aSo do I, believe me. So do I.a I glance sidelong at Fer.

aMickas not been right in the head since Iave known him,a Fer mutters.

aAnything else before we go?a I ask, standing up.

aYes,a says Fer. aIf you donat whistle, and you donat come out within ten minutes, Iam going in anyway.a He grips his crowbar.

aI should hope so.a I nod, then get up and head across the road.

Mickas garden is overgrown with weeds, and the gra.s.s is long. There are no lights in the windows, but that doesnat mean anything. Like our house, thereas a conservatory at the front. The door stands open. I step inside and look at the front door. Thereas a new lock drilled into it, big and chunky-looking. I ring the doorbell. Nothing happens. I ring it again, and a light comes on in the hall. I tense up, ready for it as I hear a key turn in the lock, then another key, and the door opens.

aYou.a Itas Mick. He belches at me, and I smell sour wine on his breath. Heas wearing a dirty T-shirt and boxers, and heas clutching a metal canister with an open top. aWhat do you want?a He leers at me. aDinat I tellya not to bug me?a aI want to see Ca.s.s,a I say evenly. Thereas stuff piled in the hall. Looks like empty food cartons, rubbish. It smells sickly sweet. aShe wasnat at Church on Sunday.a aYeah?a He raises the can and takes a drink from it, then looks at me slyly. aCome in.a I step over the threshold as he backs into the house. It looks like it started out as a mirror image of the one Sam and I live in, but itas been trashed. The hall is stacked with ripped boxes of ready meals and bits of decaying food. Something upstairs has leaked, and thereas a smelly stain spreading down one wall. aSheas upstairs, resting,a he says, gesturing at the staircase. aWhynat you go up ana see her?a I stare at him. aIf you think she wonat mind.a aShe wonat.a As I set foot on the staircase he sidles round below and closes the door, then twists both keys in the locks. aGo on,a he tells me, anothina to worry about.a He giggles.

That does it. Iave got the whistle on a cord round my neck, hidden under the jumper Iam wearing. I pull it out and blow two sharp blasts as I take the steps two at a time. Mick winces, then turns to look up at me, his face a picture of confusion slowly turning into anger. aWhatyuh do that for?a he shouts. Then thereas a loud thump from behind him as someone hits the door.

I make the top step and glance round quickly. The master bedroom is on the left, just like in my own house. There are piles of filthy clothing mounded up along one wall, and I take in the sick-but-sweet stench of blocked drains overlying something else, something less identifiable. I dart into the bedroom, and my hand goes to the light switch. Something squeals.

Thereas a splintering crash downstairs and a bellow of inarticulate rage, but Iam too busy staring at the bed to pay attention. Most of the furniture in the room has been trashed, like someone threw it about or took an axe to it. The bed is the sole exception, but itas been stripped down to the mattress. It stinks of excrement and stale urine, there are flies buzzing about, and itas occupied: Ca.s.s is lying on it naked. Her arms are tied to the headboard, and her legs to either corner of the bottom of the bed. Sheas filthy and there are bruises on her thighs and her face looks like sheas been repeatedly punched. Thatas where the squealing noise is coming from. I think heas broken her jaw.

aUp here,a I yell through the doorway. I turn back to her. aWeall get you out of here, my friend.a I bend over her and pull out the switchblade I brought along for emergencies. aThis is going to hurt.a I begin sawing on the cord around her arms and she whimpers. As she moves thereas a horrible stench from the encrusted mattress and I realize she isnat just skinny, sheas half-starved, and there are sores on her arms, angry red rope burns.

I hear more crashes and bangs from downstairs, then an angry yell. Ca.s.s whimpers, then moans loudly as the last cord parts; her arms flop limply, and she moans some more. Her hands are puffy and bruised-looking, and Iave got a bad feeling about them, but thereas no time to waste. I move to the foot of the bed and start sawing away at the rope around her right ankle, and thatas when she screams and I see what heas done to stop her from running away. Thereas blood on the rope because heas slashed the big tendon on her ankle, and her foot flops uncontrollably, and every time it moves, she tries to scream, gurgling around her broken jaw. He said you get lots of points for having a baby. I yell with fury, then thereas someone in the doorway. I look up and see itas Sam. Thereas a cut on his cheek thatas bleeding, and one eye is half-closed. That gets my attention, and Iam in control again. aOver here,a I say tensely. aI need you to hold her leg still . . .a When we go downstairs, Greg phones a number I donat know about and calls an ambulance. Everyone is a bit the worse for wear, except for Greg and Tammy. Sam is going to have a beautiful black eye tomorrow, and Fer caught a kick in the ribs while he and Sam and Greg were taking down Mick. Theyave laid him out on the floor of the conservatory while we figure out what to do with him. Iam really regretting my earlier stand against lynching, but the first priority is to get Ca.s.s to safety. Weall have plenty of time to deal with Mick later, a.s.suming he doesnat choke on his own vomit while heas unconscious. That would make things easier all round.

aHow is she?a asks Tammy. aIad bettera"a aNo.a I stop her by standing in the way. aTrust me. We need to get her to the, the hospital. This isnat something you can do at home.a aHow bad?a Tammy demands.

aHospital.a I donat want her to see what Mick did to Ca.s.sas legs. I donat want to be responsible tonight.

The ambulance arrives within five minutes, a boxy white vehicle with stylized red crescents on it. Two polite zombies in blue uniforms come up to the front door. aThis way,a I say, leading them upstairs. For once Iam glad there are zombies everywherea"they wonat ask the kind of awkward questions someone with cognitive autonomy might raise. Sam is up there with Ca.s.s, and a minute later the zombies pile back downstairs to fetch a folding wheeled platform for her.

aWho is next of kin?a asks one of the zombies as they come down the stairs with Ca.s.s lying on the stretcher.

Fer begins to point toward Mick, and Tammy bats his hand away. aI am!a she says. aTake me with you.a aRequest approved,a says one of the zombies. aRide up front, please.a They wheel Ca.s.s out toward the back of the vehicle, and Tammy follows them.

Greg watches her for a moment, then turns to look back at Mick. aWhat are we going to do with him?a he asks.

Thereas a hard expression on Feras face. aNothing,a I say quickly, before Fer can open his mouth and stick his foot in it. aRemember what we agreed? No lynching.a I pause. aWhat we do tomorrow is another matter.a aWill the police do anything?a Fer asks after a moment.

aI donat think so,a says Sam, coming downstairs. Heas holding a damp towel to his eye. aI really donat think theyare programmed for this sort of thing. If weare unlucky, theyall come after us for trampling on the flower bed and breaking down the door, but I donat think you can really expect a zombie to cope with this sort of . . . thing.a He looks very sober as he stares at Mickas prostrate form.

aLetas go home,a I suggest. aHow about we meet up tomorrow evening to talk about it?a aThat works for me,a says Greg. Sam nods.

I eye Mickas prostrate form. aIf he tries to come after any of us, I think we should kill him.a aYou sound as if youare not certain.a Thatas Fer.

aCertain?a I stare at him: as.h.i.t, Iave got half a mind to cut his throat right here! Except, Sundayaa"I swallowa"ahas kind of put me off.a I stare at him some more. aYou kicked the s.h.i.t out of him. Think heall come back for more?a Greg shakes his head. aI hope he tries something,a he says, a curious half smile on his lips. I shiver. Just for a moment he reminds me of Jen.

aCome on, letas go.a I take Samas free hand. aFer, would you call two taxis?

Itas close to one in the morning when Sam and I get home, filthy and tired and bruised. aGo on in,a I say, pausing in the conservatory. aThis shirtas going in the trash.a Sam nods wordlessly and goes indoors, leaving me to strip off under the cool moonlight. I feel numb and tired, but also satisfied with the nightas work. I correct thata"mostly satisfied. I unzip my trousers in case any of the c.r.a.p on the bed rubbed off on them, then I follow him inside.

Samas standing in the living room doorway, holding a bottle of vodka and two tumblers. He hasnat turned the lights on, but heas shed his shirt, and the moonlight shining through the tall gla.s.s windows outlines his bare shoulders in silver. aI do not want to dream tonight,a he says, holding the bottle out to me.

aMe neither.a I take one of the gla.s.ses, then brush past him into the living room. Iam tired, I realize, but Iam also wired with excitement and tension and apprehension about tomorrow, and a burning hot anger for Ca.s.sa"Why didnat I go round to see her before?a"and a fresh hatred for Fiore and Yourdon, and the faceless sc.u.m who created this nightmare and expect us to live in it. aWhat are you waiting for?a I drop onto the sofa and hold my gla.s.s out. Sam tips colorless spirit into it. aCamon.a He sits down next to me and fills his own gla.s.s, then caps the bottle. aI should have listened to you earlier,a he says, taking a mouthful.

aSo?a I raise my gla.s.s. aI hope the hospital can help. She wasa"a Thereas a long moment of silence. Itas probably only a couple of seconds, but it feels like hours.

aI didnat know.a aNone of us did.a But these sound like feeble excuses to me right now, so I take another mouthful of vodka in order to have something else to occupy my mouth with.

aR-Reeve. Thereas something else I want you to know.a I look at him sharply. Heas looking right back at me, and Iam suddenly conscious that Iam nearly naked. And heas not wearing that much either, now I allow myself to notice it.

aGo ahead,a I say, trying to keep my voice neutral.

aIam. Oh.a He looks away, looking pained. Inexpressive. aYesterday I said some things I didnat really mean. Hurtful things, some of them. I want to apologize.a aNo apology needed,a I say, my heart beating painfully fast.

aOh, but there is. You see, I didnat mean everything I said. But when I said * * * I was telling thea"a aStop right there.a I raise a hand. aThose words. You, uh, oh s.h.i.t.a My headas spinning. Itas late at night, Iave been through a lot, Iave been drinking vodka, and Samas saying words to me that my ears refuse to listen to. aI didnat hear you just now, and I know for sure you said the same thing before, and I didnat hear the words.a He looks puzzled, even offended. aI mean, I heard you speak, but I couldnat understand them.a Iam beginning to worry. aYou used the same phrase, didnat you? Exactly the same words? Could there be something wrong with mya"a He stands up and strides over to the sideboard to retrieve his tablet, which has been lying there gathering dust for some time. aWhat?a He says something to it, then holds it up in front of me. Dim letters glow on the screen: I LOVE YOU.

aYou what?a I say, aYouare trying to say * * *a"a And I know Iam saying the words, but I canat hear them. as.h.i.t.a I shake my head. aItas me. Sam, Iam so sorry.a I stand up and hug him. a* * *, too. Itas just, thereas something really flaky up with my language module. Is that what youave been trying to tell me?a I lean back far enough to see his face. aIs it?a aYes,a he admits. His face is a picture of worry. aI donat say that easily. And I canat hear it either, Reeve, I thought I was going nuts.a aI guess not.a Iam close enough to feel his crotch. aAnd I guess you only say that to people youare serious about.a He nods. aAnd maybe youare close enough that I can tell you that Iam flattered, and very happy, and, anda"a I pause. I feel as if I ought to know what this weird inability to understand those three happy words means, but I canat quite recall it. aWeave got to get out of here.a He nods. aI really donat like this,a he says, miserably, a wave of his hand encompa.s.sing everything from his body outward. aIavea"they should have spotted it. I donat feel right when Iam big and slow and fixed. I mean, they can patch it temporarily but I donat like that, either, itas easier just not to be. Only they didnat even give me a, aa"a Heas breathing too fast.

I feel a stab of anger, not at Sam but at Fiore and the other idiots. aYouave got a big-body dysphoria, havenat you?a He nods. aFigures.a Kay spent a whole lifetime as an alien, didnat she? And kept changing bodies, as if she couldnat quite settle on a form that she felt comfortable in. Doubtless itas fixable with therapy, but fixing peopleas problems isnat exactly what this polity is about. aSam.a I kiss him on the cheek. aWeave got to get out of here. Whereas your tablet?a aOver there.a aI need to show you something.a I let go of him and fetch it, intending to point out to him the myriad ways in which the polity const.i.tution turns us into victims of a biologically deterministic tyranny. aHerea"a I page through it quickly. aHey, I didnat see this before!a aWhat?a He looks over my shoulder.

aList of revealed behavioral scores. Gender-based. Huh.a I stare. s.e.x with your partner gets five points for the very first occurrence, dropping off to one point each time after a while. In other words, itas a decay function. aAdultery,a that bad word, gets minus one hundred. There are some other crazy items. Getting pregnant brings fifty points, bringing the baby to term brings another fifty. Whatas abortion? Whatever it is, it gets hammered as hard as adultery, which is what got Esther and Phil intoa"letas not go there. There are other things here, the most improbable activities, that get huge penalties. But rape isnat mentioned. Murder loses you just seventy points. What kind of sense does that make? Itas ludicrous! aEither theyare trying to generate a psychotic polity, or the people in the society they derived these scores from were off their heads.a aOr possibly both.a Sam yawns. aListen, itas late. We need to get some sleep. Why donat we go to bed and chew this over tomorrow? With the others?a aYes.a I put the tablet down, not mentioning that tomorrow Iave got other plans because Fiore is visiting the library again. aTomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.a

12.

Bag.

I spend a long time lying in bed awake, fantasizing about what Iad like to do to Mick, about what I think he deserves to have done to hima"but which isnat going to happen. I finally drift into sleep after a particularly brutal fantasy, and I dream again, but this time itas no nightmare. Rather, itas a flashback to how I started my life as a tank. I guess these flashbacks would be nightmarish, if they were still invested with any emotional impacta"instead theyare grisly and freighted with significance, but drained of immediacy by time and necessity.

I stay aboard the MASucker Grateful for Duration for almost a gigasecond as it crawls slowly through interstellar s.p.a.ce. Thereas not really anything else I can doa"weave been offlined by Curious Yellow, which appears to have targeted the ship for special treatment on the basis of its self-contained systems. Half-crazy with worry for my family, tempered by apprehension about my situation, I check myself into one of the shipas a.s.semblers when it becomes clear that this isnat a temporary outage, that something vast and extremely ugly has overcome the Republic of Is and thereas no way around it. We wonat find out whatas happening until the Grateful for Duration reaches its next destination, an obscure religious retreat in orbit around a small and very cold gas giant that orbits a brown dwarf about thirty trillion kilometers away. I extract a promise from Kapitan Vecken that heall unserialize me if anything interesting happens, then archive myself to backup storage for the duration.

When I blink and awaken in the A-gate, the universe has changed around me. Iave been asleep for a gigasecond while we crawled across almost three Urth-style alight years,a then spent a megasec decelerating under high-gee conditions to a rendezvous with Delta Refuge. The contemplatorian monastery has been erased and filed in deep storage, bits and atoms reconfigured into the sinister angled constructs of a military-industrial complex. Kapitan Vecken is reluctant to lend his ship to the resistance cabal, but heas happy to run off a clone of his stand-alone A-gate to help speed their botched, jerry-built attempts at constructing a sterile, uninfected nano-ecosystem. And heas happy to put me ash.o.r.e. So I meet the resistance.

At that timea"when I first join thema"the Linebarger Cats are an informal group of refugees, dissidents, and generally uncooperative alienists who resent any attempt to dictate their conscious phase s.p.a.ce. They live in a few cramped habs with little attempt to conceal the artificiality of the environment. In my first few kiloseconds the close-lipped paramilitaries who insist on searching me as I climb out of the transfer pod explain what Iave missed. The infection is a history worm. It infiltrates A-gates. If you go into an infected A-gate, it crudely deletes chunks of your memory (mostly at random, but if you remember anything from before the Republic of Is, youare likely to lose it). Then it copies its own kernel into your netlink. There are some bootstrap instructions. If you find an uninfected gate, thereas a compulsion to put it into operator debugging mode, enter commands via the conversational interface, then upload yourself. At which point the A-gate executes the infected boot loader in your netlink, copies it into its working set, anda"bang!a"another infected gate.

a.s.semblers are an old established technology, and for many gigaseconds theyave been a monoculture, best-of-breed, all using the same subsystemsa"if you want a new A-gate, you just tell the nearest a.s.sembler to clone itself. Where Curious Yellow got started we do not know, but once it was in the wild, it spread like an ideal gas, percolating through the network until it was everywhere.

It takes a while for a worm to overrun an A-gate network while in stealth mode, using human brains as the infective vector, but once the infection reaches critical ma.s.s, itas virtually impossible to stop it spreading throughout an entire polity.

Once the activation signal is sent, everything speeds up. Suddenly, there are privileged instruction channels. Infected A-gates sprout defenses, extrude secure netlinks to the nearest T-gates, and start talking to each other directly to exchange orders and information. Hereas the fun thing about Curious Yellowa"A-gates that are infected can send each other message packets, peer to peer. If youave got the right authentication keys, you can send a distant gate running Curious Yellow instructions to make things. Or modify things. Or change people as they pa.s.s through it. Itas an anything box.

Fearful weapons appear, seemingly at random, engaged on search and destroy missions for who knows what. Someone, somewhere, is writing the macros, and the only way to stay clear is to sever all T-gate connections, shutting the rogue a.s.semblers off from their orders. But the A-gates are still infected, still running Curious Yellow. And if you use them to make more A-gates, those will be infected, too, even if you write complete new design templatesa"Curious Yellowas payload incorporates a pattern recognizer for nanoreplicators and inserts itself into anything that looks even remotely similar. The only solution is to drop back to prereplicator tech, use the infected gates to make dumb tools, then try to rebuild a sterile a.s.sembler from the wreckage of post-Acceleration technosystems.

Or you can surrender to Curious Yellow and try to live with the consequences, as the Linebarger Cats explain to me in words of one syllable. Then they ask me what I intend to do, and I ask if I can sign up.

Which explains how I ended up as a tank, but not really why.

I wake up as the bright light of dawn crosses the edge of my pillow. I stretch and yawn and look at Sam sleeping beside me, and for a heart-stoppingly tender moment I long to be back on the outside, where Iam Robin and sheas Kay and weare both properly adjusted humans who can be whoever we want to be and do whatever we want to do. For a moment I wish Iad never found out who he was . . .

So I force myself to get out of bed. Itas a library day, and I need to be there because Iave got at least one customer to deal witha"Fiore. Iam tired and apprehensive, wondering in the cold light of day if Iave blown everything. The idea of going through a normal working cycle after what happened last night feels bizarre, the sort of thing a zombie would doa"as if Iam entirely a creature of unconscious habit, obedient to the commands of an unknown puppeteer. But thereas more to it than just doing the job, I remind myself. Iave got a different goal in mind, something else that the day job is just a cover for. Iam still not entirely sure whatas going on here, why I was sent, and who Yourdon and Fiore are, but enough stuff has surfaced that I can make an educated guess, and the picture Iam piecing together isnat pretty.

Iam fairly sure that from the outside YFH-Polity must appear to be a successful social psychology experiment. Itas a closed microcosm community with its own emergent rules and internal dynamics that seem to be eerily close to some of the books Iave been reading in my spare hours in the library. Itas got to be providing great feedback on dark ages society for Yourdon and Fiore to wave under the noses of the academic oversight committee appointed by the Scholastium. But on the inside of the gla.s.shouse, things are changing very rapidly. When Yourdon and Fiore and the mysterious Hanta announce a continuation, and say that all the inmates have agreed to extend their consent, n.o.bodyas going to look too deeply. By then, the experimental population will have nearly doubled. Half the inmates will be newborn citizens, unknown to the oversight committee on the outside. Maybe itas even worse than thata"I ought to go to the hospital and visit Ca.s.s, nose around, and see what their maternity facilities are like. Iall bet theyare pretty advanced for a dark ages facility. And that theyare expecting plenty of multiple births.

Thereas also the question of the box files in the doc.u.ment repository. I figure they contain about a billion words of data, committed to a storage medium that is stable for tens of gigasecs, potentially even for hundreds. Spores. Thatas what they need the babies for, isnat it? I canat remember why we donat have repeated outbreaks of Curious Yellow anymore, itas one of those memories thatas buried too deeply for me to retrieve. But thereas got to be a connection, hasnat there? The original Curious Yellow infection spread via human carriers, crudely editing them to insert its kernel code and making them issue deb.u.g.g.e.r commands to load and execute on each a.s.sembler they found. It spread via the netlink. Our netlinks donat work properly, do they? Hmm. The new A-gates are different, but theyare equally a monoculture, just one thatas designed to resist Curious Yellowas infection strategy. I canat help thinking about that MilSpec a.s.sembler in the library bas.e.m.e.nt. Thereas something Iam missing here, something I donat quite have enough data fora"

Iam dressed for work, standing in the kitchen holding a mug of coffee, and I donat remember how I got here. For a moment I shudder, in the grip of an anonymous sense of abstract horror. Did I just get dressed, walk downstairs, and make coffee in an introspective haze as I tried to get to grips with the real purpose of this facility? Or is something worse happening? The way I can read the words aI love youa but hear them as a* * *a suggests somethingas not quite right in my speech center. If Iam suffering memory dropouts, I could be quite ill. I mean, really ill. The small of my back p.r.i.c.kles with cold sweat as I realize that I might be about to unravel like a knit jumper hooked by a nail. I know my memoryas full of gaps where a.s.sociations between concepts and experiences have been broken, but what if too much has gone? Can the rest of me just disappear spontaneously, speech and memory and perceptions falling victim to an excess of editing?

Not knowing who you are is even worse than not knowing who you were.

I get out of the house as fast as I can (leaving Sam asleep upstairs in the bedroom) and walk to work. The weather is as hot as usuala"we seem to be moving into a scheduled asummera seasona"and I make good time even though I set off in the opposite direction from normal, intending to loop around the back way and come into the downtown district where the library is via a different road.

I open up the library. Itas neat and tidya"when neither Janis nor I are there I guess thereas probably a zombie janitor on staff duty. I head to the back room to fortify myself with another coffee before Fiore arrives, and as Iam waiting for the kettle to boil I get a surprise.

aJanis! What are you doing here? I thought you were ill.a aIam feeling a lot better,a she says, summoning up a pale smile. aLast week I was getting sick a lot, and the lower back pain was getting to me, but Iam less nauseous now, and as long as I donat have to do a lot of bending or lifting, I should be all right for a while. So I thought Iad come in and sit in on the front desk for a bit.a s.h.i.t. aWell, itas been very quiet for the past few days,a I tell her. aYou donat have to stay.a A thought strikes me. aYou heard about Sunday.a aYes.a Her expression closes up. aI knew something bad was going to happena"Esther and Phil were too indiscreeta"but I didnat expect anything like . . .a aWould you like some coffee?a I extemporize, trying to figure out how to get her out of here while I do things that could get me into deep s.h.i.t if they go wrong.

aYes, please.a Sheas got that brooding look, now. aI could strangle the greasy little t.u.r.d.a aFioreas visiting this morning,a I say, managing to pitch my voice as casually as I can, hoping to get her attention.

aHe is, is he?a She looks at me sharply.

I lick my lips. aSomething else happened last night. Ia"it would really help if you could do me a favor.a aWhat kind of favor? If itas about Sundaya"a aNo.a I take a deep breath. aItas about one of my cohort. Ca.s.s. Her husband, Mick, heas been, uh, well, some of us went round yesterday night, and we took her to the hospital. Weare making sure he doesnat go anywhere near her, and meanwhilea"a aMick. Short guy, big nose, eyes as mad as a very mad thing indeed. That him?a aYes.a Janis swears, quietly. aHow bad was it?a I debate how much to tell her. aItas about as bad as it can get. If he finds her again, Iam afraid heall kill her.a I stare at her. aJanis, Fiore knew. He had to! And he didnat do anything. Iam half-expecting him to nail us all for a ton of points next Sunday for intervening.a She nods thoughtfully. aSo what do you want me to do?a I switch the kettle off. aTake today off sick, like you have for the past few days. Go to the hospital, visit Ca.s.s. If theyave wired her jaw, she might be able to talk. We canat be with her all the time, but I think sheall need someone around. And someone whoall be there to call the police if Mick shows up. I donat know if the hospital zombies will do that.a aForget the coffee, Iam out of here.a As she stands up she looks at me oddly. aGood luck with whatever youare planning for Fiore,a she says. aI hope itas painful.a Then she heads for the door.

AFTER Janis leaves, I go and wait behind the front desk. Fiore shows up around midmorning and pointedly ignores me. I offer him a coffee and get a fish-eye stare instead of a ayesaa"he seems suspicious. I wonder if itas because of what happened last night? But heas here alone, with no police and no tame congregation of score wh.o.r.es to back him up, so he pretends he didnat see me at all, and I pretend I donat know anythingas wrong. He heads for the locked door in the reference section, and I manage to hold back the explosive gulp of air my lungs are straining for until heas gone.

My hands keep tensing and kneading the handles of my bag as if they belong to someone else. Thereas a carving knife in the bag, and Iave sharpened the blade. Itas not much of a dagger, but Iam betting that Fiore isnat much of a knife fighter. With any luck he wonat notice anything, or heall a.s.sume Yourdon is the author of my little modification to the cellar and, therefore, leave it alone. The knife is for the worst case, if I think Fiore has realized what Iam up to. Itas p.i.s.s poor compared to the kit I used to work with, but itas better than nothing. So I sit behind this desk like a prim and proper librarian, entertaining mad fantasies about sawing off the Priestas head with a carving knife while I wait for him to emerge from the repository.

Sweat trickles down the small of my back as I look out across the forecourt toward the highway, watching the pattern of light and shade cast by the leaves of the cherry trees on either side of the path shift and recombine on the concrete paving stones. My head hurts as I run through my fragmentary information again. Are my intermittent disconnects hiding things from me that I need to know?

Riddle me this: Why would three missing renegade psyops specialists from the chaos that followed the fall of the Republic of Is surface inside an experiment re-enacting an historical period about which we know virtually nothing? And why would the filing cupboard at the library contain what looks like a copy of the bytecode to Curious Yellow, printed on paper? Why canat I hear the spoken words aI love you,a and why am I suffering from intermittent memory blackouts? Why is there a stand-alone A-gate in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and what is Fiore doing with it? And why does Yourdon want us to have lots and lots of babies?

I donat know. But thereas one thing Iam absolutely clear about: These sc.u.msuckers used to work for Curious Yellow or one of the cognitive dictatorships, and this is all something to do with the aftermath of the censorship war. Iam here because old-me, the Machiavellian guy with the pen whittled from his own thighbone, harbored deep suspicions along these very lines. But in order to get me in through the YFH firewalls he had to erase the chunks of his memories that would give him awaya"and those are the very pieces of me that I need in order to understand the situation!

Itas frustrating. Itas also immensely worrying because thereas more at risk here than simple personal dangera"whether from the experimenters or the other victims. I have a faint inkling of the pain and suffering Curious Yellow caused the first time it got out, and of the terrible struggle it took to chop up the wormas Chord-type network and sterilize every single a.s.sembler. It ruptured what was once an integrated interstellar civilization, smashing it into a mess of diamond-shard polities. How did we stop it . . . ?

Footsteps. Itas Fiore, looking curiously self-satisfied as he heads toward the library doors.

aFinished, Father?a I call.

aYes, that is all for today.a He inclines his head toward me, a gesture thatas evidently intended to be gracious but that comes over as a pompous bob. Then his eyebrows furrow in a frown. aAh yes, Reeve. You were involved in the business last night, I believe?a My left hand tightens on the knife handle inside my bag. aYes.a I stare him down. aDo you know what Mick was doing to Ca.s.s?a aI know thataa"something seems to occur to him, and he changes direction in midsentencea"ait is a most serious thing indeed to interfere in the holy relation between husband and wife. But in some circ.u.mstances it may be justifiable.a He stares at me owlishly. aShe was pregnant, you know.a aAnd?a He must think my expression is one of puzzlement, because he explains, aIf you hadnat intervened, she might have lost the child.a He glances at his watch. aNow, you must excuse mea"I have an appointment. Good day.a And heas off through the door again like a shot, leaving me watching him from behind, mouth agape with disbelief.

Why is Fiore concerned with the health of a fetus, but not about its mother being a.s.saulted, repeatedly raped, held prisoner for weeks, maimed in such a way that she may never walk again? Why? Heas got all the human empathy of a zombie. Whatas wrong with him? And why did he suddenly change his tune? Iad swear he was about to denounce what we did last night, but then he moderated his line. Fear of what the Bishop might say if he incited another near riot over the way we rescued Ca.s.s, or something else?

They want us to have lots of children. But why is that important to them? Is it something to do with Curious Yellow?

I grind my teeth until Fiore is out of sight, then I hop down from my stool, hang up the CLOSED sign, and head for the lock-up. The secret bas.e.m.e.nt downstairs is as I left it except for the a.s.sembler, which is chugging to itself and gurgling as it loads feedstock or coolant or something through pipes in the floor. I guess Fioreas set it running some kind of long batch job. But checking up on it isnat why Iam down here right nowa"Iam here to retrieve the video cartridge from the camcorder I left running on the equipment shelf.

The camcorder is a small metal box with a lens on one side and a screen covering the other. I donat know whatas going on inside it. It certainly isnat an original dark ages artifacta"Iave seen pictures of them in the library booksa"but it does the same job. Along with all the other tech artifacts in this polity, some set designer probably slaved over it for hours trying to figure out how to give it the right functionality without adding too much. They got it wrong, but not too wrong. The original machines used things called atapesa or adisks,a but this one just writes everything it sees onto a memory diamond the size of a sand grain thatas good for a gigasec of events.

I go sit down on the sofa to play with the acorder. Putting my bag down next to me, I poke at the display until Iave zapped back an hour or three. Then I fast-forward through darkness until the light comes on and Fiore comes in. At triple normal speed I watch as he goes over to the bookshelves and leafs through a couple of folders. I pause and zoom in to see what he was reading: POLICY ON s.e.xCRIME, followed by a glance at FAMILIAL STABILITY INDEX, whatever that is. Next, he trots over to the A-gate and chatters to it, gesturing at the terminal. I donat see any sign of biometric authentication, no retinal scan or anything, but he may have used a pa.s.sword. The gate cylinder rotates around its long axis, and he steps inside. Fast-forward and about a kilosecond later he steps out again, blinking. So heas just backed himself up, has he?

Back at the control terminal Fiore issues some more commands, and the gate begins chugging to itself. I glance over my shoulder. Yes, itas still doing thata"just some kind of long synthesis job. He heads for the staircase anda"

s.h.i.t! I whip round and reach for my bag. The A-gate cylinder is opening.

Knife in left hand, bag in right hand. Everything is crystal clear. Fiore suspected. He backed himself up, then set an ambush, and Iave blown it. The cylinder turns and the interior cracks into view. White light, a smell of violets and some kind of weird volatile organics, a bit of steam. Thereas someone/something in there, moving.

I dart forward, bag raised, knife ready to block. Theyare sitting up, head turning. Iall only get one chance to do this. Heart pounding, I upend the empty shoulder bag over the head, lank black haira"fat jowls wobbling indignantly hands coming upa"and I shove the knife blade up against his throat and yell, aFreeze!a The duplicate Fiore freezes.

aThis is a knife. If you move or make a sound or try to dislodge the bag over your head, I will cut your throat. If you understand, say yes.a His voice is m.u.f.fled, but sounds almost amused. aWhat if I say no?a aThen I cut your throat.a I move the knife slightly.

aYes,a he says hurriedly.

aThatas good.a I adjust my grip. aNow let me tell you something. You are thinking you have a working netlink and you can call for help. Youare wrong, because netlinks work via spread spectrum, and youare wearing a Faraday cage over your head, and although itas open at the bottom youare standing in a cellar. The signalas attenuated. Do you understand?a Pause. aThereas n.o.body there!a He sounds slightly panicky. Clever fellow.

aIam glad you said that because if you hadnat, Iad have cut your throat,a I tell him. aLike I said earlier, if you try and lose the bag, Iall kill you immediately.a Heas shaking. Oh, I shouldnat be enjoying this, but I am. For everything youave done to us I ought to kill you a hundred times over. What have I turned into? Iam almost shaking with the intensity ofa"itas like hunger, the yearning. aListen to these instructions. I will shortly tell you to stand up. When I do so, I want you to slowly rise, keeping your arms by your sides. If at any point you canat feel the knife, youad better freeze, because if you keep moving, Iall kill you. When youare on your feet, you will step fifty centimeters forward, then slowly move your hands behind your back. You will then lace your fingers together. Now, slowly, stand up.a Fiore, to give him his due, has a cool enough head to do exactly as I tell him with no hesitation and no hysterics. Or maybe he just knows exactly what he can expect if he doesnat obey. He canat be under any illusions about how hated he is, can he?

aForward one pace, then hands behind back,a I say. He steps forward. I have to stretch to keep the knife around his neck, but I reach down with my free hand and follow his right arm round. Now is the moment of dangera"if he were to kick straight back while blocking with his left shoulder he could hurt me badly and probably get away. But Iam betting Fiore knows very little indeed about serious one-on-one physical mayhem, and the bag over his head should keep him disoriented long enough for me to do this. I step to one side, reach into my pocket with my right hand until I find what Iam after, then squeeze the contents of the tube over his hands and fingers. Cyanoacrylate gluea"the librarianas field-expedient handcuffs. aDonat move your hands,a I tell him.

aWhat is ita"a He stops. Of course he canat help moving his hands and the stuff flows into small cracks. Itas less viscous than water but it polymerizes in seconds. I move the knife round to the side of his neck and examine my handiwork. He might be able to get his hands apart if heas willing to leave skin behind, but he wonat be able to take me by surprise while heas doing it.

aOkay, weare now going to take three slow steps forward. Yes, you can shuffle. Iall tell you when to stopa"easy, easy, stop!a I stop him in the middle of an open patch of floor. I need to think. Heas breathing hoa.r.s.ely inside the improvised hood, and he stinks of fear-sweat. Any moment now, heall realize that I canat let him live, then heall be uncontrollable. Iave got maybe twenty secondsa"

aWhen my husband says * * * I canat hear him,a I say conversationally. aWhat does that mean?a aIt means youare infected with Curious Yellow.a He sounds oddly placid.

aYou ran off a duplicate of yourself as a guard to see who was coming in here,a I tell him. aThat was smart. Were you afraid I was using the A-gate?a aYes,a he says tersely.

aItas immune to the strain Iam infected with, isnat it?a I ask.

I can feel his muscles tensing. aYes,a he says reluctantly.

aAnd Yourdon didnat insist it was locked to your netlinks?a I ask, tensing as I gamble everything on the right answer.

He doesnat give it to me verbally, but he grunts and begins to pull his hands apart and I know Iam right, but I also know Iave got about three seconds left. So I step in close behind him and run my right hand down his chest, caressing, and he freezes when I get to his crotch. A moment of reliefa"heas anatomically orthohuman, and male. I grab his b.a.l.l.s and squeeze viciously. He jackknifes forward, speechless and gasping, almost knocking me over with the violence of it, and the bag goes flying. But thatas okay, because a moment later I grab his hair and while heas preoccupied with the terrible breath-sucking pain, I pull his head up and run the knife blade smoothly through his carotid artery and thyroid cartilage, just below the hyoid bone.

See, the difference between me and Fiore is that I donat enjoy killing, but I know how to do it. Whereas Fiore gets off on control fantasies and watching his score wh.o.r.es lynch lovers, but it didnat occur to him to tell the a.s.sembler to restore him holding a weapon, and it took him almost twenty seconds to realize that I was going to have to kill him regardless of anything he did or said. Basically, Fiore is your bureaucrat-type killer who runs push-b.u.t.ton experiments by remote control, while Iama"

I blank again.

THE civil war lasts two gigasecs, nearly sixty-four years by the reckoning of long-lost Urth. Itas probably still raging in some far-flung corners of human s.p.a.ce. When the longjump network was shattered in an attempt to firewall the damage, it split the interstellar net into disjoint domains separated by lightspeed communications lag. Isolated pockets of Curious Yellow are probably still running, out beyond the liberated light cone, in the eternal darkness and colda"just as there may be outposts of free posthumanity who dropped off the net when the Republic of Is disintegrated. Redaction, the deletion of memory, is Curious Yellowas deadliest weapona"some of those polities might have been deliberately forgotten, their proximal T-gate endpoints dropped into stars and the memories of their existence erased from everyone who used an infected A-gate. The true horror of Curious Yellow is that we have no way of knowing how much we have lost. Entire genocidal wars could have been wiped from our memories as if they never happened. Perhaps this explains the wormas peculiar vendetta against practicing historians and archaeologists. It, or its creator, is afraid we will remember something . . .

I spend my first gigasec among the Cats being a tank. Thereas very little that is human left in me once I get a clear picture of whatas going on. Itas not hard to generalize from the tales of random atrocities committed against people who specialize in the past; besides, the gigasecond of nonexistence I spent aboard Grateful for Duration is a small death in its own righta"time enough for children to mature as adults, for spouses to despair, mourn, and move on. Even if by some miracle my family hasnat been targeted for liquidation because of my career, theyare still lost to me. That sort of experience tends to make one bitter. Bitter enough to give up on humanity as a bad job, bitter enough to experiment with other, more sinister, ident.i.ties.

About my body: I ma.s.s approximately two tons and stand three meters high at the shoulder. My nervous system is nonbiologicala"Iam running as a real-time sim with sensory engagement through my panzeras pain nerves. (The long-term dangers of complete migration into virtch are well understood, but avoidable to some extent by maintaining a somatotype and staying anch.o.r.ed in the real world. Besides which, thereas an emergency to deal with.) If I have to, I can accelerate my mind to ten times normal speed. My skin is an exotic armor, pebbled with monocrystalline diamonds held in a shock-absorbent quantum dot matrix that can be fast-tuned to match the color of any background from radio frequencies through to soft X-rays. For fingernails I have retractable diamond claws, and for fistsa"clench and pointa"I have blasters. I donat eat, or breathe, or s.h.i.t, but take power from a coil wrapped around an endless stream of plasma gated from the photosphere of a secret star.

As a callout sign I adopt the name liddellhart. The other Cats donat know what this signifies. Maybe that explains why over the b.l.o.o.d.y course of four hundred megs and sixteen engagements I end up being promoted to template-senior sergeant and replicated a hundredfold. Unlike Loral and some of the others, I donat freeze up when thereas a problem. I donat experience shock and dissociation when I realize weave just decapitated twelve thousand civilians and shoved their heads into a tactical a.s.sembler that is silently failing to back them up. I do whatas necessary. I donat hesitate when itas necessary to sacrifice six of me in a suicide attack to buy time for the rest of the intrusion team to withdraw. I donat feel anything much except for icy hatred, and while I appreciate in the abstract that Iam sick, Iam not willing to ask for medical attention that might impair my ability to fight. Nor do our shadowy directors, who are watching over us all, see fit to override me.