Neither of us breathed for a few long moments, but it was Dieterling who chose to speak in the end.

“I guess we’d be dead if you were really pissed off at us, Vasquez.”

“You’re right, but it’s a fine line, Snake.” He raised his voice. “Safe mode on.” Then he made the same finger-clicking gesture he had done before. “You see that, man? It looked pretty similar to you, didn’t it? But not to the room it didn’t. If I hadn’t turned the system off, it would have interpreted that as an order to execute everyone here except myself and the fat fucks in the gaming seats.”

“I’m glad you practised it,” I said.

“Yeah, laugh about it, Mirabel.” He made the gesture again. “That looked the same as well, didn’t it? But that wasn’t quite the same command either. That would have told the sentries to blow your arms off, one at a time. The room’s programmed to recognise at least twelve more gestures—and believe me, after some of “em I really get stung for the cleaning bill.” He shrugged. “Can I consider my point adequately made?”

“I think we’ve got the message.”

“All right. Safe mode off. Sentries retire.”

The same blur of motion; the same breeze. It was as if the machines had simply snapped out of existence.

“Impressed?” Vasquez asked me.

“Not really,” I said, feeling prickles of sweat across my brow. “With the right security set-up, you’d already have screened anyone who’d got this far. But I suppose it breaks the ice at parties.”

“Yeah, it does that.” Vasquez looked at me amusedly, evidently satisfied that he’d achieved the desired effect.

“What it also does is make me wonder why you’re so touchy.”

“You were in my shoes, you’d be a fuck of a lot more than touchy.” Then he did something that surprised me, taking his hand from his pocket, slowly enough that I had time to see there was no weapon there. “You see this, Mirabel?”