Chapter 1

Rajata was late. As she dodged quickly into a small side street, she grinned to herself, thinking that, for an anarchist, actually being on time might be seen as letting the side down, somehow. Then, emerging back onto the main road, cutting through a random shop, she lost the smile: She was late because security was becoming a real pain. Well, security – the State's security, her security, the group's security – had always been a challenge – for a revolutionary that was a given – but lately things had been becoming almost impossible. OK, so the Confederacy people didn't seem to be taking that much interest in local (planetary) politics but they were taking an interest in Earth First and such like. And that was a problem, given that, to the Official Mind, one radical was pretty much like any other – Raja could remember being caught up in a sweep against neo fascist groups a few years back, and however ironic that might have been it was still unpleasant, to put it mildly. So, even if she wasn't planning to disrupt any Extractions or blow up any CAP testing centres any time soon, she knew she had to be ever more careful in going about her business.

Which, for the moment, involved getting safely to – and from – the group meeting she'd called. Which required trust – her own route here had been sufficiently convoluted and circumspect that she was pretty sure she hadn't been followed, now she had to hope that everyone else had been as careful.

She sighed, resignedly, respecting the commitment of her fellow activists even as she recognised their complete, practical ineptitude...

The group had, at least, assembled and the anonymous venue they were using appeared not to have attracted any untoward attention. Obviously, no-one quite knew what the Confed's AIs were capable of – rumours ranged from scary to terrifying – but there wasn't a lot they could do about that. So she discretely let herself into the room and, unobserved, became an observer herself.

They were discussing bombs. And not just any bombs – these were ... well, they were explosive devices, true, with some very novel chemistry providing the bang and some exquisitely designed engineering delivering the payload. Which, she learnt as the discussion went on, was tattoo ink. These bombs were not designed to kill, or to disable. Using some complex geometry and not-so-simple ballistics, they would propel ink coated particles on very precise trajectories ... and tattoo some appropriate message across any exposed body parts of their victims. As to how they would be delivered ... well, no ... they hadn't thought much about that, yet, nor – she shuddered, despite herself – had they considered the likely consequences of exposing themselves and their capabilities in order to deliver what amounted to a student prank. But then again, she thought, listening to Tiff and Johann expanding on their designs, it might be a bloody stupid idea but it was an exceptionally elegant and technically extremely clever one.

But, still, things were moving on and she hadn't risked getting them all in one place to give their wilder fantasies a chance to flourish quite like this. So, she let her bag drop onto a table with a conspicuous thud and, thus announced, watched the group reorganise itself around her. It was sad, really, but it was a fact: Whatever their principles, however interminable the debates, and however poisonous the resulting disputes, they did all tend to look to Rajata for direction. Or as they would have vehemently argued, for suggestions, for input into their mutual decision making. She grinned to herself, remembering a hated teacher and his disdain for her 'wasted leadership potential' – ah, if only he knew – then reminded herself that, after all, she had been in the game longer than anyone else hereabouts, had consequently had her street skills honed by only too frequent brushes with the Law.

So, yeah, she knew what she was doing, or, at least, she had been pretty confident before the Sa'arm complicated things. Now, well, things had got complicated and that necessitated responding in ways that would have previously been unthinkable. Even if group niceties also had to be observed – in this case, listening to Johann explaining his ideas all over again, while the rest interjected with their various objections, suggestions and particular takes on the concept and the philosophy of the action. She cut them short, feeling a slight twinge of guilt about how easy that was to do.

"I think there's something a little more pressing, to be honest," she said, as soon as she reasonably could. "CAP testing, to be precise."

She got a number of blank looks, the beginning of a predictably hostile reaction from others – this was a group that regarded such basics as driving licenses and public transport tickets as just so many infringements on their individual liberty, after all. However, things needed to be made clear and she hoped to be able to do it without having to rerun all of the ancient, much rehearsed arguments. She went on, rapidly enough to forestall immediate objections.

"Thing is, those CAP cards aren't quite compulsory, yet, but not having one – or a bus ticket, driving license, whatever, I know, is going to increasingly become a source of suspicion and, consequently, hassle. Or worse. So I think we need to get ourselves collectively and, of course, individually, tested. As soon as possible, by preference."

Uproar. Predictable, all too predictable uproar, but uproar nonetheless. She managed to carry on before they could get too far into the rehashing of old debates, before, in fact, the whole thing could degenerate into the pointless shouting at each other stage.

"A CAP score," she said, asserting herself over the rising tumult, "is just a number. We know that its gender biased and that it probably – thank you, Jas – heterosexist, too. It's also based on a set of values – such as aggression, authority and hierarchical sexuality that are literally anathema to all of us. Equally – I know what you're going to say, Tiff – it appears to be based on some unbelievably archaic and – yes, Tiff, Just Plain Wrong – assumptions about the relationship between genotype and phenotype, or between Nature and Nurture, to put it another way.

"But so what? Knowing these things as we so obviously do, why should our possession of these numbers make any difference to us? Being a master, being a slave is, all other things being equal, an attitude of mind, isn't it? Are we going to want to dominate and control – or to pimp and to prostitute – each other? Just because of a figure assigned to us by some anonymous piece of alien technology?"

She paused, noticing with satisfaction that she seemed to have nonplussed them all. Well, aside from Johann, but she swiftly headed him off, continuing,

"Look. We all have lots of numbers, National Insurance numbers and Health Service numbers just being the most obvious, if you don't count your 'unregistered' – but still trackable – mobile phone. A CAP is just another irrelevancy, just another number. Having one will save a lot of shit, and thus might even help us work towards a fairer society in the future, but it won't make any other difference. So we need to get them, OK?"

And she sat back, listening to them grumble but knowing that she'd won the day, that she'd been sufficiently decisive and determined that people would comply, go along and get themselves tested.

It was possibly a shame that she had no idea how wrong she had been about pretty much everything else.

A couple of days later, Rajata was still in a slight state of shock. In fact, she was curled up on her sofa, not really listening to whatever the hell was on the radio, and only occasionally sneaking glimpses at her CAP card, her score. 8.7.

Which was just a number, of course, even as she ran through the arguments yet again. Still, it was a pretty bloody high number and it was a 'ticket to the stars'. Rumour had it that things were pretty bloody chaotic out there – there was a lot of military-industrial shit, obviously, but socially ... hell, politically, there had to be more to play for out there, didn't there?

She really wanted to talk about this with someone but her Straight World friends would just not have understood what she was going on about and the Group ... well, the group was in lockdown. Whether this was an exhibition of collective paranoia – perhaps a guilt reaction to obtaining the hated cards – or a genuinely appropriate response to increased official attention, she couldn't tell. But, she'd defined the rules, for gods sake, knew that only their Ultimate Emergency procedures would convince anyone that it was her who was breaking security and contacting them ... and that would initiate a one-time only dispersal, never to willingly coalesce.

And so she sat on the sofa, listened, despite herself for footsteps in the communal stairwell, imagined helicopters, wondered what the Confed drones she'd heard about looked and sounded like...

All of which, she knew, was a recipe for complete breakdown, gibbering into the arms of a nice paramedic en route to the Bin ... if she didn't just starve to death first. Neither of which were particularly attractive options and anyway, didn't Guevara – no libertarian, he – emphasise the importance of taking the fight to the enemy, ensuring that He didn't get to choose the ground?

Cursing herself for the fool she suddenly knew she'd been, she threw off the blanket, pulled on a pair of sensible trainers and a fleece and – before second thoughts could intrude – set off out into the Real World.

Last thing she did, before she let herself out of the flat, was make sure she had that CAP card in the hip pocket of her jeans.

Outside, the paranoia returned. She'd been living round Archway for years – maybe too long, an unhelpful voice put in – and she knew these streets. Maybe more to the point, she knew how varied, how unpredictable, said streets could be. And looking at it like that, there was nothing obviously untoward going on. A few taller than average men around, for sure – Mugabe's destruction of Zimbabwe had left a lot of very tall Shona guys seeking some sort of living hereabouts, no telling what tidal flows they came and went on – but no-one was obviously paying her any attention. Except that maybe that guy in the red ski-jacket had been behind her for a while, that the grey ... ski jacket ... over there was too obviously not looking at her ... and the green, yup, ski jacket up ahead appeared to have just winked at her.

Rajata realised that paranoia – paranoia with a capital P, the sort that comes with full board and free drugs thrown in – was becoming all too real, so she did what she knew she had to do. She went into a café and bought a coffee. Fished some papers out of her bag, too – she was due back at her Straight World job soon enough, after all – and sat there, conspicuously at ease with the world.

Green ski jacket was the first to appear, got a coffee, too, sat down at a table in the opposite corner. Didn't look at Rajata, but did spill the sugar he spooned into the cup, came near to missing with the milk. Rajata, a puritan to her atheistic bones, recoiled slightly at the idea of adding sugar and/or milk to decent coffee but then a more worrying thought occurred. Perhaps the guy was uptight about something – maybe his cat had just been run over or whatever – but he looked calm enough. So what if his clumsiness was the result of something deeper than mental distraction – or even some sort of neurological problem. What, in fact, if he was having genuine proprioception problems ... as if, for instance, his body shape had recently been a different size or shape? Such as quite a lot larger, perhaps? She knew the Confed 'upsized' their goons, so presumably they could downsize them, too?

She took a deep, calming breath, wondering whether that was one of those genuine flashes of insight that she'd found so useful in the past or whether she really was finally losing it. For appearances sake, though, she made a few conspicuous notes in the margins of her papers and wasn't remotely surprised when grey ski-jacket came in, tripping slightly on the doormat, and sat down in a second corner, making a triangle with Rajata and Green SJ. Also obviously not a local – he appeared to be expecting table service, here? – and, yep, not practised in his movements when he finally got the hint and clumped over to the counter to get a can of coke.

Rajata allowed herself a sigh of relief, knowing, now, that this wasn't just her problem, and then, decisively, got on with stuff. Which is to say, she left her papers where they were, shoved her bag onto the seat next to her and took herself off to the toilet. A toilet that, she knew well, was generally filthy, rarely provided with tissues or towels of any description and which, conveniently, had an openable window giving access – or egress – to a narrow, hardly overlooked alleyway. Not that this was too surprising, given that Rajata had freed those window bolts herself, even provided a couple of easily over-lookable beer crates as a step immediately below.

And so, out she went, lithely dropping down onto the gritty tarmac below her, pausing for a couple of seconds to check for anything amiss and then, reassured, got herself out of her landing crouch, and strolled confidently down the alley into the street behind the café she'd just left. Which was OK as far as it went, she thought, estimating how long she had before her 'toilet break' would begin to arouse suspicion, aware that her current demeanour had to be perfectly natural, normal and completely inconspicuous. Which she was good at, so...

She turned first left, then crossed the road, passed through one of the bigger local stores, just another airhead girl out shopping, and was just beginning to feel a little more relaxed, possibly even a little pleased with herself when she walked straight into Red Ski Jacket, standing, unconcerned, just beside the entrance to the tube station she was just about to enter.

And when he made no move to intercept her, just looked her in the eye and smiled, she really began to freak out...

Rajata knew better than to go home, but also began to have a rather more sanguine view of her alternatives than she'd previously imagined. The theory of affinity groups was fine, she thought - everyone has contacts and acquaintances who none of their other friends knew much about, making them very hard to identify and monitor, but ... well, now she was on her own, and a quick review of her options suggested nothing particularly promising. So she went to a cash machine, withdrew the maximum allowed and then contemplated her options, carefully losing her debit card as she entered a different tube station.

Whatever happened, being somewhere else was something of a high priority.

Sonja, an old college friend now living and working out in the East End, seemed to be about the best option, and Rajata duly appeared on her doorstep a fair while later. In the interim, she'd swapped from tube to tube and bus to bus and taken a variety of random walks, kilometres of them. As far as she could tell, she hadn't been followed, though given earlier events the thought was not entirely reassuring, but now she was knackered. When Sonja finally answered the door – it was late, she realised – she more or less collapsed through it. And Sonja, without raising a metaphorical eyebrow, did what Rajata had trusted her to do – she gave her some food, she made up a bed ... and she didn't ask a single question.

Next morning, she found a pot of coffee beside the bed, and her clothes freshly laundered on the chair beside it. She smiled to herself – Sonja had always been a helpful soul – and set about draining the coffee, wondering whether her host had left for work already and whether or not she should extend her stay. It was tempting – she was fairly sure that this was about as safe as she was going to get, even if she wasn't quite sure what it was she had to be scared of. OK, so she appeared to have attracted some official attention – whatever the exact nature of that officialdom – but they seemed to have adopted a light touch, so far at least, in that it would surely have been possible for them to bundle her into the back of the proverbial van without much of a problem ... And just as easy, probably, to have kept her under surveillance that she would never have spotted. So someone, somewhere, was playing games. She shrugged, knowing that she simply didn't have the data to answer all the myriad questions that that thought threw up ... and went downstairs to find some breakfast.

Which was, in fact, waiting for her on the table, rye toast and Sonja's home-made jams, more coffee and, soon enough, Sonja herself, looking slightly damp from her shower.