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this, sir.”
    He watched her put the top back on the bottle, and noticed her hands were shaking.
    “Just tell me.”
    Amy swallowed nervously, and cleared her throat.
    “The transmission appears to have originated on, um, Mars.”

 
     
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
    HAIRY FRIENDS
     
    C ASSIUS B ERG’S SPINDLY frame lay strapped to a bunk in the airship’s infirmary. Victoria looked down at him with distaste. Even in sleep, his leering smile remained fixed and permanent.
    The Smiling Man.
    Once, on her world, he’d been a figure of nightmare and terror, a killer with the face of a clown and the dead eyes of a snake. He’d haunted her nightmares. He’d killed Paul and tried to kill her. And then she’d thrown him out of the Tereshkova ’s cargo bay, and thought it was over. She’d thought he was gone for good, little suspecting she’d run into another version of him, in an alternate version of Paris, on another timeline altogether.
    This new version of Berg looked even more like a corpse than the first one had. His skin was pale almost to the point of translucence, and had been stretched tightly across his scalp and cheekbones. Metal staples held it in place, each at the centre of a circle of red and puckered flesh. His black overcoat reeked of mildew and stale cigarettes.
    She looked around at the dozen or so monkeys crowding the bed.
    “Wake him up,” she said.
    A grizzled capuchin tapped Berg on the forehead with the flat side of a meat cleaver.
    Victoria looked down and straightened her tunic. It was a red one with gold buttons and a silver scabbard on a white silk sash, and it had once belonged to her elderly Russian godfather, the Commodore. It was the only thing of his to have survived the crash of his old skyliner, the Tereshkova ; and it had only survived because she had been wearing it at the time, having donned it for luck in the battle against the Gestalt.
    For this confrontation, she had left her head bare, displaying her scars—scars the other Berg had given her during their first clash.
    On the bed, the new Berg’s eyelids flickered. He blinked up at the hairy faces and bared fangs around him and jerked against his restraints.
    “What’s happening?”
    “I’m happening, Mister Berg.” Victoria stepped forward and bent slightly, bringing her face a little closer to his. “I trust you remember me from this morning?”
    “Let me go.”
    Victoria shook her head, keeping her expression immobile and unfriendly. “I’m afraid not. I have some questions for you.”
    “I mean it. I have powerful friends. If—”
    “As you can see, I have angry, hairy friends, Mister Berg, with sharp teeth and bad tempers. Now, let’s take all your bluster as read, shall we? Because, from where I’m standing, you’re in no position to be making threats.”
    He glared at her.
    “When I get free from these straps, I will make it my business to kill you.”
    Victoria wagged a finger. “If you get free from those straps, Mister Berg, these guys will eat you.”
    She brushed at a speck of dust on her tunic, making the medals clink and jangle, and let her other hand rest on the pommel of her sword. Around the bed, the monkeys chattered and whooped, and did their best to look fierce and hungry. They brandished swords and knives. One, a brawny howler monkey, carried an old fire axe.
    Berg looked around at them, and stopped straining against his straps.
    “I won’t talk.”
    “Yes, you will.”
    He cocked his head. “How can you be so sure?”
    “Because we’ve done this before, you and I.” Victoria tried not to shudder at the memory. “Last time we spoke, you were dangling out of the back of a skyliner and, when push came to shove, you told me everything I needed to know.”
    Berg’s brows furrowed. “What on Earth are you talking about?”
    “We’ve met before, Mister Berg, on another timeline. You may have killed the Victoria from this world—you may have killed a whole lot of people for that matter—but,