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‘Everybody else was in the macros,’ I protested, but I already knew what his answer would be.

‘Not while they were going bad,’ he pointed out. ‘And it was I who asked you to do that. Like I said, I’m sorry.’

At that moment his face showed real guilt. I knew him well enough to know that guilt was not an emotion whose validity he recognised, or was likely to feel for long.

‘Can’t anything be done about it?’ Meg asked.

Reid shook his head. ‘It’s the same old trap,’ he said. ‘The fast folk, whether they’re AIs or uploads themselves, could do it. We can’t, and we daren’t do anything to revive them until we know how to stop them going bad again, or contain them if they do.’

We stood in silence, thinking this over.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can live with it. Plenty for a bright young robot to do here. We can always use VR and projections and so on to socialise –’

‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ Reid said. ‘The attitude I told you about has got more entrenched, if anything. People are people. Robots are robots. Along with that goes an almost hysterical feeling against blurring the distinction between VR and actual reality. Everybody is convinced that was how the fast folk went bad, or mad.’

‘And they’re not far wrong,’ I said grimly. ‘But I can’t see people giving up the advantages of having VR.’

‘They don’t,’ said Reid. He ran his finger along the dust on top of the clone-pod, leaving a shiny trail. ‘They use it for games, and for porn I guess, and for design work. But seamless VR, like you live in – no.’

‘OK,’ Meg said. ‘Like Jon says, I can live with it. I can live with him. I’ve never done anything else. But what I want to know is, what can we actually do? Couldn’t we get on with the research into controlling or containing the fast folk? After all, I reckon we’re pretty well equipped for it.’

Reid glowered at me.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘No fucking way. There’s no research project at the moment. We can’t afford it, and I won’t allow it. I’ve got the code-keys to revive the macros, and I’ll decide the time and place. We’ll do all that in good time, when we’ve got isolated space-labs with laser-cannon pointing at them! And let me tell you, anybody else on this whole fucking planet would’ve left you switched off and shoved you in the nearest metal-recycler the minute, the fucking minute they found you were infected with some kinda shit from the macros!’

He was backing away, a shadow of alarm and suspicion on his face.

‘You know,’ he went on, ‘that suggestion you just made is exactly the sort of trick you’d pull, if you were being used as a vector by something left by one of those things. Don’t get me wrong, Wilde, I don’t blame you. But I’ve been burned once by them, and that’s too often.’

I believed him. There was no case to plead. In his place, I’d have done and thought the same. We were, I realised, alike: knowing no law or morality or sentimentality, our selfishness not petty like a child’s but vast like a devil’s, owing no loyalty to anything but what each of our fierce egos had already taken as its own. Reid had taken a world to his heart, and I the dead.

‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK, calm down. But just tell me, what can I do?’

‘Get as far away from here as possible,’ Reid said. ‘Explore the planet – that’d be useful, and interesting, and it’ll keep you out of the way of human beings for a long time to come.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘That suits us fine.’

Only Meg, I’m sure, sensed the bitterness behind my acceptance of exile.

I looked around. ‘What’s going to happen to this place, now that you’ve finished the downloads?’

Reid shrugged. ‘Probably sell it to a health-company,’ he said. ‘We can still clone replacement bodies or parts for people. We can still do live transfers, it’s just reviving stored minds that’s out for the moment. And…’ He stopped. ‘Och, all sorts of things! Why?’

I laughed. ‘I don’t want to see clones of myself walking around. Or of Meg, for that matter. I’ve enough problems with my identity as it is.’

He reached into a