'How did you end up here?' said Chris, after a few minutes.

'I was indentured for five years,' said the Jeopard. 'I was a cook aboard the Renoir Renoir. They tried to train some of us as soldiers. But we can't do that. We can't can't.'

'All right,' said Chris. 'It's all right.' He gave the alien's shoulders a squeeze.

The Jeopard picked up both photos. 'If any of my people had seen the Doctor or this disguised man believe me, I'd know about it. Everyone would be packing to leave.'

'Why?' said Chris. 'What do you think he's going to do to you?'

'What did he do to the Jithrai? They were totally different.

a.s.sertive. He infected them.'

'Maybe,' said Chris. 'Or maybe he just brought out something they already had inside them.'

The Jeopard looked at Chris. It wasn't an angry look: it was bruised. Ten years spent serving humans, millions of miles from home, had left a mark that would never be erased. 'You tell him,'

he said. 'If you ever find him, the real Doctor. You tell him about the Jithrai. Tell him they're all dead now.'

'Right,' said Chris, making a mental note never to mention it.

Chris was waiting in a shopping mall when Roz got back. He sat on a bench, totally absorbed in Heavy Cruiser Weekly Heavy Cruiser Weekly. He looked up guiltily to discover her standing there. 'h.e.l.lo,' he said.

'Any luck?'

'No,' said Roz. 'I'm glad we didn't plan on enlisting the local Adjudicators, though.'

190.

Chris put his magazine in his pocket. 'Let me guess. They're in on it.'

'Zatopek's gone to ground, apparently with their help.'

Chris said, 'Acting under orders?'

'Acting on behalf of someone... Everyone's acting on behalf of someone. How about you?'

'I'm acting on behalf of my stomach.' He got up. 'I didn't find a thing. Let's get something to eat. I'm starving.'

They walked back along the street. The dome was showing an early evening, the sky hologram slowly fading to reveal the real sky, pitch-black scattered with perfect, untwinkling stars.

'There's the Jeopard cafe,' said Roz.

'Um, maybe we better not go there,' said Chris.

'Whatever.'

As they were pa.s.sing, the Jeopard ran out of the cafe. He loped up to them through the thinning evening crowd. 'Hey,' he said.

'What is it?' said Chris.

The Jeopard's fur was standing on end. 'Someone saw him. I could tell them not to leave Tethys, because it's someone in disguise, isn't it?'

Chris nodded. 'Do you know where he is?'

'Yes, sir.'

Chris looked at the clock again. They'd been in the waiting room for two hours.

A pair of soft-spoken acolytes had met them in the Temple foyer. The floor and walls were marble genuine marble, he bet, a rich brown colour shot through with white and grey. The light was muted, globes cupped in dark half-spheres at intervals around the walls.

There were no seats, only a statue of the G.o.ddess, glistening in obsidian. The blindfold was so delicately crafted it looked as though it was made of real cloth. Her sword was real, the steel polished and sharp-edged. Chris had a strange urge to reach out and touch it.

In the silence the acolytes' footsteps rang out for almost a minute before they appeared. Two of them, male and female.

They were wearing a modified version of the Adjudicator's robes 191 or was it the other way around? Chris suddenly felt underdressed in his street clothes, unworthy to be in the sanctuary.

It didn't seem to bother Roz. She talked to them like they were desk clerks, which they were, really, and demanded to see someone who could do something about something.

The acolytes had led them through long corridors more marble, more silence and left them in this room. It was like a sort of ascetic version of a hotel suite, s.p.a.cious but almost empty.

There was a clothes cleaner and a bathroom but Chris wasn't surprised there wasn't a bar fridge.

The clock was a hologram, activated by eye contact, which meant that whenever you looked it was there. Chris had been trying to look at it out of the corner of his eye, to see whether it really was gone when he wasn't looking. Roz had been watching more news reports, flattened images sliding across the black gla.s.s of the coffee table.

'Six wars have broken out in twenty-four hours,' she said.

'Like brushfires. Only one of them in the solar system the Antarctic Alliance lobbed a missile at the Horne Collective.'

Chris got up and wandered around, getting a root beer from the kitchen unit. 'You know, there's a bed back here,' he said.

Roz didn't look up from the table. 'I'm not that bored yet,' she said.

'Er,' said Chris, suddenly not sure what either of them was talking about. 'I meant that they might be planning to leave us here overnight. Even for a few days.'

Roz switched off the news, right in the middle of a report about the Youkali hostage situation. 'You're right,' she said. 'I wouldn't trust those acolytes as far as I could throw them.'

'That's probably how they feel about us.' He sat down opposite her.

'I'm sure it is. We're just grunts, chipping away at the coalface of law enforcement, with no formal training in legal theory. Most of this building is a library, you know including a major Centcomp node. Computers and theoreticians churning out new laws and new commentary on the laws they just made up.'

'You've been here before.'

192.

'Nope. No one comes here.'

'So how come you know so much about it?' Chris tapped the table top. 'You've been reading up.'

Roz shook her head. 'I considered becoming an acolyte, for a while. Once. I read up on the place then.'

Chris shook his head. 'I can't see it.'

'Neither can I. But you know. It was one of those twenty-four-hour plans, where the solution to all your problems is perfectly clear for just one day... It was after I killed Martle.'

Chris looked at her in surprise, then quickly looked away, fingers drumming on the edge of the table.

'It's not a dirty word,' said Roz.

'You never talk about that,' said Chris.

'I dunno,' she said. She called up the news again. 'It doesn't seem like such a big deal.'

'Hey.'

'All this history,' said Roz. 'Happening all around us.

Everything shifting. The Empire's coming apart at the seams. It's like all those possibilities spraying out of the Nexus.'

'But '

'Anything could happen. So none of it matters.'

'I don't believe that,' insisted Chris. 'We do matter.'

'It's all so small. Don't you see? Martle and me. You and me.'

'Stop it,' said Chris. He stood up suddenly, almost knocking the sofa chair over. 'You're getting her attention.'

'What are you talking about?' said Roz.

Chris turned his head from side to side, trying to hear it more clearly. 'She's been watching us for hours,' he said. 'But now you've gone and gotten her attention.'

'What are you talking about?' Roz was up, wishing she had a weapon, looking around the suite to find something that would subst.i.tute. 'You're not making any sense.'

He knew he wasn't. He couldn't stop. 'She's on her way,' he said.

Roz stood up. She could feel it too, now, getting closer. 's.h.i.t,'

she said. 'The Brotherhood.'

Chris felt his head filling up. He sat down again. He knew they were being attacked, some kind of psychic attack, but he didn't 193 care. That was part of the attack, of course, but it was hard to get excited about it. Probably they'd be here in a minute, or they might just keep pushing their way into their victims' minds, looking for information. Or looking for the off switch.

He didn't care. She was coming. And she wasn't part of the attack. Oh no. They didn't even know about her.

He blinked, wondering how Roz was doing. She was behind the other sofa, hanging on to it like a life preserver, and looking at something behind him. 'Chris!' she said.

'Mmm-hmm?'

'Chris! What's the worst thing in the world?'

He thought about it. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I suppose it's different for everyone. What do you see?'

'She's scaly,' moaned Roz. She sounded like a little kid. 'She can see me.'

'Scaly?'

'She's a reptile. She can see me, she can see me.'

'Don't be fooled,' said Chris. 'That's not her. That's part of the attack.'

'Help me.'

'You don't need help. You only think you see her.'

'We're going to die,' said Roz. She pressed her face into the sofa. 'They're going to kill us. I don't understand.'

Chris got up. There was something tugging at him, something stronger than the thick blanket of ennui that had settled over him.

He walked over to where Roz was cowering. Might as well.

'Come on,' he said. 'She's almost here. We don't want to keep her waiting.'

He put his hands on Roz's shoulders and gently pulled her to her feet. 'No, no,' she was muttering. Chris's head was full of the soft humming, pushing him down to the floor to sleep, to dream and let out all his secrets. But the calling cut through all of that.

He turned.

There was a hole in the air, a spinning metallic hole. Light spilt out of it into the suite.

There was a female figure standing in the light. Dark stone. She held out a hand to them, her gla.s.sy body groaning with the movement. In her other hand there was a long, glittering sword.

194.

Roz took a step towards her, reaching for the outstretched hand.

'See?' said Chris. 'Not scared now.'

They went to her together.

'Oh no,' said Roz. 'We're in b.l.o.o.d.y puters.p.a.ce.'

Chris looked around. 'But it's the suite.'

'No, look at it. It's a VR model of the suite. Look at those lines it's not even a good VR simulation. What the h.e.l.l happened?'

'We were under psychic attack. A gateway into puters.p.a.ce opened up. We went through it.'

Chris looked down. He was standing next to his own body, lying face down in the carpet. Roz lay next to him, her lips slightly parted. She looked as though she was asleep.