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in flight. His delicately calibrated machines never stayed calibrated for long. The electricity supply wasn’t robust enough to risk calling up anything dangerous, since the resonator might fail and let it out. He would drain the Ketty Jay’s batteries if he used them while she was grounded, and he’d never dare attempt a summoning while they were in the air.
    I need a place to work , he told himself. A home, with a sanctum. Or I’ll never get any better.
    But that would mean stepping off the Ketty Jay for good. And there might still be bounty hunters looking for him. He’d seen neither hide nor hair of the Shacklemores for a long while now, but it was dangerous to assume they’d given up.
    Bess, who was standing dormant in a shadowy corner, roused herself as he approached and came lumbering over. She was a golem of tarnished metal and chainmail, standing eight feet high and five broad. Her face – if indeed she had a face – was set low between enormous shoulders and hidden behind a circular grille. Only two twinkling stars were visible where her eyes might have been, twin glimmers in the abyss.
    She hunkered down in front of Crake so he could give her an awkward hug, and bubbled happily in the depths of her chest cavity.
    ‘How are you tonight, Bess? Happy to see me?’
    She rocked back and forth. Since she had no neck, it was the closest she got to a nod.
    ‘Good girl,’ he said, rubbing his hand over her hump. ‘Good girl.’
    He found it was easiest to treat her like a pet, though he wasn’t exactly sure what she was. Was there still something in there of the eight-year-old she’d once been? Perhaps. But he’d come to terms with the death of his niece as best he could. He’d come to terms with his part in it, too, although that had been much harder. The remorse and regret would never truly end. This golem carried some memory of that beautiful child, but it wasn’t her inside that armoured suit. The real Bess was dead. What was left was an echo of her, an imprint.
    But that was something.
    ‘Look what I brought you,’ he said, holding up the book. The title was printed on the red leather cover: Stories for Little Girls . Bess couldn’t read, but after a moment she recognised the book. She clapped her hands with a loud crash of metal, tottered backwards on her stumpy legs and plonked herself onto the ground.
    Crake sat down cross-legged next to her. She loomed over his shoulder as he opened the book, craning in eagerly to see the colourful illustrations.
    ‘Which one shall we read tonight?’ he asked.
    Bess made a quizzical noise: an eerie, otherworldly coo. She sensed a question, but she didn’t understand what he’d said. He was never quite sure how much she comprehended of speech. She seemed to have good days and bad days. Or perhaps she was just good at guessing his intentions rather than interpreting the actual words.
    ‘I’ll pick, shall I?’ he said, turning to one that he knew was her favourite.
    She hunkered closer, her face-grille pressed close to the page. Maybe it was the pictures she enjoyed, or maybe she just liked to hear him talk, even if she didn’t know what he was saying. It didn’t matter. While she kept listening, he’d keep reading. He’d brought her into the world, and he had responsibilities. An honourable man had to live up to his responsibilities.
    ‘ The Duchess and the Daisy-Chain ,’ he announced, and he began.
    The desert was a cold and empty place at night. Sand and stone, from horizon to horizon. Barren outcrops jutted out of the steel-grey dunes like rotten teeth. It was a new moon, only visible as a round absence in the swathes of stars overhead. Their frosty shine, coming from an impossible distance, was barely enough for human eyes to see by.
    For Jez, piloting the Ketty Jay , it wasn’t a problem. The night was as clear to her as the day.
    They were a long way outside the Free Trade Zone, deeply into illegal airspace. She flew with the lights out and