Cawl screamed. Aspertia shut it off.

'You have been caught in the crime of unsanctified modification. To break with ritual is to break with faith!' she scolded him. 'Remember the Sixteenth Lore.'

'I think of little else, domina,' said Cawl.

A second, painful jolt of electricity passed through his body, stinging hardest where metal met flesh.

'Let the Motive Force castigate the heretek and the experimenter,' she said emotionlessly. 'I shall assess the full extent of your blasphemies.'

A green, vector line holograph of his modified intelligence core popped into being. She swung her mirrored face to look upon it. 'You have been a very, very wayward boy,' she said. 'And yet there is artistry here. There is intellect. But do you have understanding? Do you comprehend the things you have done to yourself?'

Cawl fought through the after-effects of the shock to nod his head. 'Of course I do,' he said angrily. 'Else how could I have done it?'

Another mind-flaying burst of power seared through him. His jaws clenched. Had his tongue been in the wrong place, he would have bitten through it.

While he spasmed upon the table, Aspertia Sigma-Sigma held up one of her many clawed, mechanical hands and turned it around. Haptic interfaces embedded in her metal fingers rotated the image of Cawl's heretekal device.

'How did you come by this knowledge? From which data cache did you steal it?'

Cawl could not reply. She glanced at him disinterestedly - she was far more interested in Cawl's work than the individual named Cawl - and disengaged the electrical pulse.

'I didn't steal it!' spat Cawl. A rope of milky phlegm hung from the corner of his mouth. 'I worked it out myself.'

She gave him a long, hard look. 'This work is original?' Her electronic voice was weirdly modulated.

He nodded. There was no point in denying it.

'Your crime is far worse than I expected. You have contravened the Law of Divine Complexity,' she said. 'Improving that which, by its nature as knowledge gifted from the Machine-God, is unimprovable.' She shook her head slowly, with great and deliberate menace. 'Do you realise I could have you dropped in cleansing acid for this?' She looked at the graphic again. 'Why did you expose yourself by commandeering the automata?'

'I could have just let the extractor crew die,' said Cawl. 'But I've always had an irksome heroic streak.'

'If I said you perform unholy acts and should be destroyed, what would you say?'