Antoinette pressed herself back against one wall of the office. ‘What?’ The proxy extended a manipulator. She squeezed back even further, sucking in her breath, but it was no good. The proxy stroked its manipulator down the side of her face gently enough, but she was horribly aware of the damage it could do should the machine wish it. Then the manipulator caressed he; neck and moved down, lingering over her breasts. ‘You… fucker.’ ‘I think you might be carrying a weapon, or drugs.’ There was a blur of metal, the same vile breeze. She flinched, but it was over in an instant. The proxy had torn her jacket off; her favourite plum jacket was ripped to shreds. Underneath she wore a tight black sleeveless vest with equipment pockets. She wriggled and swore, but the machine still held her tightly. It drew shapes on the vest, tugging it away from her skin. ‘I have to be sure, Miss Bax.’ She thought of the pilot, surgically inserted into a steel canister somewhere in the belly of the police cutter that had to be parked nearby, little more than a central nervous system and a few tedious add-ons. ‘You sick fuck.’ ‘I am only being… thorough , Miss Bax.’ There was a crash and a clatter behind the machine. The proxy froze. Antoinette held her breath, just as puzzled. She wondered if the pilot had notified more proxies of the fun that was to be had. The machine edged back from her and spun around very slowly. It faced a wall of shocking orange-brown and rippling black. By Antoinette’s estimate there were at least a dozen of them, six or seven orang-utans and about the same number of enhanced silverback gorillas. They had all been augmented for full bipedality and they were all carrying makeshift — in some cases not so makeshift — weapons. The main silverback had a comically huge wrench in its hands. When it spoke its voice was almost pure subsonics, something Antoinette felt more in her stomach than heard. ‘Let her go.’ The proxy weighed its chances. Very probably it could have taken out all of the hyperprimates. It had tasers and glue-guns and other nasties. But there would have been a great deal of mess and a great deal of explaining to be done, and no guarantee that the proxy would not sustain a certain amount of damage before it had all the primates either pacified or dead. It was not worth the bother, especially not when there were such powerful unions and political lobbies behind most of the hyperprimate species. The Ferrisville Convention would find it a lot harder to explain the death of a gorilla or orang-utan than a human, especially in Carousel New Copenhagen. The proxy retreated, tucking most of its limbs away. For a moment the wall of hyperprimates refused to allow it to leave and Antoinette feared that there was going to bloodshed. But her rescuers only wanted to make their point. The wall parted; the proxy scuttled out. Antoinette let out a sigh. She wanted to thank the hyperprimates, but her first and most immediate concern was for Xavier. She knelt down by him and touched the side of his neck. She felt hot animal breath on hers. ‘He all right?’ She looked into the magnificent face of the silverback; it was like something carved from coal. ‘I think so. How did you know?’ The superbly low voice rumbled, ‘Xavier push panic button. We come.’ ‘Thank you.’ The silverback stood up, towering over her. ‘We like Xavier. Xavier treat us good.’ Later, she inspected the remains of her jacket. Her father had given it to her on her seventeenth birthday. It had always been a little small for her — when she wore it, it looked more like a matador’s jacket — but despite that it had always been her favourite, and she always felt she had made it look right. Now it was ruined beyond any hope of repair. When the primates had gone, and when Xavier was back on his feet, shaken but basically unharmed, they did what they could to tidy up the mess. It took several hours, most of which were spent putting the paperwork back into order. Xavier had always been meticulous about his book-keeping; even as the company slid towards bankruptcy, he said, he was damned if he was going to give the money-grabbing creditor bastards any more ammunition than they already had. By midnight the place looked respectable again. But Antoinette knew it was not over. The proxy was going to come back, and next time it would make sure there would be no primate rescue party. Even if the proxy never did get to the bottom of what she had been doing in the war zone, there would be a thousand ways that the authorities could put her out of business. The proxy could have impounded Storm Bird already. All the proxy was doing, and she had to keep reminding herself that there was a human pilot behind it, was playing with her, making her life a misery of worry while giving itself, or himself, something amusing to do when it wasn’t harassing someone else. She thought of asking Xavier why it was taking such an interest in her father’s associates, most specifically the Lyle Merrick case, but then she decided to put the whole thing out of her mind, at least until the morning. Xavier went out and bought a couple more beers, and they finished them off while they were putting the last few items of furniture back into place. ‘Things will work out, Antoinette,’ he said. ‘You’re certain of that?’ ‘You deserve it,’ he said. ‘You’re a good person. All you ever wanted to do was honour your father’s wishes.’ ‘So why do I feel like such an idiot?’ ‘You shouldn’t,’ he said, and kissed her. They made love again — it felt like days since the last time — and then Antoinette fell asleep, sinking through layers of increasingly vague anxiety until she reached unconsciousness. And then the Demarchist propaganda dream began to take over: the one where she was on a liner that was raided by spiders; the one where she was taken to their cometary base and surgically prepared for induction into their hive mind. But there was a difference this time. When the Conjoiners came to open her skull and sink their machines into it, the one who leant over her pulled down a white surgical mask to reveal the face she now recognised from the history texts, from the most recent anecdotal sightings. It was the face of a white-haired, bearded old patriarch, lined and characterful, sad and jolly at the same time, a face that might, under any other circumstances, have seemed kind and wise and grandfatherly. It was the face of Nevil Clavain. ‘I told you not to cross my path again,’ he said. The Mother Nest was a light-minute behind him when Clavain instructed the corvette to flip over and commence its deceleration burn, following the navigational data that Skade had given him. The starscape wheeled like something geared by well-oiled clockwork, shadows and pale highlights oozing over Clavain and the recumbent forms of his two passengers. A corvette was the nimblest vessel in the Conjoiner in-system fleet, but cramming three occupants into the hull resembled a
