Perceptive, she thought. But then, he would be.

'I owe you an apology, Alex.'

'Yeah. Me too.' He hesitated. 'Sorry.'

'Alex, what I need more than an apology is an explanation.'

He had the grace to look discomfited. 'I would have thought it was all round Belial by now.'

'We've had too much else to worry about.'

'He's not real, you know.'

'I know. There's no way you could have kept him hidden for this long, and Moshe*Rabaan would have noticed any excess oxygen usage, so he's a simularity, right?'

'Right.'

'Why?' Her voice softened. 'Why not apply for real children?'

'I did,' he said levelly. 'I had a son. He died.'

Silence.

'He died?'

Bannen rested his head in his hands. Mark just looked on dispa.s.sionately. 'Yeah. I was married. Her name was Sonia. She was good. A good person. She wanted a child, so we signed up for the eugenics lottery. We were both in the upper IQ bracket; we could've used channels, pulled strings, bypa.s.sed the system. But she wanted to do it properly. Be honest.' His shoulders gave a little heave. 'We got lucky.'

'So what happened?'

'Remember when America's economy collapsed, back in forty*six?' Bannen's voice was so quiet that Piper had to strain to hear it. 'I was teaching at MexTech at the time. I was on campus when the food riots. .h.i.t full swing. Made it to the s.p.a.ceport on a student bus. Last suborbital off the ground. I saw her in the crowd outside the ship as they sealed the lock.' Bannen tried to take his son's hand, but his fingers pa.s.sed right through the simularity field. 'Saw them both.'

Piper felt something cold clench in her chest.

'What what happened?'

He looked up with bleak, pain*scarred eyes. 'There were ten million people and no food,' he whispered. What do you think happened?'

Piper swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry.

Bannen said something in such a quiet voice she missed his words.

'Pardon?'

'I said, I could have gone back. For Sonia and Mark. I could have gone back for them.'

Piper found herself unable to meet the physicist's gaze.

'I could have gone back.'

Bishop was collecting the shattered fragments of an observation drone for later a.n.a.lysis when the klaxons began. The sound was a sharp, painful call to action. Swiftly, Bishop accessed the neural net and locked down the source of the alert.

The Atmospheric Vehicle Research chamber.

Bishop activated a commdesk and punched in the requisite code. A virtual screen lit up, immediately in front of his face. The picture it showed appeared normal; then Bishop realized the dome of the chamber was open to free s.p.a.ce. Apparently there was some kind of unscheduled launch in progress, an experiment under preprogrammed control.

Bishop sighed.

So much to do already, and now this.

He left the Operations Room and was running up the Pit transport belt when Cheryl Russell swung in from a side corridor and very nearly cannoned into him. 'That's an experimental research warning,' she cried. 'What's going on?'

Bishop studied her face for a brief second. He noted the tear tracks for later consideration.

'Stop gathering wool,' she snapped. 'Someone's triggered the alarm. It could be an emergency!'

'The neural net identified the AVR chamber as the source of the alert.'

'Well, come on then!'

The main base entrance rolled shut behind Bernice, replacing the constant pinkish daylight of Moloch with the flat white glare of artificial light.

Catching sight of the back of Bishop's robes vanishing along the corridor leading to the Pit, Bernice began to follow automatically, but a firm pressure on her arm prevented her from continuing.

Her forward movement abruptly halted, Bernice threw the Doctor a cool glance. Apologetically, he removed his hand. He waved his umbrella in a distracted manner. 'Operations Room,' he said vaguely.

'Why?'

The Doctor's eyes suddenly focused. 'There's something I have to show you.'

The control room was exactly as she had left it. In a beaker at one of the duty stations cold tea rippled in time with the siren.

Bernice perched on the edge of the shift supervisor's desk, watching as the Doctor strode quickly to the neural net cabinets and began to access a series of subsystems. He looked puzzled, then worried. He thumped the desk with an uncharacteristic display of temper. 'It's gone!' He quickly searched all his pockets. 'How could I have been so stupid?'

'It's Ace, isn't it?'

The Doctor sighed deeply, withdrawing his hands from his pockets.

'Well?'

He looked away. 'There are some things I need to know. I would ask her myself but '

Bernice's eyes narrowed as she deliberately missed the point. 'But she doesn't trust you any more.'

'That's right.'

'So what do you want to know?'

'I've hurt her, Bernice. I keep hurting her. With the best of intentions, but still the pain exists. The mistrust. The feeling of betrayal.' The Doctor looked away from Bernice for a moment, and she could have sworn it was with genuine remorse. 'You're human. Tell me how I can make it up to her.'

'I'm sorry.' Bernice quickly unrolled the bundle she'd been carrying beneath her arm and thrust Ace's blood*soaked jacket into the Doctor's hands. 'I think it may be too late for words.'

Cheryl slapped home a series of circuit breakers mounted on a plinth beside the AVR chamber monitor station. Immediately, she felt the floor vibrate as the dome rumbled shut, sealing the chamber. Air pumped in as the warning sirens died away.

She waited impatiently as the pressure equalized inside the dome, finally punching an override and unsealing the lock early. She pounded into the frost*rimed chamber, breath freezing in front of her face, checking each possible place of concealment for a figure, dreading what she might find.

There was nothing.

She turned her attention to the starpod. If someone were still alive, that was where they'd be.

A moment behind her, Bishop entered the chamber, robes a-flap. He watched as she unsealed the lock on the starpod. Ice cracked away from the hatch at a pressure from inside.

Cheryl let out an involuntary gasp of surprise as a limp body fell clear of the vehicle to lie still upon the chamber floor in a slurry of melting ice.

Miles Engado.

Bishop carefully watched as first bitter disappointment and then professional concern chased startled horror from the woman's face.

Despite everything, had Cheryl expected to find her husband there?

Bernice and the Doctor entered the monitor room in time to help Cheryl stretch Miles out on the floor next to an open medkit, while Bishop probed intently into the racks of recording systems.

Bernice quickly moved the medkit to Cheryl's side. 'What happened to him?'

'I've no idea.' Cheryl pa.s.sed a diagnostic wand across the Administrator's head and torso. 'According to this, he's in second*level unconsciousness. I found him hooked up to the interactive software in the starpod. Heaven alone knows what he was doing in there.' She prepared an injector pad.

'Thinking of Paula maybe.' The Doctor moved across to where Bishop was still methodically accessing the gallery records. 'Find anything interesting?'

Bishop kept his face carefully neutral. 'All systems are off line. Diagnostics report what can only be described as an invasion. The software is corrupt and will need to be rebooted. All records of the last fifteen minutes have been erased.'

The Doctor leaned on his umbrella, his face a.s.suming an expression of innocent concentration. 'Sounds familiar, doesn't it?' His voice hardened. 'Someone's covering up a trail.'

'I would have to agree.'

'The question is, who?' The Doctor allowed his eyes to fall to those of Miles Engado, as they moved spasmodically behind closed lids.

Remembering.

Bishop noted the direction of the Doctor's gaze, and his eyes narrowed as he regarded the Administrator's disturbed expression. He would know what had happened to the software, and why.

Bishop felt the slight weight of a simularity crystal in the pocket of his robe and allowed himself an inward smile. Despite all prevarication, the evidence was building. Soon a solution would be found.

And justice would be served.

'Adjudicator?'

Bishop looked at the Doctor.

'There's something you ought to know.'

Two hours later, Piper O'Rouke, Alex Bannen and a medical team were waiting as the Adjudicator's ship locked home against the Belial Bridge terminus.

Alex fidgeted impatiently as Miles was brought forth on a stretcher, ignoring the welfare of the Base Coordinator completely. There were more important things he needed to find out; things only the Doctor could tell him.

He moved forward importantly, pushing past Bernice and Cheryl as if they did not exist. 'Doctor I must talk to you. Was there any record concerning the structure of the Bridge's interior?'

'No, Alex, we didn't find Ace or Christine. But thank you for asking,' Bernice muttered angrily.

Alex glared at Bernice. 'You're a scientist. You should understand that knowledge takes precedence over corpses. In my opinion, it may be the only way to prevent more deaths.'

With cold and deliberate fury, Bernice began to explain to the scientist exactly what she thought of his 'opinion'.

The Doctor interrupted her gently. 'I'm afraid Trau Bannen is right, Bernice.'

Bernice threw the Doctor a disgusted look. Bannen leaned attentively towards the Doctor and they began to speak in low voices. Bernice suddenly found she badly needed a drink, but her hip flask was empty. She began to make her way towards the entrance to the Pit.

The sound of someone's throat being cleared as a preliminary to speaking aloud caused her to stop.

'If I could have your attention, please.'

Bernice turned. Bishop had laid claim to an area of floor.

Cheryl and Piper, the Doctor, Alex, and the medical team all stopped talking.

Bishop continued, 'I would like to take this opportunity to inform you all that the judicial process requested by Miles Engado regarding the death of his daughter has now reached a conclusion. That conclusion is that Paula Engado was murdered.'

There was a hushed whisper of horror from the listening personnel. Bernice felt a sick feeling begin to develop in her stomach.

The feeling intensified as Bishop concluded his short speech in even, measured tones. 'I have in my possession a simularity file which clearly establishes the guilt of the murderer. It is now my duty to pa.s.s sentence.'

As Bernice watched, horrified, Bishop produced a large handgun from beneath his robes and aimed it squarely at the Doctor's head.

Chapter Ten.