‘You should have asked the woman how long it would take to persuade her friend to talk to us.’

‘I imagine it will take as long as it takes. You have remarkably little patience for a machine mind.’

‘I am goal-orientated, and currently lack any goals.’

‘The longer she stays away, the more likely it is that she and her friend know something useful,’ Ysbel said, and was glad that Zaquil did not question her dubious logic.

When she returned to the river she found that Goodwill had relit the fire and was broiling several small fish, gutted and flattened, on a flat rock he’d set in the flames. They shared them out and ate them whole, heads and all. Goodwill crunched up and swallowed the small bones; Ysbel picked them from her teeth. Afterwards, they dozed by the fire, Goodwill sprawled face-down on a tree trunk, Ysbel on a stretch of sand.

She woke when the bot began to vibrate in her pocket.

‘Heads up,’ Zaquil said.

Goodwill was standing on the tree trunk and looking towards the river. As Ysbel got to her feet a canoe came around the bend. Raia was sitting in the middle, paddling aslant the main current, grounding the canoe at the edge of the gravel bank and springing out of it and pulling it halfway out of the water. She told Ysbel and Goodwill that she had convinced her friend to meet with them, but still wouldn’t say who he was, or what he was doing in bear country.

‘We can leave as soon as we have sorted out a few supplies. I have a list. If you don’t have something on it, I am sure your helper can get it made up with the hopper’s printer.’

Zaquil had everything ready inside ten minutes, neatly packed in a bag woven from plastic strings, still warm from the printer when Ysbel handed it to Raia. As she fastened it to the cargo netting in the stern of her canoe, the woman reminded Ysbel that she and her helper had promised that they wouldn’t use the security bot.

‘Absolutely,’ Ysbel said, and pulled her little bot from her pocket and powered it down.

‘And please switch off your link, too.’

‘It’s already off,’ Ysbel said. She had forgotten to ask Zaquil to unblock it; there hadn’t been any need for it, out here.

Raia studied her for a moment, then said, ‘Do you know how to paddle?’

‘I’ve done a little,’ Ysbel told her, remembering a golden day when she and Ilan had messed about with stand-up paddle boards off one of the deserted beaches north of Ogres Grave.

‘I own a fishing skiff,’ Goodwill said. ‘I prefer to use its sail, but I can put some muscle into it when I need to.’