Glasshouse

"After we disposed of Mick. Let me think." I close my eyes. I need to get rid of the sudden storm surge of adrenaline. "Low risk. I—she—was uncertain, and she misjudged her timing. She didn't know who you are, she just thought you were up to no good, so she tried to shop you for your own protection. Fiore was preoccupied and told her to get lost. As long as nothing reminds him, you're clear."

"Shit." Janis takes a step back, and I see that she's still holding the stu

I take a deep breath. "I've never been brainwashed before." A little part of me still thinks Dr. Hanta is a sympathetic and friendly practitioner who only means the best for me, but it's outvoted by the much larger part of me that is eager to use her intestines as a skipping rope. "I am"—breathing too fast, slow down —"not amused."

"Let's try a ping test." Janis hesitates for a moment. "Do you love me?"

"I love you." My heart speeds up again. "Hey, I heard that!"

"Yes." Janis nods. "I didn't, though. You know what? I think the diffmerge must have scribbled over part of the CY load in your netlink."

"No." I step out of the assembler and carefully close the door. "It happened earlier. I heard it earlier"—I frown—"talking to Sam, after I got out of hospital. I mean, she heard it."

"Curious." She cocks her head to one side, a very Sa

I shudder. The consequences are clear enough. The original Curious Yellow used humans as an infective vector, but only really ran inside A-gates that it had infected. A modified CY that can actually run and do useful stuff inside a host's netlink, and which doesn't trigger the detection patch, is a whole lot scarier. You can do things with it like—"The zombies?"

"Yes." Janis looks as if she's seen a ghost. "Are we still in the glasshouse? Or have they relocated us?"

"We're still in the glasshouse," I reassure her. It's the first bit of good news I've been able to piece together so far. "MASucker Harvest Lore, if what she remembers seeing upstairs is anything to go by. I mean, we might have been on a different MASucker, but I thought you accounted for them all?"

"I think so." She nods, increasingly animated. "So that locked area you found in City Hall"—when I was being Fiore—"is probably the only T-gate on-site. Right?"

"There are the short-range gates to the individual residences." I shiver again: Getting into City Hall and out again without being identified was a matter of sheer brazen luck. Ten minutes later I'd have run into the real Fiore. "They're definitely switched off a hub at City Hall; I found the conference suite they inducted us through. As I recall, on the Grateful for Duration the longjump T-gate was co

"Right." She nods. "So. If this is the Harvest Lore, we're about two hundred years from next landfall. If we assume exponentiation at, say, five infants per family, there's time for ten generations . . . right, they're looking to breed up about twenty thousand unauthenticated human vectors. Hanta's got time to implant netlinks in them all. So when we arrive, she can flood the network with this new population of carriers—"

"That's not going to happen." I smile, baring my teeth. "Never doubt that. They think they've got us trapped. But the right way to view it is, we can't retreat."

"You think we can take them on directly?" Sa

"Watch me," I tell her.

THE rest of the day passes uneventfully. I say goodbye to Janis and go home as usual. At least, that's what it must look like to anyone who's watching me. I've spent the past few hours in an absentminded reverie, rolling around irreconcilable memories and trying to work out where I stand. It's most peculiar. On the one hand, I've got Reeve's horror at finding Mick dead, her apprehensive fear that Janis might be "untrustworthy" and a hazard to the friendly and open Dr. Hanta. And on the other hand, I've got Robin's experiences. Sneaking around City Hall on tiptoe, finding locked areas and avoiding Fiore by the skin of my teeth. Coming across Mick in the hospital, with Cass. Dropping in on Janis in the library, her initial guilty fear and the slowly growing conviction—on my part—that she wasn't just a bystander but an ally. Recognition protocols and the shock of mutual recognition.

Janis has been on her own in here for almost half a year longer than I have. When she realized she wasn't alone, she broke down and cried. She'd been certain it was only a matter of time before Dr. Hanta got around to her. Terror, isolation, fear of the midnight knock on the door: They wear you down after a while. She got pregnant before anyone had figured out that part of the scheme. I'm surprised she's still functioning at all.

The score system and the experimental protocols are a real obstacle to us: For all we know, half the population of YFH-polity could be cell members of one faction or another, blundering around in the dark, unwilling to risk revealing themselves. But unless we can somehow kick over the superstructure of artifice that the cabal have established, we won't be able to link up with our potential allies and identify our real enemies. Divide and conquer: You know it makes sense.

I get home in due course, by way of the hardware store. Sam is absent, so I go straight into the garage to see what I can do. This isn't the time for recrimination, but I'm really pissed at myself. I was going to get rid of this stuff! If nothing else, I found making historic weapons fascinating. I may end up doing it as a hobby, when all this is over, if there's scope for such luxuries.

Still, I guess I won't be needing the crossbow now. Or the sword I was trying to temper. Sa

I'm hopping around on top of a pile of scattered steel bar stock and spilled screwdrivers, cursing up a blue streak and clutching my left foot when some change in the light alerts me to the fact that the garage door is open. "What the fuck—"

"Reeve?"

"Fuck!" I howl. "Shit. Dropped my hammer and—"

"Reeve? What's going on?"

I force myself to calm down. "I dropped my hammer and it landed on this pile of bar stock and it bounced on my toe." I hop some more. The pain is begi

"The hammer?" He pauses. "Have you been drinking?"

"Not yet." I lean against the wall and experimentally put my foot on the floor. "Ouch. I just decided to turn over a new—heh—leaf again. A girl needs a hobby and all that." I raise an eyebrow.