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‘And that was why they were killed?’

‘No! That was all legal. They were rejectionists, sure, but they weren’t in the armed groups that became the ANR or anything like that. Mind you, in the Peace Process you didn’t have to be, to get killed. I used to think that was the point.’ He disengaged his hand, unthinking, and lit a cigarette. ‘I thought that was the whole fucking point.’

‘I don’t see it.’

‘Terror has to be random,’ he said. ‘That’s how to really break people, when they don’t know what rules to follow to keep them out of trouble.’ He gave her a sour grin. ‘You know all that. It’s been tried out on rats.’

‘But you don’t even think that was why—’

‘That was part of it. The killing was a joint operation, local thugs and a US/UN teletrooper. I never did understand that, until – actually it was Bernstein who gave me the idea it had to do with the day job. The software work.’

‘And that could be—?’ The excitement of discovery lifted her voice.

He hushed her with a small movement of his hand, and nodded.

Janis was silent for a few moments.

‘What did you do after that?’

‘I had a kid sister.’ He laughed. ‘Still have, but she’s married, settled and respectable now. Doesn’t like to be reminded of me.’

‘Can’t imagine why.’

‘Anyway…we both just took off, disappeared into the Greenbelt. I sort of dragged her up, you know? Did all sorts of casual work, usual stuff, until I was old enough to get steady jobs in construction.’

‘Christ.’ Janis looked almost more sympathetic at this part of the story than at what had come before. ‘Did you ever think of going off to the hills and joining the ANR?’

‘Thought about it? – I fucking dreamt about it. But the baseline was, I never rated their chances.’ He snorted. ‘Looks like I might have been wrong, huh? Anyway, knocking the Hanoverians off their perch wouldn’t be enough. At least the space movement understands that. You gotta defeat the Evil Empire, man! And the green slime, all the species of cranks and creeps. Protect the launch sites, protect the net, and defend the workers. That’s our line.’

‘The thin Red line.’

‘Damn’ right,’ he said with a proud grin. ‘The last defenders.’

‘How did you become a – what do you call yourself? – a security mercenary?’

‘Started with defending building sites against green heavies. Went on from there.’ He shrugged and smiled. ‘Talk about it another time…How did you get to be a mad scientist?’

Janis took a long swallow. ‘This must sound like a sheltered upbringing. A bit of that old middle-class privilege, you know? Grew up in Manchester. It’s all straight Kingdom, no autonomous communities. Not much violence. ANR sparrow units knock off soldiers and officials now and again…

‘My parents are both doctors.’ She gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘Real doctors. Uh, physicians. Two brothers, both younger than me. One’s a mining engineer in Siberia, the other’s in medical school. I was always interested in medical research – all the code-cracking breakthroughs happened when I was just old enough to understand. Grammar school, university, research. I only came down here because of the restrictions – not enough F S Zees up north.’

Kohn nodded slowly. ‘And now Norlonto. Just a natural progression.’

Janis grimaced. ‘I wouldn’t want to get mixed up in black technology.’

It was a cant phrase for the sort of research that was rumoured to go on in Norlonto. Not quite deep technology, but treading the edge; neural-electronic interfacing, gene-splicing, potentially lethal life-extension techniques, all tested on higher animals or human subjects whose voluntary status was distinctly dubious: debtors, crime-bondees, kids who didn’t know what they were getting into, the desperate poor, mercenaries…

He lit another cigarette and leaned back, blowing smoke past his nostrils and looking at her along his nose. ‘That’s a good one,’ he remarked, ‘in the circumstances.’

‘There’s a bloody difference!’

‘Explain that to the cranks.’

‘What can we do, then?’ Janis glanced around the now livening bar as if checking for infiltrators.

She looked so worried