The white van drew up just before Sable got to the taxi rank, and someone leapt out, asking, miss, miss, can you help? Ever the intrepid girl reporter, Sable clicked into journalism mode instantly. A story! Something to salvage from an otherwise wasted day. Emergency childbirth, perhaps.
        "What is it?" said Sable.
        The response was violence. She was bundled into the back of the van, which drove off.
        Then a middle-aged man in a dark suit lent over her, hunched awkwardly because there was no room to stand up properly, and asked her a question which helped put her in the picture.
        "So," said the man, the Abductor in Chief, "did Gillian confess to Ibrahim's criminal past?"
        That was when Sable realized she had been suckered, well and truly. She was a Conflux girl, born and bred, and your Conflux girl, well, she's not hard, that's the image, but the image exaggerates. Not hard, no. But street smart. She is street smart.
        Sable wasn't the kind of idiot who would toddle off to a strange address on the basis of a murky phone call from a guy she didn't know. Not at all. Rather, before getting on the ferry to Zisperhaven, Sable had checked out this Gillian Chess but good, even making a call to a cop she knew who was able to do checks on the police computer system that intrepid girl reporters were not supposed to have access to.
        Gillian Chess had checked out clean, a harmless old relict running a small business on Zisperhaven, basically renting out furniture, that wasn't the sort of thing that made you think red light girl capture, slave traders shipping innocent girls off to foreign shores, or any of that other stuff from the censored domain.
        But Gillian had just been bait.
        Sable had been suckered, big time. If she vanished, and anyone asked her useless boss where she had got to, then Watford Lammerton would place her at Gillian's house, and the trail would end there. If the police entered Sable's apartment, looking for clues, they would find a fine-detail map with Gillian's house circled by a yellow highlighter, a map Sable had forgotten to bring with her. If they checked her cellphone records, they would find that her last call was to Gillian's phone number, Sable's cautious "Let's make sure of this" phone call.
        Nothing to say "I'm going to do something stupid and get myself kidnapped into a big white van by total strangers."
        Plainly, she had been set up, snatched for her blonde good looks, and now what was going to happen to her? Good question.
        "I'm not not going to violate you," said the Abductor in Chief, "if that's what you're thinking. Ibrahim is going to violate you."
        "Ibrahim?" said Sable.
        "Ibrahim Chess," said the Abductor in Chief. "The mastermind who's in charge of this terrorist organization you're part of."
        "Terrorist ...?"
        "You're not going to try to deny it, are you?"
        "Oh, no," said Sable, hastily, thinking that if she tried to deny anything he might go to work on her in a mode of extreme ugliness. "I admit everything. I'm a terrorist, yes, uh ... Egon, I guess ... you saw it on the news, right? Glorsting. The Tespetty attack, too. I gave the Tespetty guy his goodbye kiss before we sent him on his way."
        "So far so good," said the Abductor in Chief. "Now let me fill you in on your mission."
        Her mission, which he explained in detail, was to set Ibrahim Chess up for a charge of sexual violation. Sable would have to be a convincing witness, and would have to make a report to the police. She was to report to one particular police officer, a man named by the Abductor in Chief. If she did not, then there would be consequences.
        The Abductor in Chief explained exactly what the consequences of failure would be, and, by the time he was finished, Sable was emphatically sure that she most certainly did not want to fail.
        "Who do you work for?" said Sable, unable to resist the question, even though it might be dangerous. "Really?"
        "I," said the Abductor in Chief, "work for Ideation Control."
        "Ah," said Sable.
        Ideation Control, the outfit which, officially, took care of censoring high school history books and monitoring pornography imports at the airport. Other functions were alleged, but nothing was ever officially conceded, and it was a subject which, you knew automatically, it would have been unpatriotic to enquire into too closely.
         Sable had once visited Ideation Control's official premises, which were part of the Tespetty complex, and remembered a stunningly boring place where you could get free government pamphlets on how to self-censor your mind and how to wash your stinky body without overly depleting the city's precious water supply. No sign of Scream Box there. But it did exist, somewhere in Omblock, she was sure.
        "Are you Beria Dag?" said Sable.
        It was a stab in the dark, but this guy was wearing really expensive cuff links, so it was not unreasonable to guess that perhaps he might be a big boss type. As for the name, that had turned up in an article entitled Overpaid and Underworked, all about high-level bureaucrats whose duties did not seem to justify the top-drawer salaries they were paid.
        "I am," said Beria.
        Who, Sable guessed, was not underworked at all. He was maligned.
        Beria Dag, chief of Ideation Control. Time to give credence to the extravagances of rumor, Sable, girl. Yes, Ideation Control was what it was conjectured to be. The secret police. The Thought Police. The secret dominators who worked down in the substratum which underpinned the acknowledged structure of political reality.
        "I am Ideation Control," said Beria. "And you are my instrument to destroy Ibrahim Chess. The evil Ibrahim Chess. Who will violate you, as I have explained. Or at least seem to. Now, let's be sure that you have your instructions accurately. Tell me exactly what it is that you are going to do."
        Sable, who had focused in on Beria's message with intense concentration, told.
        "Well," said Beria, "you have understood the mission. Good."
        Beria knelt beside Sable, careless of the fact that he must be ruining the creases in his trousers. What would his wife say? Or maybe he didn't have a wife.
        For a while, then, Beria said nothing more. Just watched Sable. Studying the effect he had had on her. The van drove on, the driver occasionally leaning on the horn, something the average denizen of Zisperhaven would never have imagined doing. Then Beria began to recap Sable's mission, as if she hadn't heard it the first time, as if she were brain damaged. Maybe, by the time Beria had finished with them, people often were brain damaged.
        "I think you understand," said Beria. "You will work your will with this Ibrahim Chess, as instructed. Then report to the police. Let's check that you have the details down."
        She had. She remembered them perfectly. She must report Ibrahim's transgression at Hemlock Twelve, a police station at Ming Taxis. She must be sure to report it to Sergeant Waikato. Nobody else would do. Waikato, presumably, was a member of the Baton Force who had been suborned by Beria.
        Three times, that's how often Beria got Sable to repeat the details of her mission. The timing? Tonight. The astrals were rising, and Beria needed to smash the conspiracy, and for this he needed the compliance of Ibrahim Chess, not a know-nothing blonde like Sable Tauranga.
        When Beria was sure that Sable had all the details down pat, he pulled out a handgun, something weird about that gun but Beria moved too fast for Sable to focus on the details. Jabbed the gun hard up against her head then zapped her, her world flooding first with heat and then with blackness.