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‘Get out,’ Moh’s father said. HUH HUH HUH HUH went the teletrooper’s speaker grille. The two youths sniggered. One of them glanced at a piece of paper.

‘Joshua Kohn? Marcia Rosenberg?’

‘You know damn well who we are,’ Moh’s mother said.

‘Don’t swear at me, you fucking traitor commie cunt. We know who you are.’

Joshua Kohn said, ‘You can see we’re not armed. You have no right to—’

‘You have no rights!’ one of the youths yelled. ‘You’re part of the Republican war machine and you’re going to pay for it. Get your brats out of the way and come with us.’

Moh flung one arm around his father and the other around his sister and shouted, ‘You won’t take them away! You’ll have to kill us all!’

‘Get back,’ his father said levelly. ‘Let go, Moh, let go.’

Moh made no move. He could feel his sister’s chest shaking with dry sobs.

‘All right,’ the youth who had screamed said. He spun his rifle into position for firing.

HEY MAN YOU CAN’T DO THAT.

The teletrooper lurched forward and leaned over them. Moh saw for the first time the blue roundel on the brow of its dome, the white circle of leaves, the line-scored globe. The 20-millimetre barrel retracted into its right forearm and its two hands reached over and picked up Moh and his sister like dolls.

OK YOU CAN TAKE THEM OUT NOW.

The firing seemed to go on for a long time.

The teletrooper dropped Moh and the small girl, picked up the corpses of their parents and followed the men out.

The report said the terrorists had been executed in the street, and not in their house in front of the children, which would have been a war crime under the Geneva Convention.

None of the other people in the block told a different story.

Moh saw Van’s fingers tremble as he lit another cigarette and asked, ‘How you do propose to do that?’

‘The AIS can weaken the state – the state machinery’ – Moh felt his lips stretch to an awful grin – ‘everywhere at the same time. The world’s full of groups and movements like ours and yours just waiting for their chance. We can give them that chance. Fuck up the enemy’s communications, divert supplies and reinforcements, overextend the bastards. They’re already getting tied down a bit with the Sino-Soviets and the Japanese. When the insurrection’s launched here we can create two, three, many Vietnams!’

‘We can’t,’ Van said. ‘Space Defense is ready for that, poised to strike at the first sign of AIS running wild in the datasphere. They’re quite willing to knock out the entire infrastructure of civilization to counter it. Thus giving the wrong movements their chance.’ He paused, tapping a wisp of ash from the glowing cone of his fast-drawn cigarette. ‘Many Cambodias.’

Heat lightnings of pain flickered behind Moh’s eyes. The room went in and out of focus, swayed on the edge of darkness. He sat down again, with a cold feeling as if all his rhythms had troughed at the same moment and all the anti-som had worn off.

‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘Load a sugar.’ Janis disappeared and came back – instantly, it seemed. Instant coffee. He took it like a fix, half-listening to Van spelling out again the warning that the Stasis agent had given. He was shaking inside, his initial elation from the ecstatic vision of the Watchmaker entities, the Watchmaker culture, giving way to a terrified awe. Van’s grim talk of gigadeaths only echoed into contemplation of the overkill, the sheer overwhelming redundancy of it all: a new stage in evolution, as a spin-off from a political-military expert system and a bit of biological data-theft and an organization whose purpose was a mystery to its own members? A scale too vast, surely, for anything Josh might have planned.

Moh sighed and stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I take your point about the dangers if Space Defense notices what’s going on. But they’ll find out anyway, so our only chance is to hit hard and hit fast.’

‘And what happens,’ said a sarcastic voice, ‘when they hit us hard and fast?’

MacLennan had come in silently. They all turned to face him.

‘Let them,’ Moh said. ‘Remember they’re counting on breakdowns to do their work for them,