Lizzy woke to the sound of clockwork and panting. She opened her eyes but still couldn't see. She panicked a little and took a breath. She wiggled her wrist, very subtly, and confirmed that she was tied to something. She was lying on her back and the tied wrist was slightly elevated. From making very slight motions she ascertained that she was fastened only by the one wrist. There was, however, no sense of a blindfold or hood. She really couldn't see. She panicked again and breathed her way out of it, hoping no one was watching her.

Clockwork and panting. She wondered if she might be dead. If she was, which part of The Wynding had she wound up in? She listened carefully. The clockwork sounds consisted of what she took to be a blend of gears' teeth interacting with various pins, each other and whatever scoops or pulleys they were working. The harder she listened the more complex and beautiful it became, almost like running water but with form, like a person made from water and the panting, the panting ran behind it like language, not disparate but connected to the form, like a sung response to the infinite variety of patterns of whirs, clicks and tings.

Then, rising out of that, as she listened, a mistier, but ringier tone, a reverberation, a deep and sullen Oh, appearing from the underlying silence and swirling about like it had evaporated from there. And from there it grew, expanded into howling. The howl soaked into the panting, the charmed clockwork and saturated it, became the only thing she could hear and by now she understood that this sound wasn't an external phenomenon, this was rising from somewhere inside her own consciousness. Was this the howl of an angel? Of Godh herself? She felt herself taken into it, drifting, drifting into that under-the-surface place. The Wynding.

Then it was yanked from her, this bliss. Something she hadn't felt before was torn from her temples. It felt raw, like her brain had been exposed and it jolted her eyes open. Light came flooding in, and colour and, finally, form. There was a stabbing pain in her head as the images coalesced around her. She was lying on her back on the cold bedrock. Directly above her, a grey, tarp ceiling, timber framed. She could sense someone shuffling about in the space behind her but she would have to lift her head to see anything other than tarp. She slowly kinked her head to one side. This allowed her to see the tarp wall, timber framing and a nanosteel bench, bolted into the bedrock, to which she was attached. Beyond the tarp some strange shadows. That must be the inner chamber. It was where the clockwork sounds and the panting were coming from. She was attached to the bench by a neoprene tie which was cutting into her wrist and would take a blade to remove. Slowly slowly, she turned her head to the other side and was able to see the outer wall and a closed flap from where access was clearly gained.

She hadn't been discovered as yet and she could still sense movement behind her. She tried tipping her head forward in such a way that it would look like she was still unconscious. Electrodes were sprawled across her, accidentally pulled from her head. The puller was out of view. Unlikely for a droid to be so clumsy. arKhana was tied up across from her. His trousers had been cut off leaving him naked from the waist down apart from his boots. If it wasn't for the electrodes fastened to his head, Lizzy might have thought this a good look. As far as she could tell she had been left in her fatigues. It looked like it was the electrodes that were keeping him unconscious. He twitched and chuntered like he was dreaming. Then he started to become tumescent. Lizzy tried not to watch.

A man in a white coat came between her and the view. He was facing away from her, toward arKhana but she took him for a man. He fiddled about for a while then stepped away to reveal arKhana, attached by his cock to some type of hood with wires and a cartridge. There was a vibrating noise and he was properly hard now. Lizzy made an involuntary sound and her body moved suddenly, drawing the man's attention. He turned to face her, tutting when he saw the electrodes off. The man was a Gnostic.

''What the fuck are you doing?'' asked Lizzy.

There was an awkward silence between them, in which the sound of the machine and the panting next door began to take on a whole new meaning for her.

''I mean,'' Lizzy clarified, ''why the fuck are you doing that to him?''

The man opened his mouth as if to speak but Lizzy cut across him.

''What I actually mean is, who the fuck are you and why the fuck are you milking my friend here?''

The man cleared his throat in a scientific way. ''My name is Flaft,'' he said, glancing at the outer entrance flap. ''Flaft kiJonsde.''

''kiJonsde?'' said Lizzy, astonished. ''The kiJonsde are no friends of the utThalé!''

''Vutign has my brothers,'' said Flaft.

''Down here?''

''He's taken them up to the Saturation Chamber. They were where you are.''

''And where were you?''

''I was in there,'' he glanced at the other wall, behind her.

Lizzy had too many questions and she was asking the wrong ones. ''Cut me free.''
kiJonsde looked again at the tent flap. ''He's due back any minute.''

''So do it quickly.''

kiJonsde looked unsure.

arKhana started moaning. kiJonsde attended to him, fiddling about with a plunger in the cartridge.

There was the sound of something happening in the voidspace outside.

''He's coming,'' said kiJonsde. He turned to re-attach Lizzy's electrodes.

Lizzy resisted. ''Just fucking cut me free will you. I'll get your brothers.''

kiJonsde thought about this.

''Vutign's going to want to keep a hold of them,'' Lizzy said. ''It's what gives him power over you.''

Flaft still looked to be in two minds.

''You want to be here?''

''I need to be here. The work's too important to let him bodge it up.''

Lizzy could hear the elevator reaching ground level.

''Okay,'' whispered Lizzy. ''Put the trodes on but don't power them up - I'll pretend.''

kiJonsde complied, just as utThalé entered the tent.

''Check her phone,'' he said irritably. ''There's a ping on the loose.''

Lizzy felt the air around her darken as kiJonsde leaned in. He patted her down, lingering at her breast, her inner thigh. He would pay for that.

''It's not here,'' he said. ''She must have ditched it.''

''Fucker.'' utThalé ripped the electrodes from her head.

Lizzy jolted forward, pretending to come round. She opened her eyes to find a blaster in her face.

''This one's phase-locked,'' he said, threateningly.

''By the Exotic?''

''Where's your phone?'' he said.

Lizzy glared at him.

''Phone.'' He pointed the weapon more pointily.

''Shoot me and you'll never find it,'' said Lizzy.

utThalé pointed his weapon at arKhana who, though still unconscious, was looking increasingly tense.

''You're going to kill him anyway.''

''Not until he's come. You've time enough to change my mind.''

''You're wasting yours. I'm not giving you Riverdolly.''

utThalé shot arKhana in the head. arKhana slumped back in his chair. His legs spasmed as he ejaculated into the receptacle.

utThalé's eyes lit up: ''Ha! Who would have thought? Should have done that in the first place.''

Lizzy's phone vibrated ever-so-gently in her back pocket where kiJonsde had left it. One short burst. Nothing more than a tickle.

utThalé pointed the blaster at her.

Lizzy shut her eyes tight as he fired.


*


When she came to, Lizzy's headache was twice as bad and her tongue was a woolly sock. Her cheek felt raw, like the skin had been ripped off. utThalé and kiJonsde were arguing. It sounded like they were in the adjoining section, along with the clockwork machine. She ventured to open her eyes a crack. arKhana was looking at her. His eyes were burning with rage and shame.

Lizzy was careful not to make a noise and she gestured to arKhana to do likewise. arKhana bowed his head. Lizzy saw that he was tied to the chair arm. She looked around. The trolley that kiJonsde had been working out of was gone. There was nothing in the outer chamber except for the chair arKhana was tied to and the long bench Lizzy was lying next to. There were no knives or sharp objects. No way of freeing herself or arKhana but she was desperate to make use of what small advantage they had. Riverdolly was making in-roads. Clearly she had been able to neutralise utThalé's blaster which had been locked by the Exotic. She must be making a real nuisance of herself.

Lizzy quietly extracted the phone from her pocket with her free arm and powered it up. She touched text function and typed:

Riverdolly?

I'm here.

Have you found the propagator?

Yes. I need you to get to her.

You can't hack it?

No. Her interface is mechanical, her operating system organic. I can hack whatever she's in control of but only temporarily. I need to get inside her head.

Organic?

Don't ask.

She was interrupted by a weird squeaking at the outer door-flap. The flap rustled, rose a little, then fell back into place. Something sighed, pneumatically, then tried again. The flap was lifted by a somewhat dithery ceramic claw and a shambolic-looking cluster-widow practically fell into the tent. It slowly wheeled its rattly way across the groundrock, wielding its cloths, its antiseptic wipes and bandages, its toenail removal devices and little awls and rusty razors and ground-source heat converters all about itself from a myriad of appendages like some geriatric Holrojan ghost-tamer. After quite a number of tension-building seconds, the droid finally made its way to Lizzy's position and stalled before her, sighing and panting from its unmaintained hydraulic systems.

''Good grief,'' whispered Lizzy. ''This thing must have been in service back in the fission days.''

''It's got to be at least three spans old,'' arKhana quietly agreed.

Meanwhile the widow searched itself for an appropriate tool, eventually producing, from one of its internal storage trays, a long, thin, not very sharp, pair of serrated scissors. It juddered forward, nearly taking Lizzy's eye out as she leaned up to get a better view.

Lizzy kept her face out of the way while the widow hacked at the neoprene tie around her wrist, preferring not to look at what was going on so close to the main vein. Presently the tie twanged open and Lizzy was released. She pocketed her phone as the widow reversed out of the way. arKhana waited for her to cut him free but she was against it. He appealed to the widow but Riverdolly, it seemed, took Lizzy's side. She held up a hand, signalling him to hang back. He put an urgently pleading expression on his face and she put a placatingly gentle one on hers. Then she turned away and, although he shuffled a bit in his chair, he kept his peace. He was enough of a soldier to know where she was coming from. There was no way he could approach this thing with a clear head and besides, he'd cut a fine figure trying to take down utThalé without his pants on.

Lizzy kept low. She had no blaster but found an interesting-looking, high-intensity beam-cutter lying around amongst kiJonsde's bits and pieces. She tried it on. It was fitted to a finger-holster and fired beams of greater or lesser intensity according to how the finger was moved. Lizzy practiced on the nanosteel bench which hissed and bubbled in response. She liked it and thought she would keep it for her own arsenal. She pretended to fire at arKhana and pulled a stupid face. This at least brought a smile out of him.

On the other side of the tarpaulin partition, utThalé and Flaft kiJonsde had gone quiet but there was movement which suggested they were focused on their own thing. The clockwork and panting had increased in volume, with the panting now upgraded to a series of grunts. Lizzy felt safe enough to approach the doorflap between the two sections, entirely on her feet, though she had to make an angry gesture at the cluster-widow to get it to stop dithering about.