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Carrington. You can have the exclusive rights to my absolute suicide, if you will listen to my confession..." Such a small price to pay.
    "Your suicide?"
    "Not just another performance — this will be the real thing. I have played with death long enough to know that nothing but true extinction can pay for what I did. Or did you think I planned an ultimate physical suicide, and that I intended to live on in my Augmentation, immortal? Now that would be a living hell!"
    But Daniel Carrington is shocked. He stares at Devereaux, slowly shaking his head.
    "No..." he says. "No, I can't let you do that."
    Devereaux is flustered. "But come, isn't that why you wanted to see me? To arrange to broadcast the ultimate event?"
    From the inside of his roll-neck jacket, Carrington withdraws a pistol. It is a karque-hunter's dart gun. He holds it in both hands and levels it at Devereaux.
    "Do you think for a minute that I like what I do, M. Devereaux?"
    "Why, my dear man..."
    "Do you think I enjoy living with death? Christ, everyone on the planet despises me. I have this..." he gestures to his scarred face "...as a continual reminder."
    Devereaux tries to be placatory. He is non-plussed.
    "You didn't want to meet me to ask my permission—?" he begins.
    "I asked you here to kill you," Carrington smiles.
    Devereaux is sardonic. "With that?" he says. "My dear man, you'll need more than a dart gun to destroy my Spider." He pauses, peering at him. "But why?" he whispers.
    "I've hated you for so long, Devereaux," Carrington smiles. "Of course, I naturally assumed you were dead — but I still felt hatred."
    ~
    "You...?" Devereaux says. He recalls the kid he picked up, all those years ago.
    "I didn't realise you'd survived, you see," Carrington says. "All I could think about was that you'd used me to kill yourself." He pauses. "Then I saw your picture on the vid, read about your forthcoming trip to Venus — and I knew I needed revenge. I had to kill you."
    He fires without warning. The bolt hits Devereaux in the chest and kills him instantly — kills, that is, the body, the meat, the biological entity that is Jean-Philipe Devereaux. As the body falls to the floor, Devereaux finds himself in the sensorium of his Spider.
    "Monsieur Carrington..." His transistorised voice issues from his unmoving lips. "There is a laser in the inside pocket of my jacket. If you set it at maximum, it will despatch my Augmentation."
    Carrington is standing over him, staring down.
    "But first..." Devereaux pleads. "First, please, let me confess."
    "No!"
    Carrington steps forward, slips a small laser from his jacket.
    "That..." the Spider says "...is hardly powerful enough."
    "For the past five years I've dreamed of this moment."
    "Please, my confession!"
    "I dreamed of putting you to death, Devereaux — but that would be too good for you."
    Devereaux screams a hideous, "No!"
    Carrington lifts the laser and, with an expression of revulsion, fires and separates Devereaux's head from his shoulders. He grasps the a hank of hair and lifts the head. Dimly, thorough failing eyes, Devereaux makes out on Carrington's features an expression of supreme satisfaction. "That would be far, far too good for you."
    ~
    Time passes...
    Devereaux has known seven days as a prisoner in his Spider — in one case ten days — but always these periods were made tolerable by the knowledge that soon he would be returned to his body. Now there is no such knowledge. Upon killing him, Carrington bisected his head and fished out the Spider, bound his limbs and imprisoned him within a black velvet pouch, so that he did not have even the compensation of vision with which to distract his attention from the inevitable... He had only his memories, which returned him again and again to the darkside of Janus.
    At spiraldown, his co-pilot had withdrawn from the net, left Devereaux — or Minot, as he was then — to oversee the simple docking procedure. Devereaux had disengaged from his Spider a fraction