“That’s stupid. You know you have a soul now. You shouldn’t be risking it like this. You have invented a crusade for yourself to follow rather than achieve anything as an individual. That is wrong.”

“It’s my soul, and in a way I’m no different to Edenists.”

Sinon felt a rush of real surprise. “How so?”

“I’m perfectly adjusted to what I am. The fact that my goals are different to those of your society doesn’t matter. You know what I think? Edenists don’t get caught in the beyond because you’re cool enough under pressure to figure your way out. Well, me too, pal. Laton said there was a way out. I believe him. The Kiint found it. Just knowing that it’s possible is my ticket to exit. I’ll be happy searching because I know it’s not pointless, I won’t suffer like those dumbasses that wound up trapped. They’re losers, they gave up. Not me. That’s why I’m signed up on this mad Liberation idea, it’s just part of getting ready for the big battle. Good training, is all.”

She gave his shoulder an avuncular pat with a hand whose fingers had been replaced by three big claws, and marched off.

That’s an excess of fatalism,choma remarked. What a strange psychology.

She is content,sinon answered. I wish her well in that.

A large quantity of love had been invested in constructing the farmhouse. Even the Kulu aristocracy with their expensive showy buildings employed modern materials in their fabric. And Mortonridge was a designated rapid growth area, with government subsidies to help develop the farms. A resolutely middle-class province. Their buildings were substantial, but cheap: assembled from combinations of carbon concrete, uniform-strength pulpwood planks, bricks made from grains of clay cemented by geneered bacteria, spongesteel structural girders, bonded silicon glass. For all their standardisation, such basic components afforded a wealth of diversity to architects.

But this was unmistakable and original. Beautifully crude. A house of stone, quarried with an industrial fission blade from a local outcrop; large cubes making the walls thick enough to repel the equatorial heat and keep the rooms cool without air conditioning. The floor and roof beams were harandrid timbers, sturdy lengths dovetailed and pegged together as only a master carpenter could manage. Inside, they’d been left uncovered, the gaps between filled with reed and plaster, then whitewashed. It was as historic as any of the illusions favoured by the possessed, not that anyone could mistake something so solid for an ephemeral aspiration.

There was a barn attached at the end, also stone, forming one side of the farmyard. Its big wooden doors were swinging open in the breeze the day the Karmic Crusader pulled up outside. Stephanie Ash had been tired and fed up by the time they pulled off the main road and drove along the unmarked dirt track. Investigating it had been Moyo’s idea.

“The road must lead somewhere,” he insisted. “This land was settled recently. Nothing’s had time to fall into disuse yet.”

She hadn’t bothered to argue with him. They’d driven a long way down the M6 after handing the children over, a journey which meant having to pass back through Annette Ekelund’s army. This time they’d been pointedly ignored by the troops billeted in Chainbridge. After that they’d zigzagged from coast to coast looking for a refuge, somewhere self-sufficient where they could rest up and wait for the grand events beyond Mortonridge to play themselves out. But the towns in the northern section of the peninsula were still occupied, though there was a steady drift out to farms. They were unwelcome there; the possessed were learning to guard their food stocks. Every unoccupied farm they’d visited had been ransacked for food and livestock. It was a monotonous trend, and finding a functional power supply to recharge the Karmic Crusader was becoming more difficult.

After the joy and accomplishment of evacuating the children, the comedown to excluded refugee status was hard. Stephanie hadn’t exactly lost faith, but the narrow road was no different to any of the dozens they’d driven down the last few days. Hope rebutted unfailingly each time.

The road took the bus through a small forest of aboriginal trees, then dipped into a shallow, lightly-wooded valley which meandered extravagantly. A stream bubbled along the lush grassy floor, its speed revealing they were actually travelling up at quite an angle. After four kilometres, the valley ended by opening out into a nearly circular basin. It was so regular, Stephanie suspected it was an ancient impact crater. A lacework of silver brooks threaded their way down the sides, feeding a lake at the centre, which was the origin of the valley’s stream. The farmhouse stood above the shore, separated from the rippling water by a neatly trimmed lawn. Behind it, someone had converted the north-facing walls of the basin into stepped terraces, making a perfect sun-trap. The levels were cultivated with dozens of terrestrial fruit and vegetable plants; from citrus tree groves to lettuce, avocados to rhubarb. Almost all the aboriginal vegetation had been removed; even the south side looked as if it was covered in terrestrial grass. Goats and sheep were wandering around grazing peacefully.

They all piled out of the Karmic Crusader, smiling like entranced children.

“There’s nobody here,” Rana said. “Can you sense it? This whole place is empty.”

“Oh goodness,” Tina exclaimed nervously. She took the last step off the bus’s stairs, her scarlet stilettos sinking awkwardly into the road’s loose-packed gravel surface. “Do you really think so? This is simply paradise. It’s just what we all deserve after everything we’ve done for others. I couldn’t bear us being thrown out by someone else claiming they were here first. It would be excruciating.”

“There are no vehicles left,” McPhee grunted. “The owners probably received the Kingdom’s warning and cleared out before Ekelund’s people arrived in these parts.”

“Lucky for them,” Rana said.

“More so for us,” Moyo said. “It’s absolutely bloody perfect.”

“I think the irrigation system is screwed,” McPhee said. He was shielding his eyes with a hand as he squinted up at the terraces. “There, see? There must be channels to divert the brooks so that each level receives a decent supply. But it’s spilling over like a waterfall. The plants will drown.”

“No they won’t,” Franklin Quigly said. “It’s not broken. The power’s off, and there’s no one here to manage it. That’s all. We could get it fixed inside of a day. That’s if we’re staying.”

They all turned to look at Stephanie. She was amused rather than gratified by the compliment. “Oh I think so.” She smiled at her ragged little band. “We’re not going to find anywhere better.”

They spent the rest of the day wandering round the farmhouse and the terraces. The basin was an intensive-cultivation market garden; there were no cereal crops on any of the terraces. There were signs of a hurried departure all through the building, drawers pulled out, clothes spilled on the shiny floorboards, a tap left running, two old suitcases abandoned half-packed in one of the bedrooms. But there was a lot of basic foodstuffs left in the pantry, flour, jams, jellied fruit, eggs, whole cheeses; a big freezer was filled with fish and joints of meat. Whoever the farm belonged to, they didn’t believe in modern sachets and readymade meals.

Tina took one look inside the kitchen with its simple array of shining copper pots and pans, and sniffed with emphatic disapproval. “You can take the worship of all things rustic too far, you know.”

“It’s appropriate to what we are now,” Stephanie told her. “The consumer convenience society cannot exist in our universe.”

“Well just don’t expect me to give up silk stockings, darling.”