"Sure." Greg drew his cybofax out of his leather jacket's inside pocket, taking care not to make any sudden motions. His brain sloshed from ear to ear each time his head moved.

He flipped the cybofax open, and keyed the phone function with difficulty. His fingers were stiff, devoid of feeling.

The cybofax bleeped for an incoming call. Unsurprised, he let it through. Knowing.

Gabriel's face appeared on the little screen. "No," she said, with ominous resolution.

"I'm sorry, but you have to. There's no one else."

"No, Gregory."

"Look at me, a proper look. Right now I couldn't even sense a tiger's brain if it was biting me."

"Tell you, I've got to have psi coverage to get that girl out. You'll be saving lives, Gabriel. The Trinities will bloodbath the Miriam without perfect intelligence information—where Katerina is, where the crew are, and what they're tooled up with."

"You're a bastard, Mandel."

"No messing. See you at the briefing."

After that, it was the difficult call. Eleanor.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

True to prediction, one of the yachts docked at the same quay as the Mirriam was hosting a party. A brassy, high-wattage rave; hysterical guests spilling out on to the quay itself, dancing, drawing syntho, swilling down champagne. Perfect cover. By two o'clock in the morning it still hadn't peaked.

At five minutes past two Greg walked down the quay with Suzi, the pair of them holding hands and laughing without a care in the world. He wore a dinner jacket that felt as though it was made of canvas, and reeked of starch. Suzi had slipped into a 1920s gold lamé dress, low-cut with near-invisible straps, a blonde bob wig covering her gelled-down spikes. With her size and figure she looked impossibly young—fourteen, fifteen, something like that. He reckoned that as a couple they fitted the scene perfectly. Anyone would think it was fathers and daughters night. Thank heavens for café society, immutable in a fluid world.

They infiltrated the party fringes, anthropoid chameleons.

Big Amstrad projectors were mounted on the yacht, firing holographic fireworks into the night. Upturned faces were painted in spicy shades of scarlet and green by carnation bursts of ephemeral meteorites.

Suzi lingered to watch a girl dressed in a sequin bikini and dyed ostrich feathers limbo her way under a boathook held by two semi-paralytic Hoorays.

Greg checked his watch and tugged Suzi's arm with gentle insistence, steering her into the wrap of darkness at the end of the quay. Three minutes before they had to be in position. The snatch had to be performed with exact timing; one mistake, one delay, a hesitation, and they'd be heading down the wrong Tau line and all Gabriel's planning would come to naught. He'd tried to emphasise that to the Trinities, drilling it in.