The exercise helped. By the time the hour had passed, I was feeling weak but normal—except for an aching head and a feeling that there was a strand of spiderweb interfering with my vision. Toby had given me a good meal. Maybe before the night was over he’d regret that mistake…

Across the dark grounds, an engine started up, spluttered, then settled down to a steady hum.

“It’s time,” the one with the whiskers said. He had a voice like soft cheese to match his smell. He took another half-twist in the arm he was holding.

“Don’t break it,” I grunted. “It belongs to the Baron, remember?”

Whiskers stopped dead. “You talk too much—and too smart.” He let my arm go and stepped back. “Hold him, Pig Eye.” The other man whipped a forearm across my throat and levered my head back; then Whiskers unlimbered the two-foot club from his belt and hit me hard in the side, just under the ribs. Pig Eye let go and I folded over and waited while the pain swelled up and burst inside me.

Then they hauled me back to my feet. I couldn’t feel any bone ends grating, so there probably weren’t any broken ribs—if that was any consolation.

There were lights glaring now across the lawn. Moving figures cast long shadows against the trees lining the drive—and on the side of the Bolo Combat Unit parked under its canopy by the sealed gate.

A crude breastwork had been thrown up just over fifty yards from it. A wheel-mounted generator putted noisily in the background, laying a layer of bluish exhaust in the air.

Mallon was waiting with a 9-mm power rifle in his hands as we came up, my two guards gripping me with both hands to demonstrate their zeal, and me staggering a little more than was necessary. I saw Renada standing by, wrapped in a gray fur. Her face looked white in the harsh light. She made a move toward me and a greenback caught her arm.

“You know what to do, Jackson,” Mallon said speaking loudly against the clatter of the generator. He made a curt gesture and a man stepped up and buckled a stout chain to my left ankle. Mallon held out my electropass. “I want you to walk straight to the Bolo. Go in by the side port. You’ve got one minute to cancel the instructions punched into the command circuit and climb back outside. If you don’t show, I close a switch there—” He pointed to a wooden box mounting an open circuit-breaker, with a tangle of heavy cable leading toward the Bolo—“and you cook in your shoes. The same thing happens if I see the guns start to traverse or the antipersonnel ports open.” I followed the coils of armored wire from the chain on my ankle back to the wooden box—and on to the generator.