‘You, D’nissan and all the others stay aboard the Jerusalem and continue doing what you do best: you study Jain technology and learn what you can from Dragon. Jerusalem predicts that after the initial rush to the runcibles on Coloron the pressure will drop off. In the inevitable lulls, ECS Rescue and military personnel will be transmitted through. I intend to go through then to link up with Thorn.’ He glanced at her. ‘Jerusalem is holding off until the situation on Coloron has been clarified. If required, this ship will make the jump to there. If not it will head back to either Cull or Masada.’

She mulled that over for a while, then nodded. Cormac could see her torn between undertaking field work on Coloron and continued research here on the Jerusalem with its huge resources. Probably what inclined her not to ask to come along with him was the mile-wide being which hung in space nearby, only a few tens of miles from the Jerusalem. Dragon now accompanied them. Its manacle, no longer containing CTDs, was no longer a manacle at all. This had been a test. Had Dragon fled, then some doubt would have been cast on its testimony. It did not, and continued to assist the researchers aboard this ship.

‘How long until you go across?’ She nodded at the screen.

‘When I’m ready. I need something from Jerusalem first.’

She nodded again, then gave him a long assessing stare.

‘By the way, how is your research progressing?’ Cormac asked.

Mika moved away from the screen and sat on his sofa, curling her legs up beside her. ‘We are learning a lot, and very quickly. We will, within days, have developed a system to prevent physical Jain-tech takeover of the human body, though it won’t prevent the subject being killed. Next we’ll be working on a doctor mycelium similar to the one I used before’—Mika looked uncomfortable—’only one that won’t try to grow Jain nodes and thus kill its host. Dragon has offered to give us these items complete and in working order. Jerusalem refused—it does not want us using anything we don’t fully understand. So now Dragon is feeding us the schematics piecemeal.’

Cormac did not feel very good about that somehow. Was it really the case that to survive in the universe humanity must cease to be human? Already transformation had occurred—augmentation, boosting, adaptation, the haimans—and this now seemed yet another step in that direction. If all this present furore led to some all-out conflict against something that was just a thing, just a hostile technology that required hosts, could it be, that if they came out the other side of it, they would be indistinguishable from the Makers? Transformed into something less admirable despite their victory? He winced—of course that supposed humanity was something to admire.

‘How are you progressing?’ Mika asked.