The sandrat howled. It was a genuine, animal howl that filled the whole of CasaNegro, bringing conversation to a halt. This time everything did stop. Except for the Cadillac jukebox that kept spitting out its sour/sweet words of loss and lament.

Strat was a walled village, a jumble of adobe houses balanced on the lower slopes of a vast gap-toothed puig. Three roads led in, each guarded by scrawny pi dogs. Some visitors the packs let through, others were turned away with low growls and bared teeth. No one knew the logic of their choice, the augmentation was coded too far back for anyone to remember. There were three bars and only two served outsiders: CasaNegro was the larger, less intimidating of those, and howling sandrats were not on the menu.

Too tatty to be right on the tourist trail, a little too close to the crater’s entrance to be genuinely Sierra Mal, the CasaNegro’s jukebox was the stuff of skewed memory, full of white clouds, galloping horses and sad sunsets. Ersatz homesickness for people who’d long since stopped calling Mexico, Central America and the southern US their home.

The UN immigration laws of forty years ago had seen to that, stripping citizenship from any person more than two generations removed from a valid Earth passport. LizAlec knew about it vaguely, but only as history.

“Kid,” Jude said, her hand gripping LizAlec’s thin wrist. “You’d better get him out of here. My customers don’t like this.”

LizAlec didn’t blame them. Lars had his hands round a doorpost and was trying to shake it loose, anguished grunts coming from low in his throat. The post was real enough but its purpose was fake. The door to CasaNegro was virus-grown, currently healthy: it didn’t need props. But that still didn’t mean Jude’s regulars wanted the place destroyed.

“He’s nothing to do with me,” LizAlec said.

Jude’s eyes narrowed, though the smile stayed fixed to her tired face. “You dragged him in, you drag him out again...”

LizAlec nodded. When it came down to it she didn’t have any option. It wasn’t as if she could just dump him and run, not while he wore that bloody ring. All the same, she couldn’t stay in Strat or Fracture either, not long term. Come to that, she probably shouldn’t even remain on the Moon.

The tall Frenchman wasn’t going to know it was Lars who’d trashed Mickey and Laughing Boy. The man would send someone after her, no doubt about it.

“Can you use this?” LizAlec asked, pulling the Beretta that Laughing Boy had been carrying out of her pocket and sliding it across the table towards Jude. The woman covered it quickly with her hands, then glanced round the room. Everyone was still looking at Lars shaking and moaning over by the door.

“I thought you didn’t have anything to trade,” Jude said, staring hard at LizAlec. In answer, the girl pushed her hands into the side pocket of Laughing Boy’s balloon suit and pulled out a pack of shells, a second clip and the Zeiss nightspex he’d been wearing on his way down the corridor.

“That’s the lot,” said LizAlec. “They’re yours if you can get me to Earth.”

“Just Earth?” Jude’s voice was amused, the problem of Lars temporarily forgotten.

“Europe, Paris...”

“Honey,” the woman’s expression was sympathetic. “Don’t you watch the newsfeeds? There ain’t no shuttles to Europe. America maybe, you got the spread. But Europe — it’s closed.” She said it like that was obvious, which it was when LizAlec thought about it. Five days from the New Year was what the Met office had reckoned it would take for the virus to sweep Western Europe and hit the Atlantic, and LizAlec knew her mother considered that optimistic. No one knew how long it would take to cross the water.

“I have to get away,” LizAlec insisted. It came out sounding more desperate than she intended, but then Jude didn’t need words to work that out. Sitting on the wrong side of a bar gave you more than enough experience matching thoughts to expressions.

“Problems?” Jude asked.

LizAlec nodded.

“Men problems?”

LizAlec nodded again, thinking of the man in the Versace suit. “Yeah, she said, “men problems, mother problems and PMS bad enough to take your head off.”

“Okay, no promises.” The woman turned her head, shouting over her shoulder at the boy in the combats, “Hey, Leon!” The boy wandered over, just slowly enough to irritate Jude who was scowling by the time he finally reached their table. The boy smiled back, blandly, his expression hovering on the edge of bored. But when he looked at LizAlec his brown eyes told another story.

Chapter Fourteen

Killers under the Skin

Count Lazlo was upset, seriously cross — mostly with himself for underestimating Lady Clare. It hadn’t occurred to him that she wouldn’t break immediately. That she might actually be prepared to ditch her little bitch of a daughter.

And now the girl had gone and he had to clean up after her. Lazlo had been waiting all morning for the rain to stop and it wasn’t going to happen: he was going to get wet on his way to the Tuileries. But there was something he needed to do first. Lazlo sighed, reached for a bottle of Evian and flipped open his Tosh. One minute thirty was what it took him to authorize the paperwork, falsify a few dates and leave a backdated trail of requisitions that hadn’t been there before.

Lady Clare had just ordered the release of two clone-assassins from the bioWarfare complex at Marne, always assuming they still had power enough to work the finishing vats. The request went out under her official PGPz crypt key and the cost was billed direct to her office. Lazlo was pleased about that last touch. He wasn’t stupid, he knew cost centres were an irrelevance with the Empire collapsing around him, but habit was something of which Lazlo approved and correct allocation of costs was the benchmark of a good executive.

The chance of someone actually back-checking those files was minimal. Paris would fall within a week, most likely days — certainly by the end of January. His beloved boss, her beloved Prince Imperial, both would be dead or on the run along with all their mindless, fawning officials. That was, if they didn’t come round first.

Lazlo’s original instinct had been to torture LizAlec on camera, not to death but enough to get Lady Clare’s attention. And that was what he should have done. But by the time he’d sent someone local to do the job, the brat was gone and his goons were dead. It wasn’t their demise that worried him — they were dead men walking, anyway — it was the timing. And quite how the little bitch had managed to bite out the throat of a man twice her size Lazlo didn’t know, but it seemed she had. Maybe shit like that was what he should have expected from the daughter of Razz...

Now he was faced with sending in the cleaners, getting someone to run her down and sweep up the mess. That was where the clones came in. Both were to be aptered for tracking and close combat using MS/Skillsoft, but it was shallow programming only. Though not as shallow as their given identities. They had names, S3 diplomatic passports and were chipped for loyalty, that was enough. It would have to be. His big problem was time. Getting them to the Moon was going to take five days: three to reach Mexico by zeppelin, half a day for a coyote to run them across the US border and half a day to grab an illegal launch from the Free Texas Airforce. Which left one for the flight.

Count Lazlo hoped it was going to work. It bloody well should, given what the travel arrangements were costing him. On his way out of his office, Lazlo wondered if he should have stipulated that the clones should only capture LizAlec, then dismissed the idea. Killing her would simplify matters. And since Lady Clare didn’t know LizAlec had escaped it shouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference when Lazlo came to put the pressure on. At least, the Count hoped not.