25

The Volkswagen Trooperbus carried Louise and Ivanov Robson back to London. During most of the four-hour trip she’d sat curled up on one of the big leather chairs in the cabin, accessing news reports from the arcology. The landscape held little interest for her now.

There were few rover reporters left in the Westminster dome to provide an impression of what was happening. Those who insisted on toughing it out were releasing their sensevises on a long delay, allowing them to get well clear of the area where they’d been recording. The possessed didn’t take kindly to having their activities exposed to the planet’s accessing public. Rovers who’d been caught on the first day had never accessed the net again.

What was shown by reporters still on the ground—and more comprehensively, by the dome sensors—was a rough kind of order establishing itself among the ancient buildings. The possessed were organized in small bands, walking quite openly along the main roads. It was a defiant gesture up at Govcentral. They could have been targeted easily by SD weapons, had the political will existed to do so. But as there were only ever a couple of hundred exposed at any one time, the remainder would be free to extract an atrocious retribution on the rest of the non-possessed population. Government forces within the arcology had been effectively eliminated. Highly specific fires had continued to rage throughout the night, disposing of all the dome’s police stations and eighty per cent of the local council offices. Significantly, although power grids and the communication net had also been targeted, the possessed hadn’t damaged any of the primary civic utility stations. There was still water, and fresh air; and the dome remained capable of warding off an armada storm. Somebody was controlling the possessed, ordering their activities with a great deal of precision.

The media speculated on who.

Charlie was only interested in why. If anything, the possessed were now enforcing the original curfew with a greater efficiency than the police ever had. The AI’s analysis of their movements indicated there were between seven and ten thousand of them, each with their own area to control. Enough to make sure everyone stayed indoors. Very few new possessed were being created, and there were barely a few hundred in the nine outer domes.

The only significant excursion they’d attempted was to a garage of surface vehicles. Each time they’d driven one of the lumbering machines up onto the ramp, it had been targeted by SD fire. The President himself had ordered the strikes without any urging from the B7 staff among his advisors and cabinet. The possessed had made eight attempts to leave London before giving up.

“Dexter’s preparing for something,” Charlie told Louise just before she left his dome. “There’s no way he’ll be satisfied with just London. That’s why he’s holding back on possessing the rest of the population. The way he’s put things together in there, he could do it in less than a week if he wanted. He’s far better organized than New York.”

Louise didn’t understand why Dexter was holding back any more than Charlie did. The devilsome man she’d encountered back on Norfolk didn’t seem capable of any restraint.

The only other information she received on the trip was progress reports on Genevieve. Her sister was being driven to Birmingham in another Volkswagen, along with Divinia and the first batch of Charlie’s family. From there Charlie had arranged a vac-train to take them to Kenya Station. Gen had been quite disappointed when it turned out that Charlie’s dome couldn’t fly.

It was a much shorter drive to Birmingham. Genevieve was on the African Tower ascending to Skyhigh Kijabe while Louise was still making her way across the Thames valley.

“Coming into view now if you want to see it,” Yves Gaynes called out from the cab.

Louise stirred herself and went forward to sit next to him. When they’d left London, she’d had a poor view of the domes; the direction they were travelling in was all wrong. Now the Trooperbus was pointing straight at them as it lumbered over the last few miles.

She stared at the domes that sliced up out of the rolling horizon. Only the outer nine were visible, gathered protectively around the ancient city at the centre. The sinking sun reflected vivid pillars of copper light off the vast arcades of geodesic crystal; other than that, they were completely black. For the first time, she could appreciate just how artificial they were. How alien.

Yves was looking at her. “Didn’t expect to be coming back this way quite so soon, myself.”

“No.”

“The boss does look after his people, you know.”

“I’m sure he does.” Not that she was convinced she really qualified as a B7 staff member. Then again, it could just be Charlie remote-controlling the driver, trying to reassure her, to make her more compliant. She wasn’t certain of anything anymore.

The Trooperbus drove steadily past the half-buried factory halls surrounding the arcology and dipped down a ramp into one of the huge underground garages. There were few lights on, and no activity at all among the ranks of parked vehicles. They drew up in a bay near the ramp. As the external door slid down, a navy blue car sped towards them out of the gloom. Ivanov Robson stood up and popped the cabin’s hatch.

“Are you ready?” he asked politely.

“Yes.” Louise made her voice cool. She hadn’t spoken to him since the journey started. It was an issue dominated by anger; although she wasn’t sure who she was directing it against. Him for being what he was, or her for liking him at the start. Maybe he was just too strong a reminder that she’d been so thoroughly manipulated.

She climbed down the short ladder. It was humid in the garage, but colder than she expected. She was dressed for the arcology in a short skirt over black leggings, with a long sleeved emerald T-shirt to cover the medical nanonic bracelet and thin leather waistcoat. Her hair had been battened down into a single ponytail.

Ivanov followed as she hurried over to the car, carrying the slim alligator-skin weapons case Charlie had given him. A policewoman ushered them into the car, her face devoid of curiosity. How many people have B7 sequestrated? Louise wondered. This time the car’s interior was quite ordinary. She settled back in the rear seat with Ivanov beside her, the fateful case resting on his knees.

“I am me most of the time, you know,” he said quietly. “B7 can’t control my every waking second.”

“Oh.” Louise didn’t want to talk about it.

“I regard it as a penance, not a punishment. And I get to see some interesting things. I also know how the world works, a rare privilege for anyone these days. As you now know.”

“What did you do?”

“Something very foolish, and unpleasant. Not that I had a lot of choice at the time. It was them or me. I think that’s why B7 gave me this deal. I’m not what you’d call a standard career criminal. I even had a family. Haven’t seen them for a couple of decades, but I’m allowed to know how they’re getting on.”

“But you were still told how to treat me.”

“I was ordered what information to supply to you, and when. Everything else I ever said or did was the real me.”

“Including coming back to London now?”

Ivanov chuckled quietly. “Oh no. Natural altruism doesn’t run to this insanity. I’m here under orders.” He paused. “But now I’m here, I will do my best to protect you if the need arises.”

“You think coming back was stupid?”

“Completely idiotic. B7 should toughen up and nuke London. It’s the only way we’ll ever be rid of these possessed.”

“That kind of weapon won’t work against Quinn Dexter.”

“Is that so?” A long finger stroked the alligator-skin case slowly. “Do you trust this Fletcher guy we’re going to meet?”

“Of course. Fletcher is a decent and kind man. He looked after Gen and I all the way from Norfolk.”

“Should be interesting,” Ivanov mumbled. He turned to watch the concrete wall of the tunnel slip past outside the car.

They arrived at a small vac-train freight station somewhere in one of the arcology’s underground industrial zones. Charlie had selected it because there was a direct road from the garage, and the net was still functioning in that sector.

The platform was a lot narrower than those at Kings Cross, with large units of heavy-duty cargo handling machinery standing by every airlock. When Louise and Ivanov emerged out of a service lift, eight GISD field agents were waiting for them, each equipped with a static bullet machine gun.

The train arrived five minutes later. Only one airlock door opened. Detective Brent Roi stepped out first, looking round suspiciously. When his gaze found Louise, his expression told her he was officially the unhappiest person on the planet.

“Out,” he snapped over his shoulder.

Fletcher Christian emerged from the airlock, dressed in his immaculate naval uniform. Two guards were right behind him, and there was a thick metal collar clamped round his throat. Louise didn’t care, under the stiff gaze of the field agents she ran over and flung her arms round him.

“Oh God, I missed you,” she blurted. “Are you all right?”

“Hardy enough, my dearest Lady Louise. And you? How have you fared since we parted last? More unsuitable adventures, I’ll warrant.”

She was wiping tears off against his lapels, the buttons on his jacket pressing into her skin. “Something like that.” She clutched him tighter, amazed by how glad she was to see him, the one person she really trusted on the whole planet. His hand stroked the back of her head.

“Jesus wept,” Brent Roi exclaimed in disgust.

Louise let go and took a timid step back. Fletcher’s mournful eyes showed he understood.

“You two finished?”

Ivanov stepped forwards. “Try picking on me,” he said to the Halo detective.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Put it this way, we share the same supervisor. And if you had a high enough security rating to be told what Louise has done for us, you’d display some respect there as well.”

Fletcher was looking at the hulking private detective with some interest. Ivanov thrust his hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Fletcher. I’m the guy who’s been looking out for Louise down here.” He winked at her. “When circumstances allow me to.”

Fletcher bowed. “Then you do us all a service, sir. I would be sorely grieved if any harm befell such a treasured flower.”

Brent Roi sighed in disbelief. “You want to get on with this?”

“Sure,” Ivanov said. “We’ll take over from you. I doubt I have to sign for him, right?”

“Take over? As in my part’s finished? It’s not that goddamn easy. I haven’t got any way of getting back to the Halo. I’m fucking stuck here escorting this jerk.”

Louise was about to tell him B7 could get him back up the orbital tower, then she saw Ivanov’s face go blank momentarily. Charlie must be telling him something.

“Okay,” Ivanov said sadly. “But just so you know, it wasn’t my idea.”

“That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

Louise sat next to Fletcher when they got back to the car. Ivanov and Brent took the jump seats opposite.

“It’s your show,” Ivanov told Fletcher. “How do you want to play this?”

“Wait a minute,” Louise said. “Fletcher, what’s that collar?”

“Pacifier,” Brent grunted. “If he gets fruity, I can slam a thousand-volt charge through him. Believe me, that makes these possessed bastards sit up and take notice.”

“Take it off,” she demanded.

“Lady Louise—”

“No. Take it off. I wouldn’t treat an animal like that. It’s monstrous.”

“While I’m near him, it stays on,” Brent said. “You can’t trust them.”

“Charlie,” Louise datavised. “Tell them to take it off. I’m not joking. I won’t cooperate any further until you stop treating Fletcher like this.”

“Sorry, Louise,” Charlie replied. “The Halo police were jumpy. It was only supposed to be while he was in transit.”

She watched Brent’s expression darken as he received a datavise from Charlie. “Fuck it all,” he spat. There was a click from Fletcher’s collar, and the locking mechanism rotated ninety degrees. Fletcher reached up and tugged at it experimentally. It came away in his hands.

“Hey.” Brent slid the front of his jacket to one side, revealing a shoulder holster containing a very large automatic pistol. Three reserve clips had small red lightning emblems on them. He stared at Fletcher. “I’m watching you.”

Fletcher placed the collar disdainfully on the floor between them. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Ivanov said. “We want you comfortable.”

“You mentioned a weapon, Lady Louise.”

“Yes, the Confederation Navy have designed something that destroys souls. They want you to try and get close enough to Dexter to shoot him with it.”

“True death,” Fletcher said in wonder. “There are many who would welcome that right now. Are you certain such a device works?”

“That’s confirmed,” Ivanov said. “It’s been tested.”

“If I might be so bold as to ask, upon whom?”

“The project director used it on himself and a possessed who was threatening him.”

“I am uncertain if that is heroism or tragedy. Did they suffer?”

“Not a thing. It’s completely painless.”

“Another example of your much-vaunted progress. May I see this fearsome instrument?”

Ivanov put the alligator-skin case on his knees and datavised the entry code. The lock bleeped, and he opened it. Five matt-black cylinders, thirty centimetres long, were nesting on the grey foam inside. He picked one out. One end had a glass lens, and there was a single flat red button on the side.

“The majority of its components are bitek, so it should be able to resist a possessed glitching it for a while. Simple operation. Push the button forward, so”—he worked it with his thumb—“to activate. Then press to fire. It will shine a narrow beam of red light, which has to strike your target’s eyes to work. Estimated effective range is fifty metres.”

“Yards,” Louise murmured with a smile.

Fletcher inclined his head in thanks.

“Whatever,” Ivanov said. He handed the weapon to Fletcher. Brent tensed up. But Fletcher simply examined the gadget with mild curiosity.

“It seems naught but a harmless stick,” he said.

“There’s plenty goes on inside that you can’t see.”

“Nor understand, I’ll warrant. However, its use is plain enough to me. Tell me, what happens to the original soul of a body when this is fired at a possessing soul?”

Ivanov cleared his throat carefully. “It does as well.”

“That is murder.”

“One death is a small price to pay for ridding the universe of Quinn Dexter.”

“Aye, the affairs of kings are not to be questioned by their subjects. For that is what makes them kings. Judged only by Our Lord.”

“Can I have one as well, please?” Louise asked.

Ivanov handed her one of the tubes without comment. She checked the trigger button briefly, then put it in an inside pocket on her waistcoat.

Ivanov took one for himself and offered Brent Roi one. The Halo detective shook his head.

“Now all we have to do is find Quinn Dexter,” Ivanov said. He looked at Fletcher. “Any ideas?”

“Do you have any notion where he might be?”

“Only a general assumption that he’s in the Westminster dome; that’s where he seems to have consolidated his grip on the other possessed. Logically he can’t be too far away from them.”

“I know of Westminster, but not of its dome.”

“Basically, the whole of the London you knew got put under a protective glass bubble. That’s the dome. He could be anywhere inside the city.”

“Then I would suggest you take me to a suitable vantage point. I may be able to determine where large groups of the possessed fester. It would be a start.”

It was the sign of a good leader that he could adapt quickly to changing circumstances. After the last couple of days, Quinn now considered himself to be ranked among history’s greatest. The curfew had come as a considerable shock, not least because it meant the supercops were on to him once more. He had a good idea who’d told them—a knowledge which was almost pleasing.

Of course, the curfew had completely screwed up his earlier plans. The possessed from the Lancini had done as they were ordered, and used the night to take over a quantity of people in the designated buildings. But then the day workers hadn’t arrived, and the game changed.

Quinn had sent runners out through the maze of tunnels and service shafts below the arcology, contacting the groups and telling them what to do next. They were to take out the police as he’d originally intended, luring them into ambushes and incinerating the precinct stations. Given their smaller numbers, it would take longer, but with the curfew conveniently shutting down the rest of the arcology the police would have little back-up or support available. He also told his followers to target the net and power substations, further isolating the beleaguered police.

By late afternoon, deprived of police or emergency services, power and communications, the arcology’s population had effectively been imprisoned in their own homes. Quinn had achieved his goal without any need to smash the transport network, utilities, and food factories.

It was almost what he’d originally intended, and achieved with fewer possessed than he’d originally estimated. That weighed heavily in his favour; it was easier to exert discipline over a smaller number. And the arcology, with all its prized resources, remained intact for him to use as he wished. His tightest control was imposed over the Westminster dome, with fear paralysing the nine outer domes, rendering them useless as possible sources of resistance.

With London secure, Quinn had made one attempt to send disciples to Birmingham in overland vehicles. The venture had resulted in SD strikes and the total destruction of the commandeered vehicles.

He knew it was never going to be that easy.

As the first night wore on, and his possessed battalions continued their mopping-up operation against the civic authorities, he had several technical and engineering experts brought to his headquarters. They were put to work on methods of travel unsusceptible to the SD platforms. A token gesture. He knew the coming war of Night would not be fought with science and machines. It would be personal and glorious, as war was meant to be.

As darkness fell, the bedlam of the demons had grown louder. Quinn supplicated himself across the desecrated altar of St Paul’s cathedral and delved deep into the ghost realm once more. This time he was rewarded with the greatest knowledge there could be, so beautiful he whimpered at its impact. God’s Brother Himself was awaking from His banishment at some unimaginable distance past the end of the universe. Cries of glory and rapture rose from the demons as they welcomed their vast Lord among them, his ominous presence bringing a vigour and strength they had never known before.

Their cold dreaming thoughts infiltrated Quinn’s mind. He could know them in all their astounding multitude, bound together in an enchanted torment. God’s Brother arose before them, hot and dark, radiant with malevolence. They reached out for Him, to be gifted with His power. And He freed them, His energy banishing their chains so they could soar again, as they once had so long ago. An entire army of apocalyptic angels, enraptured by their new state, and hungry. Hungry for so many things they had been denied for all this terrible time. They swirled in adulation around the Light Bringer in a cyclone larger than the world, screaming their malignant pleasure at His coming.

Quinn left his ghostdreaming behind, his body solidifying to wake upon the altar just as dawn brought a grey light to the stained glass windows around him. There were tears in his eyes as he started to laugh. “Oh Banneth, you piece of shit, where are you now, unbeliever. This truth is when you’d finally despair.”

“Quinn?” Courtney asked anxiously. “Quinn, you okay?”

“He’s coming.”

Courtney cast a glance towards the huge blackened oak doors at the far end of the cathedral. “Who?”

“God’s Brother, you dumb bitch.” Quinn stood on the altar and held his arms wide as he looked down on the congregation of possessed milling across the nave. “I have seen Our Lord. Seen Him! He lives. He has risen to lead us to the final victory. He brings an army that will tear down the bright metal angels guarding the sky. Night will fall!” He was shaking with conviction. Courtney watched in a kind of dread awe as he slowly looked down at her. “Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe, Quinn. I always believe you.”

“Yeah. You really do, don’t you.” He jumped lightly to the stone and marble floor, a wild grin visible before the blackness exuded by his robe eclipsed his flesh. His hood swung round to face the subdued congregation. Over five hundred of them had been mustered now, waiting obediently for the dark Messiah to tell them what he wanted from them. Their numbers were added to slowly, as further non-possessed captives were brought to the cathedral via underground service tunnels. The immediate vicinity around St Paul’s had been cleared of commercial and office buildings several centuries ago, extending its gardens and moating them with a pedestrian plaza. Quinn knew damn well that if too many people crossed all that open space to enter by any of the regular doors the satellites and dome sensors would see them. The pattern would be recorded, and the supercops would become curious at why none of them ever left. So the accumulation of his power base had to proceed slowly and cautiously.

Those who were brought to him were taken down into the crypt and broken open for possession by a handful of committed followers loyal to His gospel. Quinn no longer cared whether those who struggled out from the beyond into the waiting bodies believed in the word of God’s Brother or not. As long as he was physically close by, they could be coerced.

Studying the assembled possessed, Quinn thought he might have about a third of the numbers he actually wanted for the summoning ceremony. Just reaching the ghost realm took so much energistic strength. He would never be able to smash open the gates into hell by himself.

“Where’s Billy-Joe?” he asked.

Courtney gave a sullen shrug. “Downstairs again. He likes to watch.”

“Go and fetch him for me. What I’ve seen makes it fucking important that we get more warm bodies in here for possession. I want him to get word out to the shitheads on the street, make sure they keep sending them. Nobody can afford to screw up today. This is His time now.”

“Right.” Courtney started to walk towards the door at the base of the central dome which had stairs down to the crypt. She stopped and turned back. “Quinn, what happens after?”

“After what?”

“After the Light Bringer comes and, you know, we kill everyone that doesn’t do as we say.”

“We’ll live in His Kingdom, under His light, and our serpent beasts will run free and wild for the rest of time. He will have saved us from enslavement inside the false lord’s prison city; that heaven the dumb-ass religions keep singing about.”

“Oh. Okay, that sounds pretty cool.”

Quinn watched her go, sensing the dull acceptance of her thoughts. Strange how her unquestioning compliance had begun to annoy him lately.

He spent the rest of the morning supervising the groups he had out on the streets, directing them to new targets. It consisted mainly of intimidating the shit out of their representatives when they turned up at the cathedral. A couple of times he slipped into the ghost realm and travelled through the arcology himself. The original Lancini possessed tried to keep the newer ones in line, sticking to their orders, but nothing they could say about him and what would happen if they didn’t play ball was as effective as when he actually materialized without warning in the middle of them. Three times he had to make examples out of dissenters. He couldn’t visit every group, but word spread fast enough, even without the benefit of the net.

When he returned to St Paul’s after midday, a couple of orgies had broken out on the nave floor: freshly arrived possessed, desperate for strong sensation. He didn’t stop them, the defilement of such a sacrosanct place was enjoyable; it was one of the reasons he’d chosen it for the summoning. But he did limit future numbers of participants. When the possessed got carried away, they were apt to give off their glitching effect over quite a distance, and there were still some power circuits operating around the cathedral. He couldn’t risk a giveaway impulse being tracked by an AI. Souls that’d possessed the bodies of police officers had reported how the net was exploited by Govcentral to hunt down possessed.

Until he had enough people to perform the summoning, he was going to practice restraint.

Quinn was watching the ghosts when Billy-Joe hurried up with a possessed called Frenkel. There were many tombs in St Paul’s, dating back well over a millennia, including those lost when the original cathedral building burnt down in the great fire of AD 1666. All the incumbents were supposedly men of distinction or nobility, the old nation’s finest. Or at least they might have been considered so while they were alive; Quinn thought they were just a total pain in the ass now. Oh, they had their pride, which came over in the form of resentment and hatred; but basically they were no better than all the other pathetic desolates inhabiting their insipid realm. The warriors who had fallen in defence of their king and country seemed to be in the majority of those who had lingered after death to haunt the land. They despised Quinn with a passion, knowing enough of his power to fear him. To start with they had done their best to disconcert his cohorts, especially Billy-Joe and Courtney, exerting themselves to their limit. Their chill presence made the walls bead with condensation; while the corner-of-the-eye visibility as they swooped around made the chancel’s rich gold-braided fabrics flutter with anaemic life. They keened as well, like dogs tormented by a full moon, spilling their morbid depression into the air for all to perceive.

Twice Quinn had to shunt himself into the ghost realm to deal with them. His touch alone burnt them, sending them reeling away, weakened and cowed from the contact.

Their antics had withered away, leaving them slinking round to view the gathering of possessed with mute disapproval, emitting a sullen rancour which percolated through the cathedral. Then they had began to stir, as if they themselves were the victims of an unnatural incursion. They gathered together under the central dome, twittering fearfully.

The demons were growing louder.

“Something you should hear, Quinn,” Billy-Joe said. He froze at the look of displeasure Quinn gave him for interrupting. Even Billy-Joe could see the ghosts in the nave’s energistically charged environment, shivering flames of colour that skidded uncertainly over the tiled floor. “It’s important, I swear.”

“Go on,” Quinn sighed.

Frenkel was breathing hard, and trying hard not to peer into the black gulf that was Quinn’s hood. “I’m from the Hampstead group. We saw something we thought you should know about. I got here as fast as I could, rode a maintenance cab through the tube.”

“Shit,” Quinn murmured. “Yeah yeah, very good. Get on with it.”

“There was this bunch of people sneaking round the road tunnel interchange at Dartmouth Park. They’d driven a car there, which is weird, because we haven’t got round to crapping over the route and flow processors yet. Their car must have some kind of police override code, because the curfew restrictions are still in primary mode. They got up onto the street through an inspection accessway, then they started moving through the buildings. We figured they must be locals, they know the building layouts pretty good. No one can scope them from outside; our guys were having a hard time keeping up with them when I left. We didn’t take them out, because the thing is, there’s six of them; and two are really like the people you told us all to look out for.”

“Which two?” Quinn asked sharply.

“There’s the chick with long hair, and that humping great black dude. The others are just soldiers, real hard nuts. Except one, which is where things get strange. He’s possessed. And he’s not from our group, we’ve never seen him before.”

“Is he controlling the others?”

“No. They’re like a team.”

“Where were they going? What direction?”

“They were creeping along Junction Road when I left. Our guys are keeping tabs on them.”

“Take me there.” Quinn snarled. He started to glide swiftly towards the door leading to the connecting subways. “Billy-Joe, bring your hardware.”

Louise was thankful that the two GSDI field agents accompanying them were equipped with communications blocks. They provided her neural nanonics a direct, secure satellite circuit to Charlie and GSDI’s civil databank, circumventing the patchy net coverage in this section of the arcology. The only other reliable link they had was Ivanov’s affinity bond. This way she got to see the route to Archway Tower which the B7 AI had mapped out for them.

It had been scary coming up through the accessway from the underground road tunnel, especially the thirty seconds out in the open when she had to scurry to the cover of the first building. After that, she could see not only where they were but where they were going. It was surprising how reassuring that knowledge was.

Most of the buildings had some kind of route through them, interconnecting doors—all locked—or basement service corridors. Those that didn’t, the GSDI agents were planning on simply cutting through walls with their fission blades. Even that wasn’t necessary; Fletcher conjured a door into existence each time. It didn’t seem to matter what the wall was, ancient brick or modern reinforced carbon-concrete, nor how thick it was. The trick made Brent Roi very uncomfortable, but it saved a lot of time. Fletcher could tell if there were people ahead of them, as well.

They wormed their way from building to building, staying away from the front rooms overlooking the road whenever possible. Going through pub lounges, shop store rooms, offices, even kitchens and one-room flats. Those people they did intrude upon greeted them with astonishment and fear. Then when they found out the little party was official in nature, they just wanted to know what the hell was going on outside. And rescue. Everybody wanted out.

That part was the worst, Louise found. The tension from being caught was survivable; tension was a state she was growing increasingly used to. But the pitiful pleas of the residents were relentless, their eyes accusing as they clutched small children to them.

“Isn’t there another route?” she datavised Charlie after they left a woman and her three-year-old boy sobbing miserably. “It’s awful having to refuse these people.”

Brent Roi waved her through a small triangular door into a narrow disused hallway. The only light was coming through a filthy smoked-glass window above a bricked-up door.

“Sorry, Louise,” Charlie datavised back. “The AI says this way is the most likely to get you there undetected by the possessed. It didn’t take emotional stresses into account. Just try and tough it out. Not much further.”

“Where’s Genevieve?”

“They reached Skyhigh Kijabe seven minutes ago. I’ve chartered a blackhawk to take her to Tranquillity. She’ll be there within the hour.”

Louise tapped Fletcher on the shoulder. “Genevieve’s safe. She’s about to depart for Tranquillity.”

“I’m gladdened to hear that, my lady. Hope survives.”

Ivanov reached the end of the hallway and held his hand up. “Outside road.”

The two GSDI field agents moved forward to the metal door. One glanced at Fletcher.

“No one is near,” he said.

The agent pressed a small block to the damp wall beside the door. It fired a narrow electron beam through the plaster and brick, then extended a microfilament with a sensor on the end. The image it relayed showed them a narrow street, deserted except for a couple of cats. With the sensor switched to infrared, the agent focused it on each visible window along the street in turn, searching for hot silhouettes. The AI had been using the overhead dome sensors to scan their immediate area the whole way, but the angle was all wrong to examine windows.

Their caution every time they had to cross a side street was adding considerably to the journey time.

“Two possibles,” the agent reported, datavising the coordinates to his colleague. The door was opened and he ran fast across the street to the building directly opposite. Their entry point was a window covered by a security grille. Cutting the restraint bolts with a fission blade took fifteen seconds; the window catch was a mere two. The agent vanished inside with a neat roll. Brent Roi was next. Louise followed, sprinting hard across the street. According to her neural nanonics it was Vorley Road, the last open space they had to cross.

Getting in, she reminded herself. It was a long long way back to any vac-train station.

This conglomeration of buildings was gathered around the base of the Archway skyscraper itself: a monolithic twenty-five storey tower that stood halfway up a sloping ridge of land that was topped by Highgate Hill. If it hadn’t been for the buildings along the street blocking the view, they would already be able to look out over the rooftops of the old city.

Once they were inside, a service corridor took them straight to the tower’s lobby. A lift was already waiting for them, door open.

“The tower’s net and power are still connected,” Charlie datavised. “The AI is hooked into every circuit in there. I can give you plenty of early warning if there are any glitches.”

They all crammed into the lift, which rose smoothly to the upper utility level. It opened out onto a world of artificial lighting, thick metal pipes, black storage tanks, and big primitive air-conditioning machines. Ivanov led them along a metal walkway to a spiral stair. The door at the top let them out on the flat roof. A flock of scarlet parakeets took flight as they emerged, startlingly loud in the warm air.

Louise glanced round cautiously. The first rank of tall, modern skyscrapers encircling the old city were only a mile or so away to the north, their glassy faces shimmering rose-gold in the last of the twilight sun. To the south, the embargoed city swept away down the slope towards the distant Thames, a dusky mass of rooftops and intersecting walls. Patches of twinkling silvery light clung to some of the larger roads where the power hadn’t yet been cut to the hologram adverts. Not a single window was illuminated, the residents preferring to stay in the dark, fearful of drawing attention to themselves.

Louise heard Fletcher laughing. He was leaning on the crumbling concrete parapet that ran round the edge of the roof, looking out towards the south.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I laugh at my own humility, lady. I look at this city which is supposed to be the closest to home I will ever come, only to find that it is the strangest vista I have encountered since my return. The word ‘city’ no longer encompasses the meaning it had in my time. You have the power and artifice to build such a colossus, yet it is I who has been asked to perform this scant task of finding one man.”

“He’s not a man. He’s a monster.”

“Aye, Lady Louise.” The humour faded from his handsome face, and he faced the ancient city. “They’re here, but of course you knew that.”

“Are there many?”

“Fewer than I had supposed, but enough. I feel their presence everywhere.” He closed his eyes and leant out a little further, sniffing the air. His hands gripped the top of the parapet. “There is a gathering. I feel them. Their thoughts are quietened, deliberately so. They wait for something.”

“Waiting?” Ivanov asked quickly. “How do you know?”

“There is an aura of anticipation about them. And unease. They are troubled, yet unable to walk away from their predicament.”

“It’s him! It has to be. No one else could make a whole bunch of possessed do as they’re told. Where are they?”

Fletcher took one of his hands off the parapet, leaving behind a dark sweat-stain print. He pointed along the Holloway Road. “Over yonder. I am uncertain as to how many leagues. Though they remain inside the dome. On that I would wager my hat.”

Ivanov moved over to stand behind Fletcher, squinting along the direction he was pointing. “You’re sure?”

“I am, sir. There.”

“Okay. I’ve got a fix. We just need to triangulate.”

“A splendid notion.”

“I’ll take you over to Crouch Hill. That ought to be far enough. Then once we get a rough idea where the bastard’s hiding out, we can work out a route to get you close.”

“If I may suggest, I simply walk. No man would accost me in this guise, and fewer will suspect my intent.”

“Walk off into the goddamn sunset,” Brent said. “No fucking way.”

“We can talk about it,” Ivanov said. “Fletcher, you got any idea how many there are in this group?”

“I would suggest several hundred. Possibly even a thousand.”

“What the hell does he want with that many in one place?”

“I can advance no rationale to elucidate Quinn Dexter’s behaviour. He is, sir, quite mad.”

“All right.” Ivanov took a final look across the city, fixing the line Fletcher had indicated. “Let’s move out.”

They had just got into the lift when the AI reported an electronics glitch close to the Archway Tower. It immediately datavised a search update to Charlie. The glitch was occurring beside the electricity substation which distributed power to the Archway Tower among other consumers. A security camera revealed two people approaching the substation along a dark corridor.

Trouble, he warned Ivanov.

The substation door crumpled from a blast of white fire. Three more glitches appeared around the base of the Archway Tower. Sensors showed possessed moving purposefully through the subway, freight tunnel, and utilities passageway. The substation transformers exploded as a barrage of white fire pummelled into their casings.

Ivanov saw the lights in the lift flicker as the Tower’s emergency power cells took over. They were just passing the nineteenth floor.

Down in the basement, the possessed were smashing every communications conduit they could find, tearing the cables out of the wall. The AI watched the Tower’s net connections fail one after the other. Independent power cells kept the internal processors running, but it could now only access them through the communications blocks carried by the GSDI field agents, cutting down on the bandwidth available for surveillance and initiating possible counter-moves.

Security sensors on the ground floor showed fifteen possessed running up the stairs into the lobby. They immediately started slinging small bolts of white fire at the sensors and any other electronic system. Just before the last camera failed, Charlie saw a lift door being broken down with considerable force.

Out, he ordered. Get out of the lift.

The AI had already established a link to the lift’s controlling processor. It applied the failsafe brakes and slammed it to a halt on the thirteenth floor.

Louise yelped in shock as the lift floor abruptly tried to shunt its way upwards, accompanied by a strident alarm siren. She grasped at the handrail as she lurched against the wall.

The doors flashed open. Charlie was datavising orders to her as Ivanov was shouting: “Move it! The possessed are coming.” Everyone charged out into the corridor. Black apartment doors lined both walls. Smoked-glass windows at either end let in a murky glow from the setting sun. Emergency lights shone brightly above both of the stairwell doors.

Charlie told one of the GSDI agents to leave his communication block in the corridor, tucking it away unobtrusively in a doorway, enabling the AI to maintain contact with the tower’s net. “The possessed are now heading up both stairwells,” Charlie datavised. “Five in one, four in the other. The remainder are waiting downstairs. You’ll have to shoot your way through them. I suggest you use the anti-memory where possible.”

“Gets my vote,” Ivanov said. He drew the small weapon, holding it in his left hand. His right held a compact automatic pistol.

Fletcher and Louise drew their own weapons. The agents and Brent were checking their machine guns.

Ivanov opened the stairwell door cautiously. Concrete steps with metal rails wound down the shaft in a rectangular corkscrew. The sound of running boots echoed upwards.

“They know we’re here,” Fletcher said curtly.

The AI tracked glitches rising up the stairwell and computed the approximate distance. Both GISD field agents entered the time into the trigger mechanism on their grenades and dropped them down the shaft.

Louise hunched down next to the wall, her hands pressed against her ears. Explosions roared below as the chemical shrapnel grenades detonated. Then the agents tossed their gas incendiaries over the rail. Billows of flame scoured the battered stairs, searing against the groggy possessed. Screams trilled along the length of the stairwell.

“Let’s go,” Ivanov said. He took off down the stairs.

Louise was third in line, behind one of the agents, with Brent pounding along behind her. She’d put a host of programs in primary mode, an auto-locomotion so she could tear round the stairwell corners without slipping, adrenaline suppresser working through the medical nanonic to keep her calm, weapons control so she’d be able to aim the anti-memory tube properly, peripheral motion analysis, heart-rate control as a counter to the adrenaline suppresser, making sure her straining muscles received enough blood, tactical analysis, which was synchronized with the AI. It informed her that possessed from the lobby were starting to invade the bottom of the stairwell in support of their injured comrades. After descending another two floors, the agents would drop more grenades, and they’d all switch stairwells.

A thick streamer of white fire plunged up the centre of the stairwell, its tip swelling rapidly.

Louise flung herself back from the rail. Brent and one of the agents stuck their machine guns over the edge, shooting off a suppressing deluge of static bullets.

The plume of white fire burst open, spitting out a shower of incandescent sparks. Several of them landed on Louise’s legs, stinging hard as they burnt their way through her leggings. She batted at them with her free hand, putting an axon block in primary to dull the pain. Her tactical program was urging her up. Neuroiconic icons began to flash warnings about capacity reduction in her neural nanonics.

A bolt of white fire flashed like lightning. It hit the GSDI field agent who was covering the rear of the group, penetrating straight through the back of his skull to char the brain. He crumpled instantly.

Ivanov and the remaining agent whirled round, their weapons trying to find a target.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” Brent yelled.

Charlie knew there was only one answer. Instinctively, his affinity bond made Ivanov turn to face Fletcher. “Well?” the detective demanded.

“He is here,” Fletcher said with trepidation. “I feel him even though he hides beyond sight.”

The possessed were clattering up the stairwell again. Neural nanonics and blocks were beginning to glitch.

Charlie tightened Ivanov’s grip around the anti-memory weapon. “Through here,” he ordered. Ivanov went through the door to the tenth floor, arm swinging in wide arcs to cover the corridor. It was deserted, a copy of the thirteenth floor. Louise and Brent followed him while the last agent dropped a couple of grenades over the rail. They all started to run for the second stairwell. The grenades didn’t go off.

“Is he still here?” Ivanov asked.

“Close,” Fletcher said. Fury and frustration boiled into his voice. “I cannot see him. The devil!”

“Shoot it where you think he is. It might work anyway.”

Fletcher stopped running and lifted the anti-memory weapon, his thumb pushing the trigger button forwards. He glanced about the sombre corridor as though trying to make his mind up. The trigger was suddenly pressed, sending a cone of bright ruby laser light stabbing out.

“It is useless,” Fletcher cried. “Useless.”

The energistic glitch had crashed just about all of Ivanov’s neural nanonics. He certainly couldn’t receive any datavises. That meant the possessed were very close now.

The AI has lost all contact with the communication blocks, Charlie said. I can’t track the possessed for you any more.

Up is no good, Ivanov said. He looked round wildly. We’ll have to make a stand.

Very well. There’s a chance Dexter will become visible during the fight. If that happens, you must fire the anti-memory no matter what the cost.

You won’t even have to compel me. Finishing the shit will be my pleasure.

Fletcher had put his arm protectively around a trembling Louise. He suddenly fired the anti-memory again, sending the beam over Brent’s head.

“Careful with that thing,” Brent shouted.

Fletcher ignored him. “The others are almost here.”

Three machine guns lined up on the stairwell door.

“Get away,” Ivanov told Louise, waving her towards the window at the end of the corridor. Then he saw what was behind her, and let out a fast yell of delight. “Yes! Oldest trick in the book. Fletcher, cover for me. We can get her out.” You should have thought of this, he accused Charlie.

There was a fire evacuation chute beside the window, a big doughnut of composite on thick swivel pinions. Ivanov grabbed Louise and hurried her along. He pulled the release lever at the side of the chute, shoving it through a hundred and eighty degrees. The window fell out, an alarm sounded, and water rained down out of the ceiling sprinklers all along the corridor. The doughnut swung round to lock into place in front of the open window. A fabric stocking concertinaed out, the pressure it had been stored under making it pour outwards like a liquid. It fluttered away from the side of the tower as it kept on expanding, the free end sinking towards the black ground far below.

It’s a manual system, Charlie protested. The AI has no control over it.

Louise was staring at the top of the chute in bewilderment as the cold water soaked her to the skin.

“In you go,” Ivanov shouted above the alarm. “Feet first.” His laugh was manic.

“No,” Louise stammered. She took a frightened step backward.

A twin of the stairwell door materialized in the wall next to the original. Brent fired his machine gun straight at it. Skeletal hands with long red nails slithered up through the solid floor at his feet and clamped around his ankles. He got out one panicked shout before they tugged him down. Then all he could manage was a grunt of disbelief as his shins sank into the carpeting as though it was nothing more than quicksand.

Fletcher grabbed hold of the flailing Halo detective and exerted his own energistic power to counter the destabilising floor. Two possessed walked out of the stairwell at the far end of the corridor. They were dressed as Roman legionaries, but armed with stainless steel crossbows. The GISD agent crouched down and opened fire with his machine gun. Bursts of lightning followed the bullets through the downpour of water. The legionaries stumbled as the bullets struck them, twanging against their bronze breastplates. But they managed to stay upright, limbs moving in jerking motions. One raised his crossbow and fired. The bolt struck the agent on his knee, severing his lower leg. Blood foamed out of the severed limb, and he topped to one side, stunned into stupor by the pain.

Ivanov turned to Louise. “Go!” he bellowed. “Get out of here.” He shoved her roughly with one hand, and pointed the anti-memory weapon down the corridor with the other. The beam flared brightly at the advancing legionaries.

Louise gripped the rim of the doughnut, looking directly at the funnel of slippery fabric around its throat. The whole idea of jumping into it was terrifying. Another scream rang out behind her. She took hold of the handle at the top of the doughnut, and swung her legs up, pushing them through the gap. And let go.

Fletcher had got one of Brent’s legs free when three possessed rushed him out of the duplicate stairwell door. He instinctively flung his arms towards them, white fire streaming from his fingertips. They thrashed about in the slithering flame, focusing their own power to send it skidding harmlessly over their own skin.

A streamer coiled round Fletcher’s torso. He had to drop his own attack to counter it. The red slash of the anti-memory beam fluoresced the water droplets barely an inch from his nose as Ivanov tried to provide covering fire. One of the possessed collapsed.

Ivanov was switching targets when a crossbow bolt ripped into his forearm, tearing out a chillingly long strip of flesh, exposing the bone. Without muscles or tendons, the elbow joint flopped uselessly, hand opening to drop his compact machine gun. Blood gushed down to splatter the weapon’s dull metal.

When he glanced upwards, shaking the water and pain out of his eyes, he saw Fletcher writhing at the centre of five lightning forks being hurled at him by several possessed. At his feet, a badly scorched Brent heaved down a painful breath and raised his machine gun, firing round wildly, heedless of who the bullets struck. There was no sign of Dexter. None.

He might just try and follow Louise, Charlie decided.

Ivanov was never certain who was in charge of his body at that moment. But he took two faltering steps backwards until the doughnut rim hit him just below his kidneys. Then he performed a fabulously well-coordinated back flip, and vanished head first down the chute.

Fletcher staggered to one side as Brent started shooting again. The possessed scrambled for cover, two diving through walls. Out of nowhere, a skilfully aimed ball of white fire plunged into Brent’s left eye socket, and the gun fell silent. Two spears of white fire immediately resumed their strike against Fletcher. He twisted painfully under the impact, waving his hand in the general direction one of them was coming from, about to retaliate with his own fire. A thin metal band clamped tight around his throat, and an electric current punched into him. It took every reserve of strength to prevent the excruciating energy from pouring like hot acid into his brain. Thought was impossible, instinct was all he had left. He slumped to his knees, the smell of frying skin thick in his nostrils. The anti-memory weapon fell from numb fingers.

“Enough.”

The current was switched off. Fletcher’s muscles lost their rigor, dropping him into a twitching heap. Breath was hard to find with the unyielding circle of metal digging against his Adam’s apple. His fingers scrabbled weakly against the collar.

“You just leave that alone motherfucker or I’ll zap you again.”

Fletcher blinked against the shower of water still gushing from the sprinklers, focusing a long pole that extended away from the collar. At the other end was a young man, not possessed, whose tongue lolled out of the corner of his mouth. “Hands down, come on boy, down they go.”

Fletcher removed his hands from the collar.

“Gooood boy,” the young man sneered. “Hey, Quinn, I got him for you. He been whupped but good.”

Quinn Dexter materialized next to Billy-Joe. The deluge of water never even touched his robe. “Well done. I owe you at least a countess and a classical actress for this one.”

Billy-Joe put his head back and howled in joy. “Yes sir. Gonna die from too much fucking.”

“Shame my old friend Louise got away.”

“No she ain’t,” Billy-Joe shouted excitably. He shoved the restraint collar’s pole into the hands of a startled Frenkel, who gripped it in reflex. “I’ll get her for you, Quinn. You see.”

“No,” Quinn said.

But Billy-Joe was already running for the evacuation chute.

“Billy-Joe!” the tone was ominous. Billy-Joe responded with a doltish grin, and dived clean through the doughnut.

“Shit!” Quinn exclaimed. He’d emphasised how much he wanted Louise Kavanagh as he led the possessed into the tower. And for all his loyalty, Billy-Joe was far too dumb to appreciate simple strategy.

Quinn couldn’t chase after the girl himself. Fletcher was regarding him with calculating ferocity. Captured, but hardly subdued. And there were too many questions he had concerning the soul-less bodies now sprawled inertly along the corridor. He snapped his fingers at a couple of the possessed from the Hampstead group. “You two, get down there and help him out.”

If she’d just had the time to read the instructions and pictographs on the side of the doughnut, Louise might not have been so frightened. The chute was an old idea, improved by the use of modern flextailored fabric so it could be used from almost any height. She slid down the first four stories with little resistance; then the fabric began to constrict around her, gently braking her fall. It was designed to be elastic in one direction only, making sure its length remained constant. The end would continue to dangle one metre above the pavement no matter how many people were inside the chute.

Louise was deposited gently from the end, not even having to bend her knees when her feet touched the ground. Her neural nanonics were back on line, with the adrenaline suppression program quickly damping down her shakes. She took a few unsteady steps from the tower, then looked up. Faint sounds of conflict were drifting out of the open window far above. A bulge was descending down the chute, putting her in mind of a guinea pig swallowed by a snake.

There was no time for her to reach cover before the person in the chute arrived. Louise gave the anti-memory weapon she was holding a blank look, then aimed it at the end of the chute.

A head cleared the rim, which surprised her. She’d been expecting feet.

Ivanov had gritted his teeth against the shocking pain from his arm while his neural nanonics slowly recovered on the ride down. When he slid out of the chute the axon block was established, cutting off all the impulses from the mangled wound. Physiological shock was more difficult to counter.

With only one arm to flail around with, he tumbled awkwardly from the chute as the hem released him. Louise rushed forward to help, only to gasp when she saw the state of his bloody arm.

“No,” Ivanov groaned. He rolled onto his knees, gripping the long wound tightly, trying to staunch the blood. “Go,” he said earnestly.

“But you’re hurt.”

“Doesn’t matter. You go. Now.”

“I . . .” she stared round in despair at the dark deserted streets. “There’s nowhere to go.”

Ivanov’s expression altered, a subtle but definite change. “This is Charlie. Run, Louise. Run now. And keep on running. Go down the Holloway Road to start, there aren’t many of them in that direction. Shoot anyone you see. I mean it, don’t ask questions, just shoot. Once you’re clear, find somewhere deserted to hole up. I promise I’ll do what I can to save London. You know that, Louise.” He looked up. A bulge was sliding down the chute, already halfway down. “Now go! Please. Go on, leave. I’ll take care of them here. They won’t be following you for quite a while.”

Ivanov winked. Louise knew that was him, not Charlie. She nodded and backed off. “Thank you.” Then she was gone, running hard down the Holloway Road.

Behind her, Ivanov swung round to face the chute. He let go of his injured arm, allowing the blood to flow freely again. His good arm brought the anti-memory weapon up to point at the chute hem, just as Billy-Joe’s head popped out.

The fluorescent yellow frisbee soared high above the white sand. Haile had to formshift her tractamorphic flesh into a long tentacle to catch it. Jay clapped excitedly, hopping about. “Throw it back, throw it back,” she squealed.

Haile’s tentacle curled round the rim, and released the frisbee with a fast flick. It flew back, travelling twice as quickly as when Jay threw it, tracing a perfectly flat trajectory.

The little girl had to jump to have any chance of making a catch. It hit her hand with a sharp smack, and she tumbled over onto the sand.

“Ouch!”

You feel painfulness?

“Not half.” Jay scrambled up, shaking the tingling out of her hand. She gave the clubhouse along the beach a guilty glance. Tracy had started to warn her about the amount of times she was using the provider for medical aid when she went surfing, threatening to confiscate the board. Asking for something to ease her stinging palm would probably result in more scolding.

“Rest time,” she announced, and flopped on her towel.

Haile lumbered over and used her tractamorphic flesh to scoop out a shallow depression in the warm dry sand. She settled into it, emitting strong thoughts of grateful satisfaction.

Jay eyed the cooler box again, then looked back to the clubhouse. “What are they watching now?”

Corpus is displaying pictures from sensors on Earth for them.

“Really? Where from?”

London. Fletcher Christian has arrived to help the police locate Quinn Dexter. Tracy is concerned that the security services have acquired the life-pattern disrupter weapon.

Jay sighed with impatience. Tracy kept telling her how momentous events were back in the Confederation. Privately Jay thought the way the old observers got into such a tizz over all the political shenanigans was stupid. All she really wanted to know was when it was all going to be over and she could see her mother again. Loads of politicians arguing about who they should ally their planets with wasn’t going to bring any sort of end to the crisis.

Friend Jay, what is wrong?

“I want to go home.” She hated how miserable and whiny she sounded.

Corpus asks that you be patient.

“Huh!” Suffering quickly turned to a spike of anger. “As if it cares.”

It does care, a distressed Haile said. All Kiint care.

“Right.” She wasn’t going to argue with Haile, it always upset both of them.

Tracy comes, Haile said with a note of hope.

Jay saw the old woman riding a chrome-blue air scooter towards them. Several of the Village residents used the little vehicles to get about on, each one as individual as its owner. Tracy’s was a fat ellipsoid shape with a recessed saddle in the middle. Stubby triangular fins with red tail lights protruded from the rear third; for show Jay assumed. There were also some positively anachronistic circular headlights on the front, like glass jewels. Tracy called it her T-bird.

Another thing Jay was banned from using by herself. She was convinced the sleek-looking vehicle could go a lot faster than Tracy’s maximum speed.

It glided silently through the air at about twenty kilometres an hour, keeping a good two metres above the ground.

Jay stood up, brushing sand from her swimsuit as the T-bird landed beside her.

“Sorry I’m late, poppet,” Tracy said. “Haile, my dear, you’ll have to look after yourself this afternoon. I’m going to take Jay to Agarn.”

“What’s Agarn?”

Tracy explained as they walked back to the chalet, the T-bird following faithfully behind. Agarn was another planet in the Arc, inhabited by a small number of Kiint. They didn’t involve themselves in the kind of life practised by the majority of the Arc, preferring more philosophical pursuits. “So mind your manners,” Tracy warned. “They’re a very dignified group.”

“Why are we going there?”

“The Agarn Kiint are slightly different from the others. I’m hoping they’ll intervene in our favour. It’s a bit of a last resort, but things are turning ugly in the Confederation. I’m worried the situation will result in a squalid kind of stalemate. Nothing will be resolved, which is one of the worst outcomes there can be.”

She inspected Jay’s clothes, a pair of khaki shorts and a blue T-shirt, with sturdy hiking boots. “You’ll do, quite the little explorer.”

“Why am I going with you?”

“So they can get a look at a true human.”

“Oh.” Jay didn’t like that idea at all. “Can’t they look at the pictures from the Confederation like you do?”

“In a way they already have. They haven’t turned their back on Corpus. If they had there wouldn’t be any point to visiting them.”

Jay just smiled. She still really didn’t understand Corpus.

Agarn didn’t have any buildings within sight of the teleport circle they arrived on. They were on the rolling foothills of a wide valley. It was kind of like the parkland of Riynine, but left untended for a couple of centuries. Lush emerald grass-analogue swamped the ground. Trees were twisting towers of clustered magenta bubbles. A dozen waterfalls poured over tall rock cliffs lining the valley, while every crevice was home to a stream, emptying into crater lakes that were stepped down the slopes.

Tracy looked round, dabbing at her forehead with a lace hanky. “I’d forgotten how hot it is here,” she murmured.

Jay put her sunglasses on, and they walked down to one of the crater lakes. Two Kiint were bathing just off the shore.

Hello, Fowin, Tracy said.

The Kiint raised a blunt length of tractamorphic flesh, and began to wade ashore. Greetings to you, Tracy Dean. You are Jay Hilton? Query.

“Yes, thank you very much. Hello.” Jay pushed her sunglasses up as the Kiint reached the shore and walked out onto the thick grass-analogue. It was very similar to Haile’s parents, though she thought the breathing vents were angled steeper, and the legs were flatter.

I thank you for this visit, Tracy said. I wish to ask you to consider intervention.

I know this. Why else do observers visit me? Following the Gebal stabilisation, every time a new species encounters a problem I am asked to be favourable towards them.

Your enlightenment is renown among Corpus.

Corpus is a constant reminder of the Gebal, so much so that I doubt my wisdom in agreeing to help. Such a notion features heavily in my contemplation. It distracts me from higher thought.

The Gebal faced a unique situation. So do humans.

Humans face an unfortunate situation.

Nonetheless, we can reach full transcendence amity. The inverse population is negligible. Our progress towards social maturity, though admittedly slow, is constant. She gestured at Jay. Please consider our potential.

Jay put on her best bright smile for the Kiint.

Your attempt to influence is crude, Tracy Dean. The child of every species is a reservoir for great potential, good and bad. I cannot judge the individual path, thus logically providing a neutral witness. However, children are inherently innocent. A positive bias.

Jay is the only human available.

Very well. The Kiint turned its big violet eyes to the little girl. What do you desire above all else, Jay Hilton?

“I want my mummy back, of course. I keep telling your Corpus that.”

So you do. I grieve with you for the loss you suffer.

“But you won’t help, will you. None of your kind will. I think that’s horrible of you. Everyone keeps saying how we’re not perfect. But do you know what Father Horst told me once?”

I do not.

“It’s very simple and very smart. If you want to know if something is fair, then turn it round. So if you know us as well as you claim, and we were the ones with a thousand planets and providers and stuff, do you think we’d help you if we could?”

A healthy argument, presented with integrity. I know this is hard, but there are more issues involved than are apparent.

“Very clever,” Jay said. She folded her arms in a huff. “I know it’s possible to take possessors out of the bodies they’ve stolen. I saw it done. So why don’t you at least help us to do that? Then we could work out what to do afterwards by ourselves. That’s what you really want, isn’t it? For us to stand up for ourselves.”

The weapon your military is constructing requires no assistance from us.

“Not that. Father Horst exorcised Freya. He threw the possessing soul out of her.”

I am interested in your claim, Jay Hilton. Corpus is unaware of the incident. Could you tell me what the circumstances were?

Jay launched into a description of the events that had taken place that fateful day in a small homestead on Lalonde’s savannah. Just retelling it made her realize how much had happened since, how much she’d seen and done. It also pushed her mother further into the past, making her even more remote. She finished the story, and a tear trickled down her cheek.

Tracy’s arm immediately went round her shoulders. “Hush hush, poppet. The possessed can’t reach you here.”

“It’s not that,” Jay wailed. “I can’t remember what mummy looks like anymore. I’m trying, but I can’t.”

This at least I can remedy, Fowin said. A provider globe appeared in the air beside Jay. It extruded a square of glossy paper. Jay took it cautiously. A picture of her mother was printed on one side. Jay smiled, tears forgotten.

“That’s her passport flek image,” she said. “I remember when we went to the registry office together. How did you get this?”

It is stored in your Govcentral memory cores. We retain access.

“Thank you very much,” Jay said contritely. She looked at her mother again, warmed by the sight. “I thought you didn’t use stuff like providers on this planet, that you’d gone back to nature or something?”

Quite the opposite, Fowin said. We have rejected everything but our technology. Permanent physical structures are unessential. We are free to pursue thought alone.

“Humans are never going to evolve into anything like you,” Jay said sadly. “We’d just get too bored.”

I am glad. Your appetites are unique. Treasure them. Be yourselves.

“So will you help us expelling souls?”

I believe the circumstances that allowed Father Horst his exorcism will not be repeated on many occasions.

“How come?”

As you have demonstrated this day, human children have very strong beliefs. Freya was brought up to believe in her ethnic Christian religion. When Father Horst began the ceremony of expulsion, she believed that it would work, that the soul possessing her would be cast out. At that same time, the soul experienced doubt. It had endured a form of purgatory, implying the priests of its era enjoyed some kind of fundamental truth when they discussed spiritual matters. Now it was confronted by a priest who believed he had God’s aid to perform the exorcism. Three different, extremely strong beliefs were acting upon the soul, exerting considerable pressure not only from outside, but within its own thoughts. The soul convinced itself of the validity of the ceremony. Its own faith turned against it, and it withdrew as it believed it had to.

“Then Father Horst can’t do it for entire planets?”

No.

“Okay,” Jay said reluctantly. She was right out of arguments and hope.

Your evaluation? Tracy asked respectfully.

I acknowledge that the breakthrough event on Lalonde was extraneous. Even so, that cannot justify total intervention.

I see.

However. Your race’s potential should be safeguarded. You may initiate a separate origin.

“Thank you,” Tracy said weakly.

“I don’t understand,” Jay complained when they returned to the chalet. “What are you so happy about? Corpus won’t intervene.”

Tracy sat in one of the deck chairs on the veranda, for once breaking her own rule and ordering a cup of tea from the provider. “You worked an absolute miracle, poppet. Fowin’s evaluation immediately becomes Corpus policy. It’s going to allow us to start a brand-new human colony if the Confederation falls apart.”

“Why is that good? The possessed won’t spread to every colony, you said that yourself.”

“I know. But it’s knowledge, you see. Humans found out about souls before they were socially advanced enough to deal with such a revelation. Now that knowledge is going to act like a mental contaminate among every culture. It’ll split humanity into a thousand squabbling factions—that’s already started with Kulu and its idea for a core-Confederation of wealthy worlds. Recovering from such a catastrophe will take generations, and even then the resolution will be influenced by what’s gone before. What Corpus will do is begin a colony of, say, a million people from scratch. Observers will be authorized to purchase or acquire ova and sperm stored in zero-tau from medical and biological institutes all across the Confederation. The new colony’s start-up population will be gestated in exowombs and cared for by AIs during their childhood. That way, the information they’re given can be carefully edited. We can start with a high-technology society equivalent to the Confederation’s level of scientific knowledge and let it develop naturally.”

“Fowin can do all that?”

“Any Kiint can do that. Too many of them have conformist thought routines if you ask me. At least the Agarn Kiint make an effort to push the envelope. Not that it’s helped them with the Sleeping God.”

“What’s that?” Jay asked eagerly.

Tracy gave her a solemn smile. “Something an old race left behind a very long time ago. It’s created quite a dilemma for this civilization of so-called philosophy gurus. Not that there’s anything they can do to affect the situation. I think that’s what upset them the most. They’ve been the undisputed masters of this section of the universe for so long, finding something infinitely superior to themselves is rather shocking. Perhaps that’s why Fowin was so accommodating today.” She stopped as Galic appeared at the foot of the veranda’s steps.

“You did it,” he said.

“Certainly did.” Tracy grinned back.

He came up and sat in the deckchair beside her. Before long, other retired observers had dropped by to discuss the new colony. They had an enthusiasm Jay hadn’t seen in them before, making them younger. Not once that whole evening did they discuss the past.

After dark, the party moved into Tracy’s lounge and started calling up star charts and planetary surveys. Arguments about the merits of possible locations raged good-naturedly. Most wanted to see the colony in the same galaxy as the Confederation, even if it had to be on the other side of the core.

Some time around midnight, Tracy realized Jay had fallen asleep on the settee. Galic picked her up and carried her into her bedroom. She never woke as he covered her with a blanket and put Prince Dell on the pillow beside her. He tiptoed out and closed the door before returning to the debate.

Louise had fled for half a mile down the Holloway Road. It was narrow at the top end, the pavements lined by tall brick buildings with crumbling windowsills and gutters. Their ground floors were small shops and cafes whose drab and grimy fronts were firmly shuttered. Her footsteps rattled off the stern walls, an auditory beacon signalling to everyone where she was.

Further down, the road began to widen out. The buildings along this section were better maintained, with clean bricks, glossy paintwork, and more prosperous businesses. Narrow side roads branched off every hundred yards or so, consisting of attractive, compact terrace houses converted into flats. Silver birches and cherry trees in their front gardens overhung the pavements, to give them the semblance of a quiet rural town.

The slope began to flatten out, revealing at least a mile of straight deserted road ahead of her. The larger commercial premises had taken over on either side, their hologram adverts swirling over the broad pavements, forming a skittering iridescent rainbow. Traffic control informationals hung in the air above road lanes at the main junctions, flashing their colour sequences down onto the empty carbon-concrete.

Louise slowed to a halt, panting heavily from the exertion. She couldn’t see anything move behind her, but it was so dark behind her she’d hardly see any pursuers until they were almost on top of her. Travelling on under the illumination of the holograms would be a mistake.

Tollington Way was fifty yards ahead of her, a side road leading into the backstreet maze that proliferated behind every major London thoroughfare. Holding her sides against the ache of breathing, Louise jogged for a hundred yards down it, then stopped and hunched down in the deep shadows of a doorway.

Her soaking leggings were chafing her thighs, the T-shirt was disgustingly cold and clammy, and her feet felt as though they were shrivelling up. She was shuddering all over now from the cold. High above, small green lights flashed on the dome’s geodesic structure.

“Now what?” she gasped up at it. Charlie would be watching her through the sensors, seeing her infrared image constricted into a small ball. She datavised a general net access request. There was no response.

Escape and hide, Charlie had told her. Easy to say. But where? No one was going to open their door to a stranger on this night. She’d probably be shot just for knocking and asking.

A cat yowled and jumped off a nearby wall to run along the street. Louise was rolling to the ground and bringing the anti-memory weapon smoothly to bear before the noise had even registered properly. The cat, a furry tabby, loped past, giving her a disdainful look.

She let out a brief sob as her muscles went limp. The weapons control program was still in primary mode. She took it off line as she climbed painfully to her feet, swatting dirt from her knees and the front of her waistcoat.

The cat was still visible, silhouetted against the hologram haze curtaining the end of Tollington Way, its tail swishing about arrogantly. It was obvious she was still too close to Holloway Road; her pursuers would come down it, searching every side road. Fletcher said they could sense people without even having to see them.

Louise accessed the map of central London she’d stored in a neural nanonics memory cell, and began to walk away from the light. The anti-memory weapon was slipped back into her waistcoat pocket. She couldn’t work out which was the better way of avoiding search parties; staying in one place (assuming she could find a disused room or warehouse) or constantly moving round. The odds were uncomputable, principally because she didn’t know what she was facing. An organized systematic hunt, or a couple of possessed ambling round in a disinterested fashion.

Studying the map was almost meaningless, it didn’t relate to anything. Without any goal, any destination, one street was the same as any other. Its only use was in preventing her from crossing any of the main roads.

Maybe I should just find somewhere to hide. That’s what Charlie suggested.

On an impulse she called up the Ritz’s address. The map had to switch magnification factors the hotel was so far away from her.

That was out, then. Pity, no one would think to hunt for her there.

“Andy,” she whispered in shock. The one person she knew in London. And who would never turn her away.

She retrieved his eddress and ran it through the London directory she’d loaded along with all the other junk data recommended as essential personal survival tools for the arcology. Some people didn’t include their physical address with their net code. But Andy had. He lived in Islington, somewhere on Halton Road. A tiny blue star burned on the map.

Two miles away.

“Sweet Jesus, please let him be there.”

They chained Fletcher to the altar with manacles that had an electric current running through them, nullifying his energistic power. They ripped his clothes off, and cut obscene runes into his flesh. They shaved him. They burned a pile of Bibles and prayer books at his feet, and used the ash to smear a pentagon around his body. They hung an inverted cross above his skull, dangling by a rope that was fraying and rotting.

Ghosts slithered past, offering their desolate expressions in sympathy.

“Sorry,” was their only whisper. “So sorry.” Past heroes, humbled and degraded by their emasculation. The possessed spat at them, jeering them out of the way.

St Paul’s was illuminated with the mealy light from smoking iron braziers and racks of candles, leaving the vaulting ceiling invisible. Its new incense was the smell of sweaty bodies and fried burgerbap onions. Prayers had been supplanted by rock music coming from a ghetto blaster, with the sounds of copulation heard between tracks. With his head forced back awkwardly against the stone, Fletcher could see several young possessed scrambling monkey-fashion over the stained glass windows, painting them over with sticky black fluid. A dark shape moved into his limited field of view.

Quinn bent over him. “Nice to see you again.”

“Enjoy your taunts while you can, you inhuman monster. You will issue them no longer once this day is through.”

“You’re good. I admire that. You got off Norfolk in time, which wasn’t easy. And you got down to Earth, which is fucking impossible. Very good. What did you do? Make a deal with the supercops?”

“I know naught of what you speak.”

“Shit. Okay, I’ll put it in real slow retard-speak for you. Who brought you down to Earth?”

When Fletcher didn’t answer, Quinn ran his hand over the iron band securing the man’s forehead. “I can have them increase the voltage you know. It can get a lot lot worse.”

“Only while I remain in this body.”

“Not such a dumb asshole after all.” Quinn crawled sinuously onto the altar beside Fletcher and moved his hooded head right up close. “Before we go any further,” he whispered, “what’s she like to fuck? Come on, you can tell me. Is she hot stuff? Or does she just lie there and take it like a corpse? Just between us. I won’t tell anyone. Does she give good head? Does she like it up the ass?”

“You are unfit to live, sir. I shall relish your fall, for it will be a great one from the height of your arrogance.”

“Don’t tell me you never tried her out? That Louise? She was with you for weeks and weeks. All that time. You must have.” Quinn withdrew a fraction, vaguely puzzled. “Shit, you’re the one that’s not human.”

“Your judgements have neither value nor relevance to me.”

“Oh yeah? There’s one judgement I might interest you in. I’m gonna find out what she’s like. My people will bring her here for me, and then you can watch me and Courtney go to work on her. I’ll make you watch. See how long you can keep that assholing superiority going then. Motherfucker!”

“You will have to find her first.”

“Oh I will. Believe it. Even if the morons I’ve got out there now don’t do it, His army will bring her to me. And then that last little thread of defiance you treasure will snap. You’ll scream and plead and cry, and curse your shitty false Lord for his divine inaction.”

“The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. The age of miracles may be past, but His messengers still walk amongst us. You will fail. It is written.”

“Bollocks. There are no messengers. And I’m busy burning the book it’s written in. It’s my Lord who comes, not yours. And He doesn’t move mysteriously. God’s Brother is very blunt, as you’re going to find out. Unless I spare you.”

“I would never be sullied by your mercy, sir.”

“No? Then how about sparing Louise? Join us. Get on the winning side. I’ll give her straight back to you. Won’t touch a hair on her head. Promise. And that’s a lot of hair.”

Fletcher gave a short, bitter laugh.

“I mean it,” Quinn said smoothly. “You’re smart, tough. I could use people like you. You were some sort of officer, right? Half these shitbrains I’ve got working for me can’t find their own ass with both hands. I could put you in charge of a whole bunch of them. You can make out any way you like, then. Marry Louise. Live in a palace. It can’t get any better.”

“I apologize, for I am mistaken. I had thought you dangerous. I see now you are merely small. Our Lord Jesus was offered the kingdoms of the world, and refused. I believe I can resist coveting another man’s wife and some fine living. Have you not yet learned that in this wretched state we can create anything we desire for ourselves? You can offer nothing of any value; you may only rain down empty threats.”

“Empty!” Quinn shouted in rage. “He is coming. My Lord, not yours. If you don’t believe me, ask the ghosts. They can hear the dark angels draw near. His Night will fall. That is the new miracle.”

“Day follows night, as it is now and always will be. Amen.”

Quinn backed off the altar and stood up. He held an anti-memory weapon in front of Fletcher’s face. “Okay, fun-time’s over, dickhead; tell me what this is.”

“I do not know, sir.”

“You were shooting it about pretty freely before. Was it meant for me? Is that why the supercops let you down here? Were you trying to find me for them?” Quinn beckoned.

Frenkel stepped forwards and dumped Billy-Joe’s body on the altar next to Fletcher. The young man’s head flopped about. His eyes were open, unfocused, and he was still breathing.

“We found him like this down at the bottom of the Archway tower. The big black dude managed to shoot him with one of these gadgets before my troops took him out. Now, I can understand a weapon that forces possessors out of their host body. Every fucking scientist in the Confederation must be working on that right now. But this is a little more powerful, isn’t it? Billy-Joe wasn’t a possessed, but it still kicked his soul’s ass out of there.” Quinn smiled, fangs pressing up into white lips as he sensed the worry trickle into Fletcher’s thoughts. “Or did it do more than that? Huh? Those supercops play for the highest stakes there are. They know I can just come back in another body and start the whole crusade up again. Because I can’t die, now can I? We’re all immortal now.”

Fletcher’s face became a mask of stubborn determination.

“Ah,” Quinn said softly. He held the weapon up, regarding it with a new respect. “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” His hand made a pass over Billy-Joe, applying energistic force to open a pathway to the beyond. A soul struggled its way up into Billy-Joe’s body. He sat up, wheezing for breath, looking round avidly.

“How about that?” Quinn marvelled. “No strain, no pain. We can speed up the whole resurrection game.” He grinned down at Fletcher. “You know what, in the wrong hands this little toy you brought me could be really dangerous.”

The tenement on Halton Road consisted of three low-cost apartment towers intended for the poor and the elderly. A third of the residents still fell into that category, the rest worked in the black cash economy or lived off the dole, spending their days stimmed out on cheap activant programs and home-synthesised drugs. There were no other amenities for them. The ground between the twenty-storey towers was a concrete yard walled in by rows of small garages. Fading white lines marked out baseball and football pitches, though the baskets and goal posts had been torn out of the ground decades ago. Despite its classical urban erosion demeanour, it was a perfect site for The Disco At The End Of The World.

Andy had been dancing on the worn concrete since sundown, embracing the communal madness. Out of all London’s residents, the type that lived in the tenement had the least to lose when the possessed came marching out of the darkness. So . . . sod it. If you are absolutely going to get captured by the evil dead/tortured/your body consumed by ghouls/live the rest of eternity as a zombie slave, you might as well have one last decent party before it happens.

The underground trax jammers had set up their ageing speaker stacks as twilight fell. When the sun left the sky, out came the pounding rhythm to rattle the windows and sneer an utterly worthless defiance at the arcology’s new overlords. Everyone had dressed for it. That’s what Andy loved. Disco divas in their sequinned micro dresses, hot funk dancers in leather and infra-white shirts, jive masters in sharp suits. All grooving and swaying in one huge dense mass of hot bodies, doing the stupid moves to stupid old songs.

Andy wriggled his hips, and waved his hands, and generally boogied on down like he’d never done before. No need to be self-conscious now, there wouldn’t be a tomorrow morning for people to laugh at him and his coordination. He swigged from the bottles passed round. He snogged a couple of girls. He sang along at the top of his voice. He made up his own cool moves. He cheered and laughed and wanted to know why the hell he’d wasted his life.

And then there she was. Louise, standing in front of him. Clothes wet and dishevelled. Her beautiful face deathly serious.

She’d generated her own space among the exuberant dancers. People instinctively avoided her, knowing that whatever private hell she was in they didn’t want any part of it.

Her lips parted, shouting something at him.

“What?” he yelled back. The music was incredibly loud.

She mouthed: Help.

He took her hand and led her across the yard. Through the ring of elderly people around the edge of the dancing throng, happily clapping along and doing a small shuffle. Into the brick-wall lobby, and up the stone stairs to his flat.

When the door shut behind them, Andy thought he was dreaming, because Louise was in his flat. Louise! On the last night of existence, they were together.

His window looked out over the street not the yard, so the music was muted down to a constant bass drumming. He reached for a lightstick; the grid power supply had failed early that morning.

“Don’t,” Louise said.

Without air conditioning, condensation had settled thickly on the glass panes, but there was enough coloured light from the disco creeping in to reveal the outline of the small room. A bed at one end, sheets unwashed for a while now. Apart from one vinyl-top table littered with electronic tools, the furniture was cardboard boxes. The kitchen fitted into an arched alcove with a plastic curtain drawn across it.

Andy hoped she wouldn’t look at it all too closely. Even in this light it was seedy. His delight at seeing her was fading as his real life began to seep back to claim him.

“Is this the bathroom?” she asked, indicating the one other door. “I got drenched. I’m still cold.”

“Um, sorry, it’s supposed to be the bedroom. I just use it to keep stuff in. Bathroom’s down the hall. I’ll show you.”

“No.” Louise stepped up to him and put her arms round him, nestling her head against his. He was so startled he didn’t respond for a couple of seconds, then he gingerly returned the hug.

“There’s been so much horror in my life today,” she said. “So many vile things. I’ve been so frightened. I came here to you because I have to. There’s no one else left for me now. But I want to be with you as well. Do you understand that?”

“Not really. What’s happened to you?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m still me. For now.” She kissed him, urgency arousing her in a way she hadn’t experienced before. The desperate need to be held, and adored, to be promised that the whole world was a fine and good place after all.

She demanded all that from Andy on his small disorderly bed. Spending the night being worshiped, listening to his ecstatic cries twist away into the disco music while the hazy dapple of iridescent light played across the ceiling. Air in the small confined room grew stifling from the heat and sweat evaporating off their skin. It made them oblivious to the Westminster dome’s giant air circulation systems shutting down.

By the time the first tendrils of thin mist were rising from the Thames to squat listlessly above the riverside buildings, their bursts of orgasmic pleasure had become close to pain as program abuse forced already overdriven flesh to continue. Finally, with the exquisite narcotic of desperation spent, they clung to each other, too senseless to know that a thin layer of cloud had started glowing red above the heart of the ancient city outside.