‘The dark one’s definitely Golem,’ said Svent. ‘All the others are human unless they’re carrying sophisticated emulation programs. Going by the rest of their equipment, that’s something I doubt. I reckon they were here tracing arms deals until one of them eyeballed one of us. You can be sure they’ll be sending an underspace message any time now.’

‘That will not help them much,’ said Corlackis. ‘No runcible to get reinforcements here in the nick of time. The nearest one is a good month, ship time.’

‘I don’t mind it being known that we are here. I do mind it being known that we have acquired a dropbird here,’ said Pelter.

‘Yeah,’ said Corlackis with a shrug. ‘We still kill them.’

Pelter looked at Svent, pushed him subliminally through his aug. The little mercenary continued.

‘Five of them as far as I can make out. The four humans take shifts in the car, two of them at a time, probably to get out of the rain. The other two and the Golem are in that café with the meshed-over window. They follow whichever of us leaves here. Splitting up if we split up.’ Svent reached into his pocket and dropped a little sample bottle on the table. Inside the bottle were a couple of glittering specks. ‘Fucking Golem put them on me and Dusache with a little air gun. She think we’re that stupid?’

‘What are they? Phones or tracers?’ Stanton asked.

‘Tracers.’

‘Deactivated?’ Pelter asked, an edge to his voice.

‘’Course they are,’ said Svent.

‘Right,’ said Pelter. ‘The humans are no problem, but I’d rather they were out of the way before we deal with the Golem. This is how we play it . . .’

* * *

Pelter leant against the door to his room as the nausea hit. Something was happening with his augs, the optic link and the command module. He could feel packets of information being exchanged, linkages being made and broken, busy handshaking. He fumbled his card into the reader beside the door and cursed the fact that his false identity precluded the use of palm-locks. Eventually he got it read and stumbled into his room. Behind him Mr. Crane quietly closed the door. With shaking hands Pelter pulled one, then two patches from a reel. He lifted his grubby mesh shirt, peeled the patches and slapped them against his chest. Only now did he notice the glue marks from previous patches, and the filth. He tried to find it in himself to care. He couldn’t.