“Come on,” Ralph said. “We’re just in the way here.” He led the others out of the hall; ashamed that the most helpful thing he personally could do was run away.

Stephanie went out on to the narrow balcony and sat in one of the cushioned deck chairs next to Moyo. From there she could look both ways along Ketton’s high street where squads of Ekelund’s guerrilla army marched about. All signs of the mud deluge had been ruthlessly eradicated from the town, producing a pristine vision of urban prosperity. Even the tall scarlet trees lining the streets and central park were in good health, sprouting a thick frost of topaz flowers.

They had been billeted in a lovely mock-Georgian town house, with orange brick walls and carved white stone window lintels. The iron-railed balcony ran along the front, woven with branches of blue and white wisteria. It was one of a whole terrace of beautiful buildings just outside the central retail sector. They shared it with a couple of army squads. Not quite house arrest, but they were certainly discouraged from wandering round and interfering. Much to Cochrane’s disgust.

But Ekelund and her ultra-loyalists controlled the town’s diminishing food supply, and with that came the power to write the rules.

“I hate it here,” Moyo said. He was slumped down almost horizontally in his chair, sipping a margarita. Four empty glasses were already lined up on the low table beside him, their salt rims melting in the condensation. “The whole place is wrong, a phoney. Can’t you sense the atmosphere?”

“I know what you mean.” She watched the men and women thronging the road below. It was the same story all over Ketton. The army gearing up to defend the town from the serjeants massing outside. Fortifications were first conceived as ghostly sketches in the air, and then made real by an application of energistic strength. Small factories around the outskirts had been placed under Delvan’s command. He had his engineers working round the clock to churn out weapons. Everybody here moved with a purpose. And by doing so, they gave each other confidence in their joint cause.

“This is fascist efficiency,” she said. “Everybody beavering away as they’re told for her benefit, not their own. There’s going to be so much destruction here when the serjeants come in. And it’s all so pointless.”

His hand wavered in the air until he found her arm. Then he gripped tight. “It’s human nature, darling. They’re afraid, and she’s tapped into that. The alternative to putting up a fight is total surrender. They’re not going to go for that. We didn’t go for that.”

“But the only reason they’re in this position is because of her. And we weren’t going to fight. I wasn’t.”

He took a large drink. “Ah, forget about it. Another twenty-four hours, and it won’t matter any more.”

Stephanie plucked the margarita from his hand and set it down on the table. “Enough of that. We’ve rested here quite long enough. Time we were moving on.”

“Ha! You must be drunker than me. We’re surrounded. I know that, and I’m fucking blind. There’s no way out.”

“Come on.” She took his hand and pulled him up from the chair.

Muttering and complaining, Moyo allowed himself to be led inside. McPhee and Rana were in the lounge, sitting round a circular walnut table with a chess game in front of them. Cochrane was sprawled along a settee, surrounded by a haze of smoke from his reefer. A set of bulky black and gold headphones were clamped over his ears, buzzing loudly as he listened to a Grateful Dead album. Tina and Franklin came in from one of the bedrooms when they were called. Cochrane chortled delightedly at the sight of Franklin tucking his shirt in. He only stopped at that because Stephanie caught his eye.

“I’m going to try and get out,” Stephanie told them.

“Interesting objective,” Rana said. “Unfortunately, la Ekelund is holding all the cards, not to mention the food. She’s hardly given us enough to live on, let alone build our strength back to a level where we can contemplate hiking through the mud again.”

“I know that. But if we stay in the town we’re going to get captured by the serjeants for sure. That’s if we survive the assault. Both sides are upping their weapons hardware by an alarming degree.”

“I told you this would happen,” Tina said. “I said we should have stayed above the valley. But none of you listened.”

“So what’s the plan?” Franklin asked.

“I haven’t got one,” Stephanie said. “I just want to change the odds, that’s all. The serjeants are about five miles away from the outskirts. That leaves a lot of land between us and them.”

“So?” McPhee asked.

“We can use that space. It certainly improves our chances from staying here. Maybe we can sneak through the line in all the confusion when they advance. We could try disguising ourselves as kolfrans; or we could hide out somewhere until they pass by us. It’s got to be worth a try.”

“A non-aggressive evasion policy,” Rana said thoughtfully. “I’m certainly with you on that.”

“No way,” McPhee said. “Look, I’m sorry Stephanie, but we’ve seen the way the serjeants move forwards. You couldn’t slide a gnat between them. And that was before the mortar attack. They’re wise to us using the ferrangs as camouflage now. If we go out there, we’re just going to be the first to be de-possessed.”

“No, no, wait a minute,” Cochrane said. He swung his feet off the settee and walked over to the table. “Our funky sister might be on to something here.”

“Thanks,” Stephanie grunted sarcastically.

“Listen, you cats. The black hats and their UFOs are like scoping the ground out with microscopes, right? So if we like cooperate with each other and dig ourselves a nice cozy bunker out in the wilderness, we could sit tight down there until they’ve invaded the town and moved off.”

Several surprised looks were passed round. “It could work,” Franklin said. “Hot damn!”

“Hey, am I like the man , or what?”

Tina sneered. “Definitely a what.”

“I keep expecting to be asked for my ident disk,” Rana said as the seven of them walked down Ketton’s main street.

They were the only people not wearing military fatigues. Ekelund’s army gave them suspicious glances as they passed by. Cochrane’s tinkling bells and cheery, insulting waves didn’t contribute to making them inconspicuous. When they walked out of the house, Stephanie considered junking her dress and adopting the same jungle combat gear style. Then she thought to hell with that. I’m not hiding my true self anymore. Not after what I’ve been through. I have a right to be me.

Near the outskirts, the road led between two rows of houses. Nothing as elaborate as the Georgian town house, but comfortably middle-class. The barrier between town and country was drawn by a deep vertical-walled ditch, with thick iron spikes driven into the soil along the top. Some kind of sludge trickled along the bottom of the trench, stinking of petrol. The arrangement wasn’t terribly practical, it was more a statement than a physical danger.

Annette Ekelund was waiting for them, lounging casually against one of the big spikes. Several dozen of her army were ranged beside her. Stephanie was quite sure the hulking guns they had slung over their shoulders would be impossible to lift without energistic power fortifying their muscles. Three-day stubble seemed compulsory for the men, and everyone wore ragged sweatbands.

“You know, I’m getting a bad case of dйjа vu here,” Annette said with ersatz pleasantry. “Except this time you haven’t got a good cause to tug my heartstrings. In fact, this is pretty close to treachery.”

“You’re not a government,” Stephanie said. “We don’t have loyalties.”

“Wrong. I am the authority here. And you do have obligations. I saved your pathetic little arse, and all these sad bunch of losers you have trailing round with you. I took you in, protected you, and fed you. Now I think that entitles me to a little loyalty, don’t you?”