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was in the studio, making a like disavowal. Angus smiled. He didn’t think any of these were responsible–they’d have done a better job–but it pleased him to have his major opponents on the back foot. The potential benefit from that almost outweighed the annoyance of finding himself on the news at all.
    The assassination attempt puzzled him. All the enemies he could think of–the list was long–would have sent a team to kill him, if they’d wanted to do something so drastic and potentially counterproductive. It seemed to him possible that the assassin had acted alone. That troubled him. Angus had always held that lone assassins were far more dangerous and prevalent than conspiracies.
    He reviewed the bios linked to as shallow background for the news items about him. Most of them got the basic facts of his life right, from his childhood early in the century on a wind farm and experimental Green community in the Western Isles, through his academically mediocre but socially brilliant student years, when the networks and connections he’d established soon enabled his deals and ventures in the succession of technological booms that had kept the bubble economy expanding by fits and starts through seven decades: carbon capture, synthetic biology, microsatellites, fusion, smart dust, anti-aging, rejuve, augments…and so on, up to his current interest in geoengineering. Always in before the boom, out before the bust, he’d even ventured into politics via a questionably bestowed peerage just in time for the packed self-abolition of the Lords and to emerge with some quite unearned credit for the Reform. The descriptions ranged from “visionary social entrepreneur” and “daring venture capitalist” to “serial confidence trickster” and “brazen charlatan.” There was truth in all of them. He’d burned a lot of fortunes in his time, while adding to his own. The list of people who might hold a private grudge against him was longer than the list of his public enemies.
    Speaking of which, he had a conference to go to in the morning. He stubbed out the last of Glenda’s cigarettes and went to bed.

    The assassin woke at dawn on Manly Beach. He’d slept under a monofilament weave blanket, in a hollow where the sand met the scrub. He wore nothing but a watch and swimming trunks. He stood up, stretched, scrunched the blanket into the trunks’ pocket, and went for a swim. No one was about.
    Shoulder-deep in the sea, the assassin removed his trunks and watch, clutching them in one hand while rubbing his skin and hair all over with the other. He put them back on when he was sure that every remaining trace of the synthetic skin would be gone. Most of it, almost every scrap, had been dissolved as soon as he’d keyed a sequence on his palm after his failed attempt, just before he’d made his way, with a new appearance (his own) and chemical spoor, through various pre-chosen alleys and doorways and then sharp left on the next street, up to Kings Cross, and onto the train to Manly. But you couldn’t make too certain.
    Satisfied at last, he swam back to the still-deserted beach and began pacing along it, following a GPS reading that had some time during the night been relayed to his watch. The square meter of sand it led him to showed no trace that anything might be buried there. Which was as it should be–the arrangement for payment had been made well in advance. He’d been assured that he’d be paid whether or not he succeeded in killing the target. A kill would be a bonus, but–medical technology being what it was–he could hardly be expected to guarantee it. A credible near-miss was almost as acceptable.
    He began to dig with his hands. About forty centimeters down his fingertips brushed something hard and metallic.
    He wasn’t to know it was a land mine, and he didn’t.

    One of the nuclear power companies sent an armored limo to pick Angus up after breakfast–a courtesy, the accompanying ping claimed. He sneered