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  He looked up and saw Rash staring down at the fireplace.

  "Probably cost more to lug this here than it cost to bring Team Hotel," he said.

  "Some fuckers are mad," said Rash.

  "Funny how they're the ones who end up with an artisan crafted Casman-style mansion in the oceanside wilderness foothills of a premium settlement, though, right?"

  "I've always found that highly amusing," said Rash.

  Falk stood up.

  "Work on this place stopped dead months ago," he said.

  "Agreed. Or longer."

  "But it was intended to continue," said Falk.

  "Ran out of cash?"

  "They've got a barn full of expensive stuff just waiting to be fitted. Don't tell me someone with this clout couldn't have got local workers to keep going at it on a promise. I mean, if money was the problem, it would have been easier to finish this place to a retail standard, then pay off your crew with a slice of the sale rather than just stop dead."

  "Something else happened then. Legal? A permit thing? You said the map designation was odd."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe someone thought they'd bought this whole plot," said Rash, "started work, then found they didn't have regs approval. Or maybe the parcel sale didn't go through. Maybe it's in a state of suspension because of some kind of ongoing legal action."

  "Yeah," said Falk. "Would have been a nice place."

  The window changed softly as the light outdoors altered. The sun had gone in, chased away by new clouds. Falk watched the terminator of the bright sunlight retreating across the meadows towards the highway, bright gold grass turning khaki. A little flurry of rain pattered against the ribbon windows.

  "At least it's a roof," he said. "We can get Bigmouse indoors, maybe warm up some food."

  Rash nodded.

  Preben walked in to the living space and beckoned to them.

  "Someone's here," he said.

• • •

They followed him out, along a corridor that led to other vast rooms, a study, a dining-room. This wing of the house was slightly more finished.

  "What have you seen?" Falk asked Preben.

  "Down here," said Preben. "There's a small kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom at the end. Like an annexe. I think it's for a servant or housekeeper."

  "Okay."

  "Someone's been living in it."

  The annexe had probably been the first section of the house to be finished, perhaps to provide basic accommodation for a permanent foreman or supervisor on-site. There was carpet and proper tiling, and though there was no power, water came out of the kitchen taps. In all three rooms, there was evidence of life. Dirty clothes, an unmade bed, a fibreplak sheet pinned across the bedroom window in lieu of curtains. There were open, empty self-heat cans, food wrappers, dirty plates and forks, cups, junk. There were also plates and glasses with candles fixed into fields of wax, each candle lit and fixed in the remains of the last. In the kitchen there lingered a smell of cold, old food and yesterday's cooking, in the bathroom, a scent of stale soap, in the bedroom a musk of human body, unventilated.

  "Someone's been here recently," said Preben.

  "More than one person," said Rash. He picked up two litex running shoes from the mess on the bedroom floor and put them sole to sole. Neither of them was large, but one was a good two sizes smaller than the other.

  "Whoever it was, they could have left here a week ago," said Falk.

  Preben shook his head. He picked up one of the open cans from the counter in the small kitchen and handed it to Falk. There was a plastic spoon in it, a babyfood utensil. The can held a residue of some kind of rice-effect dessert. It was a self-heater: you pulled the ring, and peeling the lid off tripped the little thermal liner to speed-heat the contents.

  The can was still warm.

  They looked at one another.

  A renewed flurry of rain drummed on the annexe windows.

  "Go bring Bigmouse and Valdes in," Falk said to Preben.

  "Yeah?"

  "We'll sweep and see who's here."

  Preben nodded and headed back to the kitchen exit. Moving together, Rash and Falk finished checking the rooms on the ground floor, and then went up to the first via the back stairs off the annexe. There was carpet in the hallway, but not in the empty rooms destined to be bedrooms.

  They came to a room that had been painted up as a child's bedroom. The white walls were covered with bright cartoon faces and glossy coloured shapes, and the ceiling light had been given a lively shade, a mobile of moving planets and moons around a sun. Against one wall was a roller box with the smiling face of a cow painted on it. The box was loaded with brand-new nursery toys and vivid, large-format fabric books. There was no bed, no dresser, no desk or chair. The room had never been finished.

  Next door to it there were two bedrooms in a row that were partially fitted. Rugs had been put down to line and cushion the floor, and makeshift curtains hung. Old but serviceable bedsteads had been put in, with mattresses and worn bedclothes. The beds were made. The rooms were cold, but Falk saw little portable heaters in both. Both rooms carried, in their chilly atmospheres, a fading hint of incense, of patchouli or rose.

  Falk glanced at Rash. There was an en suite bathroom attached to one of the rooms, and Rash edged forward to check it.

  Falk stepped back out into the hall. The backmasked voices had darted across his hearing again briefly, and he wanted a second of silence to check if they made any sense. He saw a box room opposite, a walk-in airing cupboard or drying room with a skylight in the roof and wooden racks for bedding and laundry. The door was ajar.

  He approached it, raised the Koba against his shoulder, right hand holding the pistol grip and bracing the weapon's weight against his armpit, left hand reaching forward to push the door all the way open.

  Nothing. Empty white linen sacks for laundry. The decorators had used the wooden racks to store their folded drop sheets.

  "Come on out," he said.

  She appeared, very slowly, from behind the furthest rack. Short blonde hair home-shorn into an elfin cut, a small, gymnastic figure, taut and lean. Her expression was fierce, defiant. Two other girls cowered in the shadows behind her, but Falk noticed them rather less than he noticed the large kitchen knife in the blonde girl's hand.

  "You can put that down," he said immediately.

  She kept it raised. The daylight catching the long blade showed it was trembling slightly, but from the tension of her grip rather than fear. The girls behind her were murmuring anxiously to each other. The muscles in the corners of her jaw were as hard as knuckles.

  "Put it down," he repeated. "You don't need it."

  She curled her lip, showed teeth, and then started to rail at him, a stream of venom and invective, a challenge, a curse, a spell to drive him back and banish him.

  "Whoa! Whoa!" he called.

  "You leave us alone! You leave me and my friends alone! Go! Get out! Go away!" she shouted. "Go away or I will cut your balls off!"

  "Hey!" he said, lowering the Koba slightly. "Hey, it's okay! It's wealthy! I'm SOMD! I'm not going to hurt you! Just put the knife down, put it down! I swear I'm not going to hurt you!"

  "You are Office? You are Settlement Office soldier?" she asked. There was a hesitation, a surprise.

  "Yes, I am. Yes," he said. "Now put that down. No one's going to hurt you. Put that down and we can talk."

  Falk felt something touch the back of his head. It was hard and cold. He froze. He knew that the muzzle of an automatic weapon was resting against his skull.

  "Fuck," he whispered.

  "Fuck is right," said Rash. Standing directly behind Falk, he let the PAP 20 press a little harder.

  "What are you doing, Rash?" Falk asked.

  "Well, I'm asking you a question, Bloom," Rash replied. "And the question is, since when did you start speaking Russian?"

TWENTY-SEVEN

"The fuck is going on, man?" Valdes exclaimed. "Rash, what the fuck are you doing, man?"

  "Take his weapons," Rash said, his PAP still covering Falk squarely. He allowed Falk to turn around to face him.

  "It's fucking Bloom, man, are you crazy?"

  "Disarm him right now!" Rash snapped. "Preben, help me! Come on, there are three Bloc national females in that store closet, and our buddy Bloom was talking to them in Russian. In Russian! He doesn't get to touch a weapon until we get an explanation! Okay? Okay?"

  Preben faltered, then came forward, leaving Valdes wide-eyed, with Bigmouse at the head of the stairs.

  "This is wrong," said Bigmouse. "This isn't right at all." He sounded drunk, vague, disorientated. His skin colour wasn't good. He was holding on to the top post of the grand staircase for support.

  "S'okay, Mouse," Valdes said, "It's okay. We'll deal with it, man."

  Preben came up to Falk and Rash. There was a caught in the headlights look on his too-young face.

  "Take his weapon off him, Preben," said Rash.

  "There's no need for this," Falk said. "Come on."

  "Take his weapon, and his side arm too," Rash ordered.

  "What are you doing? What is happening?" the blonde girl cried out from the closet behind them.

  "It's okay!" Falk called out to her over his shoulder. "It's all okay!"

  He stopped, saw Preben's look, Rash's expression. He heard the sound of his own voice, the words he had just spoken. Not English. Not English at all. A fluent, effortless something that could have been anything for all he knew but sounded Russian.

  "You fuck," said Preben, and wrenched the Koba out of Falk's hand.

  "No, you don't understand," Falk protested.

  "Not another word from you, Bloom," said Rash. "Not a word, until we're ready. Okay? Okay?"

  Falk nodded.

  Preben slung the Koba over his left shoulder by its strap, then pulled Falk's PDW from his holster. He also took Falk's utility knife.

  "Cover the women," Rash told Preben. "Just keep them covered. Watch the blonde bitch, she's got a blade."

  "Okay," said Preben. The women in the closet had gone quiet.

  Rash gestured with his weapon and indicated that Falk should cross into one of the crudely furnished bedrooms. He did as he was told. It was the room without the en suite. There was no other exit, and the window was a sealed unit.

  "Stay in here," Rash said.

  Falk stared at him.

  "I'll be back in a minute," said Rash.

  He backed away, the PAP 20 unwavering, and then shut the door. Alone, Falk lowered his hands. He waited for a second. He heard voices rise in protest, the women gabbling in fear as Preben took the kitchen knife and checked them for other concealeds. He could hear Rash and Preben giving them instructions, slow and overloud, in English, the women replying in terrified Russian. The blonde girl was the most strident. None of them had any real English, just a few swear words and the phrase "please do not hurt". Rash kept telling them to be quiet and to sit down. He told Preben he was going to use the closet as a holding cell for them as soon as they were certain the women weren't hiding anything more dangerous than a carving knife.

  Falk sat on the bed, listening to the two overlaid, conflicting conversations outside, two languages colliding. He understood both of them.

  He lay back on the thin, worn bedspread and closed his eyes.

  "Cleesh? Please be there. Cleesh?"

  He was fully expecting no reply when she said, "We thought you'd lost us for good."

  Her voice was skeletal and far away, but in his eyes-shut darkness, it came with the soft swell of enclosing warm water.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  "I don't know. We could hear you, but you clearly couldn't hear us. Ayoob says there was some kind of delay on the sensory reposition. Maybe a side effect of whatever the Bloc is using to scramble signals in that zone."

  "Aren't they just jamming our comms?" he asked, enjoying the serenity of the warm darkness for a moment, the sensation of his limp body and limbs supported and swaying in the lightless womb.

  "If they were jamming, how would they coordinate their own responses?" Cleesh replied. "It's a scrambling effect. Very specific, very new. Our sources say the SOMD is busting a vessel trying to find the key for it."

  "What else do the sources say, Cleesh?"

  "Not much. Big storm brewing. Lot of activity at Lasky and Thompson Ten and Broadknot Fields, several other depots. Stuff going on at the Cape too. Commercial drivers are clearing out of parking orbit. A friend of a friend says that would only happen if something freek
^®
ass big was inbound on an intersystem transit."

  "Something big?"

  "You know, Falk. Something US Fleet Arm spinrad big. A main battledriver."

  "There goes the neighbourhood."

  "And centuries of peace, let's not forget that."

  "What happened, Cleesh? With the language?"

  A tiny, embarrassed laugh.

  "We could hear you, Falk. Once you'd got the glares. We could hear what you were saying about the translation. We ran one for you, sent it back, but you clearly couldn't hear it. So, I figured, we could at least allow you to translate it for yourself. Anyway, I got you ling patched. Russian language. Just basic level. I thought I was helping."

  "That kind of backfired."

  "I'm sorry," she said. Invisible water lapped.

  "There is–" she said. Whatever the last word was, it turned sideways and became an unintelligible sound. A beetle click, a toad rattle.

  "What?" he asked. "What?"

  "There is good news," she said, coming back stronger and clearer.

  "Yeah?"

  "Oh yes. Ayoob thinks he can pull you out."

  "Out of the tank?" Falk asked.

  "Out of the tank, out of that guy."

  "Bloom."

  "Right. Bloom. Of course. Ayoob thinks he's worked out a, well I don't understand any of it, to be honest. Some kind of neural damper. It'll basically cushion and absorb any trauma you might suffer at disconnect. Basically, we can pull you out alive. Hooray, right?"