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‘Do they indeed?’ Wilde sucked in smoke and blew it above her head, in a long sigh. ‘Now that’s really interesting, because the robot Jay-Dub claims to be another…implementation of me, and to have been around since before the first landing here. I wouldn’t put it past its capabilities to throw a fetch, or to appear as me on screen.’

‘Aha!’ said Tamara. ‘According to the message I got from Invisible Hand, Reid claims he has evidence that Jay-Dub hacked into Dee, and he holds you responsible.’

‘Me?’ Wilde said. ‘Well, Jay-Dub said nothing to me about anything like that. What a surprise.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tamara. ‘AIs are devious bastards, aren’t they?’

‘Devious and dangerous,’ Wilde said. ‘Wouldn’t trust them an inch, myself.’

Tamara laughed.

‘OK,’ said Wilde, ‘I reckon we need to fill each other in a bit. Us humans gotta stick together.’

Tamara recounted what had happened the previous evening, and that morning, and some of the background. Wilde kept smiling when she spoke about abolitionism. Then Wilde went over what had happened to him, and what the robot had told him. Tamara listened, sometimes wide-eyed, sometimes frowning. When he’d finished she sat silent for a moment.

‘What a bastard,’ she said at last. ‘Growing a clone of your wife’s body and using it as a gynoid. Jeez. Guess he didn’t expect to see you again.’

‘Maybe,’ Wilde said dubiously. ‘He must’ve known about the robot, though, surely? Could the robot have seen Dee before?’

‘Sure,’ said Tamara. ‘That kind of rig would have comms, if nothing else. And Reid’s claiming Jay-Dub did hack into Dee. But the robot said nothing about that?’

‘Nothing to me,’ Wilde said. ‘I definitely got the impression that it knew something about Dee, in fact it insisted Dee wasn’t human even in the sense that it is, but it never gave any hint that Dee was part of its plans, whatever they are.’

‘And now it’s disappeared,’ Tamara sighed. She looked about, as though hoping it would reappear. ‘Presumably it doesn’t know about the legal case, and it figures it’s best to lie low.’

‘That would fit in with its personality all right,’ Wilde grinned. ‘And mine!’

‘Let’s hope it finds out before the trial,’ said Tamara. ‘Otherwise it is in even deeper shit…You still want to go before Talgarth?’

‘From what you’ve told me,’ Wilde said, ‘I don’t have much choice in the matter.’

‘That’s right,’ said Tamara.

Wilde responded with an ironic grimace. He stood up, without saying anything, and wandered about the nearby stalls. Every so often he smiled to himself, and then he turned and smiled at Tamara, who’d silently followed him.

‘There’s something about this place,’ he explained. ‘I always knew there would be places like this, trash markets on other worlds. It makes me feel so homesick that I know I’m the same man I was on Earth.’

Tamara looked down and scuffed the dirt.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so much about Wilde, but my mental picture of him is always like – you know, those cards, posters I’ve seen. I know I’ve been sort of presumptuous, talking to you like you’re as young as you look.’

Wilde snorted and slapped her shoulder. ‘Knock it off,’ he said. ‘I’ve only come back from the dead in a literal sense.’

They went over to Invisible Hand and registered Wilde as a joint defendant, and Wilde laid a counter-charge against Reid of having been responsible for the death of one Jonathan Wilde, of London, Earth. The machine took it all in without demur, but its internal lights moved about in an agitated manner.

‘What now?’ Wilde asked Tamara.

‘Well, perhaps it’s time you met Dee. She’s staying at my place, and it’s only five minutes away from here. Ax – that’s a…kid who lives with me – said he’d take her out shopping this morning.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Fifteen-thirty. They should be back by now.’

‘OK,’ said Wilde. He stood up. For the first time since they’d met, his face showed something less than composure.

‘Let’s go.’

Ax retrieves the knife from the closed door of the wardrobe, paces back a few metres, and throws the knife again. It thuds