'What did they put a Class Five brain in a horse for?' Dom asked as they walked away from the palace, with the drosk trotting behind.

'I'm kept for guests. You gotta be intelligent with some of them,' said the horse conversationally. 'You the guy who's going to discover this great El-Ay in the sky?'

'Yes. Have you ever met a Class Five, registration TR-3B4-5?' asked Dom.

'Oh, him. We were programmed together. He went off to serve some backplanet king, and I got landed with this.'

'I thought you might have known my Isaac. You've got the same conversational style,' he said.

'Being a horse isn't too bad,' said the horse, tossing its head. 'They gotta treat me well, on account of us Class Fives being officially Human. You get regular overhauls and three jolts a day . ...id you say something?'

'I'm thinking,' said Dom. He bit his lip and stared at the scenery.

Nothing grew on Laoth. The planet was sterile. Incoming ships went through a rigorous decontamination and visitors were stripped of everything except necessary colonic bacteria. Laoth's atmosphere had been imported. A world with an economy based on the manufacture of electronic miracles couldn't afford one tiny virus in the wrong place.

But a bare world was inhuman. So, around his palace, another Emperor Ptarmigan, the first of the dynasty, started to build a garden...

Rooted in barren dust, powered by sunlight, the robot acres were deader that a corpse but, like a corpse, roared with tiny life.

Electronic men were a fact of life. A fifth of the Human population was metal. Electronic nature was something else again.

The stately copper trees were nevertheless squat and gnarled like oaks to support their selenium-cell leaves, which tinkled in the breeze. Humming birds - an electronic hum - whirred among the spun-silver flowers, where small golden bees tapped the currents into their tiny batteries and flew back to their secret, dark storage cells. In a little mineral-rich brook that wound through the garden the reeds sucked up the metals and threw forth brittle sulphur flowers. In the depths, zinc trout churned. And in the cool pools aluminium water lilies opened like hands.

The horses trotted between the trees and along gravel paths lined with nodding flowers. Sharli led him to a small hill where a streamlet gushed out of the ground and fell over a rock outcrop into a deep blue pool. A small pagoda had been built amid beds of golden lilies, shot with copper.

She sat down and patted the seat beside her, then spoke to the giant.

'Lady Sharli say to tell about yourself,' the drosk said. She was throwing a two-foot knife in the air and catching it by the blade.

He did. There were long pauses when the giant translated, and he had plenty of time to watch a little brass spider which scuttled out of a cranny a few feet above his head and, taking up a position on a steel twig, swung purposely outward.

Sharlie was a good audience, and possibly the giant was a good interpreter. The girl gasped at the account of the fight in the Bank, and laughed and clapped her hands, weaving a golden haze in the air, when he told her about the escape by sunpuppy.

The spider climbed another twig and swung again.

'Empress say, were you not scared?'

Dom tried to explain the predictions while the spider completed several more jumps. He hadn't finished before the spider had completed a web of fine copper wire and retired to a twig, paying out two tiny power cables behind it.

Dom told himself that he was being too expansive, too sure of himself. But Sharli was gazing at him wide-eyed. It was too much to resist. Besides, her perfume was going to his head. He was acutely aware of the giant lady's maid behind him, and the horse, too, had sniggered once or twice.

While he was demonstrating his grav sandals by flying a figure-of-eight above her head a small mechanical fly blundered into the spider web. There was a minute blue flash.

Prowess in catching and steering windshells was being explained while the spider slowly dismantled the protesting fly with two spanner-like legs.

Another horse galloped between the trees. At the controls was Tarli, almost hidden in an armour made of leather slabs in a complex overlapping pattern. He removed his fearsome helmet, wiped his forehead with his gauntlet, and smiled brightly at Dom.

'Greetings, step-uncle. I thought you might be here. I hope you have not been overly bored?'

'Not at all,' said Dom airily. 'Er, your costume . . . '

Tarli raised his eyebrows. 'I have been Sham fighting. You do not fight Sham on Widdershins?'

Dom thought of one or two fights he had seen on the jetties, when four-foot long dagon-knives were used. 'It's usually for real on Widdershins,' he said. 'Sham?'

Tarli unslung a long bundle from his horse and drew out a sword as tall as he was. The handle was leather-bound, with no superfluous decoration. The blade was invisible, except when it caught the light, when it showed up momentarily as a thin green sliver.

'Shamsword,' he explained. 'The blade is, of course, only a few microns thick, forged as a molecule in the special sword-light of dawn. Strong, too. Perhaps you are a good swordsman?'

'I can use a memory-sword,' said Dom. He drew his own and demonstrated. Tarli took it gingerly.

'How does it work?'

'There's a little matrix field projector in the stud that can generate up to a dozen shapes.'

Tarli handed it back. 'Not an honourable weapon,' he said sadly. 'You would perhaps like a sham battle?'

He laughed at Dom's expression and pulled two wooden lathes from his bundle. 'For practice,' he explained. 'So novices don't lose too many appendages in the learning. I am the second-best shamuri on Laoth.'

Dom felt Sharli's eye on him.

'Okay,' he said miserably. After all, he could handle a sword by proxy on the tstame board, even if it was only a two inch skewer wielded by a mommet. And they were only wooden poles.

Tarli unpacked another helmet and some pieces of leather body armour, and Sharli helped Dom into them.

'You'd better explain the rules.'

Tarli smiled. 'This is only stick sham. Anything goes, but you've got to use the stick. Sharli will give us the signal.'

The girl, who had been watching them with interest, shook her head and spoke sharply to her brother.

'She says we've got to fight for a prize. My sword against your grav sandals. I don't think that's fair.'

'Don't worry,' said Dom. He bent down and began to unstrap his sandals. Tarli sighed and laid his shamsword on the seat alongside them.

Sharli waved a small handkerchief.

The poles met in mid-air, once, and they circled each other warily.

Dom felt emboldened and tried one or two lunges, which slid harmlessly off the other's pole. Tarli smiled, and spun his pole around a finger. The spin carried on - the pole flashed across his back, was caught again and came down with a thud on the heavy padding of Dom's helmet. Tarli made a few passes and completed the movement with another gentle blow to the head.

Dom jerked aside and swung his pole downwards. Tarli hopped over it, lunged and twisted. Caught by the added leverage Dom slid several yards on his stomach in the gravel.

Sharli put her hand over her mouth and turned away. Her shoulders were shaking.

Dom's pole came down with a crack across Tarli's unprotected feet. Then he scrambled up and brought it down in a whistling arc that ended on the boy's arm.

Tarli staggered backwards, waving his arms desperately to keep his balance. Dom caught him again in the chest.

Tarli disappeared.

Dom ran forward in time to see his white face vanish under the water of the waterfall pool. He struggled out of his own armour and dived after him, hitting the water in a jangle of waterlilies.