‘Why,’ she said, ‘do you have any evidence that there is a viral dream?’

I told her that Moody had muttered something about blue Buicks and Mrs Nesbit and the hands out to get him.

‘Moody the RailTec?’

I nodded.

‘And,’ I said, thinking of my training, ‘according to regulation SX-70 of the Continuity of Command directives, I will need to carry on Logan’s investigation – or at least, make some enquiries.’

‘About viral dreams? With Toccata?’

‘I guess so.’

She patted my hand.

‘Here’s some advice. Dump off Bouzouki Girl at Hibertech and get on the last train home. The Sector Twelve Winter Consuls are a bunch of vipers, especially Toccata. You don’t want to be mixed up with them.’

I’d heard this from several sources.

‘Is it true Toccata ate two nightwalkers to survive the Winter?’

‘Kept them alive until needed, I heard, and now has a taste for it. Anything else you remember about the two perps who were going to farm Bouzouki Girl?’

‘There were three suspects, not two.’

She stared at me with her single eye for a moment while the other moved around, seemingly of its own accord.

‘To the left, was she?’

‘He. A MediTech.’

‘That would explain it,’ she said, pointing to her useless eye, ‘I don’t see things too well on my left.’

She showed me a sketch on her notepad. It was, predictably, of half a face – Foulnap’s.

‘The man who took the nightwalker. This him?’

I nodded, and she placed the pad in her breast pocket.

‘Logan paused,’ I said after a moment’s thought, ‘like he didn’t want to kill you. Why was that?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Aurora, ‘but it was to your clear advantage that he did, and his clear disadvantage that he didn’t. Remember what I said: avoid the Winter Consuls in Sector Twelve – especially Toccata.’

She bade me goodbye, and wandered off down the carriage, leaving me to my thoughts. After half an hour or so the train stopped at Torpantu high station.

There was no movement of passengers or freight while the RailTecs set the brakes for the descent, and we were soon on our way again, first through a mile-long tunnel that cut the summit off the mountain, then past a weathered sign welcoming us to Sector Twelve and from there down a long incline at a measured pace. It had stopped snowing on this side of the ridge, and in the twilight I could just make out the shape of the mountains rising all around, their peaks draped in a soft blanket of snow. On the tighter bends the red glow of the locomotive five carriages ahead was clearly visible, and occasionally the train shuddered as the snowplough scythed its way through a drift while sparks from the funnel drifted past the windows like fireflies.