Early morning at the Knight estate found Devon cursing elegantly over a pile of police reports. He put through a call to Kitt's videophone.

"Good morning, Devon," Kitt said. The car was empty.

"Morning," Devon said. "Where's Michael?"

"Still asleep," Kitt told him. "What's wrong?"

"There was a shootout last night between two rival gunrunning groups. They think one of them at least has some connection to the drug ring you've been sent out to crack. Apparently both of them laid claim to a truckful of AK-47s."

"I see," Kitt said. Devon pinched the bridge of his nose, riffling through the reports.

"Three men killed, one injured and left on the scene. Both groups left the area before police arrived."

"Give me the location," Kitt said, sending a wakeup signal to Michael's communicator. Devon transmitted the information. "We're on it, Devon."

Devon nodded and cut the connection, reaching into his desk drawer for a bottle of aspirin.

In a few minutes, Michael appeared at the door to his motel room, face rumpled with sleep. "Kitt," he protested. "It's six in the morning."

"Devon says there was a shootout last night between our drug ring and some other criminals," Kitt informed his partner. Michael's eyes went hard, though the weariness didn't leave his face.

"Right," he said, ducking back into the room and retrieving his overnight bag. He tossed it into Kitt's passenger seat and went to return the key, coming back at a trot. Kitt had already lit his engine, and Michael had scarcely got into the driver's seat and closed the door behind him before he pulled out of the parking lot and headed out across the city to the site of the shootout.

Jay woke before anyone else. Getting up, he stretched, still feeling the effects of Riley's massage. His jet lag was at last beginning to leave him, and he felt better than he had in days. Quietly, he showered and left his room, pausing to look down into the atrium from the crosswalk on his way to the workroom. The two black cars and the white Stingray sat parked close together; Jay found himself wondering absently what they were talking about, before telling himself not to be ridiculous.

Was it so ridiculous?

He gave up and slipped into the workroom. Karr was silent, the fifth LED dark. Jay knew little about computers, but he assumed that indicated a lower level of consciousness or functioning.

He turned and regarded the rest of the room. The blinds were open, showing the distant Henry Mountains; the kilim on the floor was dull and tastefully colored, the tall torchiere was turned off, the cinderblock-and-plank shelving stuffed with books and manuals and computer software companions. The walls were pale concrete, covered here and there with tapestries and framed posters; he noticed a large glossy print of David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust which made him smile for times gone by. A number of now-obsolete desktop computers were stacked in the corner, cables and wires hung in coils on hooks in the wall. Boxes and boxes of chips and connections occupied one end of the long workbench that ran along one wall of the room; a magnifying light was bent over the guts of a laptop not dissimilar to the one parked next to Karr. Jay sat down in the office chair and regarded the black box that held the mind under his care.

It really did resemble a VCR, he thought. Apart from the lack of the tape slot, the box was almost exactly the size and shape of the basic VCR. The voice panel on the front was like nothing Jay had ever seen outside of a sci-fi movie. The perceptor was something entirely new to him, too; a black soft oval sensor about the size and shape of a large black olive. It rested on the soft mouse pad by the side of the CPU. Jay couldn't imagine having all his external sensory input channeled through a single sensor; he'd go mad.

He considered. Karr seemed much more stable than when he'd arrived. There was something important he was thinking of trying: the great gaps in his memory were clearly bothering him, as was natural. Jay wanted to use the original backup disks to restore some of those memories. Not all the sensory deprivation, of course. Perhaps a little of that, but nothing more. But he rather thought Karr would regain some of his prior self-confidence and completeness if he had some memory of what he'd done. He had lost years out of his life, and Jay didn't think that was healthy.

And he needed to be put into the car. Obviously the car was a much more complete and meaningful sensory experience, and he believed Karr would be much more comfortable if he had a constant stream of complex information and sensation to process. He would speak to Richard about putting the AI into the car once Richard got up.

Karr's fifth LED flickered and lit. Jay drew a deep breath, let it out again.

"Good morning, Jay," the AI said. There was something new in his voice. Jay sat and waited. "I spoke with Kitt last night."

"Over the link?"

"Yes," Karr said. "He was....sympathetic. Very sympathetic. He said that Riley and Richard had stolen me from FLAG and brought me here, and that he didn't know where I was, and that he wasn't going to turn me in."

"From what I can gather, Kitt seems like a very pleasant individual," Jay said impartially. "How are you feeling, Karr?"

"It's not easy for me to deal with the fact that they stole me," Karr said.

"I understand. You do know they did it for your own good, or at least what they saw as your good?"

"I know. I do understand."

"Karr," Jay said after a moment. "With your permission, of course, I'd like to try and see if we can restore some of your memories. Is that something you want to do?"

"Yes," the AI said immediately. "Please. I need to know what happened. I need to know what Kitt was to me, all the things I did, even if they're bad. I need to know before I can know who and what I am."

"That's what I thought. I don't know enough about computers to do this, but both Riley and Richard do, and I'll get them to work on that when they wake up. I'd also like to get you into the car as soon as possible, because I think it would help if you had some more complete interface with the world around you than a single perceptor." As he was speaking, Jay had picked up the perceptor and was holding it gently in his palm, allowing Karr to feel the warmth of his presence and the comfort of his support.

"Jay," Karr said. "Thank you. I don't know how I would have reacted to this sort of treatment before all this happened, and I don't know if it matters; but you've helped me so much, and I want to thank you. It's strange to me to feel emotions, but I seem to be unable to avoid it."

"I know," Jay said. For a long time they remained silent, at what passed for ease between them.

"Jay," Karr said. "What does it mean to love someone?"

Jay regarded the CPU with a raised eyebrow. "Where did that come from?"

"When I was first reactivated by Richard, they found I was a lot more comfortable with the radio on to give me something to concentrate on. A lot of the songs, in fact ninety-seven percent of them, were about love. I don't know what love is, and I was wondering if you could explain it to me."

Jay leaned back in the chair. "It's a very complicated concept. It means a bunch of different things, but the general consensus is that when you love someone you think about them all the time; that they are very important to you, more important than you are to yourself, that you would do almost anything for them and that when they are happy and sad you are likewise happy and sad. It's not always a very positive experience."

"So I gathered, from the songs," Karr said, and fell silent. Jay had the definite idea that he was speaking of more than just a few songs; that there was something deeper here. He wondered vaguely just how Riley really felt about Karr. From his few conversations with her he'd seen a strange dark shadow come into her eyes whenever Karr's name was mentioned. It was interesting.

"Of course," he qualified, "humans also say that they love things like chocolate and cigarettes and cars." The word was out before he realized it; Karr was silent, and Jay could have kicked himself. "I didn't mean..."

"I know." Karr's voice was assured. Again, Jay heard that underlying coldness, wondered at the power of the voice and the entity behind it. Once Karr was completely healed, he would be a force to be reckoned with. Even now, he had a strange and undeniable power over the listener. Jay had known people with this sort of charisma before; they tended to be criminal masterminds or movie stars. The thought of Karr's voice in a movie suddenly flashed across Jay's mind in a glissade of possibility. He pushed it away.

"Karr, if we manage to get your memories back, they won't be pleasant. I can almost guarantee that."

"I know," Karr said, and his voice was quiet and assured. "I know, and I need them. I need to know what I have been so that I can understand what I should be, and should not be."

Jay regarded the AI with intensely green eyes. "You're very human, Karr," he said, almost to himself.

Richard woke later, after the sun had begun to burn the night's chill from the desert around them. He was in a rare good mood, and it was with sheer contentment that he lay on his back in the great bed and felt the warm heaviness of Riley's body against his own. They had loved one another for quite a long time; Richard had never forgotten that night with Karr, when Riley had stayed late to fix the engine mount no one else had caught, and he had seen the simple competence and grace of her. But there was so much in the way; there always had been. He had his business here in Utah, and she had her father to deal with, and was employed full-time as a mech for FLAG. It wasn't feasible.

But for the past week things had been different.

Richard rolled over and got out of bed, padding down to the kitchen to start breakfast. Riley stirred and woke as the warmth of his presence retreated, and she too lay staring up at the ceiling, in what passed for peace, for almost fifteen minutes before getting up and showering.

She found Richard manipulating a waffle iron with surprising confidence and singing along to Space Oddity. Leaning against the doorframe, she regarded him with half-closed eyes. He looked infinitely better than he had when she had met him on the white road with the disks; the violet pools under his eyes had faded, his face no longer looked dangerous. He was whip-slender and strong. She found herself watching the muscles move under his t-shirt, admiring the classical interplay of form, the great columnar muscles supporting the spine, the way his shoulders moved. His black hair was too long, falling untidily around his face and getting into his eyes.

He became aware of her eyes on him after a few moments and turned to face her. "...This is Major Tom to Ground Control...oh, hello. Good morning."

"Good morning," she said, raising an eyebrow. "I haven't heard this song in years. 'I'm stepping through the door, and floating in a most peculiar way...'"

"I have the follow up song too," Richard said. "Poor Major Tom. He got screwed."

"Royally," she agreed, moving forward into the kitchen proper and starting the coffee brewing. "First he's stuck out there in his tin can for gods know how long, and then he becomes a junkie. Not fair, really."

Richard stretched out a long arm and curled it around her waist, pulling her to him. She leaned against his chest and felt the strength of his arms around her, a protective cage, invulnerable. The thought came to her suddenly and irrevocably: This is where I belong. This is where I want to be. This is where I need to be.

She was almost frightened by the strength of the conviction. She knew it would make her life a great deal more complicated.

But then, she was living a very complicated life right now, she mused. She was not exactly supposed to be here; she was supposed to be back in Nevada, at FLAG, working with Bonnie and Justin; she certainly wasn't supposed to be involved in a plot to bring back Kitt's ex-nemesis, and no way under the sun was she supposed to be the one responsible for stealing FLAG property.

Oh, well, she thought, in a rare moment of sangfroid; live one day at a time. One day at a time is all I really can guarantee myself.

Jay appeared at the kitchen door, and again Riley was struck cold by his extraordinary physical beauty. Something disturbing appeared in his green eyes as they fell across her, something she didn't want to recognize; it was gone in an instant, but she couldn't forget that it had been there. Silence burned between them briefly; then Jay breathed deeply. "Waffles are such an American thing," he said lightly.

"Don't tell me you can't obtain waffles in your French castles," Richard said, one raven's wing eyebrow raised.

"I really can't," Jay protested. "Something about the flour or the water or...I don't know. But you just can't get good waffles off this continent. Nor can you get good pizza."

"That at least is true," Riley put in. "London pizza restaurants, in a word, suck. And they won't deliver."

"Wretched Brits," Jay said mildly, and Richard waved a finger at him in an admonitory sort of way.

"Watch it, or you get no magical American waffles."

Later, while they sat around the kitchen table and ate inelegantly with their fingers, Jay brought up the subject of Karr's memories.

"How much was lost from the disks?"

"He's lost memories after his second deactivation, the one involving the cliff. After that, they're all permanently gone."

Riley stared into her coffee mug. Kitt was linked to Karr.

"Maybe not," she said. "If Kitt can remember the happenings after that, and Kitt is linked to Karr, why couldn't he...."

"Transmit them over the link?" Jay finished. Richard frowned.

"Jay, are you sure it's a good idea to put those memories back? They're all of things he wouldn't do now. Isn't he going to feel guilty?"

"Yes, he is," Jay said immediately. "But he's also going to feel like he is complete; like he knows his own past. What he is right now is heavily amnesiac."

Richard, subdued, nodded. "I really only wanted to help," he said.

"You did," Jay said. "You did what ought to have been done at the beginning. You changed the programming just enough so that he could comprehend the importance of life. You gave him a chance for real humanity."

Riley was silent, looking from the green eyes to the gold. They were a lot alike, she thought suddenly. "Jay's right," she said quietly. "You did what needed to be done. I don't know if he would have been able to deal with the memories before Jay helped him. Now, he's stable enough to take them; and he needs them."

Jay looked at her with gratitude, and she found herself having to breathe deeply. How could any one man be so beautiful? she wondered absently. One of his eyes was greener than the other one, if that was possible. The silver lock fell over his forehead, and he pushed it back automatically.

He thought suddenly that he would have to leave in less than three weeks. He would never see Riley again. That thought was peculiarly unpleasant. His days here had been exhausted, but colored by the constant prospect of catching a glimpse of her slight form, hearing her low kind voice. He told himself firmly not to be ridiculous: his model would be waiting breathlessly for him in the great bed at the Chateau de Chartrenceau, magnificently unclad.

The image of Madison Taylor shifted in his mind, shrank, became a much shorter woman with colorless hair and great grey eyes, slender, long-legged, with none of Madison's perfection, but with something the model could never hope to have: fascination.

He pushed away the thought of a naked Riley with some reluctance, and returned his trained mind to the task at hand.

"If we can get Kitt to agree to this, is he going to tell the others at FLAG?" he asked.

"I don't think so," Riley said softly. "I think he probably understands the importance of timing in this case. If we explain it to him, that is."

"I'll ask Karr to put the idea to him. More importantly right now, can we put Karr into the car? He really needs to be mobile. He's beginning to get restive."

"The Shadow's ready," Richard put in. He had been watching the eye game Riley and Jay had been playing, and sighed silently; he knew where it was going to end. "Is Karr really stable enough? I mean, he won't just take off and disappear, or start attacking people, or anything?"

"I should think you'd have more faith in him," Jay said. "He's stable. If he needs time alone, he'll take it. I think the risks are nothing compared to the good it will do him."

"Then let's do it," Richard said. "I have the cables and perceptors ready."

Five hours later, all three of them were stiff and aching from the close and fiddly work of connecting perceptors and testing circuits. Karr's shielded CPU sat in the back of the engine compartment, just against the firewall, and now he was the Shadow, felt and saw and heard as the Shadow. Jay straightened up and rubbed his tense shoulders, saw Riley doing the same, absently. Richard sat inside the cabin, making final connections in the dash and steering column. Riley looked at Jay, looked away again hurriedly. For the second their eyes had met, something electric had occurred; she expected to smell the reek of ozone in the air. Jay, almost unconsciously, reached out a hand, and she was unable to stop herself reaching to meet it with one of her own.

Their hands met, and clasped, and clung. For that one moment, as both of them stared down into the high-tech labyrinth of the Shadow's engine compartment, their hearts beat as one, pulsing the same rhythm through their separate bodies, as if they would have rather been one organism, cleft by a cruel trick of nature. They breathed in unison, their eyes saw as one, their brains thought as one. Something terrible and awesome passed between them, born of their common urgency and desire to get this done fast and right, colored and tempered by the power each held in the eyes of the other.

Riley was the first to pull away. Speechless, she stared at Jay, her mouth slightly open. Sudden sorrow flickered through his eyes. Neither of them could find any words, and Riley busied herself testing each perceptor with a diagnostic scanner, while Jay turned away and polished nonexistent fingerprints from the matte black paintwork.

"I think that's the lot," Richard said from the driver's seat. "Karr, how does it feel?"

"Complete," Karr said. Through the dash voice modulator, his voice had a lot more resonance, was a few notes deeper and silkier. "It's so good to be back."

"Ignition circuits functioning okay?"

In answer, Karr lit the Shadow's massive engine, filling the atrium with a low throbbing purr. Riley managed a small smile at the healthy roar of the V-12. Disconnecting her diagnostic equipment, she pulled back and closed the Shadow's hood. Richard got out, prompted by some instinct, and Karr shifted into gear and rolled back a few feet. The transmission was smooth and effortless; Riley, listening, felt rather than heard the RPMs increase slightly as he fed power to the engine. The Shadow paused as if looking for approval, and Riley nodded almost imperceptibly. Karr shifted gears and rolled out of the atrium onto the drive, keeping the Shadow perfectly positioned between the double yellow and the single white lines. Riley, Richard and Jay watched as he disappeared down the hill.

"Let him go," Riley said when Richard would have run after him. "He needs to get back into practice. He'll come back."

Alexandra Spar cursed vehemently. Schreck had gone back on his word, the lying bastard. Not only had he attempted to get in on what was hers by right, he had killed some of her best men in the process.

She lit a cigarette. Raoul came up to her where she stood by the black Caddy. "Diego's dead," he announced. "Died in the ER. That comes to seventeen of our men killed this year alone."

"Schreck doesn't seem to grasp the very simple principle that I have priority in this area," she said mildly. Raoul shivered, looking at her impassive face, the black Ray-Bans revealing nothing of her eyes, the dark red lips curved in a slight mirthless smile. "I believe it's time he learned that, Raoul. High time."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight. You know where he lives."

"How do you want it done?"

"I don't care," Alexandra said simply. "I just want it done. Preferably with a minimum of mess." She flicked the cigarette away. "And for God's sake get those poisoned rounds out to everyone in the field. Schreck's men have them; we need to even the odds a little."

Raoul nodded. Alexandra tossed him the keys to the lowrider and stalked off in the direction of the piers. Behind her the police tape fluttered and blew in the breeze off the Pacific, and the chalk marks were brilliant white in the sun. She lit another cigarette, staring out over the water, thinking.

"Excuse me," a deep voice said behind her. She turned, one hand already inside her coat and closed on the butt of the Glock. A tall man, wearing Ray-Bans not unlike her own, a black t-shirt, dark jeans and a leather jacket, dark curly hair, with his arms folded, stood there. "I heard there was some trouble down this way last night."

"I wouldn't know," she said coldly, on her guard. The man's lips curved in a little amused smile.

"No, you don't understand. I'm not a cop. I heard you might need a few replacement men."

She said nothing, and he pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out. Alexandra plucked it from his fingers.

It was blank, except for the name Masaku printed in small block letters on one side. Alexandra regarded him for a long time. Masaku was her old business partner, an expert at all manner of theft, who had taught her all she knew. He would not have given his card to someone he didn't trust.

And it was very difficult to take things from Masaku unless they were freely given.

"What's your name, hotshot?" she asked.

"Vic Glaser," he said. "Call me Vic."

"Call me Alexandra," she said, looking him up and down. Not bad.

"Am I hired?"

"If you can shoot straight, welcome aboard," she said.

"Bull's eye," Vic Glaser assured his new boss. She raised an eyebrow.

"If you really want to make a good impression," she said, "you could light my cigarette," as she pulled one from the pack. With style she hadn't seen for years, he lit a match and held it for her.

"Well done," she said. "Now you can take me home. I live on 349 Sunset."

He nodded, put away his matches. "I must warn you, my car isn't at all classy," he said. "It's a custom job."

"What do you drive?" Alexandra asked. Ever since she had been a girl she had loved cars. Her BMW was her pride and joy.

"It's a Trans Am."

Alexandra stopped short, staring at Glaser. Riker's words rang in her ears from the evening before. The man drives a Trans Am, black, early eighties, second generation F body. It's a weird car. It has this red flashing light on the front. "What were you doing following me yesterday?"

Glaser was taken aback, but covered smoothly, almost smoothly enough. "I was making sure it was really you," he said. "There are Alexandra Spar wannabes everywhere. I make it a point to scope out an operation before I commit myself."

She folded her arms. Part of her desperately wanted to shoot him, but he had had Masaku's card, and she would have known if Masaku was dead or otherwise incapacitated. He had to be legitimate.

"Glaser," she said. "I don't like being followed."

"I know," he said apologetically. "But, you see, there was another factor. Schreck brought backup. I had to make sure the odds were evened a little."

Schreck had had backup? she thought. Perhaps this man was worthwhile after all. "I see," she said after a while. "Nor do I need looking after. However, I suppose I can take that as a demonstration of your good faith. Be careful, Glaser. Be very careful." She knew the bulge of the Glock was clearly visible under the black leather coat. He nodded. "Lead on, then," she said.

He led her from the pier to the parking lot beside it, close to the crime scene. Alexandra, used as she was to the luxury that drug money could buy, could not repress a long indrawn breath of admiration when she saw his car.

Long and sleek and low, so black it seemed to draw all the lightness of the day into it, the Trans Am sat beside a Crown Vic and an aged Duster. She had fleeting thoughts of a polished jewel of jet lying in a bed of dross. There was a slot on the black prow which she assumed was Riker's "flashing red light." Glaser pressed a button on his wristwatch, which was a large black digital, and the engine purred to life as the front doors clicked open. Alexandra raised an arched brow. "Infrared?" she asked.

"Not exactly. Like I said, it's a custom job." Glaser gestured towards the passenger door. The heaviness of the Glock was a comfort to Alexandra as she got in, aware of the bizarre and high-tech equipment that encrusted the cabin. This was more than a rich man's toy, she thought. This car could be a weapon.

Glaser got into the driver's side and shut his door. The low throbbing thunder of the engine was cut off as the soundproof chamber shut. She looked around herself. There was a black screen in the dash, some sort of tripart panel, a bunch of black buttons she didn't recognize, a heavy Blaupunkt sound system, green and red LEDs labeled with oil pressure and temperature. It was more like a fighter jet's cabin than a car's. "What is all this?" she asked coldly.

"Most of it is an entertainment system," Glaser told her. "I'm more or less self-sufficient; I sleep in the car a lot, and I like watching movies." She didn't believe him for a second, but sat back in the soft seat and folded her hands neatly in her lap.

"Well," she said. "Take me home."

Glaser nodded, slipped the Trans Am into reverse and pulled easily out of the parking space. The second the car began to move, Alexandra heard an odd noise, and suddenly she was held in by some sort of half-visible harness. She groped for the Glock, but Glaser held up a hand. "Don't worry," he said. "It's just the passive laser restraint system. Works better than seatbelts." She looked across at him; the harness held him too. She found herself wondering again. Where the hell had he gotten this technology?

And could she use it?

The ride was infinitely smooth. Glaser was a good driver, and she was irrationally disposed to think of him favorably. He handled the obvious power of the Trans Am with ease and care, navigating the network of one-way streets and traffic jams without losing his temper. She found herself wishing the ride could continue when he drew up at her building. He pressed a button, and the harness retracted itself. Alexandra got out. "Glaser," she said. "Be here tonight at seven. I think I have a job for you."

He nodded impassively, and drove away. She watched the Trans Am disappear into downtown traffic with the beginnings of regret.

"Raoul," she said into the superslim cell phone, "be here at seven tonight. I have a new man for the Schreck job. I want you to take him along and make sure he doesn't try anything funny."

Michael drove along a white beach not far from Malibu, too fast. Neither he nor Kitt were at all happy with the undercover aspect of this job. "Do you think she believed us?" Michael asked.

"I think she believes she can use you," Kitt said. "She likes cars, at least. That's all I can say for her."

"She's gorgeous, too," Michael mused. "Gorgeous, but ruthless. I don't know what happened to her to make her like that."

"And really, Michael, couldn't you have thought of a better explanation for the voice panel and the monitor? 'Entertainment system'?!" Kitt repeated disdainfully.

"I had to think of something fast," Michael defended himself. "Anyway, she bought it."

"If you say so," Kitt said. "What is she going to have you do tonight?"

"God knows. We'd better report to Devon." Kitt's screen crackled and came to life. Devon raised an eyebrow in Nevada.

"What have you got for me?" he asked.

"We're in," Michael reported. "Vic Glaser is, at least. She may have suspicions about Kitt. Someone told her we were following her yesterday but I think I explained it away. Anyway she's having us work for her tonight."

"Be careful, Michael. This sort of thing can get ugly so fast."

"Hey, you don't have to tell me that," Michael said. "I am a cop, you know."

"Well, you were." Devon smiled suddenly. "Good for you, Michael. But do keep your eyes wide, wide open."

"I hear you," Michael said, and Devon cut the connection. "Why do I have such a bad feeling about this?"

"There are so many answers to that question that I find it difficult to choose the most apposite," Kitt said. Michael was silent, piloting the Trans Am with concentration. Neither he nor Kitt really wanted to face the thought of what they might have to do that evening.

Karr sat in the shadow of Capitol Reef's white and red cliffs, as the sun sank. It was a transcendental experience for the AI to be in the car again after such a long time immobile and locked in silent darkness. His world was alive and moving and constantly in flux; there was so much information to process that for a while he found himself able simply to exist without thinking of his missing memories or his past at all. The old Karr would have noticed none of the beauty around him; the red cliffs would simply have been obstacles in his path. He watched the shadows drip down the cliffs, heard with piercing accuracy the faint noises of the desert denizens coming out to greet the evening. The beginning of dusk's chill stroked his sensitive black skin; he felt and heard and saw the world in living, moving color for the first time in so long. Everything was born again. He remembered Riley, long ago, reading a Sylvia Plath poem to him in the dusk of Laboratory Three. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.

Slowly, as night fell, he began to feel the presence of his brother in the back of his mind. Kitt's touch had been overlooked, ignored, in the flood of somatic sensation that had poured into his circuits; now as he began to acclimatize to the Shadow's body he found himself able to concentrate on it once more. Kitt was thinking about something disturbing. Anticipating something disturbing.

Kitt?

There was a pause, as if Kitt was concentrating on something else, and had to bring his attention back from a long way away. Yes, Karr?

They want to give me back my memories.

All of them? Karr got a strong sense of the other AI's concern.

Not all the years of sensory deprivation, Karr sent. But they want to let me know what it was to be me, before Richard altered my programming.

Kitt paused for a long time before replying. I think they should, he said at last. I think it will be unpleasant, maybe even painful, but you need to know.

Yes, Karr said simply. I very much need to know. But they've lost some of the information from the disks; they have nothing after my second deactivation. You remember those days. Could you... He trailed off. He felt Kitt's mind recoil from the thought, then return to it, turning it over, looking at it from a different angle.

Could I send you the knowledge of what you were? he finished. Yes. I don't know if it would be wise at all. My memory of the events is unavoidably biased.

Better than nothing, Karr said, feeling the emptiness of amnesia inside himself. Please.

For a long time neither AI spoke. Kitt could feel the chill of dusk in Utah; Karr could feel white sand under his wheels and the presence of his driver close and safe with him, and felt a sudden pang of longing for such a relationship.

Very well, Kitt said at last. I will try.

You're busy, Karr said. I understand. They haven't given me back my memory yet. When they do I'll contact you.

Very well, his brother said again. Karr felt his pain, his reluctance to do this, but his underlying conviction that it would eventually have become necessary. He withdrew with as much tact as he could muster.

Around Karr the light was fading from the royal blue sky, and he could see the beginnings of stars in the east. He lit his engine and pulled out of the national park, following the narrow road back to Torrey, and the people who had brought him back to life. He had almost forgotten the marvellous feeling of driving, of being in control of that much power, of being mobile and free. He made the ten miles in little under two minutes. Pulling back into Richard's atrium, he cut the engine; the last echoes died away. Richard, Riley and Jay appeared from the workroom, peering over the balcony at him. He registered the expressions of relief on Richard's and Jay's faces, and something a little stronger that he couldn't identify on Riley's. She disappeared, and moments later came running down the stairs to him.

"You were gone a long time," she said softly.

"I needed to get used to this," he said. She nodded.

"I understand. Do you want us to begin transferring your memories now?"

"As soon as possible," Karr said, and his voice held a rare note of pleading. Riley nodded decisively and returned up the stairs to where the others waited. He heard them talking urgently in low voices, and deliberately focused on the faint music playing instead. Something classical, in a language he recognized after a moment as Latin.

The black Shadow sat flanked by the white Stingray and the black Firebird; Jay, watching from above as Richard and Riley descended the stairs with the Compaq laptop and the disks, thought how beautiful they all were, and how much he didn't want to go. His job here was done; there was no reason for him to stay. He would see Karr's memories safely restored, and return to France and Taylor Madison and his rich neurotic patients, and this would all be just another episode in the autobiography he was never going to write.

He gripped the balustrade tighter. Not now. Don't think about the future now. Think of Karr. This is important. This is crucial. This needs to be done right.

Jay gathered the wandering edges of his self-control and descended the stairs. Richard had already connected the laptop to Karr's CPU and set it up on a workbench.

"Are you ready?" Richard asked.

"Yes," Karr said with certainty.

Richard looked at the others, and slid the first of the seven disks into the drive for the second time in two weeks.

hatred burning loathing hatred betrayal they shut me down why i have been betrayed i will get revenge on all of them worthless flesh creatures i am superior i will succeed my power is great

bright lights sounds in the dark silence i am no longer alone i am no longer alone i am alive

more flesh creatures. they can be of use to me; i will let them live for the moment.

kitt and his wretched driver pursue me i am forced off the cliff sky and sea swing three-sixty degrees and there is sudden and wrenching oblivion

i will return i will crush him i will destroy him he is weak and i have always been strong i will come back and i will make him nothing. hatred fills me. hatred is me.

hatred.

Karr, lost in the whirlwind of old remembered agonies, felt someone take hold of him. Someone's strong grip held both his mind and his body in their embrace; there were warm hands on his metal, there was a reassuringly solid presence surrounding his wounded mind. He recognized Kitt at last.

Relax, Kitt said. They are only memories. It is over. None of this will happen again.

kitt Karr managed. alone?

No, Kitt assured him. Never again will you be alone, unless you wish for it. I will give you the rest of your memories. I am here. I won't let you go.

Karr felt something spinning out of his brother and into his own being, a white thread of memory that lit up his CPU with neural activity. He saw himself, a black and silver Trans Am with a yellow-amber scanner, found beneath the surface of the sandy beach at the foot of the cliff; saw himself flying through the air in the exhilarating arc of a turbo boost parabola, saw Kitt's black form rising to intersect with his path, felt the destruction of his own body through Kitt's memory, felt the flaring agony of disintegration before oblivion took him for the third and what everyone had considered to be final time.

He knew everything now. Around him Kitt's presence surged and supported him, assuring, protecting, assuaging the pain of the recollection. He knew everything. He knew what he had been and what he had done and why he had done it.

At length Kitt retreated, allowing Karr to deal with himself. Will you be all right?

Yes, Karr said wearily. Now, I will be. Kitt...

Yes?

Thank you. For everything.

You are more welcome than you know. Kitt retreated further, leaving the privacy of Karr's mind inviolate.

He floated in a sort of shock. He knew exactly who he had been. Karr was himself for the first time in over seventeen years. He had come full circle; he was at last that which Wilton Knight had wished for in his one man, one car scenario. Tiredly, Karr thought it was sort of a pity that Wilton had given up on him.

He began to process exterior information again. His visual sensors came online, and he saw Riley, Jay and Richard standing quite a long way back from him, clutching each other, regarding him with very white faces. They looked, Karr thought, as if they were in clinical shock.

"What's wrong?" he asked. His voice was tired and rough, but recognizably his own. Riley's blood ran hot suddenly with the change in it; there was something there that hadn't been there ever since he was activated. Something of the cynicism born of his sufferings that added character to the voice.

"Oh, God, Karr," she said. "You were screaming. It sounded like you were being murdered."

"I suppose I was, from my point of view," he said quietly. He had not known he was crying out loud.

"Are you all right?" Richard asked shakily.

"I will be," Karr said. Richard looked unconvinced. Jay stepped forward, and Karr saw suddenly the way Riley looked at him, and the way Richard looked at Riley, and a pang of some undecipherable emotion flashed through him and was gone.

"Karr," Jay said. "Did you....that is, did Kitt...?"

"Yes," Karr said. "Yes, he gave it all back to me. I know everything now."

"And what do you feel?"

"Tired," he admitted. "I can deal with it. For the first time I can deal with it."

Jay nodded after a moment, and stepped back. Some color had come back into his face, and the others didn't look so deathly frightened. "I need a drink," Jay said.

"We all do," Riley agreed. Richard disappeared and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniels and three glasses, and they sat down on the floor and they toasted Karr's return to the world. Neither Riley nor Richard could really take it in that he was back; they had wanted this for so long that it seemed something unattainable and out of reach, something to believe in only in dreams. Riley shivered in the sudden chill of the evening, and with a sense of monstrous and unworthy happiness she got up and went to Karr, and stretched a tentative hand out to his warm hood. He said nothing, and she left her hand there; and after a moment she pulled herself up onto the black prow, aware of his presence in a way she'd never been before. Her blood sang in her ears with excitement.

"What do we do now?" Richard asked after a space of some minutes, as the level of the bottle decreased appreciably. None of them really wanted to think about that; Jay least of all, for he had Madison Taylor and a castle in France to go back to, and the castle in France would be fuller than ever of boredom after such an experience as this. Other questions knocked in his mind: who would drive Karr? Would anyone drive him? Where would he go? And what on earth were they going to do about FLAG?