Erlin looked around. Forlam was still here—a Hooper with whom she felt a reluctant kinship—and she recognized Peck and one or two others of Ambel’s crew scattered about the large room, carrying out tasks she had assigned to them. Still no sign of the Captain himself, though.

She walked over to Bloc’s tank and peered inside. There was a lot of detritus floating around in the water, even more lying in a silty layer at the bottom, but she could see fresh new skin down one leg, where one large sludgy scab had fallen away, and a flexing pink hand. She checked the displays and confirmed that Bloc was undergoing download. He was near to resurrection now, and his memcrystal downloading to his organic brain. His control unit, attached to that crystal, was no longer within his mental compass. It seemed doubly ironic to Erlin that the one here most deserving to remain dead looked the most likely to live. Turning away she spotted a certain individual entering the Tank Room, and suddenly felt horribly guilty—a child knowing she has done wrong. He crossed the room and loomed beside her.

‘An interesting and adventurous rescue attempt, I hear,’ she managed, her mouth dry as she turned to him.

‘It had its moments,’ Ambel replied. He studied her closely. ‘Did you need rescuing?’

‘A sail performed that task when the danger was greatest to me.’ She shrugged. ‘Subsequent dangers were not so immediate. Bloc had no wish to harm me, just control me, and I doubt there was much even you could have done about giant waves and Prador spaceships.’ She knew she was avoiding his implicit question.

‘I asked you if you needed rescuing,’ he said again.

She turned back to him. ‘I don’t think so.’ She waved a hand at the chainglass tanks all around them. ‘I am busy now, and will be busy for some time to come. Who can say what will happen then? As you once told me: I need to accumulate years.’

Ambel nodded thoughtfully. ‘Ron tells me there’s a nice bar just forard of here. You’ll join me there later?’

‘I will.’ Erlin returned to her work and he moved away, calling out the occasional question to those of his crew who were scattered about the room. His implicit question had been, ‘Do you want to die?’ She felt she did not, realizing that a giant whelk had taught her that lesson, and that her time here aboard the Sable Keech had only confirmed it. But she knew that such a feeling could be deceptive. Was her unconscious even now planning her next suicide attempt, or had she at last, having passed her quarter millennium, crossed some watershed?

Janer smiled to himself as he brought the submersible up against the jetty. Wade, moving slowly across the sky suspended from his grav-harness, must have been experiencing some difficulties for Janer to overtake him. That was good, for Janer could now do what he suspected Wade would not. Ahead, just before pulling in, he had observed Zephyr spiralling down to Olian’s island. Now, staring at the screen, he registered expressions of confusion from Hoopers peering down at the vessel in search of its mooring ropes. He touched the anchor icon on the control screen, and heard the double thumps of four harpoons, trailing anchor wires, fired from the sub to the left and right, angled down into the seabed. Four reel icons then appeared, with an overlay of a top view of the submersible and the nearby jetty. He ignored the icons, touched the sub picture and dragged it across to the jetty. The anchor wires adjusted themselves accordingly, slackening on one side and pulling taut on the other, drawing the vessel up against the adjacent support beams. Janer then abandoned his seat and climbed out.

Now the Hoopers appeared to be less interested in finding mooring ropes than in something else that was happening inland. Others were emerging onto the decks of their ships to peer in the same direction.

As he stepped down onto the planking, Janer queried the nearest of them: ‘What happened?’

The Hooper, a bulky woman who had lost all her hair and compensated for that with a white skull tattoo of writhing snakes, glanced at him. ‘Explosion, back at Olian’s.’

Janer immediately broke into a run.

‘Wait a minute!’ the woman called, but he ignored her and kept going.

Wade would be setting down on the island very soon, but what would the Golem do then? Zephyr had already killed two organic sails, and was now blowing things up. That meant the time for negotiation and metaphysical discussion was over. Janer did not want to bet Spatterjay’s whole economy and biosphere on Wade’s reluctance to act. Entering a street lined with stalls, he drew his gun. All around, Hoopers and a few Polity citizens were stepping outdoors to see what all the commotion was about. He dodged between them and soon caught sight of the entrance to Olian’s museum. Hoopers were gathered there around the closed, and firmly bolted, doors. Janer ran up behind them and pushed through.

‘Can you get in?’ he asked of those Hoopers right next to the doors.

‘I don’t think so,’ said a figure standing beside him—he smelt the pipe tobacco before he recognised Captain Sprage. ‘These doors were made to keep out Hoopers, including even us Captains. Not very trusting, Olian.’

Two others stepped up beside Sprage. One, tall and long-limbed, bore a disconcerting similarity to the Skinner, the other was red as chilli pepper and built like a barrel.

Sprage introduced them: ‘Captains Cormarel and Tranbit… I don’t think you’ve met them, young Janer.’

Janer glanced at them, then around at the crowd. If he fired his weapon here, people could get hurt—and annoyed. And these were not the kind to have annoyed at you. ‘I can’t explain now—it would take too long. Sorry, but I have to get inside.’

He turned and hurried away, hearing the squat Tranbit say, ‘Hasty lad, there.’

Janer pushed back through the crowd and around the corner of the museum. The ground here was covered with modified grass, greenish purple, stretching back a hundred metres towards the dingle. The long stone side-wall of the building was unrelieved by windows, and Janer ran along it to where it abutted Olian’s bank itself. Stepping back five metres, he knocked his gun to its non-standard setting, pointed and fired.

A large section of stonework, all of three metres in circumference, disappeared with a screaming crash, thenreappeared as an explosion of dust and compacted stone shrapnel. Janer hit the ground, hot flakes of stone dropping all over him. Then, with his ears ringing, he shoved himself up again and groped forward through the thick cloud to find the hole created. Visibility inside the museum was as bad, but at least he had some idea of the direction he must go. He stumbled on something, glimpsed a Golem metal skull amid the debris, and moved beyond it to a chainglass cylinder lying on the ground. Inside this he observed Rebecca Frisk writhing slowly and dragging her fingernails down the glass. He shivered and stepped over her towards the wrecked door.

Then suddenly a figure was standing beside him.

‘This is not your concern,’ said Isis Wade.

Janer turned abruptly, bringing his weapon to bear on the Golem. But he was far far too slow—Wade’s hand snapped down, caught his wrist and squeezed. Janer yelled as his wrist bones ground together. As he dropped his gun, Wade kicked it clattering into the settling murk.

‘I’m sorry,’ the Golem murmured, then almost in an eyeblink, was gone.

‘Fuck,’ said Janer, rubbing his wrist. He stumbled off in search of the singun. Without it he could do nothing.

‘Open the door or I will remove it,’ demanded the Golem sail.

Olian decided it was pointless to pretend she could not get them inside. The wreckage behind her ably demonstrated the sail’s lack of patience. She took a big iron key from her pocket, twisted it in the lock, and pushed the door open. The space beyond used to be her house’s main living room. Now it was clear of all furnishings, which had been relocated to her new home built to one side of the museum. Stepping in, she glanced up at the security drone suspended from the ceiling, and quickly stepped aside.