'That's their plan. Simply destroy the component that happens to be running haywire. I'm sure we can do a little better than that. Shut it down and repair the damage it's done.

All I need is a few moments with the Eridani's Interrupt device.'

There was a soft thump. We both turned. I swear the device had moved across the bedspread by several inches. The Doctor gave me an enigmatic smile and picked the thing up.

As good as his word, the Doctor sat down at the kitchen table and pried open the device with a set of jeweller's screwdrivers. He peered at its guts with an enormous Sherlock Holmes magnifying gla.s.s, 'hmming' and 'ah yesing' to himself. Half an hour later he announced that it would do what it was told now, and we could get going.

Swan had, all unknowing, emailed several pictures from each of her security cameras to Bob's computer. Bob set up the Apple to email those pictures to her at regular intervals the same intervals as her minicomputer. Then he crawled across her kitchen floor, pulled the keyboard from the Eclipse down to a chair, and typed in commands to stop the real pictures being sent to her office. As far as Swan would be able to tell, her house was quiet and empty.

It would never have worked if Swan didn't have the willpower to leave the Savant behind. She was determined to stay at her office until she cracked the secrets of its program: she wanted to be able to take advantage of the Savant without it taking advantage of her. My bungled burglary must have convinced her that it really was safe to leave the Savant on its own.

The moment Bob gave us the all-clear, Luis was up the stairs like a raped ape. When the Doctor reached the bathroom doorway, he was already holding the Savant in his arms.

It was a kill or cure moment. If the Savant had lashed out at Luis the way it had lashed out at me, it might have been more than his already affected brain could handle.

But it snuggled comfortably into Luis's arms, playing with a TV remote which it had partly disa.s.sembled. There were individual b.u.t.tons spread all over its sticky fur.

Luis didn't say anything. He just stepped out into the hallway, brushing past us, and sat down on the carpet with his back to the stair railing.

It took us a while to get Luis down the stairs. He wasn't interested in anything except the Savant. In the end Bob and I marched him out to the Travco while he cradled the thing against his chest, inside his sweater. It was hard to believe we were doing him any favours.

We sat him down on the bunk bed. Bob and I perched on the double bed in the back. Once again, Peri handled the maps and the Doctor did the driving.

'That thing freaks me out,' confessed Bob in a low voice.

I was sitting cross-legged on the bed, peeking out through the venetian blinds into the twilight. 'The Doctor reckons it's harmless.'

'I can't work out what it is,' he murmured. 'Is it a mammal? It's got fur. But it doesn't have a body body. Just those three cylinders. Where are its eyes? How does Luis know which one is its head?'

'The one with the beak?'

'Yeah, but he doesn't hold it that way up.'

'Uh-oh. Doctor,' I called out 'I think we're being followed'

Bob peeked out through the blinds. A small, dark blue car was sitting right on our tail. 'Is that Swan back there?'

I staggered forward up the length of the Travco. 'Pull over,' I told the Doctor. 'I'll jump out and talk to her. As soon as she stops, you take off.'

'You're sure?' He was already slowing.

The car pulled over to the shoulder behind us. I jumped down from the Travco as it was still rolling to a stop, and then strode back down the gravel.

A moment later I was running back towards the departing campervan, waving my arms. 'Hold on! It's Mondy!'

The Doctor leaned out of the window. 'Find out what he wants.'

The phreak didn't get out of his car; he wound down the window. 'Hi Chick, he said. He was doing odd things with his face, rolling his eyes and twitching his cheek, as if trying to point with his eyebrows.

'What's up? Are you following us?'

He grinned weakly, in between twitching. 'I guess I am. I guess I just want to see how all of this comes out.'

'How'd you find us, anyway?'

'Police radio,' said Mondy brightly. 'You just ask if anyone's seen the vehicle you want. They do all the work for you.' He quit twitching and gave me a 'you idiot' look. 'Wait, I have to blow my nose.' Mondy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of tissues. He extracted one of them and handed it to me. I uncrumpled it reluctantly to find three words written in thick black marker pen.

SWAN IN BACK, said the note.

Swan emerged from the back door carrying a shotgun. If I had thought fast enough, I could have slammed the door on her. But I didn't. Which meant I was on the business end of the gun a couple of seconds later. I'd been there just once before in my life, when I was fifteen years old and caught with a farmer's daughter. The same instinct possessed me then as it did now: I froze and shut up.

'You know what I want,' she told me.

I must have hesitated. Or maybe Mondy made a move she didn't like, I don't know. Swan turned and gave the Escort both barrels. The windscreen burst inwards, showering the front seats with gla.s.s. 'Holy c.r.a.p!!!' announced Mondy. He shot out of the pa.s.senger side door and disappeared into the trees at the side of the road. His car rolled forward until it b.u.mped into the Travco and idled there.

Swan cracked the gun to reload it. I grabbed the barrels, burned h.e.l.l out of my fingers, and s.n.a.t.c.hed them away. She flipped the shotgun closed as though she'd done it a thousand times, laughing as I blew on my fingers.

She gestured at the Travco, moving the gun in a small oval from me to the campervan and back. 'Open it up,' she said.

I did it, moving in slow motion, partly so she could see everything I was doing, partly to give the Doctor and co a chance to react. I had caught a glimpse of the Doctor watching in the rear view mirror, but I didn't dare look back there now in case Swan took it the wrong way.

n.o.body, but n.o.body, stopped to see what was going on. I don't think anyone even slowed down.

I opened the narrow side door. Swan peered in at this sitting on the bunk bed, clutching the Savant like a dozing four-year-old.

'Hand that over or I'll blow your frigging head off,' she told him.

' Que to jodan Que to jodan,' he said, clutching the Savant so tightly I was worried it couldn't breathe.

'You know I'm not joking,' said Swan. 'You know just how I feel. You can either hold onto that thing and lose your skull, or you can give it to me right now.'

'You don't feel!' Luis was weeping. 'You're not attached to this thing as though it was your own arm or your own hand.'

I said, 'For G.o.d's sake, man, hand it over. It's not worth your life.'

'Maybe we can work together,' he begged her. 'I could come with you. I'll look after it for you.'

'You know that won't work,' said Swan.

'You'll kill it!' screamed Luis. He folded up around the Savant as though his own flesh and bones could save it from a shotgun blast.

That was when the Doctor hit the b.u.t.ton.

The Savant didn't make a sound. It froze in position, one of its stubby hands still clutching half a Rubik's Cube.

Luis didn't make a sound. He was already half-slumped on the bunk bed. He just sank down further, like a child falling into sleep. The Savant slid from his lap like a living statue.

Swan screamed her head off.

The Doctor was out of the Travco with incredible speed.

He slapped Swan's arms as she fired the shotgun, the pellets flying off wildly, the explosion turning the world silent for a long ringing second punctuated by Peri screaming in the pa.s.senger seat.

The Doctor and I both grabbed for the gun, and found ourselves grabbing each other instead as the length of metal spun around in our grip. Swan had darted into the side of the Travco to grab the Savant. The Doctor pounced on the little yellow body. But she didn't even look at it. She grabbed Luis and dragged him onto the gravel like a side of meat.

And Luis had a gun. Swan fished it out of his jacket pocket and aimed it up at us, crouching over his limp body.

She suggested strongly that we depart. The Doctor looked at them and decided to comply.

Luis sat in the pa.s.senger seat of Mondy's car, gazing evenly through the remains of the windscreen. Drops of rain were forming an intricate pattern on the surviving gla.s.s, glittering dots and s.p.a.ces Luis's shoulders had unknotted for the first time in days, his hands lying loose in his lap.

Swan said nothing. She drove through the gathering darkness, through rain that turned from spots to lines to a constant sizzling haze that dripped in through the broken windscreen. From time to time, when they were stopped at lights or when nothing much was happening on the road, she would glance at Luis. He watched the road with nothing to say.

It was hours later when the garage doors yawned for the Escort. Swan opened the pa.s.senger door and herded Luis into the house. Upstairs, she cleared all the junk out of the tub and ran a steaming hot bath for Luis. While he got undressed she laid the loaded shotgun across the little desk in the guest room.

She sat on the lid of the john while he soaked, both of them warming up after the long cold drive. When he was done she made up the guest bed and tucked him into it.

She sat on a wooden chair in the dark, turning a pen around and around in her hands, clicking the nib in and out.

this sat quietly, propped up with three pillows. His eyes wouldn't close.

She brought him some of the Lego in an old plastic ice-cream container. She put it in his lap on top of the blankets.

Luis's hands dived into the container and started feeling the shapes with their fingertips, turning each one around and replacing it. Swan switched on a small lamp on the desk, dragged her chair to the edge of the bed and watched. In just a few minutes, those probing fingers had worked out how to stick two Lego pieces together. Soon Luis was building more and more complicated structures.

After half an hour Swan took the plastic container away.

They were both going to need some rest. Tomorrow would be a big day for both of them.

100.

The Doctor drove us to a gas station and pulled the Travco into the parking lot. Peri and I were both still vibrating with adrenaline. I was just starting to discover the little sc.r.a.pes and bruises I had acc.u.mulated during those few dramatic seconds on the shoulder. A couple of police cars pa.s.sed the station, heading back the way we'd come, sirens blazing.

'They'll get her,' said Peri. 'She must be driving the car with bullet holes in the windshield!'

'Unless she hijacked somebody,' I said.

'I doubt that.' The Doctor was perfectly calm. 'Swan will not want to involve anyone else if she can help it.' He wasn't even breathing fast, as though nothing unusual had happened at all. He climbed into the back of the Travco to examine the Savant.

Peri peered at it from the pa.s.senger seat. Its stiff, stretched-out shape reminded me of a cat I'd had as a kid, poisoned by a neighbour and found in frozen running position underneath a bush. We'd had to dig a very long grave for it.

'Is it OK?' said Peri. 'You didn't kill it, did you?'

'No I did not,' the Doctor replied. 'It has been thoroughly interrupted. In fact, it's quite comatose.'

'Now what do we do?' said Bob.

'I've arranged with its owners that they will collect it.'

Peri sat down on the bunk bed next to the solid Y. She tentatively stroked its fur. 'Maybe we should keep it,' she said.

'I don't trust those guys to look after it.'

'You don't establish an infraluminal interplanetary civilisation by being wasteful. I'm sure the Eridani will find some use for it, even though it's run off the rails of its original genetic program.' The Doctor didn't sound entirely convinced.

But at least the little yellow b.u.g.g.e.r wasn't a threat to anyone any more.

I said, 'Didn't you say something about it being born pregnant?'

'Yes, well, it's best if they collect it sooner rather than later'

'So we win,' said Bob. 'We've deactivated the Savant.

We've stopped the threat to Earth. We, in short, rock.'

'What about Luis?' said Peri.

'Don't forget Mondy; I added.

The Doctor said, 'I suspect Mr Mond is capable of effecting his own rescue. Luis Perez, on the other hand, will need more help than the police can give him, even a.s.suming they can catch up with Swan.'

'She's crazy,' said Peri. 'I thought we were all dead. I thought she was going to shoot holes in the campervan until she got all of us. Like playing a video game.'

'There's method in her madness, rather than the other way around,' said the Doctor. 'Swan hasn't lost control. Her threats were very calculated, even though they're driven by her obsession with the Savant. No, she knew just what she was doing.'

'You mean she planned to kidnap Luis all along?'

'Now that is interesting...' The Doctor was staring off into the distance, as if watching a TV show only he could see. 'She switched targets almost the moment I activated the Interrupt.

But she couldn't possibly have known I had the device, nor what it would do. So why the sudden change of plan?'