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The glasses on the bar rattled. All the pygmy maidens in the bar turned to look at Mother of Nobody. Again the glasses rattled and the maidens turned away. ‘Still hear we though,’ she said with a certain amount of satisfaction. ‘Sons and sister-sons say fight but we say fight clever. We remember that metal gods leave many things in their spaces in the earth. We send mother-sister-daughters out to find lost boys and fetch them back to we. Lost boys know many machine things, many weapon things. We tell them they are sons now and must teach other sons to use the things left by the metal gods. When we sure we can win we fight.

We smart now.’

‘You’ve been fighting for six years,’ said Roz. ‘And you control, what, six per cent of the surface. You haven’t taken a town yet, let alone one of the cities. Doesn’t sound too smart to me.’

Mother of Nobody smiled. ‘We not fight to win yet. Fight only to cause trouble, to bring many human soldier here. If they here then they not where they needed later.’

‘You are working for someone,’ said Roz. ‘Who is it this time, the Sontarans? Or have you gone back to your old masters again?’

‘Not masters,’ said Mother of Nobody. ‘Not all-the-sames or metal gods. We have friend now, human friend to help us fight humans.’ She slammed her palm down on the bar and grinned at Roz. ‘Who is truly stupid race now?’

65

Five minutes later, Mei Feng walked up to the bar and said,

‘Roslyn Forrester.’

Roz didn’t react. ‘What about her?’ she said, not looking up.

Mei Feng said, ‘It took longer than we had expected to trace you. You are difficult to trace. Something has gouged you out of puterspace. Almost entirely. Not quite entirely.’

‘It’s a fair cop,’ said Roz. ‘You going to throw me out, boss?’

Mei Feng didn’t answer. Mother of Nobody was watching, silently. Roz looked up at Mei Feng, saw the glint of gold behind the blue eyes. Imagined the black line inside her brain, opening wide.

‘We were going to ignore you,’ said Mei Feng. ‘You are, after all, hugely unimportant in the scheme of things. However, we cannot allow interference in the war plan, especially by operatives affiliated to the renegade Prydonian.’

‘What’s with the “we”?’ said Roz. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this place ever use a singular pronoun? Is being a gestalt in fashion or what? All right, you and the Ogrons I understand, but even the humans can’t seem to refer to themselves without reference to their unit or regiment…’

With the wet sound of soft tissue rupturing, golden spikes erupted from Mei Feng’s eye sockets. Something small and round flashed past Roz’s head and squelched against the wall.

The spikes drilled through the seat back, but Roz had stepped to the side, the pistol already in her hand. It made a high-pitched ripping sound on full auto. The air was suddenly full of concrete dust and broken glass. Mei Feng staggered backward as her chest exploded into ribbons of bloody flesh.

Roz was out of the doors and sprinting down the street before anyone in the bar had a chance to start screaming. She hoped that Mother of Nobody had sense enough not to get involved. Turning the corner on to the Boulevard Sharman, she ejected the spent clip from the pistol on the run. Fumbled in her pocket for the spare as she dodged around pedestrians and electric carts, slammed it into the pistol butt.

She had no illusions about how much damage she might have done to the N-form. The one in the Quadrant had been bloody indestructible. What couldn’t be outfought had to be outsmarted.

66

What couldn’t be outsmarted had to be outrun. The Rift Valley rap. An adrenaline response evolved a million years ago when a bunch of hairless apes found themselves walking upright in a universe of claws and teeth.

There was a sucking noise, like the sound air makes when it rushes into a vacuum. A vegetable stall ahead of Roz grew an intense point of light at its centre. The air shimmered. She heard the sound of wood and metal groaning under stress.