“Terrorartist artefacts do well if you know the right collector, of course,” he said. “An eccentric bunch. Unpleasant at times. Bit of a niche, really.” He half-looked at them through the goggles, half at the data scrolling before his eyes. “But where would we be without collectors, eh?” Mukhtar said.

“I don’t know,” Saleh said, bemused.

Mukhtar frowned. “It’s confusing the scanners,” he said. “Was this modified recently? It seems to be, well, primed.”

He looked quite happy at the discovery.

“Primed?” Mariam said, suddenly alarmed. “Primed with what?”

“I expect it’s a miniature black hole,” Mukhtar said. “That’s what powers them usually, you see.”

Mariam said, “What do you mean, a black hole, Mukhtar?”

“It’s only a miniature black hole,” Mukhtar said—a little too carelessly, Mariam thought. “But regardless. The fact that it does work presents us with two new problems.”

Anubis growled. The jackal was evidently less concerned about safety and more with the prospective sale.

“What . . . problems?” he said.

“One,” Mukhtar said. “I can’t afford to pay you what this is worth. I apologise, but I just don’t have that kind of money. Which leads me to two, which is that I can’t possibly buy it from you anyway. This is illegal even by the standards of Neom, and we pride ourselves in thinking that the very notion of legality is a more than a little bit fluid here.”

The boy’s face fell. The jackal growled again, louder this time.

“However,” Mukhtar continued smoothly, “I do have a pressing need for something like this for another little job I’m handling at the moment. In that sense, where it will be used purely for repairs, I am sure legality won’t prove a challenge. Especially if you agree to just, let me see, loan it for that purpose. In that case, I would be happy to pay you a consultant fee on the eventual sale of the item in question.”

“How much?” the boy said. “It has to be enough to get me to Mars.”

The jackal said, “And me. I’m his partner.”

“It will be more than enough to send you both to Mars, I’m sure,” Mukhtar said. “Once the sale goes through, of course. And if the repair works. With those caveats in mind, do we have an understanding?”

The boy and the jackal looked at each other.

Anubis nodded.

Saleh said, “Sure.”

“Great,” Mukhtar said, and he shook Saleh’s hand and Anubis’s paw. “Mariam, do you think you could get hold of Sharif?”

“I think so, yes,” Mariam said. She was looking out on the street, where a small determined figure was just then wheeling a large box.

Mariam pressed the button to unlock the door.

“Hello, Sharif,” she said.

“I fixed it,” Sharif said. She was sweating, and her pupils were dilated as if she hadn’t slept all night. “It looks good as new. There you go!”