After the Ghosts watched their life heat leak away to the sky, they became motivated by a desire to understand the fine-tuning of the universe. As if they wanted to fix the design flaws that had betrayed them.

So they meddled with the laws of physics. This made them interesting to deal with. Interesting and scary.

Relationships deepened. The ‘Raoul Accords’ were established to maintain the peace, and give humans some say in the Ghosts’ outrageous tinkering with the universe.

But times changed. The Coalition tightened its grip on human affairs.

Three centuries after Minda, there was rising friction between Ghost and human empires. And Jack Raoul found himself out of favour.

THE COLD SINK - AD 5802

THE COLD SINK

AD 5802

‘I called on Jack Raoul at the time appointed, acting in my capacity as a representative of the Supreme Court of the Third Expansion. Raoul submitted himself to my custody without complaint or protest.

‘I must record that the indignity of the armed escort, as ordered by the court, only added to the cruelty of the procedure I was mandated to perform.’

It was as if somebody had called his name.

He was alone in his Virtual apartment - drinking whisky, looking out at a fake view of the New Bronx, missing his ex-wife - alone in a home become a gaol, in fact. Now he looked to the door.

Maybe they’d come to get him already. He felt his remote heart beat, and his mood of gloomy nostalgia gave way to hard fear. Don’t let ’em see they’ve won, Jack.

With a growl, he commanded the door to open.

And there, instead of the surgeons and Commission goons he had expected, was a Silver Ghost: a spinning, shimmering bauble as tall as Raoul, crowding the dowdy apartment-block corridor. It was intimidating close to in this domestic environment, like some huge piece of machinery. In its mirrored epidermis he could see his own gaunt Virtual face. An electromagnetic signature was quickly overlaid for him - Ghosts looked alike only in normal human vision - but he would have recognised his visitor anyhow.

‘You,’ he said.

‘Hello, Jack Raoul.’ It was the Ghost known to humans as the Ambassador to the Heat Sink. Raoul had dealt with this one many times before, over decades.

‘What are you doing here? How did you get past the Commission security? . . . Ambassador, I’m afraid I’m not much use to you any more.’

‘Jack Raoul, I am here for you.’

Raoul grimaced. What in Lethe did that mean? ‘Look, I don’t know how closely you’ve been following human politics. This isn’t a good day for me.’

‘As in former times, you hide your emotions behind weak jokes.’

‘They’re the best jokes I’ve got,’ he said defensively.

‘The truth is well known. Today you must face the sentence of your conspecifics.’

‘So you’re here for the spectacle?’