“What blew up?”

“I think somebody shot through the door. I tried to help the ambassador. His machine was over on its side, but I don’t think he’s dead. Somebody needs to get to him…” The pain in his head ebbed a little. Someone in charge of the taps had detected something way out of parameters…he didn’t know: he didn’t understand all that went on in Central. He only used what he was given. Discreetly. Which this wasn’t, standing here, leaning on a frontage like a drunk. He was in deep trouble with Brazis, who wouldn’t like him talking here in public. And Luz was involved. God help him. “Can somebody please get me to the office? I’m a little dizzy.”

Sharp stab of pain. “Marak is concerned,”another voice said, likewise female, and in old, old downworld accents. “Now we know you’re alive. Good. Ignore Brazis’s orders. Marak demands your attention. He trusts everyone in this affair less than he needs do, until he hears from you, and he refuses common sense. Speak to him! Do you hear us, boy?”

Female. He didn’t know who. But he had a sudden, dire suspicion who it was, besides Luz, and shivered, whispering, “Yes, ma’am.”

A third female voice interposed: “Ila, he’s not permitted.”Station accent. Maybe one of the taps.

“But we are permitted,”that second voice said, autocratic and absolute. And he tried to shut it out and not to answer, but an off signal didn’t work. Nothing he did worked to protect him from that contact, loud as it wanted to be, as nothing he had done had summoned it. He leaned against the wall, unable to control the tremor in his hands, unable to see anything but black, now, and flashes of light in his eyes that tried to form patterns. And he kept thinking what that voice had said, that Marak needed to hear from him, but he couldn’t tap through.

“ Where have you been?”the female voice demanded of him. “Some Earth lord arrives, expecting to gain satisfaction from our servants? And local authority permits this? Brazis is mistaken in that estimation of protocols and priorities, let me assure you.”

Silence. Silence so deep and so sudden after that storm in the tap that he felt deaf and blind in its departure. His heart pounded as if he had run the length of the Trend.

Vision returned, hazily so. The lights had stopped flashing.

He tried to reach Brazis. Tried to tap into the system, but pain shot through his skull, his pulse raced, and his control was gone. Passersby on the street surreptitiously stared at him, pretending to continue their own business, but noticing, some sizing him up. Perhaps he had gotten bad news in a tap message. Perhaps he had become ill. In this neighborhood, no one asked. Nobody would intervene—except the predators.

Flash of light. Gentler, this time.

Quieter voice. “Procyon.”

“Sir.” Brazis.With ineffable relief, he turned his face toward the cold wall—not that people on the street weren’t accustomed to drunk people talking to their disembodied taps, or singing or dancing to them, but he had his wits about him now enough to remember some people read lips. “Sir, somebody shot the ambassador.”

“I know.”

“Downworld just tapped in.”

“The Ila, piggybacking on Luz. We know that, too.”

“She can do that?”

“She’s done it before, which you unfortunately now know, and we don’t know what else she’s gotten her hands on. Don’t discuss that where you are. Just listen. Where are you?”

“Don’t know, sir. On Blunt, somewhere. On Blunt. A Brant’s Drug. Across the street.” He leaned against the wall and craned to see the adjacent frontage. “Mullan’s Delivery.”

“Drusus is coming to get you. Physically coming to get you. Stay off the tap right now, if you can. I know everything that’s happened. The ambassador is not dead. We need you back in the office. Immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” He leaned back, shivering. Relieved at that news, though the tap had given him a horrid headache that shot from ears to eyes, blinding light, right at the seat of his personal universe. He tried to think past it, tried to remember all that Brazis had just said. And what Luz and the Ila had said about Marak, which alarmed him.

Brazis opposing Luz and the Ila. That wasn’t good. If Brazis was taking a course contrary to Luz, it wasn’t good, and the Ila herself was saying Marak was in trouble.

Drususwas coming to get him? Drusus was supposed to be with Marak, wasn’t he? Or was he wrong about the time of day?

Don’t use the tap, Brazis said. Don’t use the tap.

He walked a few steps, then tried to remember whether Brazis had said stay put, or whether he should try to get out to Grozny, where he was easier to see. Method wasn’t clear to him. He didn’t know where Drusus was.

Flash of light. Blinding. Roar in his ears. He found himself sitting down on the street, conspicuous, not remembering the last few minutes, and tried shakily to get up, dusting himself off.

A knee-high cleaner-bot had come out of the adjacent service nook to see about him, mistaking him for refuse. A half dome, it hummed and flashed across its surface with, he imagined, reproach.

“Come,” it said.

He thought it was Drusus who was supposed to find him. And here he was hearing voices from a cleaner-bot.

“Come.” It butted him in the ankle. Hard. And moved off.

What was he supposed to do? Was this thing under someone’s personal control? He tried hard to tap in.

Senses exploded, a flare of light that hit his aching head right behind the eyes, sound that buzzed in his ears. He crouched down on the street, making himself a human ball, trying to shut it out. He pressed his hands hard against his eyes, trying to stop the flashes, trying to order his blood flow past the headache to send a clear signal on the tap, before his head exploded.

Cleaner-bots were all around him. If a man went down the bots were supposed to call the hospital. But these seized on him, gripped his clothing, gripped his arms painfully, and extruded lift-arms under him.

“Let me go!” he cried. But they dragged him away into the adjacent service nook, rapidly, rapidly. He couldn’t kick, he couldn’t move his arms. A clicking of wheels on tiles marked their passage, and tugs at his limbs indicated a certain AI randomness in their movement—autonomous units cooperating, robots deaf to his protests.

He was swept up with the damn garbage, was what. He couldn’t break free. He yelled for help, and no one on Blunt gave it.

A low metal gate gaped ahead, affording scant clearance for the machines dragging at his limbs. It was dark inside. He tried desperately to free a hand or bend a knee and catch the edge of the opening, but with a concerted whirr and a buzzing of wheels, they dragged him painfully past the gate.

They were in a cleaning chute. He was headed straight for disposal.

“Help!” he yelled, in total darkness, and the tap got only wild signal, flashes of white shock.

“Help!”

Down and down. He didn’t know whether they combusted the trash or chopped it to bits or compacted it before they did any of that. He fought, he yelled, he tried to kick. He felt joints in the metal passage as they dragged him along, faster and faster. His skull banged over the seams until the small impacts began to distract him, a misery unto themselves.

They took a turn, and another turn, clattering along in absolute dark, where bots obeyed impulses that had nothing at all to do with sight or human senses, and the only measure of it was the seams in the chute. He yelled. He fought as hard as he could in the narrow chute, until the pain in his skull overpowered his coordination.

Then they were free of the chute, wide enough to bend his knees, to try to roll over. The air was choked with ammonia. His eyes began to water with it, and he made out a dim green light, illusory, like phosphor glow. He tried to tear free and turn and get a knee or a foot on the surface.