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‘Hi,’ he calls. ‘Sorry about the abrupt departure. You can go back to our place with Meg if you want, but right now I’ve got to stay in reality.’ He laughed. ‘To the extent of looking out the window and driving the truck, anyway.’

In reality, Jay-Dub is nested in a cavity near the front of the vehicle, and has been since they arrived. The truck is perfectly capable of driving itself. Dee has a shrewd suspicion that the necessity of controlling its progress is in part purely psychological, at a more superficial level than that of the embedded consistency-rules. She lets the explanation pass.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

‘We have to go back to Ship City,’ the man tells her.

‘Problem at the trial?’ Dee guesses. She’s not paying the conversation her full attention; she’s exploring her mind, checking off her selves like they’re strayed children coming home, and finds to her relief that they’re all there. Secrets is smaller, Stores is far bigger than when she downloaded them to Jay-Dub – but that’s all right, she has room in her head to spare.

‘Oh no,’ Wilde shouts back, his eyes flicking from the mirror to the desert. Dee can see the vehicle is moving at almost its top speed. ‘We have to pick up some poison, and then…’

His voice trails off, whether because of the outcrop they’re about to (she grabs the edge of the bed-bench) go over – or because he doesn’t know what to say.

‘Then what?’

Wilde’s eyes, crinkling into a smile, look back at her again.

‘We’re going to hack the gates of hell.’

She doesn’t even bother to ask for a further explanation. It is obvious that none will be forthcoming, and she has to assume there’s some good reason why not. Wilde gives her an encouraging nod, and then turns his attention to the flat desert and to Meg. Ax has braced himself on an old foil blanket, next to an aerial feed, and is having visions by television.

Dee sets Scientist to work, and enters Sys. Minutes pass. Then, as from a great, cold height, a mountain higher than any on Earth or either Mars, in a raw virtual vacuum that makes her head feel as though it’s about to bloodily explode, Dee sees exactly what Wilde’s cryptic statement means.

‘You first,’ Tamara said. The others dispersed to their seats and Wilde stepped forward to the microphone. Talgarth stubbed out the cigarette he’d spent the seven minutes smoking, and nodded.

Wilde went through the same courtesies as Reid had used and said:

‘Esteemed Senior, I am more than willing to answer for my actions, and for those undertaken on my behalf. I am not willing to answer for the actions of the robot Jay-Dub, or to accept the allegation that it is my property. My present physical existence began last Fi’day, around noon, when I was resurrected. The robot Jay-Dub claimed to have accomplished this, by means which I make no pretence to understand –’

Reid sprang to his feet.

‘Objection!’ he said. ‘Irrelevant.’

‘Sustained,’ said Talgarth.

Wilde swallowed. ‘Very well, Esteemed Senior. The point can be made independently by appealing to the records of Jay-Dub’s transactions with the Stras Cobol Mutual Bank, which I am happy to make available to the court so far as they are relevant. They establish indeed that the owner of Jay-Dub is one Jonathan Wilde. And they identify who, exactly, that Jonathan Wilde is. The earliest records include transactions with David Reid’s company, Mutual Assured Protection. They explicitly accept the name ‘Jay-Dub’ as a synonym of Jonathan Wilde, and the robot Jay-Dub as equivalent to that person, Wilde. The robot Jay-Dub has been accepted without demur these many years as none other than Jonathan Wilde – Jay-Dub, in short, is Jonathan Wilde! Any records mentioning Wilde as the owner of the robot Jay-Dub, therefore, can only be interpreted as meaning that the person Jonathan Wilde owns Jay-Dub in the same sense that I, Jonathan Wilde, own my body.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Any coincidence of names is regretted.’

Eon Talgarth, sitting on his chair on the dais, shared an eye-level with Wilde, standing. Their eyes locked for a moment.

‘The court will