“Check for yourself. You’re a ship; you’ll have the ability. I’m giving you permission. I’m not a biological, not in here, so take a look for yourself. Scan all the data in this cube. Go on; feel free.”

“You’re sure?” the avatar said. He looked at Cossont, who found it was her turn to shrug.

“Yes!” QiRia’s voice said sharply.

Berdle sighed. He smiled at Cossont. “This might take a moment,” the avatar told her.

She sat back slumped in the seat, rubbed her face with two of her hands. She sighed heavily. “Take all the—”

“Ah,” Berdle said, sounding resigned. He looked at Cossont. “I’m afraid it’s just as Mr QiRia’s mind-state has claimed.”

“Told you,” the voice from the cube said.

“The memories aren’t there?” Cossont felt suddenly tired, full of aches, and depressed.

“I’m afraid not,” Berdle told her. “And even the memories of the times when Mr QiRia thought back to those times, before the source memories were edited out, have been expunged, too.” Berdle looked at the cube. “That’s quite a thorough job, Mr QiRia.”

“Sounds like it,” the voice agreed.

Berdle smiled faintly, shook his head as he said, “Would you have any idea why you—?”

“No. None at all. Guess I must have thought I had something to hide. If so, glad I’ve done a good job of it, or made sure somebody else did.”

Cossont was sitting, looking deflated, eyes closed, shaking her head gently. “They can’t just have gone,” she said, as though to herself. “They can’t just have gone.” She looked at Berdle. “What now? Can we look for … the real QiRia, for the old guy himself? He might … he should still know.” She shook her head again. “Shouldn’t he?”

“We’ve already tried that,” the avatar told her. “They found him, but he’d had the memories encoded site-specific in his body, and then had those sites removed.”

“What?” Cossont said, frowning.

“Mr QiRia looks like this, now,” Berdle said, and a screen appeared in mid-air, of a man in a dark room, wearing a pair of dark, slatted glasses. “The person who tracked him down,” Berdle said; “their suit took this.” The screen image moved and the man took off the glasses, revealing that it was QiRia, but also that where his eyes should have been, there were the inner parts of ears.

The clip looped and the screen split to show different versions of the same sequence, in infra-red, slow motion, with the eye sockets zoomed in on, and combinations thereof.

Cossont just stared.

“How gross!” Pyan said.

“What are you looking at?” QiRia’s voice asked.

Cossont reached out and turned the cube off, then slumped back in her seat, eyes closed again. She had a feeling she might be about to cry.