backroom hitter who builds coalitions where nobody else could see common ground. And Jack has stolen his memories. There are microcams built into the frame of the glasses, pickups in the earpieces; everything is spooled into the holographic cache in the belt pack, before being distributed for remote storage. At four months per terabyte, memory storage is cheap. What makes this bunch so unusual is that their owner – Manfred – has cross- indexed them with his agents. Mind uploading may not be a practical technology yet, but Manfred has made an end run on it already.

In a very real sense, the glasses are Manfred, regardless of the identity of the soft machine with its eyeballs behind the lenses. And it is a very puzzled Manfred who picks himself up and, with a curious vacancy in his head

– except for a hesitant request for information about accessories for Russian army boots – dusts himself off and heads for his meeting on the other side of town.

* * *

Meanwhile, in another meeting, Manfred's absence is already being noticed. 'Something, something is wrong,' says Annette. She raises her mirrorshades and rubs her left eye, visibly worried. 'Why is he not answering his chat? He knows we are due to hold this call with him. Don't you think it is odd?'

Gianni nods and leans back, regarding her from behind his desk. He prods at the highly polished rosewood desktop. The wood grain slips, sliding into a strangely different conformation, generating random dot stereoisograms – messages for his eyes only. 'He was visiting Scotland for me,' he says after a moment. 'I do not know his exact whereabouts – the privacy safeguards – but if you, as his designated next of kin, travel in person, I am sure you will find it easier. He was going to talk to the Franklin Collective, face-to-face, one to many…'

The office translator is good, but it can't provide realtime lip-synch morphing between French and Italian.

Annette has to make an effort to listen to his words because the shape of his mouth is all wrong, like a badly dubbed video. Her expensive, recent implants aren't connected up to her Broca's area yet, so she can't simply sideload a deep grammar module for Italian. Their communications are the best that money can buy, their VR environment painstakingly sculpted, but it still doesn't break down the language barrier completely. Besides, there are distractions: the way the desk switches from black ash to rosewood halfway across its expanse, the strange air currents that are all wrong for a room this size. 'Then what could be up with him? His voicemail is trying to cover for him. It is good, but it does not lie convincingly.'

Gianni looks worried. 'Manfred is prone to fits of do his own thing with telling nobody in advance. But I don't like this. He should have to told one of us first.' Ever since that first meeting in Rome, when Gianni offered him a job, Manfred has been a core member of Gianni's team, the fixer who goes out and meets people and solves their problems. Losing him at this point could be more than embarrassing. Besides, he's a friend.

'I do not like this either.' She stands up. 'If he doesn't call back soon -'

'You'll go and fetch him.'

'Oui.' A smile flashes across her face, rapidly replaced by worry lines. 'What can have happened?'

'Anything. Nothing.' Gianni shrugs. 'But we cannot do without him.' He casts her a warning glance. 'Or you. Don't let the borg get you. Either of you.'

'Not to worry, I will just bring him back, whatever has happened.' She stands up, surprising a vacuum cleaner that skulks behind her desk. 'Au revoir!'

'Ciao.'

As she vacates her office, the minister flickers off behind her, leaving the far wall the dull gray of a cold display panel. Gianni is in Rome, she's in Paris, Markus is in Dusseldorf, and Eva's in Wroclaw. There are others, trapped in digital cells scattered halfway across an elderly continent, but as long as they don't try to shake hands, they're free to shout across the office at each other. Their confidences and dirty jokes tunnel through multiple layers of anonymized communication.

Gianni is trying to make his break out of regional politics and into European national affairs: Their job -

his election team – is to get him a seat on the Confederacy Commission, as Representative for Intelligence Oversight, and push the boundaries of posthumanistic action outward, into deep space and deeper time. Which makes the loss of a key team player, the house futurologist and fixer, profoundly interesting to certain people: The walls have ears, and not all the brains they feed into are human.

Annette is more worried than she's letting on to Gianni. It's unlike Manfred to be out of contact for long and even odder for his receptionist to stonewall her, given that her apartment is the nearest thing to a home he's had for the past couple of years. But something smells fishy. He sneaked out last night, saying it would be an overnight trip, and now he's not answering. Could it be his ex-wife? she wonders, despite Gianni's hints about a special mission.

But there's been no word from Pamela other than the sarcastic cards she dispatches every year without fail, timed to arrive on the birthday of the daughter Manfred has never met. The music Mafiya? A letter bomb from the Copyright Control Association of America? But no, his medical monitor would have been screaming its head off if anything like that had happened.

Annette has organized things so that he's safe from the intellectual property thieves. She's lent him the support he needs, and he's helped her find her own path. She gets a warm sense of happiness whenever she considers how much they've achieved together. But that's exactly why she's worried now. The watchdog hasn't barked…

Annette summons a taxi to Charles de Gaulle. By the time she arrives, she's already used her parliamentary carte to bump an executive-class seat on the next A320 to Turnhouse, Edinburgh's airport, and scheduled accommodation and transport for her arrival. The plane is climbing out over la Manche before the significance of Gianni's last comment hits her: Might he think the Franklin Collective could be dangerous to Manfred?

* * *

The hospital emergency suite has a waiting room with green plastic bucket seats and subtractive volume renderings by preteens stuck to the walls like surreal Lego sculptures. It's deeply silent, the available bandwidth all sequestrated for medical monitors – there are children crying, periodic sirens wailing as ambulances draw up, and people chattering all around him, but to Manfred, it's like being at the bottom of a deep blue pool of quiet. He feels stoned, except this particular drug brings no euphoria or sense of well-being. Corridor-corner vendors hawk kebab- spitted pigeons next to the chained and rusted voluntary service booth; video cameras watch the blue bivvy bags of the chronic cases lined up next to the nursing station. Alone in his own head, Manfred is frightened and confused.

'I can't check you in 'less you sign the confidentiality agreement,' says the triage nurse, pushing an antique tablet at Manfred's face. Service in the NHS is still free, but steps have been taken to reduce the incidence of scandals: 'Sign the nondisclosure clause here and here, or the house officer won't see you.'

Manfred stares blearily up at the nurse's nose, which is red and slightly inflamed from a nosocomial infection. His phones are bickering again, and he can't remember why; they don't normally behave like this, something must be missing, but thinking about it is hard. 'Why am I here?' he asks for the third time.

'Sign it.' A pen is thrust into his hand. He focuses on the page, jerks upright as deeply canalized reflexes kick in.

'This is theft of human rights! It says here that the party of the second part is enjoined from disclosing information relating to the operations management triage procedures and processes of the said health-giving institution, that's you, to any third party – that's the public media – on pain of forfeiture of health benefits pursuant to section two of the Health Service Reform Act. I can't sign this! You could repossess my left kidney if I post on the Net about how long I've been in hospital!'

'So don't sign, then.' The Hijra nurse shrugs, hitches up his sari, and walks away. 'Enjoy your wait!'

Manfred pulls out his backup phone and stares at its display. 'Something's wrong here.' The keypad beeps as he laboriously inputs opcodes. This gets him into an arcane and ancient X.25 PAD, and he has a vague, disturbing memory that hints about where he can go from here – mostly into the long-since- decommissioned bowels of NHSNet – but the memories spring a page fault and die somewhere between fingertips

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