None of which was true. Victims of Distress rarely had a history of neurological or mental illness, and bore no signs of injury or disease. And no one had the slightest idea how to deal with the cause of their suffering; the only current “treatment” consisted of sustained heavy sedation.

I picked up my notepad and touched the icon for Sisyphus , my knowledge miner.

I said, “Assemble a briefing on Violet Mosala, the Einstein Centenary conference, and the last ten years’ advances in Unified Field Theories. I’ll need to digest it all in about … a hundred and twenty hours. Is that feasible?”

There was pause while Sisyphus downloaded the relevant sources and scrutinized them. Then it asked, “Do you know what an ATM is?”

“An Automatic Teller Machine?”

“No. In this context, an ATM is an All-Topologies Model.”

The phrase sounded vaguely familiar; I’d probably skimmed through a brief article on the topic, five years before.

There was another pause, while more elementary background material was downloaded and assessed. Then: “A hundred and twenty hours would be good enough for listening and nodding. Not for asking intelligent questions.”

I groaned. “How long for…?”

“A hundred and fifty.”

“Do it.”

I hit the icon for the pharm unit, and said, “Recompute my melatonin doses. Give me two more hours of peak alertness a day, starting immediately.”

“Until when?”

The conference began on April 5th; if I wasn’t an expert on Violet Mosala by then, it would be too late. But … I couldn’t risk cutting loose from the forced rhythms of the melatonin – and rebounding into erratic sleep patterns – in the middle of filming.

“April 18th.”

The pharm said, “You’ll be sorry.”

That was no generic warning – it was a prediction based on five years’ worth of intimate biochemical knowledge. But I had no real choice – and if I spent the week after the conference suffering from acute circadian arrhythmia, it would be unpleasant, but it wouldn’t kill me.

I did some calculations in my head. Somehow, I’d just conjured up five or six hours of free time out of thin air.

It was a Friday. I phoned Gina at work. Rule number six: Be unpredictable. But not too often.

I said, “Screw Junk DNA . Want to go dancing?”

Chapter 5

It was Gina’s idea to go deep into the city. The Ruins held no attraction for me – and there was far better nightlife closer to home – but (rule number seven) it wasn’t worth an argument. When the train pulled into Town Hall station, and we took the escalators up past the platform where Daniel Cavolini had been stabbed to death, I blanked my mind and smiled.

Gina linked arms with me and said, “There’s something here I don’t feel anywhere else. An energy, a buzz. Can’t you feel it?”

I looked around at the station’s black-and-white tiled walls, graffiti-proof and literally antiseptic.

“No more than in Pompeii.”