The twenty-first-century door opened outwards, not quite silently.

The area outside the cell was as dark as the inside. I nearly set out to cross it, but figured that it was wiser and safer to grope my way along the wall, one step at a time. I moved to the left, because the open door was blocking the way to the right. The wall felt like plastic, just like the door and the handle.

I couldn’t have gone more than five meters before I came to another door. That one had a handle, too. It turned easily enough, and the door wasn’t locked.

Gently, without making more than the minimum amount of noise, I swung it open and moved carefully around it.

The fist that hit me in the face seemed to be astonishingly well aimed, considering the total darkness. I presume that it was the knuckle of the middle finger which smashed into my nasal cartilage.

The snap was audible.

I was hurled backwards, swept unceremoniously off my feet by the momentum of the punch. I was in too much pain already to take much notice of the jarring as my coccyx, elbows, shoulders, and head made violent contact with the floor.

I tried to swear, but the pain was so intense that the reflexive explosion turned the word into something half way between a gasp and a yell.

Lights came on abruptly, dazzling me.

I clutched at my broken nose with both hands, feeling the warm blood gush out into my palms, soaking the sleeves of my shirt.

I had been stabbed more than once in my early days on the streets, before I acquired the kind of IT that rendered such wounds more tolerable, but that had been a long time ago. I had been cossetted by good IT for more than twenty years — give or take a hypothetical thousand — and the pain of my present injury was probably worse, even on an objective scale, than any inflicted upon me during my misspent youth. It was horrible.

When my eyes began to adjust to the brilliant light they were full of tears, which had to be blinked way before I could hope to see where I was or who had hit me. There was no thought in my mind of reprisal, or even of evasive action in the face of further danger. There was just the pain, and the fear that whoever had hit me might take a second shot.

It didn’t make me feel any better to see that the face peering down at me seemed more puzzled than angry, with perhaps the faintest hint of regret.

It was the face of Solantha Handsel.

Somehow, I was able to take note of the fact that she was staring at her own hand in utter bewilderment, and I had enough presence of mind to leap to the conclusion that it wasn’t the discovery that it was me she had hit that had puzzled her. Her regret wasn’t apologetic: she was amazed and slightly upset by the fact that hitting me had made her own hand hurt. She hadn’t had the dubious benefit of my upbringing. She’d alwayshad good IT, and hadn’t ever worn dead clothes. If I was unprepared to find myself in this condition, she must be in a much greater state of shock.

Even so, it was me that had taken the punishment. She might have hurt her hand, but she hadn’t broken her nose.

By the time Michael Lowenthal’s lightly bearded face had appeared beside the bodyguard’s I had found the energy and ability to swear. I took abundant advantage of the opportunity, but I didn’t forget to look around. I felt that I had to try to keep up with the news, even though I was in sore distress.

The room we were in wasn’t vast, but space was at a premium because it was so extensively cluttered with boxes and equipment. There was a folding table propped against one ceiling-high stack of boxes, and a whole pile of folding chairs beside it. If I’d tried to cross the room rather than making my way along the wall I’d probably have tripped, scraping my shins and bruising my limbs — but at least I wouldn’t have broken my nose.

The ceiling seemed a little low. It looked to be a mirror image of the floor, gray and plastic. The walls were gray too, although they seemed to be fitted with an abundance of equipment and hatches, as well as a superabundance of doors with handles. Everything was plastic, except where gleaming metal showed through. Some of the bits of gleaming metal looked like the heads of rivets. Other bits looked like screwheads.

Even in buildings deserted during the Crash I’d almost never seen rivets or screwheads. Rivets and screwheads were pre-Gantz, and pre-Gantz was practically pre-civilization. It wouldn’t have been quite as strange if they’d been rusted, but they weren’t. They looked new. Maybe not brand new, but new enough.

I finally managed to turn the stream of my curses into a coherent sentence, which was: “Have you any ideahow much this hurts, you stupid bitch?” The pronunciation came out all wrong, because my nose was flooded by the blood that I was still spilling, but the meaning seemed to get across.

Solantha Handsel shook her head ever so slightly, to signal that she hadn’t a clue, even though her own hand was throbbing. I hoped that she’d broken the knuckle, but the perfunctory way she was shaking it suggested that she hadn’t.

The bodyguard should have been the one to check the damage she’d inflicted, but when my head sagged back on the floor the face that came into view, upside down, was Niamh Horne’s. It was she who finally managed to get the protective hands away from my nose so that she could inspect the damage.

“Do you want me to try to straighten it?” she asked.

Like an idiot, I must have mouthed “yes.”

The cyborganizer reached out to press the broken cartilage back into position, and I found out what realpain was like.

I fainted.

Twenty-Two

Injury Time

By the time I came round someone had put a pillow under my head and draped a cold damp cloth over my nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but I didn’t dare move in case it started again. My vision was blurred, but I could see that at least half a dozen standing figures were gathered about my supine form. They were arguing.

“How was I supposed to know who it was?” Solantha Handsel was complaining. “It was dark. How was I supposed to guess that his IT had been stripped? I hadn’t even registered the fact that myIT had been stripped. It wasn’t my fault.”

I took some small comfort from the fact that nobody seemed to be in agreement with this judgment — not even Michael Lowenthal.

I counted, and decided that there were five standing figures. Then a sixth hove into view, and finally a seventh.

There was little comfort to be gained from the fact that they all looked frightened, with the possible exception of Christine Caine. Adam Zimmerman looked very frightened indeed. He hadn’t had any time at all to adjust to the world into which he had been reborn before it turned bad, and he had to be figuring that he was now even further removed from his objective than he had been on the day he stole the world for the Hardinist Cabal. Davida Berenike Columella seemed more terrified than her emortal companions, but that may have been an illusion fostered by the fact that she was so tiny and so seemingly immature.

Of the party that had been on the guided tour of Niamh Horne’s ship only the two other cyborgs were missing. Suddenly, the assumption that Niamh Horne had been behind our kidnapping, if we had indeed been kidnapped — and it certainly looked that way at present — didn’t seem quite so natural. It wasn’t just the fact that she was here with us that made it seem less likely — it was the fact that we’d all been deprived of our smartsuits, the most vital components of our internal technical support, and our dignity. That, and the gravity. Wherever Niamh Horne would have taken people she’d kidnapped, it wouldn’t be Earth, or anywhere that simulated Earth gravity.

On the other hand, I thought — still trying hard to demonstrate my presence of mind — Niamh Horne was the only one among us to have retained a considerable fraction of her intimate technology. Herintimate technology had included a great deal that was far too intimate to be removed without leaving great gaping holes in her head and body. She still looked whole, if not quite human.