I know, reap what you sow. We might be too aggressive, and not progress as fast as we ought, but I want Corpus to know I am immensely proud of our compassion. No matter how fabulous your technology is, what counts is how it’s used.

We acknowledge your criticism. It is one that is levelled at us constantly. Given our position it is inevitable.

He sighed and looked up at the arc again. We’ll get here eventually.

Of that we are sure. After all, you have already made a start.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery,joshua said.So I guess that means you’re not all bad after all.

Jay appeared on the chalet veranda carrying a bulging shoulder bag. She shouted and waved, then charged down the steps.

“Is her mother all right?” Tracy asked urgently.

“She’s treatable,” Joshua said. “That’s all I can say. I’ve stopped intervening now. It’s just too damn tempting. Not that the singularity would permit much more.”

“It doesn’t need any more. Corpus analysed what you’ve done. You made some smart moves. The current economic structure won’t survive.”

“I provided the opportunity for change, plus one small active measure. What happens after . . . well, let’s just say, I have faith.”

Jed and Beth stayed with Marie in the hospital waiting room. Beth wasn’t exactly overjoyed about that, she would have loved to see Tranquillity’s park. But Gari, Navar, and Webster were settled in the paediatric wing which wasn’t far away. She didn’t know what was going to happen to any of them next, but then right now that applied to a lot of the human race. There were worse places to be cast ashore.

The doctor who’d met the bus came out of the emergency treatment centre. “Marie?”

“Yes?” She looked up at him, bright with hope.

“I’m terribly sorry, there was nothing we could do.”

Marie’s mouth parted silently, she covered her face with her hands and started sobbing.

“What happened to him?” Beth said.

“There was some kind of nanonic filament web in his brain,” the doctor said. “Its molecular structure had broken down. Disintegration caused a massive amount of damage. In fact, I really don’t understand how he could have survived at all. You said he’s been with you for weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Ah well, we’ll do a postmortem, of course. But I doubt we’ll learn much. I think it’s a symptom of the times.”

“Thanks.”

The doctor smiled briskly. “The counselor will be along in a moment. Marie will have the best help possible to overcome this. Don’t you worry.”

“Great.” She saw the way Jed was looking at Marie, as though he wanted to be crying with her, or for her, sparing her the burden.

“Jed, we’re done here,” Beth said.

“What do you mean?” he asked in puzzlement.

“It’s over. Are you coming?”

He looked from her to Marie. “But we can’t leave her.”

“Why, Jed? What is she to us?”

“She was Kiera, she was everything we dreamed of, Beth, a new start, somewhere decent.”

“This is Marie Skibbow, and she’ll hate Kiera for the rest of her life.”

“We can’t give up now. The three of us can start Dead-night again, for real this time. There were thousands of people just like us who wanted what she promised. They’ll come again.”

“Right.” Beth turned and marched out of the waiting room, paying no heed to his braying calls behind her. She hurried for the lift, her heart lifting at the prospect of finally seeing the lush parkland with its sparkling circumfluous sea.

I’m young, I’m free, I’m in Tranquillity, and I’m definitely not going back to bloody Koblat.

It was a great beginning.

The Assembly Chamber was deathly silent as the vote was taken. The ambassadors on the floor were first to register.

From his seat at the Polity Council table, Samual Aleksandrovich watched the tally rise. There were several abstentions, of course, and the names were no surprise to him: Kulu, Oshanko, New Washington, Mazaliv, several of their close allies. No more than twenty, though, which made the First Admiral smile contentedly. In diplomatic terms that was as good as a censure motion in itself, a sharp warning to the larger powers.

The ambassadors of the Polity Council entered their vote. Samual Aleksandrovich was last, pressing the button in front of him, and seeing the last digit click over on the big board. Ridiculous anachronism, he thought, though certainly dramatic enough.

The Assembly speaker got to his feet and gave the President a nervous little bow. Olton Haaker stared straight ahead, not meeting anyone’s gaze.

“The motion that this house has no confidence in the President is carried by seven hundred and ninety-eight votes, with none against.”

Durringham had never recovered from the devastation wrought by Chas Paske. It was the docks and warehouse sector which had born the brunt of the water’s impact. Not that they’d stopped the onrush. Debris from their disintegrating frames had formed a black speckle crest on the wave as it surged on into the town’s main commercial district. The wooden buildings with their minimal foundations had crumpled instantly. Three dumpers had been knocked over and pushed along.

A kilometre inland, the resistance offered by energistically reinforced walls managed to protect the buildings, though the mud on which they lay was siphoned away, dragging them back towards the Juliffe as the waters retreated. When they’d drained away, Durringham was left with a broad semicircle of destruction eating right into the heart of the town, a swamp with a million filthy splinters sticking upwards. Bodies lay among them, caked in drying mud and slowly decomposing in the dreadful humidity. Despite this, Durringham continued to function as an urban centre all the time Lalonde was hidden away in a realm outside the universe. Like Norfolk’s, its essentially low tech nature allowed its inhabitants to carry on along virtually the same lines as before. Boats continued to sail up and down the Juliffe, crops were sown and harvested, timber cut and sawn.

Now it was back in the universe. The humidity and daily rains returned with a vengeance. And with the thick carpet of weeds chopped away from the metal grid runway, spaceplanes were arriving once again. They were complemented by Kiint craft, small blunt ovoids that flew up and down the Juliffe and its myriad tributaries collecting people from the villages and delivering them to Durringham. Over two thousand of them were performing ambulance duties, racing round at hypersonic velocity, scanning the jungle for any remaining humans.

The Kiint had set up seven fat thirty-storey towers on the edge of the city. They’d been extruded in one go from a provider, coming fully fitted with all the medical equipment necessary to treat dangerously ill humans.

Ruth Hilton had been picked up on the third day after the Return, as people were calling it. When the flyer landed in front of her, its controlling AI asking her to come inside, she seriously contemplated not bothering. The memories of possession acted like damping rods on her psyche. She certainly hadn’t eaten anything since the Return.

In the end it was her hope for Jay which made her climb in. For the last few weeks, her possessor had been soaking up aspects of her personality. She’d travelled between villages, asking for news of Jay and any of the other Aberdale children who might have survived that fateful night. Nobody had heard much from that district after the bomb went off somewhere on the savannah.

For two days she’d lain in the hospital while the Kiint examined her and made her eat. The big xenocs had smeared a bluish jelly on the areas of her skin around her cancers, which sank into her flesh as if she’d suddenly become porous. They told her it would flush her tumour cells away, a less invasive technique than human medical packages. For one and a half days she peed a very strange fluid.