short-circuiting firefly. After fifty seconds they saw the glint of its fusion torch and watched it fall ahead of them, back towards the Rust Belt. ‘How to win friends and influence people,’ Antoinette said as she watched the ruined one tumble away. Half its hull was gone, revealing a skeletal confusion of innards belching grey spirals of vapour. ‘Good work, Clavain.’ ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s two reasons for you to trust me. And now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have to faint.’ He fainted. The rest of the journey passed without incident. Clavain was unconscious for eight or nine hours after the battle against the banshees, while his mind recovered from the ordeal of such a protracted spell of rapid consciousness. Unlike Skade, his brain was not built to support that kind of thing for more than one or two actual seconds, and he had suffered the equivalent of a massive and sudden heatstroke.
But there had been no lasting ill effects and he had earned their trust. It was a price he was more than willing to pay. For the remainder of the trip he was free to move around the ship as he pleased, while the other two gradually divested themselves of their outer spacesuit layers. The banshees never came back, and Storm Bird never ran into any military activity. Clavain still felt the need to make himself useful, however, and with Antoinette’s consent he helped Xavier with a number of minor in-flight repairs or upgrades. The two of them spent hours tucked away in tight cable- infested crawlspaces, or rummaging through layers of archaic source code. I can’t really blame you for not trusting me before,‘ Clavain said, when he and Xavier were alone. ‘I care about her.’ ‘It’s obvious. And she took a hell of a risk coming out here to rescue me. If I’d been in your shoes I’d have tried to talk her out of it as well.’ ‘Don’t take it personally.’ Clavain dragged a stylus across the compad he had balanced on his knees, rerouting a number of logic pathways between the control web and the dorsal communications cluster. ‘I won’t.’ ‘What about you, Clavain? What’s going to happen when we get to the Rust Belt?’ Clavain shrugged. ‘Up to you. You can drop me wherever it suits you. Carousel New Copenhagen’s as good as anywhere else.’ ‘And then what?’ ‘I’ll hand myself over to the authorities.’ ‘The Demarchists?’ He nodded. ‘Although it’d be much too dangerous for me to approach them directly, out here in open space. I’ll need to go through a neutral party, such as the Convention.’ Xavier nodded. ‘I hope you get what you’re hoping for. You took a risk as well’ ‘Not the first, I assure you.’ Clavain paused and lowered his voice. It was unnecessary — they were many dozens of metres away from Antoinette — but he felt the need all the same. ‘Xavier… while we’re alone… there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’ Xavier peered at him through scuffed grey data- visualisation goggles. ‘Go ahead.’ ‘I gather you knew her father, and that you handled the repair of this ship when he was running it.’ ‘True enough.’ ‘Then I suppose you know all about it. Perhaps more than Antoinette?’ ‘She’s a damned good pilot, Clavain.’ Clavain smiled. ‘Which is a polite way of saying she’s not very interested in the technical aspects of this ship?’ ‘Nor was her father,’ Xavier said, with a touch of defensiveness. ‘Running a commercial operation like this is enough trouble without worrying about every subroutine.’ ‘I understand. I’m no expert myself. But I couldn’t help noticing back there, when the subpersona intervened…’ He left the remark hanging. ‘You thought that was odd.’ ‘It nearly got us killed,’ Clavain said. ‘It fired too soon, against my direct orders.’ ‘They weren’t orders, Clavain, they were recommendations.’ ‘My mistake. But the point is, it shouldn’t have happened. Even if the subpersona had some control over the weapons — and in a civilian ship I’d regard that as unusual, to say the least — it still shouldn’t have acted without a direct command. And it definitely shouldn’t have panicked.’ Xavier’s laugh was hard and nervous. ‘Panicked?’ ‘That’s what it felt like to me.’ Clavain couldn’t see Xavier’s eyes behind the data goggles. ‘Machines don’t panic, Clavain.’ ‘I know. Especially not gamma-level subpersonae, which is what Beast would have to be.’ Xavier nodded. ‘Then it can’t have been panic, can it?’ ‘I suppose not.’ Clavain frowned and returned to his compad, dragging the stylus through the bright ganglia of logic pathways like someone stirring a plate of spaghetti. They docked in Carousel New Copenhagen. Clavain was prepared to go on his way there and then, but Antoinette and Xavier were having none of it. They insisted that he join them for a farewell meal elsewhere in the carousel. After giving the matter a few moments’ thought, Clavain happily assented; it would only take a couple of hours and it would give him a valuable chance to acclimatise before he commenced what he imagined would be a perilous solo journey. And he still felt he owed them thanks, especially after Xavier allowed him to take whatever he wanted from his wardrobe. Clavain was taller and thinner than Xavier, so it took some creativity to both dress himself and not feel that he was taking anything particularly valuable. He retained the skintight spacesuit inner layer, slipping on a bulging high-collared vest that looked faintly like the kind of inflatable jacket pilots wore when they ditched in water. He found a pair of loose black trousers that came down to his shins, which looked terrible, even with the skintight, until he found a pair of rugged black boots that reached nearly to his knees. When he inspected himself in a mirror he concluded that he looked odd rather than bizarre, which he supposed was a step in the right direction. Finally he trimmed his beard and moustache and neatened his hair by combing it back from his brow in snowy waves. Antoinette and Xavier were waiting for him, already
