Opal shook her head, dislodging the after-trance daze. ‘Merv and Scant. We need to go.’

Merv helped her from the trolley’s lid. ‘That’s right. The clone is ready.’

Scant peeled back a sealed-foil false bottom in the trolley. Inside lay a cloned replica of Opal Koboi, wearing an Argon Clinic coma suit. The clone was identical, down to the last follicle. Scant removed an oxygen mask from the clone’s face, hauled it from its resting place and began cinching it into the harness.

‘Remarkable,’ said Opal, brushing the clone’s skin with her knuckle. ‘Am I that beautiful?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Merv. ‘That and more.’

Suddenly Opal screeched. ‘Idiots. Its eyes are open. It can see me!’

Scant closed the clone’s lids hurriedly. ‘Don’t worry, Miss Koboi, it can’t tell anyone, even if its brain could decipher what it sees.’

Opal climbed groggily into the trolley. ‘But its eyes can register images. Foaly may think to check. That infernal centaur.’

‘Don’t fret, miss,’ said Scant, folding the trolley’s false bottom over his mistress.

‘Very soon now, that will be the least of Foaly’s worries.’

Opal strapped the oxygen mask across her face. ‘Later,’ she said, her voice muffled by the plastic. ‘Talk, later.’

Koboi drifted into a natural sleep, exhausted by even this small exertion. It could be hours before the pixie regained sustained consciousness. After a coma of that length, there was even the risk that Opal would never be quite as smart as she once was.

‘Time?’ said Merv.

Scant glanced at his moonometer. ‘Thirty seconds left.’

Merv finished cinching the straps exactly how they had been. Pausing only to dab sweat from his brow, he made a second incision with his scalpel, this time in the clone’s arm, and inserted the seeker-sleeper. While Scant sealed the cut with a blast of magical sparks, Merv rearranged the cleaning paraphernalia over the trolley’s false section.