges of their thick leaves. Between these were sunflowers and sugar cane, with varieties of climbing beans, peas, tomatoes, squashes and other less easily identifiable fruit vines. The ground was covered with a mix of brassicas, salad vegetables, and a form of GM Jerusalem artichoke that produced huge, starchy roots and was a staple for food synthesizers everywhere. And scattered throughout all this were slow-moving agrobots like steel harvestman spiders with bodies the size of footballs with each limb terminating in some useful tool. A whole food-growing ecology was being maintained in this enclosed environment.

"They must have problems with contamination," he said, gesturing back to the airlock, "with anyone wandering in like we just did."

"A year ago," said Spencer, "you needed permission to land and went through a decontamination routine in those huts you saw by the spaceport. That all changed when the scum moved in here. They don't care what dies here—either plants or people." She was fingering the butt of a gas-system pulse-gun holstered at her hip, Cormac realised. He also realised that Spencer, under that usually cool façade, was an angry person. This did not bode well for the people they had come here to see.

"We go here," she said, and immediately a schematic of the building ahead arrived in Cormac's aug, with one of its interior rooms highlighted. "Tarren is usually sitting at court in his favourite bar at this time."

"The informant, I take it," said Gorman, "is one of the original inhabitants?"

"You take it correctly," Spencer replied.

The path they traversed, which was made of flakes of red stone—probably the local white stuff dyed for this purpose—wound through the growth to terminate at an arch. As they moved through this Cormac eyed an old-fashioned gimbal-mounted holocam above, turning to track their progress. The short entry tunnel opened into a central courtyard occupied by a series of ponds with water flowing and splashing between them down waterfalls or sprayed up in jets. Within the crystal depths numerous large fish, either trout or salmon, cruised back and forth restlessly. Doubtless these were another food resource.

Now they began to see a few more people. Some were wary and quickly found reasons to be on their way elsewhere. Other armed individuals also began to appear and follow them.

"How many… associates does Tarren have?" Gorman enquired.

"Oh, about fifty," said Spencer offhandedly.

"I see."

Pain again stabbed Cormac's forehead, but he could not pull out now.

They ducked through into another tunnel on the other side of the courtyard, took a couple of turnings, then came to a wide tunnel down along one side of which people were queueing. Cormac noted that generally these people wore cotton clothing in the same bright shades as their homes, were unarmed and looked scared. While those who were armed were heavy on the black leather, canvas webbing, odd items of envirosuit or even spacesuit, and didn't look scared at all. It should be simple enough to select targets, if that became a requirement.

"Keep an open link now," Spencer advised generally over their military comlink.

Next they turned in through the arch at which the queue of locals terminated, into a wide bar area with many supporting internal arches, scattered tables and low divans, star lights across the ceiling and here and there the occasional servitor-bot, each one immobile having obviously been used for target practice. Tarren was immediately identifiable, for he sat like some medieval king in a large armchair raised up on plasmel ammunition boxes. However, Cormac's attention was immediately drawn to others in the room. Prostrate before the throne was one of the locals, and over to one side lay another whose petition had obviously found disfavour, if the angle of her neck was anything to judge by. But most striking was the individual standing to one side of Tarren, a huge man clad in only a loin cloth, his skin oddly coloured as if tattooed all over with blue circles, and a star-shaped steel cap atop his bald skull.

"Fucking hell," sent Gorman.

Cormac, because he was only just becoming accustomed to using his aug, did not feel confident enough at subvocalizing to ask what was bothering his unit leader.

Tarren was a small, wiry little man clad in an armoured suit which Cormac assumed he favoured because it made him look a little more impressive. He wore an aug and sat with a hand resting on a hexagonal box affixed to the arm of his chair. He eyed them for a moment, then nodded to one of his men, who kicked the prostrate man to his feet and sent him on his way. This local scuttled past them as they advanced.

"This could be a problem," Spencer sent generally.

"We will both have to focus on him," came Travis' reply.

"If, or probably when, we encounter any problems," Spencer sent direct to Cormac's aug, "these are yours." An image of the room and its occupants arrived in his aug with four of Tarren's men highlighted over to Cormac's left. He tried to focus first on the image, then on the four men indicated, but felt distanced by the pain in his forehead. But he would not let this little handicap hinder him—he had managed to function with worse than this. There were about twenty of these thugs in the room and he wondered how the others had been assigned. And why were Crean and Travis focusing on only one person? He decided to try asking a question.

"Who Travis Crean focus on?" he managed, feeling clumsy as he tried to prevent his lips moving.

"I see," sent Spencer. "The big guy is a thralled hooper. Under his hand Tarren has a Prador control unit which is probably linked to his aug."

Cormac absorbed that and shivered almost in superstitious awe. He had heard about such creatures, but stupidly assumed they were all gone now, or were confined to the Prador Kingdom. Only a short while back his research, before taking the mem-load, had revealed to him that his father and Amistad had been keeping watch on "Prador snatch squads." He called up in his aug part of the text he had found then:

During the latter years of the war, these same squads captured humans who were then transported to the planet Spatterjay where they were infected with the local viral fibres, which impart great physical toughness and durability. The purpose of so infecting these captives was to make them strong enough to physically survive Prador coring: a process whereby the brain and part of the spinal column is removed to be replaced by thrall technology.