Right. What? … Oh; the stuff from the You Call This Clean? … Okay. The memories were in his eyes and they’ve been removed. How severe with himself. Just as well we successfully retrieved Mr Q’s mind-state, then. At no small risk to life and limb, I might add.

∞

Congratulations. With what result?

∞

Just about to find out …

Cossont felt sleepy, sore, elated, all at once. Her pain-management systems were telling her to move gently, slowly, with no sudden movements. She would be bathing rather than showering, she had already decided, but first, the ship had insisted, they needed to talk to the stored mind-state inside the silvery grey cube.

The Mistake Not … was powering away from the Ospin system on a wildly erratic course, having decided – after its jinking, ducking and diving, field-to-field tussle with the Gzilt ship – that it was the faster. So far at least, the Gzilt vessel had shown no sign of following.

Cossont sat down in the lounge area of the shuttle that had become her home over the last few days, clad only in the eSuit with its hands and feet components retracted to cuffs again and the helmet collapsed back into its necklace form. Pyan had gone ooh and ah over her and wrapped itself round her neck, rubbing gently at her bruised skin. Berdle, back to looking like a handsome Gzilt male again, entirely gave the impression he’d just strolled out of a grooming parlour; not a hint of tiredness or a hair out of place.

“You have been in the wars, you poor thing,” Pyan told Cossont, wrapping itself tighter.

“Yes. No need to throttle me.”

“Apologies. There. And where is that silly android?”

“We had to leave him behind,” Cossont said, glancing at Berdle as she extracted the silver-grey cube from the battered shoulder bag. “Under a wrecked elevator car at the bottom of a lift shaft.”

“The Gzilt ship disloc’d him aboard itself,” Berdle said. “It took Colonel Agansu too.”

“Were they both still alive?” Cossont asked.

“I think Agansu was,” the avatar said.

“Not Parinherm?”

“No.” Berdle shook his head, held Cossont’s gaze until she looked away.

She put the silvery cube on the low table in front of her, then reached out, touched it on.

“Ngaroe?” she asked.

“Ms Cossont,” QiRia’s voice said immediately.

Cossont realised she had been tense, hunched over the table. She relaxed a little. “Good to speak to you again,” she said, smiling.

“How long has it been? Oh. Quite a few years, I see. And are we on … a Culture ship?”

Cossont wasn’t sure what to say. She glanced at Berdle, who shrugged, unhelpfully.

“Yes,” she said. “Umm … I didn’t realise you could …”