“Sure,” I said, “and your leg is going to grow back.”

He said nothing but squeezed my hand.

“We’ve got to be home at three,” I said. “Finisterre is taking me up to the Sisterhood to view the contents of their scriptorium.”

Then something occurred to me.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “That Synthetic wouldn’t have been activated without help, and she was barely two hours old.”

“What are we looking for?” asked Landen. “A cobwebby basement with ancient electrical equipment and a mad scientist? Or just a really large jar?”

“She’d certainly have been sealed in something. Hang on.”

I delved through my pockets—I was wearing her clothes, after all—and found a key card from the Finis Hotel.

15. Tuesday: The Finis

15.

Tuesday: The Finis

The Finis Hotel remains not the most luxurious or stylish of Swindon’s many hotels, but it is certainly the most notorious, with the ballroom and guest rooms host to more attempted coups, murders, formations of political splinter groups and subject to police raids than any other. It had become so notorious, in fact, that people came to holiday here simply to witness what management refers to as “the Finis’s diverse clientele and their antics.”

Swindon Tourist Board leaflet

The receptionist greeted me cheerily as we walked into the lobby.

“Welcome back,” she said brightly. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“In a manner of speaking. How long am I booked in?”

“Let’s see,” she said, looking at the screen set into the desk. “Two nights.”

“Did I arrive with anyone?”

Her eyes flicked to Landen. We were a recognizable couple in the city, and the Finis prided itself on its discretion.

“I’m a very understanding husband,” said Landen.

The receptionist said that someone named Mr. Krantz checked us both in, but we didn’t arrive together. I asked for a photocopy they had made of his ID, and she added that she had seen me only once recently—just before midday.

“Is Mr. Krantz okay?” she asked anxiously.

“Did he appear unwell?”

“A little. I offered to call a doctor, but he said it wasn’t necessary. Do you not remember any of this?”

“I’ve been having memory lapses. Which room am I in?”

“Jacob Z. Krantz,” I read from the copy of his ID as we took the lift to the top floor, “Laddernumber 673, based in Goliathopolis.” Anyone under a thousand was way up high in the upper echelons of the Goliath corporate structure. Last I heard of my old adversary Jack Schitt, he had entered the Goliath Top One Hundred at eighty-eight.

“Krantz is easily high enough to be involved in the Synthetic Human Project,” I murmured thoughtfully. “We’re here.”