But there seemed no particular advantage in asking that question. Using his third-eye blink reflex, he cued the various channels of his link in turn and felt them reinstate. Now he could download data in just about any form to his link, either to view in his visual cortex, or so that it became part of memory—the mental component of physical skills, languages, the recorded experiences of others. In the link itself he possessed the facility to create programs: perceptile, search, analysis, logic trees . . . the list was only limited by his imagination, and his imagination need not be limited while he could link to so many sources of knowledge and experience within the human Polity. He opened a skeletal search program, altered its parameters to suit his requirements, and transmitted it to the nearest receiver. It came back with a report he scrolled up in his visual cortex. The report itself was overly technical and detailed, so he ran it through a filter to provide him with the gist:

Spinal reconnection in 2 lumbar regions; extensive bone welding of 116 fractures; the removal of 1 kidney, two thirds of the liver, 2 yards of intestine, 350 ounces of cerebral tissue; extensive cell welding in all areas; currently undergoing nanocyte repair and genetic reversion regrowth . . .

‘I thought I felt lighter,’ said Cormac. ‘Tell me, how much of my memory is still true?’

‘I reconstructed what I could, but perhaps ten per cent is missing.’

Cormac began walking round the surgical table.

Holes in my body and in my mind. Great.

Eventually he came to stand before a wall dispenser for disposable surgical clothing. Using the controlling touch-screen he selected a paper coverall, removed it from the dispensing slot and donned it over the garment he already wore.

‘What about my crew . . . and the Jack Ketch? Cormac asked reluctantly.

‘Jack, the ship’s AI, is safe, and Thorn and Fethan are presently on Cull. Cento and Gant are dead.’

‘Gant?’ he asked—he already knew about Cento.

‘Gant was terminally infected by a Jain informational virus that supplanted his mind. Thorn therefore destroyed him. There is, however, a back-up copy of him on Earth.’

Cormac grimaced. ‘The situation now?’

‘As you must have already surmised, Skellor is now just a pretty pattern on the surface of a brown dwarf sun. I have one Dragon sphere held in custody, and the planet Cull now has been granted provisional membership of the Polity while search teams locate, remove and isolate any stray items of Jain technology still there.’

Cento probably formed part of that same pretty pattern on that brown dwarf. Only pure luck had saved Cormac from the same fate.

‘You are currently in orbit of Cull?’

‘No, I am currently six hundred light years away.’

‘What?’

‘A rather knotty problem has arisen.’

Without cerebral augmentations Thorn could only view the memory in VR and absorb it by repetition. Fethan however, being a cyborg, loaded it directly into his mind so it became part of his memory.