“That sounds nice,” Louise said. “What time?”

“Seven o’clock. If that’s okay?”

“That’s fine.” She gave him a light kiss on his cheek. “I’ll be here.”

Andy walked back with her to the waiting lift. There had been something about a dress code in the datavise when he reserved the table. He now had two and a quarter hours to find a dinner jacket. A clean one, that fitted. It didn’t matter. A man who’d got himself a date with Louise Kavanagh could do anything. Louise pressed the button for her floor. “You don’t mind if I bring Genevieve, do you? I really can’t leave her here by herself, I’m afraid.”

“Uh.” From nirvana to hell in half a second. “No. That’ll be lovely.”

“I don’t want to spend an evening with him ,” Genevieve whinnied. “He’s all peculiar. And he fancies you. It’s creepy.”

“Of course he fancies me,” Louise said with a grin. “He wouldn’t have asked me out otherwise.”

“You don’t fancy him, do you?” a thoroughly shocked Genevieve asked. “That would just be too hideous, Louise.”

Louise opened the wardrobe and started to rifle through the dresses they’d managed to acquire on their shopping trips. “No, I don’t fancy him. And he’s not peculiar. He’s quite harmless.”

“I don’t understand. If you don’t fancy him, why did you say yes? We can go out by ourselves. Please, Louise. London isn’t nearly as dangerous as Daddy thinks it is. I like it here. There’s so much to do. We could go to one of the West End shows. They sell tickets at reception. I checked.”

Louise sighed and sat down on the bed. She patted the mattress, and Gen made a show of being reluctant to sit beside her. “If you really, really don’t want to go out with Andy for the evening, I’ll cancel.”

“You’re not going to kiss him or anything, are you?”

“No!” Louise laughed. “Devil child. What a dreadful thing to say.”

“Then why ?”

Louise stroked the dark hair from Gen’s face, letting the flexitives ripple it over her ears. “Because,” she said softly. “I’ve never been asked out to dinner with a boy before. Not to a fancy restaurant where I can dress to kill. I don’t suppose it’ll ever happen again. Not even Joshua asked me out. Not that he could, of course. Not when we were at Cricklade.”

“Is he the baby’s father?”

“Yes. Joshua’s the father.”

Gen brightened. “That means he’s going to be my brother-in-law.”

“Yes. I suppose it does.”

“I like Joshua. It’ll be stupendous having him living at Cricklade. He’s such jolly fun.”

“Oh yeah. He’s fun all right.” She closed her eyes, remembering the way his hands had caressed. Warm and skilful. It had been so long since she’d seen him. But he did promise . . . “So, what do I tell Andy Behoo, then? Do we go, or do we stay here all night?”

“Can I wear my party dress, too?” Gen asked.

The scene playing out above the B7 sensenviron conference room table was the one involving the failed sabotage attempt against Edmonton’s water station. It wasn’t a particularly good image, the station’s perimeter sensors were hardly commercial-quality; but the two humanoid figures shouting at each other had enough colour and resolution to sketch in their individual features. Billy-Joe was being suspended several centimetres off the floor of the alley by the large possessed man. Their noses were almost touching. Then Billy-Joe was slapped hard, more words were exchanged. The two of them ran off down the squalid alley.

“We think we know who Carter McBride is,” Western Europe told the other supervisors as the recording ended. “The AI found several references. He was the child of a colonist family on the same starship that took Quinn Dexter to Lalonde. According to the Lalonde Development Company files I accessed, the McBrides were also in the same village that Dexter was assigned to for his work-time.”

“A friend of Carter McBride,” Southern Africa mused. “You mean this new possessed was on Lalonde?”

“Yes,” Western Europe said. “And the whole Quallheim Counties trouble was originally thought to be an Ivet rebellion over the killing of some boy. The obvious conclusion is that it was Carter. That implies the possessed who blew the sabotage group in Edmonton has to be someone killed on Lalonde at around the same time.”

“So you’re saying that this possessed person is out for revenge against Quinn Dexter?”

“Exactly,” North America said. “We have a new ally.”

“Bullshit,” South Pacific said sharply. “Just because the possessed have internal disputes, that doesn’t make one faction friendly towards us. Suppose this new possessed does manage to eliminate Dexter? Do you really think he’ll just conveniently vanish for us afterwards? I certainly don’t. In any case, we’re not exactly communicating with him, are we? You lost him and this waster boy. What kind of amateurism is that?”

“I’d like to see you do better in that goddamn labyrinth,” North America snapped.

“Given the speed at which this new development broke, I think the situation was handled as adroitly as possible,” Western Europe said. “However, it does introduce some new factors which I believe warrant our consideration.”

“Such as?” North Pacific asked suspiciously.

“I believe it will force Dexter to abandon all his activities for a while. Unfortunately, this wretched little oik Billy-Joe couldn’t be intercepted, so we must assume he returned to Dexter and passed on the message he was given. As a consequence, Dexter will know he has a possessed stalking him; and that after the sabotage mission was exposed, the authorities have confirmed there are possessed in Edmonton. If we’re right about his reasons for being here—to wreck as much of the planet as possible—he’ll have no choice but to ignore Banneth and either abandon or betray the remaining possessed in the arcology. Then he’ll lay low until political pressure forces the North American senate to reopen the vac-train lines. Face it, we can’t keep them shut for months unless there is a visible threat to rattle the public with. Time is on his side. We’re already compromising ourselves with the actions we’ve taken to date.”

“Not a chance,” South Pacific blurted. She pointed a hostile finger at Western Europe. “Very smooth. But I can see what you’re angling for, and I say no. No way.”

“Angling for what?” Central America asked.

“He wants us to open Edmonton’s vac-train routes.”

“Count me out,” Asian Pacific said quickly.

“Absolutely not,” East Asia agreed. “We’ve got Dexter bottled up in one place. Keep him there. You’ll just have to improve your surveillance techniques and track him down.”

“He’s goddamn invisible!” North America stormed. “You saw what happened in Grand Central Station. There aren’t any techniques to improve that can catch up with that kind of ability.”

“If we don’t re-open the vac-train routes, then we’ll be condemning Edmonton and everyone in it to possession,” Western Europe said. “And very probably removal from this universe. Remember what happened to Ketton on Mortonridge. That’s what they’ll do to it. They can’t survive here.”

“That outcome is certainly acceptable to me,” North Pacific said. “We’ve discussed this through before. Better to lose one arcology if that means saving the rest.”

“But we don’t have to,” Western Europe insisted. “Dexter becomes visible to us when he’s moving. That’s when he’s vulnerable.”

“He’s not visible,” South Pacific said. “We know he’s moved simply by the destruction he leaves behind. I mean, shit, blowing up the Eiffel Tower! Face it, we can’t catch him.”

“We have to make the attempt. It’s the reason we exist, the only reason. If we cannot protect Earth from a single possessed when we have the opportunity, especially because of political cowardice, then we have failed.”

“I’m not buying into any of this noblesse oblige crap, I never did. That might be your heritage, but it certainly isn’t mine. We formed B7 out of sheer bloody minded self interest. And you were a big part of that, don’t forget. We exist to protect our own interests. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that means protecting Earth and looking out for its citizens. Well bravo us. I don’t begrudge them that expenditure. But this is not one of those benevolent times. This time we safeguard ourselves against possession, and especially against Quinn bloody Dexter. I’m sorry about the inhabitants, but Edmonton falls to this Night of his. Probably Paris and the others as well. Tough. We’ll be safe, though.”