He worked his way back to where Antoinette was waiting. To his relief, Clock and the pig were still in their seats. He felt his weight diminishing as Beast cut power to the nuclear rockets. ‘Well?’ Antoinette asked. ‘We’re OK,’ Xavier said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘The police will be here any moment.’ He was in his seat by the time they were weightless. A few seconds later he felt a series of bumps as the police craft grappled on to the hull. So far, so good, he thought: they were at least going to get a boarding, which was better than being shot out of the sky. He would be able to argue his case, and even if the bastards insisted that someone still had to die, he thought he could keep Antoinette out of too much trouble. He felt a breeze. His ears popped. It felt like decompression, but it was over before he had started to feel real fear. The air was still again. Distantly, he heard clunks and squeals of buckling and shearing metal. ‘What just happened?’ asked Mr Pink. ‘Police must have cut their way through our airlock,’ Xavier said. ‘Slight pressure differential between their air and ours. There was nothing to stop them coming in normally, but I guess they weren’t prepared to wait for the lock to cycle.’ Now he heard approaching mechanical sounds. ‘They’ve sent a proxy,’ Antoinette said. ‘I hate proxies.’ It arrived less than a minute later. Antoinette flinched as the machine unfolded itself into the room, enlarging like a vile black origami puzzle. It swept rapier- edged limbs through the room in lethal arcs. Xavier flinched as one bladed arm passed inches from his eyes, parting air with a tiny whipcrack. Even the pig looked as if there were places he would rather be. ‘This wasn’t clever,’ Mr Pink said. ‘We weren’t going to hurt you,’ Clock added. ‘We just wanted information. Now you’re in a great deal more trouble.’ ‘You had a trawl,’ Xavier said. ‘It wasn’t a trawl,’ Mr Pink said. ‘It was just an eidetic playback device. It wouldn’t have harmed you.’ The proxy said, ‘The registered owner of this vessel is Antoinette Bax.’ The machine moved to crouch over her, close enough that she could hear the constant low humming that it gave out and smell the tingle of ozone from the sparking taser. ‘You have contravened Ferrisville Convention regulations relating to the use of fusion propulsion within the Rust Belt, formerly known as the Glitter Band. This is a category-three civil offence that carries the penalty of irreversible neural death. Please submit for genetic identification.’ ‘What?’ said Antoinette. ‘Open your mouth, Miss Bax. Do not move.’ ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ ‘Me, Miss Bax?’ The machine whipped out a pair of rubber-tipped manipulators and braced her head. It hurt, and continued to hurt, as if her skull were being slowly compressed in a vice. Another manipulator whisked out of a previously concealed part of the machine. It ended in a tiny curved blade, like a scythe. ‘Open your mouth.’ ‘No…’ She felt tears coming. ‘Open your mouth.’ The evil little blade — which was still large enough to nip off a finger — hovered an inch from her nose. She felt the pressure increase. The machine’s humming intensified, becoming a low orgasmic throb. ‘Open your mouth. This is your last warning.’ She opened her mouth, but it was as much to groan in pain as to give the proxy what it wanted. Metal blurred, much to quick for her to see. There was a moment of coldness in her mouth, and the feeling of metal brushing her tongue for an instant. Then the machine withdrew the blade. The limb articulated, tucking the blade into a separate aperture in the proxy’s compact central chassis. Something hummed and clicked within: a rapid sequencer, no doubt, tallying her DNA against the Convention’s records. She heard the rising whine of a centrifuge. The proxy still had her head in a vicelike grip. ‘Let her go,’ Xavier said. ‘You’ve got what you want. Now let her go.’ The proxy released Antoinette. She gasped for breath, wiping tears from her face. Then the machine turned towards Xavier. ‘Interfering in the activities of an official or officially designated mechanism of the Ferrisville Convention is a category-one…’ It did not bother to complete the sentence. Contemptuously, it flicked the taser arm across Xavier so that the sparking electrodes skimmed his chest. Xavier made a barking noise and convulsed. Then he was very still, his eyes open and his mouth agape. ‘Xavier…’ Antoinette gasped. ‘It’s killed him,’ Clock said. He started unfastening his restraint webbing. ‘We must do something.’ Antoinette snapped, ‘What the fuck do you care? You brought this about.’ ‘Difficult as it may be to believe, I do care.’ Then he was up from his seat, grappling for the nearest anchorage point. The machine gyred to face him. Clock stood his ground, the only one of them who had not flinched when the proxy had arrived. ‘Let me through. I want to examine him.’ The machine lurched towards Clock. Perhaps it expected him to feint out of the way at the last moment, or huddle protectively. But Clock did not move at all. He did not even blink. The proxy halted, humming and clicking furiously. Evidently it did not know quite what to make of him. ‘Get back,’ it ordered. ‘Let me through, or you will have committed murder. I know there is a human brain driving you, and that you understand the concept of execution as well as I do.’ The machine brought the taser up again. ‘It won’t do any good,’ Clock said. It pressed the taser against him, just below his collarbone. The sparking bar of current dancing between the poles like a trapped eel ate into the fabric of his clothes. But Clock remained unparalysed. There was no trace of pain on his face. ‘It won’t work on me,’ he said. ‘I am a Conjoiner. My nervous system is not fully human.’ The taser was beginning to chew into his skin. Antoinette smelt what she knew without ever having smelt it before to be burning flesh. Clock was trembling, his skin even more pale and waxy than it had been before. ‘It won’t…’ His voice sounded strained. The machine pulled back the taser, revealing a scorched-black trench half an inch deep. Clock was still trying to complete the sentence he had started. The machine knocked him sideways with the blunt circular muzzle of its Gatling gun. Bone cracked; Clock crashed against the wall and was immediately still. He
