‘All human minds are a mess. Your gridlink is designed to access computer and AI systems, which are formatted much more logically. Anyway, since it is your own mind that you are attempting to look into, you will be in danger of cerebral feedback and might well end up in a psychotic loop.’

‘Well, then, you do it for me. I want to retrieve a memcording covering the time from my arrival at the brown dwarf up to when I ended up on that grapple.’

‘I fail to see why.’

Drily, Cormac stated, ‘Memory is something past, but experiencing a memcording is current.’

Jerusalem made no reply to that, but the link was made and the memcording flowed across. Cormac loaded it, experienced it. The first time through was hard for him, since the survival mechanism of memory always dulled the pain and the sickness originally experienced. The second time through, he saw it:

He fired five times into Skellor’s head, forcing the man back against the wall. Not enough though—Skellor was no longer human. Two shots to the chest, more to the knees as he tried to spring, and a hand blown apart as it pressed against the wall. Then Cento, scissoring his legs around Skellor’s waist, was tearing away wall panels to embrace a beam behind.

‘The cables,’ Cento urged over com.

Another clip into the gun. Back towards the blown screen . . . and there, at the corner of his vision, Jain substructure formed around the shape of a man rooted to the floor, its shell unbroken but no man inside it.

I was inside.

‘I would like to believe,’ said Cormac out loud, ‘that it is just an unfortunate accident that so critical a part of my memory is missing, but I am by nature a suspicious person.’

Jerusalem replied, ‘Your mind needs to heal further before it can accept that. It is something you did that you do not comprehend.’

‘Return it to me.’

‘I cannot. The human mind is a fragile structure at best. The memory of what you did then could be like the inverse of a keystone, especially with your mind in its present condition.’

‘I didn’t think I was that bad.’

‘Why do you think it has taken you so long to start reviewing your memories of that time? Doubtless the explanation to yourself is that only now are those memories relevant to your coming encounter with Dragon.’

Cormac wanted to sneer at that suggestion, but found he could not. Instead he said, ‘Can you at least tell me, in general, what I did?’

‘Oh yes: you used your own mind to translate your body through U-space,’ Jerusalem replied.