“One AT Squad can’t possibly contain them,” Ralph said. It was like speaking treason. I betrayed those people. My failure.

“There are sixty people on that bus,” an aghast Warren Aspinal exclaimed. “We might be able to cure them.”

“Yes, sir, I know that.” Ralph hardened his expression, disguising how worthless he felt, and looked at Landon McCullock. The police chief obviously wanted to argue; he glanced at his deputy, who shrugged helplessly.

“Admiral Farquar?” Landon McCullock datavised.

“Yes.”

“Eliminate the bus.”

Ralph watched through the hypersonic’s sensor suite as the laser blast from low orbit struck the fantasm vehicle. Just for an instant he saw the silhouette of the real Longhound inside the illusory cloak, as if the purpose of the weapon was really to expose truths. Then the energy barrage incinerated the bus along with a thirty-metre-diameter circle of road.

When he looked around the faces of everyone sitting at Hub One, he saw his own dismay and horror bounced right back at him.

It was Diana Tiernan who held his gaze, her kindly old face crumpled up with tragic sympathy. “I’m sorry, Ralph,” she said. “We weren’t quick enough. The AIs have just told me the bus stopped at the first four towns on its scheduled route.”

Chapter 03

Al Capone dressed as Al Capone had always dressed: with style. He wore a double-breasted blue serge suit, a paisley pattern silk tie, black patent leather shoes, and a pearl-grey fedora, rakishly aslant. Gold rings set with a rainbow array of deep precious stones glinted on every finger, a duck-egg diamond on his pinkie.

It hadn’t taken him long to decide that the people in this future world didn’t have much in the way of fashion sense. The suits he could see all followed the same loose silk design, although their colourful slimline patterns made them appear more like flappy Japanese pyjamas. Those not in suits wore variants on vests and sports shirts. Tight-fitting, too, at least for people under thirty-five. Al had stared at the dolls to start with, convinced they were all hookers. What kind of decent gal would dress like that, with so much showing? Skirts which almost didn’t cover their ass, shorts that weren’t much better. But no. They were just ordinary, smiling, happy, everyday girls. The people living in this city weren’t so strung up on morality and decency. What would have given a Catholic priest apoplexy back home didn’t raise an eyebrow here.

“I think I’m gonna like this life,” Al declared.

Strange life that it was. He seemed to have been reincarnated as a magician: a real magician, not like the fancy tricksters he’d booked for his clubs back in Chicago. Here, whatever he wanted appeared out of nowhere.

That had taken a long while to get used to. Think and . . . pow. There it was, everything from a working Thompson to a silver dollar glinting in the hot sun. Goddamn useful for clothes, though. Brad Lovegrove had worn overalls of shiny dark red fabric like some kind of pissant garbage collector.

Al could hear Lovegrove whimpering away inside him, like having a leprechaun nesting at the centre of his brain. He was bawling like a complete bozo, and making about as much sense. But there was some gold among the dross, twenty-four-karat nuggets. Like—when he first got his marbles together Al had thought this world was maybe Mars or Venus. Not so. New California didn’t even orbit the same sun as Earth. And it wasn’t the twentieth century no more.

Je-zus, but a guy needed a drink to help keep that from blowing his head apart.

And where to get a drink? Al imagined the little leprechaun being squeezed, as if his brain were one giant muscle. Slowly contracting.

A macromall on the intersection between Longwalk and Sunrise, Lovegrove squealed silently. There’s a specialist store there with liquor from every Confederation planet, probably even got Earth bourbon.

Drinks from clear across the galaxy! How about that?

So Al started walking. It was a lovely day.

The sidewalk was so wide it was more like a boulevard in itself; there were no paving slabs, instead the whole strip had been made from a seamless sheet, a material which was a cross between marble and concrete. Luxuriant trees sprouted up through craters in the surface every forty yards or so, their two-foot sprays of floppy oval flowers an impossible shade of metallic purple.

He spotted a few trashcan-sized trucks trundling sedately among the walkers enjoying the late-morning sunshine, machinery smoother than Henry Ford had ever dreamed of. Utility mechanoids, Lovegrove told him, cleaning the sidewalk, picking up litter and fallen leaves.

The base of each skyscraper was given over to classy delis and bars and restaurants and coffee shops; tables spilled out onto the sidewalk, just like a European city. Arcades pierced deep into the buildings.

From what Al could see, it was the same kind of rich man’s playground setup on the other side of the street, maybe a hundred and fifty yards away. Not that you could walk over to be sure, there was no way past the eight-foot-high glass and metal barrier which lined the road.

Al stood with his face pressed to the glass for some time, watching the silent cars zoom past. Big bullets on wheels. All of them shiny, like coloured chrome. You didn’t even have to steer them no more, Lovegrove told him, they did it themselves. Some kind of fancy electrical engine, no gas. And the speed, over two hundred kilometres an hour.

Al knew all about kilometres; they were what the French called miles.

But he wasn’t too sure about using a car that he couldn’t drive himself, not when it travelled that fast. And anyway, his presence seemed to mommick up electricity. So he stuck to walking.

The skyscrapers gave him vertigo they were so tall, and all you could see when you looked up at them was reflections of more skyscrapers. They seemed to bend over the street, imprisoning the world below. Lovegrove told him they were so high that their tops were designed to sway in the wind, rocking twenty–thirty metres backwards and forwards in slow motion.

“Shut up,” Al growled.

The leprechaun curled up tighter, like a knotted snake.

People looked at Al—his clothes. Al looked at people, fascinated and jubilant. It was a jolt seeing blacks and whites mixing free, other types too, light-skinned Mediterranean like his own, Chinese, Indian. Some seemed to have dyed their hair completely the wrong colour. Amazing.

And they all appeared so much at ease with themselves, owning a uniform inner smile. They had a nonchalance and surety which he’d never seen before. The devil which drove so many people back in the twenties was missing, as if the city elders had abolished worry altogether.

They also had astonishingly good health. After a block and a half Al still hadn’t seen anyone remotely overweight. No wonder they wore short clothes. A world where everyone was in permanent training for the big game, even the seventy-year-olds.

“You still got baseball, ain’t you?” Al muttered under his breath.

Yes, Lovegrove confirmed.

Yep, paradise all right.

After a while he took off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He’d been walking for a quarter of an hour, and it didn’t look as if he’d got anywhere. The massive avenue of skyscrapers hadn’t changed at all.

“Hey, buddy,” he called.

The black guy—who looked like a prizefighter—turned and gave an amused grin as he took in Al’s clothes. His arm was around a girl: Indian skin, baby blonde hair. Her long legs were shown off by a pair of baggy culottes.

Cutie pie, Al thought, and grinned at her. A real sweater girl. It suddenly struck him that he hadn’t hit the sack with a woman for six centuries.

She smiled back.

“How do I call a cab around here?”