He paused, then put one hand to his ear. “Sorry?” he said. “Didn’t hear you there…”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “All right.”

“Super. We’ll be in touch again, Lady Sharrow,” he told her. “Every now and again we’ll make our presence felt. Just to keep you convinced this hasn’t been a dream, and we are quite serious.” He smiled and spread his arms wide. “I really would urge you to do your utmost to cooperate with us, Lady Sharrow. I mean, just think; supposing these started to fall into the hands of your enemies?” He looked at the doll lying in the hands of his twin, then gazed back into her eyes, shaking his head. “Life could become very unpleasant indeed, I’d imagine. You agree, I take it?”

She nodded.

“Jolly good!” The young man clapped his hands then pulled the sleeve of his grey jacket up and looked at a wrist-screen. He started to whistle as he watched the display for a while.

After a minute or so, he nodded a few times, then crossed his arms and smiled up at her again.

“There, my dear; that’s probably given all of the above time to sink into your memory.” He flashed his broad smile, then nodded to his image, who cradled the doll in both hands and carefully placed it on the metal deck between his booted feet.

“Twin,” said the other young man, “the lights, please.”

The one who hadn’t spoken raised the heel of his right boot over the doll.

She had time to suck in air but not to scream before he brought his foot stamping down on the doll’s head.

Something beyond pain detonated inside her skull.

She woke to a dim glow. The doorways to the adjoining tanks were still closed off by the metal shutters. There was no sign of the two young men, their deck-chairs or the gas cylinder. The naked plastic doll with the squashed, shattered head lay by her gun on the deck.

She drew herself up on her hands and stayed that way for a while, half lying, half supported by her arms.

She picked up the gun and the doll. The gun was still loaded; she put it in her jacket, then tested the doll, pressing it gingerly. It seemed to have stopped working. Circuitry foam sparkled dully inside the broken head.

She put the doll in her satchel and struggled to her feet, staggering. She reached into a pocket and pulled out the old heirloom timepiece. It had been smashed, the glass face broken. She shook it, then her head, then put the watch back in her pocket.

She rinsed her mouth in a puddle of relatively clean-looking water.

She couldn’t find any way to open the shutters over the doors, so she climbed the clanging metal stairway towards the tanker deck above, stopping to rest at each turn.

She hauled herself out onto the deck as the dawn broke pink and sharp above. She walked unsteadily along the deck, heading towards the tanker’s distant superstructure where a few lights burned. She breathed deeply and tried not to sway too much as she walked.

Then a man jumped out from behind a pipe cluster about ten metres in front of her. He was dressed like a refugee from the worst fancy-dress patry in the history of the world, clad in a baggy suit of violently clashing red and green stripes. He lifted what looked like an artificial leg and pointed it at her, telling her to stop or he’d shoot.

She stared at him for a moment, then laughed loudly and told him where to stick his third leg.

He shot her.

6 Solo

Continual noise and constant vibration. But something hushing, reassuring, comforting about these surrounding sensations, as though they were the acceptable successors of a womb-remembered external busyness, a comforting reminder that all was well and being attended to.

She became gradually aware that she was warm and prone and-when she stirred her tired, tingling limbs-naked under some smooth cloth. She tried to open her eyes but could not. The drone of noise called her back to sleep; the shaking all around her became a rocking, like the arms of somebody she had never known.

Her fingers and hands tingled.

She had been playing in the snow in the grounds of Tzant; she and Geis had been throwing snowballs at Breyguhn and the Higres and the Frenstechow children, a running battle that had gone on round the great maze and down into the formal gardens. It had been a startlingly cold winter that year; there were days when if you spat you could hear the spittle crack and freeze before it hit the snow, and the huge house smelled of the tape the servants had sealed the window frames with, to keep out draughts.

Geis was fifteen or sixteen then; she was eleven, Breyguhn nine. Geis and she end up in the gazebo, fending off the others as they close in. Geis looks into her eyes, his face glowing; a snowball whizzes over his head. To the death, cuz! he shouts, and she nods; and he tries to kiss her but she giggles and pushes him away and quickly gathers more snow together, while Breyguhn screams imprecations in the distance and snowballs thud into the wooden boards of the gazebo.

She woke slowly, turning over in the narrow cot. There were voices talking somewhere beyond the wall. An antiseptic, hospital smell came off the sheen beneath her. She remembered something about a puddle and throwing up into it, but she felt all right now, just hungry and slightly queasy at the same time. There was a light behind her; that was what she had turned away from. Her hair, beneath her on the thin pillow, smelled washed. Her eyes insisted on closing again. She let them; the view had been hazy anyway. The voices outside her head went on.

The Lazy Gun came and talked to her in her sleep.

In her dream the Lazy Gun had legs and a little head, like a doll’s. (She started to wake again, remembering the doll; she wanted her doll. She didn’t try to open her eyes, but felt around her for the doll; under the pillow, down the sides of her naked body where the sheets were tucked in, against the vibrating metal wall to one side and the metal bars of the cot on the other… but there was no doll. She gave up.)

The Gun was still there when she returned to the dream. It cocked its tiny doll-head to one side and asked her why she was going to look for it.

I can’t remember, she told the Gun.

It walked around for a while on its spindly legs making annoyed, clicking noises and then stopped and said, You shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t what? she said.

You shouldn’t look for me, it told her. I bring nothing but trouble. Remember Lip City.

She got very angry and shouted something at it and it disappeared.

There had been eight Lazy Guns. A Lazy Gun was a little over half a metre in length, about thirty centimetres in width and twenty centimetres in height. Its front was made up of two stubby cylinders which protruded from the smooth, matt-silver main body. The cylinders ended in slightly bulged black-glass lenses. A couple of hand controls sitting on stalks, an eyesight curving up on another extension, and a broad, adjustable metal strap all indicated that the weapons had been designed to be fired from the waist.

There were two controls, one on each hand grip; a zoom wheel and a trigger.

You looked through the sight, zoomed in until the target you had selected just filled your vision, then you pressed the trigger. The Lazy Gun did the rest instantaneously.

But you had no idea whatsoever exactly what was going to happen next.

If you had aimed at a person, a spear might suddenly materi-alise and pierce them through the chest, or some snake’s spit fang might graze their neck, or a ship’s anchor might appear falling above them, crushing them, or two enormous switch-electrodes would leap briefly into being on either side of the hapless target and vaporise him or her.

If you had aimed the gun at something larger, like a tank or a house, then it might implode, explode, collapse in a pile of dust, be struck by a section of a tidal wave or a lava flow, be turned inside out or just disappear entirely, with or without a bang.