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‘That’s still a hell of a risk,’ Mudge said.

‘Not really. They are ordered and cooperative, where we are chaotic. It was surprisingly easy to gauge how They would react. At the end of the day They are little more than plants and as predictable as which side of the boulder moss grows,’ Gregor finished. I must admit, uniformity of tactics or not, They never felt all that predictable when I was fighting Them.

‘We were fighting space lichen?’ Mudge said. ‘Somebody should’ve said.’ The thing was, I couldn’t decide if knowing that would’ve made things better or worse for morale.

Mudge turned back to Cronin. ‘I still don’t get why?’

‘Why what? I’ve little idea about any of this. It sounds like an involved conspiracy fantasy. Why don’t you ask one of your alien friends? They’re running this psy-op,’ Cronin answered impassively.

‘Do you ever get tired of all the spin and the lies?’ Mudge asked. Cronin didn’t dignify the question with an answer.

‘Look, let’s ignore this guy’s bullshit. I think we’ve got more important things to worry about.’ Everyone ignored me and apparently the fact that Rolleston and the Grey Lady could breach at any moment. I couldn’t be the only person shitting himself, could I?

‘Biotechnology,’ Gregor said. He sounded tired. I could understand why; trying to navigate through this sea of lies against constant denial was tiring.

‘I can see that,’ Mudge said. The viz screen was split three ways between him and reaction shots of Cronin and Gregor. ‘But even allowing for great advances and huge profits it just seems a trivial reason for sixty years of conflict.’

‘Once again you answer your own question. Nobody but an insane person would do these things,’ Cronin said. Gregor glanced up at the viz screen but pretty much ignored him.

‘Not really. Profit aside, many of the Cabal are dying. Mixing Their naturally evolving but incredibly advanced, in its own way, biotechnology with human ingenuity and scientific know-how and you’re looking at incredible advances. Advances we would have problems even imagining,’ Gregor said. Mudge gave this some thought. He did a close-up on himself just so everyone could see how thoughtful he was.

‘And that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Mudge said. ‘God, can you bring the images of the Cabal up on the screen?’ On the viz screen the images we’d seen earlier appeared. They were almost all fat old white guys being kept alive by drugs and machinery that probably cost thousands every day if not every hour. Presumably they communicated through the net but I don’t think they were jacked in at the moment, unsurprisingly. ‘All this is for them?’ Mudge asked. ‘What the fuck have these vampires got to do with the rest of us? Why are they even living, if you call that living, off of us? Anybody else want to die for them?’

‘They worked for the power they have and deserve to be rewarded for it,’ Cronin said, though I wasn’t sure even he believed that. He seemed very uncomfortable with the images of the sleeping members of the Cabal.

‘These people had their time; now it’s over they all should’ve died a long time ago. This is deeply unnatural,’ Mudge said in disgust.

Cronin shook his head. ‘This is irrelevant, a fantasy. What proof have you got of us harvesting Them biotechnology? Even your God seems to struggle to fabricate evidence.’

‘Because you used Demiurge to purge your systems,’ Morag spat with a surprising amount of hatred in her voice.

‘There’s me, there’s my last year of being a fucking test bed for you after Rolleston exposed the Wild Boys to a Ninja in the hope that one of us would be infected. What were you doing then?’ Gregor asked. His voice had become nearly a whisper. Cronin concentrated as if he was receiving data.

‘Rolleston ordered you to hunt and kill one of Their assassination bioborgs, not an unreasonable order to give an SAS patrol. When you were exposed, you were isolated to be studied so we could find a way of more effectively combating Them. You’re fabricating a fantasy out of little strands of the truth,’ Cronin snapped.

Gregor was pointing at Cronin. ‘No, you are!’ he shouted. Even to me it sounded weak.

Cronin leaned into the screen. He looked angry now. ‘And in the absence of any credible evidence it is your word against mine, and one of us isn’t currently possessed by an alien! What have we done? Nothing! Except try and study you, even see if we could help you.’

‘Oh, that’s bullshit!’

‘You people, on the other hand, have just single-handedly destroyed our economy and our security apparatus. People have access to information that is dangerous to them. Now everyone in the world can learn how to manufacture nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons, genetically targeted weapons and concrete-eating microbes. You’ve just released all the information on banned genetic engineering and cloning processes, processes that were considered to be immoral by the UN. Now people have access to black bio and cyberware, sequestrination cyberware. Or are you going to tell us that you didn’t think of any of this?’ It was quiet again. I felt like I’d been scolded and the answer was no, I hadn’t thought it through. The thing is, there were smarter people than me here. Had they thought it through? ‘You say that we’re the enemies of humanity and then you go and do all this. I trust the comparison with Pandora isn’t lost on you.’

‘You’re right,’ Pagan said. I looked over at him. Surely he must’ve thought of all this. I was beginning to wonder if we’d been very stupid. ‘We have made all that information available, do you know where from?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘From the likes of you and your friends. God, all the things that you just mentioned, can you provide evidence for their manufacture and use in, say, the last ten years?’ Text, audio, and audiovisual information began scrolling down the screen. I wondered how many people accessed it. ‘See, it hadn’t gone away. The information was still there. What you’re pissed off about is that we’ve taken it out of the hands of people like you.’

‘Yes, congratulations on proliferation. That’ll help,’ Cronin said.

‘How will it proliferate? Every time someone accesses this information everyone in the system has the potential to know about it. Surely that’ll make it easier to police?’ Pagan said. He seemed to have recovered from his earlier despondency. It was obvious he had thought of this and he had a counter-argument; the trouble was, I wasn’t sure if it was enough. I didn’t like the idea of genetically targeted viruses or slave cyberware available to anyone. I wondered if this was the part of me that liked the idea of other people making the decisions, making things safe, looking after us. The trouble was we were here because they weren’t doing a very good job. In fact they had become abusive.

‘Surely you’ve made every hacker in the world unemployed?’ Cronin said sardonically.

‘I’m sure we’ll find something to do,’ Morag said.

‘I’ve always fancied farming,’ Pagan said, looking slightly wistful.

‘And what about the financial markets? Money and commodities are moved around as information all the time. Now anyone can access this.’

‘You’d be surprised how few people that affects. Well maybe you wouldn’t. For most of us it’s still cash under the mattress or illegal credit chips. God?’ Pagan said expectantly.

‘While all information is available, security systems are still functioning. Money and other commodities still cannot be moved except by the authorised person, though now it is a lot easier to check that person’s authorisation,’ God said. I noticed that Pagan was momentarily tranced in but he was back by the end of God’s explanation.

That said, it’s now a lot easier to see how much money people have. Wow! You’re rich, Mr Cronin,’ Pagan said. There was something of the teen-punk hacker about him at this moment. He was enjoying himself. ‘How did you make your money, I wonder?’ Pagan continued. There was all sorts of information scrolling down the screen.