Miz followed her.

On the valley-facing side of the tower a door had dropped vertically into the floor, revealing what appeared to be another door of black glass. There was a hint of a small space behind the black glass door the daylight did little to illuminate. A smell of plastic wafted from the tower’s entrance. As they looked in, lights came inside; the Lazy Gun sat on a pedestal in the centre of the room, gleaming.

“Yes,” Miz breathed.

Sharrow moved forward; another hand-print appeared at face level on the surface of the black glass door. She put her palm to it, and with hardly a pause it, too, sank into the floor.

She looked at Miz. He nodded at her. “You go on; I’m staying out here.”

She walked forward, entering the tower. She stepped quickly over the doors that had sunk into the floor, and went to the Lazy Gun. It looked real. She lifted it from its plinth and swung it around. It was light but massy; a strange, disturbing sensation, like something from a dream.

So it was real. This was the eighth and last Lazy Gun. Her head swam; she felt dizzy. She put the Gun down on its pedestal again and walked to a hole in the floor where a broad ramp led down beneath the tower.

She went half-way down to the floor below; a softly lit space perhaps half the area of the stone square outside stretched away around her. She saw equipment of a hundred different types, and boxes and cases that might have concealed a hundred more; a billion more, on some scales. There was a strange, car-like device near the foot of the steps, resting on one canted wheel, its single-seat cockpit open. What looked like a fabulously hi-tech suit of armour stood nearby. A rack of bewilderingly complex guns stood to one side of what might have been a cluster of black-body satellites gathered together to resemble a carousel.

Something that resembled an old radar unit sat on the back of what was probably a small ACV.

She was still looking for something that looked remotely like a comm set when she heard the firing.

Miz watched Sharrow enter the tower. He felt nervous; there were too many dead people around here. Even the android had keeled over once he’d come back within half a klick of the place.

The wind gusted, lifting snow from the trees in the valley behind the tower and from the stone square itself, blowing it across the square and into Miz’s eyes. He blinked.

He heard something like clattering feet coming from behind him. He turned and looked through the cloud of drifting snow.

A huge black four-limbed animal was charging towards him, its head down. Something on its head glittered. Miz stared. The animal was thirty metres away. A sial; a racer; one of the things they raced in Tile, one of the beasts somebody had been naming after his defeats and setbacks for the past half year or more.

He blinked; this couldn’t be happening. The animal charged on; its warm breath powered out of its black nostrils and curled in the air. Miz raised the machine gun and fired.

The animal vanished utterly. The noise of its hooves faded a second later, then came back, again from behind him.

He turned: another night-black sial with something glittering on its head. He sighted the gun. When the beast was ten or so metres from him, and he could have sworn he could feel each shuddering hoofbeat through the flagstones under his boots and make out the great silvery spike attached to its forehead by a glinting harness, he fired; that animal too disappeared, just like a hologram.

The noise faded, swung round behind him. He turned again: two animals, racing towards him, heads lowered. He glimpsed movement in the doorway of the tower and saw Sharrow. She sagged against the doorway, then fell forward into the snow.

“Fucking set-up!” he roared.

He glanced at the two animals tearing towards him through the snow, hooves flinging curves of powdery white behind them. He fired, saw the image flick out of existence and turned to see two more beasts coming from the other direction. He fired at them too, until the gun’s magazine ran out; then he ran for the doorway.

He realised then that he had seen only one of the first pair of sial disappear. He glimpsed something bearing down on him to his right. He turned to use the machine gun as a club and put his hand to his pocket for his laser.

The firing came again before Sharrow could stumble from the ramp to the doorway; when she got there, she saw Miz firing through a hazy cloud of wind-blown snow. She opened her mouth to shout and then the pain struck her, incandescing. An instant later the pain shut off abruptly and was replaced by a terrible numbness, exactly as though somebody was using a nerve weapon on her. Her arm holding the HandCannon wouldn’t move. Her legs folded under and she collapsed against the side of the door, before falling forward into the snow.

She could move her eyes and blink and swallow; nothing else. Her bladder had emptied, and if she had had anything to eat for the last few days her bowels would have voided. Her heart spasmed, beating quickly and irregularly. Her breathing was shallow, uncontrollable. She had a view forward across the snow-covered stone square to the low circular wall and the dark-on-white chevrons of a forested mountain beyond.

She felt the stones beneath the snow ring to hoofbeats like a drum-roll and glimpsed movement from the corner of her eye.

There was a scream and a terrible tearing noise, then great hooves pounded past; a pair of camouflage-clothed legs kicked and struggled in the air in front of the flashing hooves, and then the scream gurgled to nothing.

She closed her eyes.

There was a single loud shot and then a ragged thump a few metres away. She opened her eyes to see the black back and haunches of the great beast fall heavily to the snow. A single, jacketed arm flopped into the snow beyond the head of the animal.

A sial. One of the things they raced in Tile, with criminals’ brains emplaced. She stared at the arm lying loose on the snow, and saw movement. She watched the fingers clench, then slowly unfold and go limp.

The sial’s hide steamed gently in the cool air. She could see blood on the snow, where the animal had passed in front of her.

She waited. The paralysis went on. Then she heard the squeaking, cramping sounds of somebody walking towards her across the snow. Two sets of footsteps.

Two identical pairs of boots came into view; one pair went over to the fallen sial. She could see the person wearing them up to about mid-thigh level; he was standing near Miz’s motionless arm. The butt of a large hunting rifle was lowered to rest on the snow. She could hear other footsteps, but only those two pairs of boots were visible. The pair in front of her tilted as the person wearing them squatted. She saw knees, then a pair of clasped hands, held in front of a smart uniform jacket the colour of dried blood and decorated with insignia she didn’t recognise; then a face.

The young man pushed the cap back from his blond-browed, gleaming face, revealing a bald scalp. He favoured her with an enormously wide smile.

“Why, Lady Sharrow!” he exclaimed. “Fancy meeting you here!” He glanced over to where his twin was also squatting down, still holding the hunting rifle and studying the dead animal.

The one with the rifle saw her looking at him and waved cheerily. He lifted the limp arm lying on the snow in front of him, and made that wave too.

Miz’s hand was made to flop up and down. Tears came to Sharrow’s eyes.

The young man said, “Yes, and you brought some of your little friends with you. How chummy. What a pity Mister Kuma seems to have taken all our criticism to heart!”

He laughed, and then she felt herself lifted up by the armpits until she was half-resting on her knees. The young man stood behind, holding her.