Zidarov let him go, holstered his autopistol and adjusted his coat.

‘Scila’s Syndrome,’ Peravov said, weakly, trying to salvage something. ‘Accelerated ageing. I might be able to do something about that. I mean, to hide the visible effects, anyway.’

Zidarov looked at him witheringly. ‘Just send the money. That way, it has a chance of doing something useful.’

Zidarov was on his way back to the Bastion when confirmation of the meeting came in from Vongella. It was going ahead without delay, prompted, so they told him, by a sudden nervousness on the part of the Vidora that the entire thing was all some kind of hoax and that the raids were about to start up again.

The light was failing by then, and the rain had started up in earnest, sluicing down the gutters along the transitways, gushing hard when it hit the inlaid ground-tracks. He pulled the loc-ref from the transmission packet, and realised he’d have to drive hard to make it in time. Castellan had selected a site on the fringes of the toxic zones, the Scarlands, the places so mutilated by industry that even the famously lackadaisical ­citizen safety boards had prohibited development and torn down the old manufactoria. The whole region was a wound, now – a gouge that ran across a few thousand square yards of Urgeyena real estate, a monument to a long-run culture of hard exploitation without thought to consequences.

He engaged both engines, and the Luxer growled, kicking up spray behind its thick wheel arches. It felt, just then, as if he’d spent far too long behind the wheel. His shoulders both ached, his legs felt cramped. He could do with a drink, could do with some more sleep, but knew already that the night would be a long one and neither would be heading his way.

Gradually, the habclaves around him degraded. The buildings went from tight-packed blocks of residential towers and commercia units, to semi-industrial workshops and warehouses, to derelict old shells of places, their windows empty and their blackened walls punched through with windblown holes. The life slid out of everything, held back to where the lumens still glimmered and the roads were crammed with vehicles.

Zidarov activated the groundcar’s enhanced atmosphere-filters, and switched on a tox-reader. There wasn’t much he could do about what it told him, but at least he’d know something about the level of filth he’d be breathing in. Eventually he drew up at the loc-ref he’d been given – a large cleared area sited between two huge building carcasses. The ground at his feet was a mix of pale gravel and masonry residue, now sodden from the rain. The tox-reader clicked alarmingly. He got out of the Luxer, went to the hold and pulled out a slimline rebreather. He strapped it on, tasting the old, half-perished latex where it pressed up around his nose and chin. He should have replaced it years ago.