‘Where are you taking me?’ Ty asked.

‘Well, that depends on exactly how cooperative you’re feeling,’ Lamoureaux replied.

‘Kosac told me someone was coming for me, but he wasn’t going to let me escape.’

He watched the two men exchange glances.

‘Well, that’s it,’ Willis muttered. ‘I’m going to get a kick out of burying that little shit up to his neck in trouble.’

‘Mr Whitecloud,’ said Lamoureaux, his tone dry, ‘can you tell me if the term “Mos Hadroch” means anything to you?’

Ty nodded slowly. ‘It’s an Atn term: a transliteration based on an analysis of ancient Atn sound recordings. It means a machine for passing judgement.’

‘And you’ve been living under the “Nathan Driscoll” identity for some years now, isn’t that correct?’ Lamoureaux prompted.

Ty nodded slowly, unsure what to admit to just yet.

‘We’ll stick with the Driscoll identity for now,’ said Willis. ‘Seems you’ve had quite the varied career, haven’t you, Ty?’

Ty shrugged uneasily and still said nothing.

Lamoureaux’s eyes became momentarily unfocused. He’s accessing data from somewhere, Ty realized.

Lamoureaux blinked and looked at Ty. ‘You have an implant,’ he remarked.

‘You can tell?’ Ty asked.

Lamoureaux shook his head. ‘No, not that it stopped me trying to detect one. But it’s noted in your records. Is it still active?’

‘No,’ Ty replied. ‘The Uchidan authorities disabled its higher-level functions before I was to be handed over to the Legislate. You should know that Uchidan implants aren’t programmed like the machine-head variety. Spontaneous networking isn’t what they’re designed for.’

‘I’m aware of that, Mr Whitecloud.’

‘Why are you asking me questions about the Atn? Nobody cares about them except a few underfunded university departments.’

Lamoureaux responded by pulling a case out from under the seat beside him. He opened it and extracted a bundle of printouts and handed them to Ty.

‘Can you identify these?’ he asked.

Ty studied the documents for a good minute or two before looking up again. ‘These are the spiral forms of the wall-glyphs found inside almost every Atn clade-world,’ he said. One set of glyphs – a crescent placed next to a full circle, both of them at the centre of a tight spiral of lines and squiggles – was immediately familiar. ‘If all you wanted to do was identify the Atn clade-family concerned, I could have told you as soon as you said the words “Mos Hadroch”.’ He tapped the crescent and circle. ‘This is the identifier for Crescent-over-Moon. They’re the only clade with which that term is associated.’

Willis leaned forward. ‘What exactly is a “clade”?’

‘The Atn have clans, or clades, distinguishable by small differences in their written languages. They appear to be quite distinct from each other, and rarely interacting.’

Lamoureaux fixed him with an intense stare. ‘What we want to know, Ty, is whether the Mos Hadroch is a tangible artefact. Can you tell us that?’