Cormac strapped the holster back on his arm. He appreciated the irony of his situation. It was quite possible to talk to a person, without an AI in the background to give him information on that person. It was quite possible to learn a great deal about that person too, things that an AI might not be able to tell you. What had he learnt? He’d learnt that both these soldiers wore their personal guises over a harsh professionalism: Thorn with his phoney English accent borrowed from another age, Gant with his smoking and his gruff manner. Here, he realized, were two men who had been dehumanized, and were now reclaiming that humanity. Another of Blegg’s little touches. Cormac snorted to himself and thought about his last conversation with Angelina before he killed her. How had he managed to get so out of touch? In retrospect he realized he was lucky to be alive.

‘Five minutes and we should be there. It’s a hydroponics facility on the edge of the blast-zone. A bit hot, but the suits should handle it if there’s no fallout from these storms,’ said Jane.

‘What about you?’ asked Cormac.

‘I’ll have to stay here, otherwise I’ll need to spend the next week being detoxified.’

It was a nice way to describe it. Cormac knew that she would probably have needed a body replacement.

‘Is there any more information on the heat source?’

‘Not very much. Hubris has picked up two heat sources of about human mass. They might be survivors.’

And if they are not? Cormac wondered.

Chaline said, ‘If they are survivors, they will be very sick, being that close to the blast-site. Let’s hope they’re not too sick to tell us what happened to the runcible. If they even know.’

Cormac turned from her and watched Mika put her notescreen aside, then open a case on her lap. From this she removed an instrument like a flattened torch. Its wider end was inset with a small touch-panel and screen. He recognized it from one time he went on a mission to a planet that had seceded from the Polity, and where immediately the three continents had gone to war. It was a hand diagnosticer. It covered a whole range of cases, up to just how many lumps of radioactive metal were lodged in your patient, or what poisons were in his blood, and what viral agents might be eating his face away. Perhaps now she would get a chance to use an instrument like this. Before, he had doubted the possibility.

‘Coming up on the facility now.’

The shuttle dipped and slowed, thrusters firing in reverse, and through swirls of snow they caught glimpses of three long buildings like half-submerged pipes.