“I was murdered,” she whispered. “He . . . he. He laughed when he did it, every time I screamed it just made him laugh louder. He enjoyed it.” The tears were flowing openly again.

“I’m sorry.”

“My children. I had three children, they were only little, the eldest was six. What kind of life would they have knowing what happened to me? And Mark, my husband, I thought I saw him once, later, much later. He was all broken down and old.”

“Hey there, it’s over now, finished,” he said softly. “Me, I got hit by a bus. Which is a tricky thing to do in Kochi’s capital city; there are barriers along the roads, and safety systems, all kinds of protective junk. But if you’re real stupid, and loaded, and part of a group that’s daring you to run the road, then you can jump in front of one before its brakes engage. Yeah, real tricky, but I managed it. So what use was my life? No girl, no kids; just Mum and Dad who would have been heartbroken. You had something, a family that loved you, kids you can be proud of. You were taken away from them, and that’s a real evil, I’m not saying it isn’t. But look at you now, you still love them after all this time. And I’ll bet wherever they are, they love you. Compared to me, Stephanie, you’re rich. You had it all, the whole life trip.”

“Not anymore.”

“No. But then this is a fresh start for all of us, isn’t it? You can’t allow yourself to grieve over the past. There’s too much of it now. If you do that, then you’ll never do anything else.”

“I know. But it’s going to take time, Moyo. Thank you, anyway. What were you, some kind of social worker?”

“No. I was at university studying law.”

“You were young, then?”

“Twenty-two.”

“I was thirty-two when it happened.”

Moyo bit into his doughnut, which tasted as good as it looked. He grinned and gave the proprietor an appreciative thumbs up. “I can see I’ll be coming back here.”

“It seems silly to me,” she confided.

“Me too. But it’s the way he’s chosen to anchor himself.”

“Are you sure it was law, and not philosophy?”

He smiled around the doughnut. “That’s better. Don’t go for the big issues right away, you’ll only get depressed, start small and work along to quantum metaphysics.”

“You’ve lost me already, when I did work I was just a councillor at the local junior day club. I adored children.”

“I don’t think you were just anything, Stephanie.”

She sat back in the chair, toying with the tiny coffee cup. “So what do we do now?”

“Generally speaking?”

“We have only just met.”

“Okay, generally speaking, try and live the life we always wanted to. From now on, every day is going to be a summer’s day you’ve taken off work so that you can go out and do the one thing you’ve always wanted to.”

“Dance in the Rubix Hotel,” she said quickly. “It had the most beautiful ballroom, the podium was big enough for a whole orchestra, and it looked out over the grounds to a lake. We never went to a function there; Mike always promised he’d take me. I wanted to wear a scarlet gown, with him in a dinner jacket.”

“Not bad. You’re a romantic, Stephanie.”

She blushed. “What about you?”

“Oh, no. Mine are all pretty basic male daydreams. Tropical beaches and girls with perfect figures; that kind of thing.”

“No, I don’t believe that. There’s more to you than simplistic clichés. And besides, I told you mine.”

“Well . . . I suppose there is mountain gliding. It was a rich-kid sport on Kochi. The gliders were made out of linked molecule films, only weighed about five kilos, but they had a wingspan of about twenty-five metres. Then before you could even get in to one you had to have your retinas and cortical processor implants upgraded so that you could actually see air currents, determine their flow speed; the whole X-ray vision trip. That way you’d be able to pick out the wind stream which could carry you to the top.

“The clubs would set out courses over half a mountain range. I watched a race once. The pilots looked like they were lying in a torpedo-shaped bubble; the linked molecule film is so thin you can’t even see it unless the sun catches it just right. They were skiing on air, Stephanie, and they made it seem like the easiest thing in the world.”

“I don’t think either of us is going to be living our fantasies for a while.”

“No. But we will, eventually, when Ekelund takes over Mortonridge. Then we’ll have the power to indulge ourselves.”

“That woman. God, she frightened me. I had to hold a man hostage while she spoke to the soldier. He was pleading and crying. I had to give him to someone else afterwards. I couldn’t hurt him.”

“I let mine go altogether.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was a boy. I think he got to the marines in time to be evacuated. Hope so, anyway.”

“That was good of you.”

“Yeah. I had the luxury this time. But if the Saldana Princess sends her troops in here to find us and claw us back, I’ll fight. I’ll do everything I can to stop them from evicting me from this body.”

“I hear mine,” Stephanie said. “She’s inside me, lonely and afraid. She cries a lot.”

“My host’s called Eben Pavitt, he rages the whole time. But underneath he’s scared.”

“They’re as bad as the souls in the beyond. Everyone is making demands on us.”

“Ignore them. You can do it. Compared to the beyond, this is paradise.”

“Not really. But it’s a good first step.”

He finished his chocolate, and smiled. “Do you want to come for a walk, see what our new town is like?”

“Yes. Thank you, Moyo, I think I would.”

Chapter 13

The Confederation Navy Intelligence Service had originally been formed with the intent of infiltrating the black syndicates that produced antimatter, and hunting down their production stations. Since those early days its activities had expanded along with those of the Confederation Navy as a whole. By the time Admiral Lalwani assumed command, one of its principal functions was to monitor, analyse, and assess the deplorable amount of new and ingenious weapons systems manufactured by governments and astroengineering companies across the Confederation, with emphasis on the more clandestine marques. To that end, the designers of the service’s secure weapons technology laboratory complex were given a brief to contain just about any conceivable emergency, from biohazards to outbreaks of nanonic viruses, to small nuclear explosions.

There was only one entrance: a long corridor cut through the rock with two right-angle turns; it was wide and high enough to accommodate an outsize service truck or even a small flyer. Three separate doors were spaced along it, each built from a two-metre-thickness of carbotanium composite strengthened by molecular binding force generators. The first two slabs could only be opened by the security staff outside, while the third was operated from inside the facility.

Since the arrival of Jacqueline Couteur, Trafalgar’s population had started calling it the demon trap.

Appropriate enough, Samual Aleksandrovich conceded as the final door swung upwards amid a hiss of pressure and loud mechanical whinings. Dr Gilmore was waiting on the other side to greet him and his entourage.

“I’m delighted I can actually offer you some good news for a change,” Dr Gilmore said as he led the First Admiral up to the biological division’s isolation facility. “We’ve all heard about New California. Is it really Al Capone leading them?”

“We don’t have any evidence to the contrary,” Lalwani said. “The Edenists in the system are monitoring news broadcasts. Capone appears very fond of publicity, he’s been touring cities like some kind of medieval monarch. Pressing the flesh, he calls it. A number of reporters were left unpossessed purely so they could record the event.”

“And this pre-starflight primitive had the ability to take over one of our most developed worlds?” Dr Gilmore inquired. “I find that hard to credit.”