Janer kept the grin on his face as he backed out of the crowd of jubilant Hoopers and went back to sit on his log. He tried to figure out if what Ambel had just done was deliberate. He glanced down at his shoulder and the mess on it that had once been the mind’s colonizing queen. From the Hive link came a buzzing scream, as of a circular saw going into hardwood. Janer grimaced and pulled the link out of his ear, to drop it into his pocket. The transfer had already been made and he now had ten million shillings in a private account. The future looked good.

* * * *

Thirteen decided that nothing more of any moment was going to happen near the fire, so it rose up over the trees and floated down the slope of the island to the beach. Here it settled to scan something else, so that its record of events here might be more complete. An accurate description might be ‘for morbid curiosity’, but Thirteen did not allow itself to think like that. The coffin had been placed in one of the rowing boats beached here, ready to be returned to Sprage’s ship. Thirteen hovered above it, and tapped the palm lock with its tail, but to no effect. The drone then projected a complex lasered image at the lock, then tapped it again, thus opening the viewing window. These particular actions it would edit from its final record, before allowing that record to go out on general release. It wouldn’t do for the Warden to know that one of its SMs had been buying and uploading black software normally employed by the less salubrious members of society.

Through the window, the drone observed Rebecca Frisk thrashing her head from side to side and rolling her eyes. Every time her mouth passed underneath the panel, her breath frosted the chainglass. Touching the surface of the coffin with its tail to detect the vibrations, Thirteen surmised that the woman was screaming. Amazing how much energy she had. The drone tapped once on the glass with its tail, and Frisk stopped her thrashing to stare at it bug-eyed. She started to shout, to beg, her eyes filled with tears. The drone linked to the Coram server, trying to find a lip-reading program, but had no time to download the sluggish spurts of information before huge movement in the dingle at the head of the beach distracted it.

Thirteen shot high into the air, watching as the Prador came out on to the beach and, after counting legs, made an understandable mistake. It was the adult! Somehow, the Prador in the spacecraft had survived and come ashore!

‘Warden! Warden! The Prador is here!’ the drone screamed over the ether.

This time there was an immediate response. ‘Lemme see,’ someone said, and a huge threatening presence linked through Thirteen, and gazed through the little drone’s eyes.

* * * *