‘I know that woman,’ Liv whispered, ‘but I can’t think where from.’

Antoyne was unable to help. He had seen so many people like that, in bars from here to the Core. After you had yourself rebuilt to such a degree, body language was enough to tell whatever two-dimensional story you had left. You were so wired to yourself you no longer knew what you were. Every response ramped up, every surface tuned to receive rays from space: designed for looks, speed, confidence and security at point of use.

‘But who can say what back door access the tailor left?’ he concluded.

Liv found this critique unhelpful. ‘I know her from somewhere,’ she said. Then: ‘Look! Antoyne! In the breaks!’

Two hundred yards away, a long cylindrical object was beating up out of the sea, dipping and rolling in the salt spray. In three or four minutes it had found its way on to the beach. It looked like a mine from a forgotten war, rusty, steaming and throwing off curious dark rainbows while it decided where to go next. The woman by the Deleuze Motel was watching it too. She stood up and dusted off her hands. When the mortsafe showed signs of moving away into the dunes, she called out and began running after it at a rate no human being could sustain, becoming in three or four paces a mucoid blur. Almost immediately, she was in collision with an identical blur, which had lunged up at her from a shallow hiding place down in the sand and marram grass. Both of them shrieked loudly. It was as if she had run full tilt into a mirror. Every movement she made, her double matched. Sand flew up around them so it became impossible to tell which was which. Then one of them slowed down suddenly and strode around looking puzzled with her hands to her head. She sat down hard. Fell forward slowly from the waist. Leaving her there motionless, the survivor went fizzing away among the dunes, tearing up the marram grass, startling the shoreline birds.

‘They’ve killed her!’ said Liv.

Antoyne put his hand on her arm. ‘This isn’t to do with us.’