The factories were anchoring themselves and doing their work. The Spatterjay virus was in there doing its work as well. He should be in a tank at this moment, being watched over by one of the more sophisticated autodocs - not sitting here on a rock being watched by people he had killed long in the past. He opened his eye and saw that the hieroglyph lights on the cleanser were all flickering from amber to red and to blue. He’d never seen them blue before, and he made a croaking sound that might have been laughter. When he then surveyed his surroundings to see what his audience’s response might be to that, he saw that he was once again alone. He now croaked at the silence, then abruptly turned his head and stared down at his burnt knee. There was a sensation there. No, not possible - not yet. It had to be some sort of ghosting coming across from his organic brain to his aug. The stab of agony that came next, though, was undeniable. He tilted his head back and relished the pain. He knew there would be more of the same as the nano-machines repaired his decayed nervous system. But Keech also knew that, if he survived, he would remember this moment; this pain had been the first thing he had really felt in seven centuries.

* * * *

The molly carp did three circuits of the bay at high speed, and then squatted in a deep trench where the bay opened to the sea. SM13 put this down to an intestinal complaint, and Sniper suggested that the little drone might like to act as a molly carp suppository. SM13 had then suggested it should go off to finish the whelk census and survey of the carp population. Sniper suggested the carp population might be better reduced by at least one.

‘You can’t do that,’ said Thirteen. ‘You’ll be guilty of killing class-three intelligence and I’ll be culpable.’

Sniper did an ultrasound scan of the inside of the carp, found the creature’s peanut-sized brain, and wondered just who had made that classification. Also, scanning the other contents of the stomach he rested in, he found the carp had already been guilty of the crime he wanted to commit.

‘This one’s been eating the others here,’ he informed Thirteen.

‘That’s the natural order of things. We aren’t allowed to intervene.’

‘Yeah, but how’s the Warden going to know this one hasn’t been eaten?’ Sniper asked.

‘If you probe to the back of its skull you’ll see why.’