«It's valuable, isn't it, Laurus? Our machine, I mean. Camassia says it is.»
«She's quite right.»
«Will there be enough money to buy Jante new eyes and legs?» Torreya asks, her voice echoing round the trellis walls of climbing plants.
Laurus has lost track of her; she's not in the cyclamen passage, nor the forsythia avenue. «One day,» he calls out. The thought of giving Jante eyes is an anathema, the boy might lose his imagination.
That is something else he is going to have to research carefully. Torreya and Jante can hardly provide an endless number of different fantasies to fill the candy buds once he starts mass-producing them. Although in the three days they have been at the estate they have dreamt up three new fantasies.
Will it only be children, with their joy and uninhibited imagination, who'll be the universe's fantasyscape artists?
«Some day soon, Laurus,» Torreya's disembodied voice urges. «Jante just loves the estate. With eyes and legs he can run through all of it himself. That's the very best present anyone can have. It's so gorgeous here, better than any silly candy bud land. The whole world must envy you.»
Laurus is following her voice down a corridor of laburnum trees that are in full bloom. Sunlight shimmers off their flower clusters, transforming the air to a lemon haze. He turns the corner by a clump of white angels trumpets. Torreya is standing beside the machine, and even that seems to have thrived in its new home. Laurus doesn't remember its organic components as being so large.
«As soon as we can,» he says.
Torreya smiles her irrepressible smile, and holds out a newly plucked candy bud. Refusing the warmth and trust in her sparkling eyes is an impossibility.
The starling is already eighty metres off the ground. Laurus thinks it must have owl-eye transplants in order to fly so unerringly in the dead of night like this.
Ryker hurtles down, and Laurus feels feathers, malleable flesh, and delicate bones captured within his talons. In his rage he wrenches the starling's head clean off. The candy bud which the little bird was carrying tumbles away, and not even Ryker can see where it falls.
Laurus contents himself with the knowledge that they are still well inside the estate's defensive perimeter. Should any animal try and recover the candy bud, the estate's hounds and kestrels will deal with them.
He drops the starling's body so he will have a rough marker when the search begins tomorrow.
Now the big eagle banks sharply and heads back towards the mansion in a fast silent swoop. The ground is a montage of misty grey shadows, trees are puffy jet-black outlines, easily dodged. He can discern no individual landmarks, speed has reduced features to a slipstream blur.
He curses his own foolishness, the satellite of vanity. He should have known, should have anticipated. The Laurus of old would have. Three days Torreya and Jante have been at the estate, and already news of the candy buds has leaked. Programmable neurophysin synthesis is too big, the stakes are now high enough to tempt mid-range players into the field. There will be no allies in this war.
Ryker soars over the last row of trees and the mansion is dead ahead, its lighted windows glaringly bright to the eagle's gloaming-acclimatized eyes. Camassia is still fifty metres from the side door. There's no urgency to her stride, no hint of furtiveness. One of his girls taking an evening stroll, nobody would question her right.
She's a cool one, he admits. Kochia's eyes and ears for eighteen months, and Laurus never knew. Only the importance of the candy buds made her break cover and risk a handover to the starling.
Laurus thinks he still has a chance to salvage his dominant position. Kochia and his Palmetto operation are small, weak. If Laurus acts swiftly the damage might yet be contained.
He activates his cortical chip's datalink. «Mine,» he tells the enforcers. But first he wants the bitch to know.
Ryker's wings slap the air with a loud fop. Camassia jerks around at the sound. He can see the shock on her face as Ryker plunges towards her. Hand-sized steel talons stretch wide. She starts to run.
Laurus is visiting Torreya in her room to see how she is settling in. Over four days the guest bedroom has metamorphosed beyond recognition. Holographic posters cover the walls, windows looking out across Tropicana's northern polar continent. Dazzling temples of ice drift past in the sky-blue water. Shorelines are crinkled by deep fjords. Timeless and exquisite. But Laurus is the first to admit that the images are feeble parodies compared to the candy bud fantasies. The new pastel-coloured furniture is soft and puffy. Shiny hardback books of fictional mythology from his library are strewn all over the floor. It's nice to see them actually being used and appreciated for once. Every flat surface is now home to a cuddly Animate Animal. He thinks there must be over thirty of them. There is a scuffed hologram cube on the bedside dresser, containing a smiling woman. It seems out of kilter with the deliberate cosiness organic to the room. He vaguely recalls seeing it at the old office building.
Torreya clutches a fluffy AA koala to her chest, giggling as the toy rubs its head against her, purring affectionately.
«Aren't they wonderful?» Torreya says. «All the people in the house have given me one. They gave some to Jante, too. You're all so kind to us.»
Laurus can only smile weakly as he hands her the huge AA panda he's brought. It's almost as tall as she is. Torreya stands on the bed and kisses him, then bounces on the mattress as the panda hugs her, crooning with delight.
«I'm going to name him St Peter,» she declares. «Because he's your present. And he'll sleep with me at night, I'll be safe from anything then.»
The damp tingle on his cheek where she kissed him sets off a warm contentment.
«Shame Camassia had to go,» Torreya says. «I like her a lot.»
«Yes. But her family need her to help with their island plantation now her cousin's married.»
«Can I go and visit her?»
«Maybe. Some time.»
«And Erigeron's away as well,» she says with a vexed expression. «He's nice. He helps Jante move around, and he tells funny stories, too.»
The thought of his near-psychopathic enforcer reciting fairy stories to please the children is one that amuses Laurus immensely. «He'll be back in a couple of days. He's driven over to Palmetto to sort out some business contracts for me.»
«I didn't know he was one of your company managers.»
«Erigeron is very versatile. Who's the woman?» he asks to deflect further questions.
Torreya's face is momentarily still. She glances guiltily at the old hologram cube. The woman is young, mid-twenties, very beautiful, smiling wistfully. Her hair is a light ginger, tumbling over her shoulders.
«My mother. She died when Jante was born.»
«I'm sorry.» But the woman is definitely Torreya's mother; he can pick out the shared features, identical green eyes, the hair colour.
«Everyone back in Longthorpe who knew her said she was special,» Torreya says. «A real lady, that's what. Her name was Nemesia.»
After lunch, Laurus took Torreya down the hill to the city zoo. He thought it would make a grand treat, bolstering her spirits after Camassia's abrupt departure.
In all his hundred and twenty years Laurus had never found the time to visit the zoo before. But it was a lovely afternoon, and they held hands as they walked down the leafy lanes between the compounds.
Torreya pressed herself to the railings, smiling and pointing at the exhibits, asking a stream of questions. She would often narrow her eyes and concentrate intensely on what she was seeing, which he came to recognize as using her affinity bond with Jante, letting her brother enjoy the afternoon as much as she did. It would be interesting to see if the visit resulted in a new fantasyscape.