Pinky and Brains: the (ex-)flatmates from heck, if not hell. I used to share a house with them, back in the days when I was still seeing Mhari. They're a matched couple of geeks, working for Technical Support these days (Gizmos department, Dirty Tricks directorate). Brains does the hardware, Pinky does human factors and delivery flourishes, and both of them do the Pride march around Regent's Park every summer even though they don't need to be publicly out to maintain their security clearances these days.

A voice calls from the kitchen, "Hey, who let that thing in here?"

I go back inside hastily. "It's mine. As of this afternoon."

"Mine, precioussss." Brains is bending over my new phone. "Jailbroken it yet? I've been doing some evaluation work on these too, they look promising . . ."

"Don't be silly." I peer at the beer casks. He's lined them up next to the sink. "Hey, that's not nitro pressurized."

"That's right; they're cask-conditioned!" Brains says proudly. "Normally you have to leave them twenty-four hours to drop bright after you tap them, but with this"—he produces a home-brew box of electronics from one waterproof pocket—"you can cut the wait to sixty minutes."

"What is it?" I pause. "If it's a temporal multiplexer I've got to warn you, last time we had one in here Mo had to beat the fridge contents to death with a cricket bat—she was most annoyed—"

"Nope, it's ultrasonic." He switches it on as he plants it on top of the first cask, and I feel my jaw muscles clench. Ultrasonic it may be, but it's got some low frequency harmonics that remind me unpleasantly of a mosquito the size of a Boeing 737.

"Switch it off, please."

Pinky is doing something bizarre to the umbrella, turning it inside out through its own center—I do a double take: Is that really a Mobius strip umbrella?—and it vanishes, except for a stubby handle, which he hangs on the inside doorknob. I blink. "To what do I owe the honor?"

"Iris said you could do with some company," Brains says blandly as my phone chirps and does an incoming-text shimmy on the counter. I grab it. It's a message from Mo: UNAVOIDABLY DETAINED BY WORK, DON'T STAY UP.

I might not be wearing a ward around my neck right now—I didn't stay in the office long enough to sign out a replacement for the one I toasted yesterday—but it's not my only defense, and right now my this-is-a-setup gland is pulsing painfully. "This is a put-up job, right? What's going on?" I glance at the front hall, half-expecting the doorbell to ring again and Boris and Andy to be standing there, along with a briefing on some kind of harebrained operation—