I still find that hardest to believe. Handing over the Lady Macbeth to his brother and giving up flying. Will he be happy living on Norfolk? It’s very peaceful there.

Ione laughed, and reached for a cut-crystal glass of Norfolk Tears. She eyed the fabulous drink as if it was the last drop left in the universe. I think it’s about to become a whole lot noisier.

Syrinx and Ruben stood patiently in the hospital waiting room as the psychology team assembled. Some of them she knew from her own therapy sessions, and exchanged warm greetings.

This is exciting,Oenone said. The last act we will perform in this saga.

You just want to go fly,she teased.

Of course. With the Confederation stars so close, there will be many more flights now.

I wonder what sort of flights, though. Now we’ve glimpsed Kiint technology, I doubt He3 fusion will last much longer. Perhaps we’ll go into the pleasure cruise business.

I will still love you.

She laughed. And I you, my love.her hand closed a little tighter around ruben’s. I think I might start having children now. We’ve faced the worst danger there is, flown to the other side of the nebula, and now life is changing. I want to be a part of it, to embrace what’s happening in the most human way possible.

I like you being truly happy. You are complete.

Only when we’re together.

The chief psychologist beckoned. We’re ready for you.

Syrinx walked over to the zero-tau pod in the middle of the room, standing by its head. The black field vanished, and the lid swung open. She smiled down. “Hello, Erick.”

It took only a day for the Kiint to cure Grant of his tumours. He submitted to the treatment of blue jelly with passive grace, meekly doing all that was requested of him. The massive xenocs were so overwhelming. Any sort of protest seemed appallingly churlish. They were only here to help, coming to Norfolk’s aid out of the kindness of their mighty hearts.

An enormous hospital had been built just outside Colsterworth. In less than an hour, according to those who saw it extruded. Little flying craft zipped across the wolds, stopping next to anyone they found and asking politely if they needed assistance, then conveying them back to the hospital for the ubiquitous treatment. Apparently Colsterworth’s hospital was the one dealing with all the cases on this half of Kesteven island. Another had been built at Boston to handle the city’s casualties.

Grant returned to Cricklade once his tumours had been flushed away, wandering round the big manor in a daze. The staff trickled back as they were discharged by the Kiint, looking to him to tell them what to do. That part of his reclaimed existence was easy; he knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

It was the reason for them doing it which had left him. He’d got his body back, not his life.

Marjorie returned on the second day, and they clung to each other in miserable desperation. There was still no sign of the girls.

Flying craft started to deliver the men from the militia who had remained in Boston after their possession, dropping down out of the sky at individual cottages and farm houses. The weeping and fragile laughter which came from each reunion was everywhere Grant went.

He and Marjorie drove back to Colsterworth to ask if the Kiint had found the girls. The computer at the hospital said no, but that they were still cataloguing Norfolk’s surviving residents. Tens of thousands were being added every hour, it told him, and he would be notified immediately (the Kiint had already repaired the entire planet’s telephone network). When he asked for a flying craft to take him to Norwich the computer apologised, saying they couldn’t accommodate private flights, all the craft were needed for patients.

They went back to the farm rover, debating what to do next. A Kiint was walking sedately down the broad cobbled street outside, crazily incongruous amid the stone-walled cottages with their slate roofs and climbing roses. A gang of laughing children were running round it, totally unafraid. It kept holding thin tentacles of tractamorphic flesh just above their heads, flicking them away when the children jumped to catch one. Playing with them.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” Grant said. “We can’t go back to how it was, not now.”

“That’s not like you,” Marjorie said. “The man I married would never allow our way of life to be cast aside.”

“The man you married hadn’t been possessed. Damn that Luca to hell.”

“They’ll always be with us, just as we were always with them.”

Provider globes were drifting round the manor, ejecting replacements for items which had never been repaired or replaced. The staff followed them, fitting lengths of guttering, hammering new trellis sections onto the walls, mending fence posts, plumbing in sections of central heating pipe. Grant felt like shouting at the globes to go away, but Cricklade needed fixing up: for all Luca’s attention its overall maintenance had been pretty shabby during the possession. And providers were doing the same thing for every household in Stoke County. People were entitled to some charity and good fortune after what they’d been through.

He examined that thought, wondering who it had come from. Was it too kind for Grant, not liberal enough for Luca? In the end it didn’t matter, because it was right.

When he walked into the courtyard, another provider was repairing the burnt-out stable all by itself. Its purple surface flowed through buckled soot-clad walls and blackened timbers, leaving a broad line of clean straight stone and tiled roof in its wake. The process was like a brush painting detail over a preliminary sketch.

“Now that’s what I call a corrupting influence,” Carmitha said. “No one’s going to forget just how green the grass is on the other side of the technological divide. Did you know they can make food as well?”

“No,” Grant said.

“I’ve been working my way down an impressive little menu. Very tasty. You should try it.”

“Why are you still here?”

“Are you asking me to leave?”

“No. Of course not.”

“They’ll come back, Grant. You might have loosened up, but you still don’t give your own daughters the credit they deserve.”

He shook his head and walked away.

Lady Macbeth ’s brand new ion field flyer landed on the greensward in front of the manor the next day. Its bubble of golden haze evaporated and the hatch opened. Genevieve ran down the airstairs as they slid out, jumping the last couple of feet to the ground.

Grant and Marjorie were already coming down the portico’s broad stone steps to find out what the flyer was doing. They both froze when they saw the familiar little figure emerge. Then Genevieve streaked over and cannoned into her mother so hard she nearly knocked both of them over.

Marjorie wouldn’t let go of her daughter. She had trouble speaking, her throat was so choked up with crying. “Did . . . did it happen to you?” she asked in trepidation.

“Oh no,” Genevieve said breezily. “Louise got us off the planet. I’ve been to Mars, and Earth, and Tranquillity. I was scared a lot, but it was really exciting.”

Louise put her arms around both her parents and kissed them.

“You’re all right,” Grant said.

“Yes, Daddy, I’m just fine.”

He stepped back to look at her, so wonderfully self-confident and poised in her smart-cut travel suit with a skirt that finished well above her knees. This little Louise would never meekly do as she was told, no matter how much he shouted.

Bloody good thing too, as Luca might have said.

Louise gave both her parents an impish grin and took a deep breath. Genevieve started giggling wildly.