Pelter stopped at the Café Saone, at the furthest end of this boulevard that teemed below an illusory sky. He sat on a hard stool, placed his case on the glass-topped bar, and thought again about the killer of his sister. Why was it that an image of the man holding that thin-gun to Pelter’s face seemed to be permanently imprinted on the vision of his missing eye? He could not shake this illusory presence, and it made Pelter constantly angry. Where was the bastard now, he wondered. The runcible on Cereb was working continuously, and hundreds passed through it every solstan day. Was he already gone?

‘Coffee,’ he said indifferently, and without looking round. A three-fingered chrome hand placed a cup of coffee next to him and snatched up the shilling he tossed on the glass. Stanton, who had seen Pelter arrive and was coming towards him, saw the aug and optic link and nearly turned away, but his own particular honour, combined with the promise of a million New Carth shillings, kept him walking.

‘Executives don’t pay with cash,’ he said, taking the stool beside Pelter. ‘What have you had done, Arian?’

‘Who the fuck is he, John?’ Pelter asked, his voice flat and without acknowledgement of Stanton’s question.

Stanton surveyed the area, then glanced at the metalled android that was frying burgers only a couple of paces away from them, behind the counter.

‘Not here. I’ve got a room,’ he said.

Pelter was off his stool in a second and walking from the café. Stanton took up the case he had abandoned and quickly went after him. The android cleared the untouched coffee, and wondered if it would ever understand humans: always in such a hurry.

* * *

Cormac leant back for a moment and looked across the desk at Melassan. At first she had found it difficult to hide her joy at all the wonderful evidence revealed by the files he opened for her and for all the Cheyne III police on the planet below. As that evidence had mounted up, with its descriptions of punishment killings, of the ‘disappeared’, and the sadisms for which there was simply no excuse, that joy was replaced by a kind of grim determination.