9
“She wasn’t lying,” Janet said, reading her smart. “About the Mackintoshes. All purchased at public auction in the last decade. Anonymous bidder in every case, as you might expect.”
I nodded, saying nothing and watching the cartoon playing out on the tunnel wall beyond the pipe carriage window. The Yin-side pipe network had hand-drawn animation cells every ten yards so that as the carriage streaked by the passengers were treated to a comic vignette or two. This one was vaguely recognisable, a recreation of some ancient 2D in which a cat and a mouse were locked in endless slapstick conflict, some of it insanely violent. Is that how he sees us? I wondered as the cat took yet another mallet to the head. Me chasing around after him forever. The cunning mouse always out-thinking the dumb bu
