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similarly heavy with bat-tlegear. If we were caught now, maintaining the pretence we were twists would be the last of our problems.

TEN KILOMETRES SOUTH, through the swirling, sticky mists, we could hear the chugging, rending sounds of the harvesters as they

moved on their way. Every few metres there was another bloody smear or furry pulp, the remains of crop rodents caught in the reaping

blades of the factory machines.

'You'd think,' said Inshabel, pausing to wipe the gooey sweat from his face, 'that the wildlife would have got used to the farm-factories

by now. Learned to get out of the way.'

'Some things never learn,' Husmaan muttered. 'Some things always come back to the source.'

'He means food. He always means food,' Nayl chuckled to me. 'To Duj, everything comes back to food.'

'According to mill statistics,' said Aemos, 'there are four billion crop-rats in every demitare of field space. Rivers of them flee before

the harvesters. We've seen one rat-corpse for every twenty-two metres, which suggests only two-point-two per cent of them were

unlucky enough to be caught in the blades. That means the vast percentage fled. They're smarter than you think.'

He paused. Everyone had stopped and was staring at him.

'What?' he asked. 'What? I was only saying…'

'That old geezer fantisises about maths and stats more'n I fantisise about the laydies,' Nayl told Bequin as we moved forward again.

'I'm not sure which of you I'm supposed to feel more sorry for,' she said.

HUSMAAN HELD UP the tracker the Porcupine-girl had given us and shook it. Then he slapped it a couple of times for good measure.

We waded through the plant fibre and came level with him.

'Problem?' I asked.

'Damn thing… too old.'

'Let me see it.'

Husmaan handed it to me. It was a piece of crap, all right. Battered by a lifetime of hard knocks, with a nearly flat powercell. A nice

touch that, I thought, noting Lyko's careful planning. An unreliable tracker made this seem so much more genuine. A brand new or

well-powered unit would have been as good as a written invitation beginning ''Dear people chasing me, please come here and get

killed''.

I shook the device myself and got a good return. Just enough juice to lead us to our deaths.

'That way,' I said.

IT WAS CLOSE to noon. The sun was up, but the sap-mists hadn't dissipated. We were bathed in a warm, yellow, filmy glare. According

to the tracker, we were about half a kilometre from the auction site.

'They're expecting me and Nayl, so we'll go in with Bequin.' I wanted an untouchable close to me. 'Inshabel, cut east with Aemos.

Husmaan, west. Covering positions. Don't move in unless you hear me vox a direct command. Understand?'

The three nodded.

'If you find anything, keep it Glossia and keep it brief. Go.'

Nathun Inshabel armed his lascarbine and moved away to the left with Aemos along a harvester track-bed, leaving tacky footprints in

the glassy, crashed residue at the bottom of the huge rat. Husmaan's hempcloth-wrapped long-las was already armed. He darted away

to the right, quickly lost in the mist.

'Shall we?' I said to Bequin and Nayl.

'After you,' Nayl grinned.

I made one last command by vox, in Glossia code, and we trudged into the ripped thickets of the chew-after.

THE PHANT'S PEOPLE had used flamers to clear a wide space in the morass of the chew-over. We could smell the burnt pulp-fibre from

several dozen metres away.

The mist was still close, but I could make out several crop-runner trucks, skimmers and land speeders parked in the blackened

clearing. People bustled around them.

'WHAT DO YOU see?' I asked Nayl.

He played his magnoculars round again. 'Phant… and his twist cronies. The horned guy, and that eyeball creep. Maybe a dozen, some

of whom think they're hidden around the perimeter. Plus the prospective buyers. I make… three… no, four, all hive-types, with

minders. Sixteen other bodies, all told.'

I yanked up my hood. 'Come on.'

'There's an alarm strand round the site.'

'We'll trip it. That's what it's there for.'

THE ALARM STRAND was an ankle-high wire-cord tied taut between the churned root clumps. Every metre or so, the air-dried shell case

of a storm bug was carefully tied to it, forming a little, hollow-sounding bell. They rattled and jangled as we deliberately plucked the

wire.

In a moment, ragged-robed twist muscle loomed out of the murdered undergrowth, aiming matchlocks and blades at us.

'We're s'here for the auction,' I told them, holding up Phant's tracker. 'S'invited.'

'Name?' croaked a frog-headed thing with a crossbow and a spittle problem.

'Eye-gor, from off. With his twists.'

Frog-head waved us into the site. The others assembled before the low, flak-board stage on which Phant Mastik stood, looking round

at us.

'Eye-gor! Off-world twist, with two others,' Frog-head announced.

Phant nodded his heavy, tusked head and Frog-head and his men backed off, putting up their weapons.

++S'glad you could make it, twist++

'You the Phant. You the twist with the stuff. But… I s'hear my own name loud, not these others.'

++Let's all be known, then the sale can begin++

Phant looked down at the other buyers. One, a stunning female up-spire hiver in a tight bodyglove nodded. 'Frovys Vassik,' she said

through a pan-lingual servitor-skull drone that floated at her shoulder.

She was clearly speaking some high-caste dialect cant which the drone was translating. I assayed her and her two male bodyguards

quickly: Dilettante wealthers, would-be cultist types, well-armed and armoured with all the wargear spire money could afford.

'Merdok,' said the next, a frail, white-suited, elderly man leaning on a cane and wiping perspiration from his brow with a japanagar

lace kerchief that had cost more than the lowly Phant's entire outfit. He had four minders, squat females in rubberised warrena suits,

each with an electronic slave-leash collar around her throat.

'Tanselman Fybes,' said the bland-faced man to Merdok's left, stepping forward with a courteous nod. He was dressed in a bright

orange cooler-suit, with large, articulated exchanger vanes sprouting from his shoulders. His breath smoked in the personal veil of

cold air the suit was generating around him.

He was also alone, which made him instantly more dangerous than the hive retards who had brought muscle.

'You may address me as Erotik,' said the last, a bitch-faced crone who had inadvisably wedged her ancient body into a close-fitting,

spiked, black bodyglove, the mark of a death-cultist.

Or would be death-cultist, I thought. She had five masked and harnessed slaves with her, all of them sweating in the misty heat. I saw

at once they were out of their depth. They played at death-cult, up in the eyries of the mainhive, maybe cutting their skin and drinking

blood once in a while. The closest they had come to a real death-cult was watching some blurry, fake snuff-pict to impress their

friends after a banquet.

'S'greet you all. I'm Eye-gor. S'off world, and twisted as they come.'

I bowed. Fybes and Vassik returned the motion. Merdok mopped his brow and Erotik gestured a very ham-fisted sign of die True

Death which nearly made Nayl laugh out loud.

'Can we get started, my friend Phant?' Merdok asked, dabbing his kerchief around the sweat runs on his face. 'It's midday and bloody

hot out here.'

'And I have murders to do and blood to drink!' Erotik cried. Her plump and unhealthy minders oohed and aahed and tried to get their

nipple-spikes and bondage straps comfortable.

'Oh dear God-Emperor… they're never going to make it out alive…' whispered Bequin.

'More fool them…' I whispered back.

PHANT'S MEN USED force-poles and electrolashes to goad the sale item from the back of a crop-runner track onto the stage. It was a

rangy human, straitjacketed and bindfolded, with a heavy psychic-damper muzzle buckled around his head.

++Alpha-plus quality. One only. S'bids, now?'++

'Ten bars!' cried Erotik at once.

'Twenty,' said Vassik.

'Twenty-five!' cried Merdok.

Fybes cleared his throat. His cough blew cold steam out from the private atmosphere generated by his suit. 'I think that's established

the common level here. I do hate mixing with proles. One thousand bars.'

Erotik and her minders gasped.

Merdok looked pale.

Vassik glanced round at Fybes with a curt look.

'Ahh. At least someone sees the true worth of the item on sale. Good. We can begin serious bidding.' Vassik cleared her throat and her

cyber-skull dutifully issued white noise. 'Twelve hundred bars,' she said.

'Thirteen hundred!' Erotik cried out, desperately.

'Fifteen,' said Merdok. 'My best offer. I had no idea this meet would be so hungry… or so rich.'

'Two thousand,' said Vassik's hovering skull.

'Three,' said Fybes.

Merdok was already shaking his head. Erotik was walking away towards the edge of the site, complaining loudly to her pudgy sextoys,

who bustled around her.

'Three five,' said Vassik.

'Four,' said Fybes.

'Anything?' I whispered to Bequin.

'Not even the slightest latent push. But those baffles could be doing their job.'

'So it could be Esarhaddon?'

'Yes. I doubt it. But it could.'

'Nayl?'

Harlon Nayl looked round at me.

'Nothing. The Phant's minders are getting edgy because the old witch and her sad hump-muffins are trying to leave before the auction's

finished. But nothing else…'

'Five five,' Vassik's servitor-skull rasped.

'Six,' said Fybes.

Merdok had withdrawn to one side of the site with his minders, and was taking a sustaining puff of obscura from a portable water-pipe

one of the war-rena slave ferns was holding for him. Erotik and her chubby concubines were arguing with Horn-head and another

couple of twists on the other side of the burned acre.

'Eight five!' Vassik was announcing.

'Nine!' returned Fybes.

'Fifty!' I said quietly, tossing a huge pile of ingots down onto the stained soil.

There was a pause. A long, damned pause.

++Fifty bid++

Phant looked down at us all.

Merdok and Erotik and all their people were simply dumbstruck. Vassik turned away, screaming, and her minders had to hold her

down as she went into fits of rage.

Fybes just looked at me, his breath coming slow and short in clouds.

'Fifty?' he said.

'S'fifty, count 'em. You got better?'

'What if I have, Eye-gor? And please… stop it with the "s'stupid s'twist" talk. It's getting on my nerves.'

Fybes walked towards me. He reached up and pulled his face off. The flesh disintegrated like gossamer as he pulled it away, revealing

his blank, piercing eyes.

'Oh, Gregor. You do so like to make an entrance, don't you?' said Cherubael.

ELEVEN

FACE TO FACE.

NO WITNESSES.

DEATH ALONG THE LINE.

HIS WAS THE last face I had expected to see here, though it had been in my mind and my nightmares for nearly a hundred years.

'It's been a while, hasn't it, Gregor?' the daemonhost said softly, almost cordially. 'I've thought of you often, fondly. You bested me on

56-Izar. I… held a grudge for a while, I must admit. But when I learned you had survived after all, I was quite delighted. It meant

there would be a chance for us to meet again.'

The orange cooler-suit began to burn and collapse off him in molten hanks until he was naked. He rose gently, arms by his side, like a

dancer, and hovered on the wind a few metres above the churned soil. He was still tall, and powerfully made, but the aura that shone

from him was more sickly green than the gold I remembered.

Unhealthy bulging veins corded his body, and the nub-horns on his brow had grown into short, twisted hooks.

'And so we meet again. Aren't you going to say anything?'

I could feel Bequin shaking in terror beside me.

'Stay calm, stay still,' I told her.

The daemonhost glanced at her and his smile widened. 'The untouchable! How wonderful! An almost exact repeat of our first

encounter. How are you, my dear?'

'What do you want?' I asked.

'Want?'

'You always want something. On 56-Izar, it was the Necroteuch. Oh, I forgot. You never want anything, do you? You're just a slave,

doing another's bidding.'

Cherubael frowned slightly. 'Don't be uncivil, Gregor. You should treasure the fact that I have taken a personal interest in you. Most

things that cross me get destroyed very quickly. I could have hunted you out years ago. But I knew… there was a bond.'

'More of your riddles. More nothings. Tell me something real. Tell me about Vogel Passionata.'

He laughed, an ugly sound. 'Oh, you heard about, that did you?'

'Reports of the incident have made me suspect in the eyes of many.'

'I know. Bless you, that wasn't my intention. It was just a tiny error on my part. I'm sorry if it's inconvenienced you.'

'I have no wish to be seen as a man who would form a compact with daemons.'

'I'm sure you haven't. But that is what's happening, whether you like it or not. Destiny, Gregor. Our destinies are entwined, in ways

you cannot even begin to see. Why else would you dream about me?'

'Because it has become a central goal of my life to hunt you down and banish you.'

'Oh, this is a lot more than simple professional obsession. Think, why do you really dream of me? Why do you search for me so

diligently, even hiding the extent of that search from your masters?'

'I…' My mind was racing. This thing knew so much.