She got out and looked at him expectantly. He was wearing Levis and his leather jacket over an olive-green T-shirt. She'd dressed in a shapeless navy-blue sweatshirt and black jeans; nondescript, as he'd told her. Now she was beginning to realise why; Bretton was a backwater, untouched by the vitality which roared through the rest of the city. The houses she could see all had heavy wooden shutters over the windows, and solid metal security doors.

Greg blipped the Duo's lock.

They were quickly surrounded by about fifteen kids, none of them in their teens yet. Silent, eyes shining bright out of grubby faces.

"Car watch, fella?" piped a prepubescent voice.

"Highway robbery," Greg protested.

The ritual was a relief in an obscure fashion, putting her back on solid ground. Bretton was still plugged into the rest of the city, during the day, at least.

"Five pounds," the lad said.

"I think we'll park in the next street," Greg retorted.

"Four."

"It's very dirty," Eleanor pointed out.

The kids put their heads together.

She exchanged an amused glance with Greg.

"Three," declared the summit. "And we wash it, too."

"Half now?"

"Two now," said the highly affronted ringleader.

He and Greg showed cards, both of them pictures of woe.

"Wonder what Walshaw will make of a three-pound transport expense item?" Greg mused whimsically as the kids moved in on the Duo, two racing away for water and sponges.

She let him guide her into the centre of Bretton, pleased he was with her. The place looked rough. She would never have gone into it by herself.

The main street was roofed over by an erratic collage of plastic sheeting, solar cells, corrugated iron, even thatch; all supported by an equally bizarre collection of trusses like telegraph poles and rusting chunks of electricity pylons. It was a twilight world where relief from the sun's heat was tempered by the clouds of arid dust any motion kicked up. The stalls snaking along the pavements lacked the cramped clutter of Oakham's disarray, here the shops were coming back into use. There was a greater emphasis on material goods. Food was appearing in packages again. But no tins yet, she noticed.

They grazed the stalls for stuff Greg said Royan would want. Junk, Eleanor thought. He picked out circuit boards, electric motors, inexplicable mechanical gizmos that were parts of bigger machines, antique watches, the wind-up sort. Three plastic carrier-bags full, which came to thirty pounds. There was no logic behind it. He seemed delighted when he found a Sanyo VCR. It was lying among Mickey Mouse phones and kettles on a stall which was half lobster-tanks, half broken gear. He haggled the owner down to a tenner and departed well pleased.

She began to wonder about Royan again. Strange gifts.

They walked out of Bretton and into the Mucklands Wood estate; and Eleanor decided that Bretton wasn't so bad after all, not compared to this. The fifteen high-rise blocks which had risen out of the dead forest were council-run low-cost housing. They represented the least successful aspect of the city's expansion programme. A throwback to the worst of the nineteen-sixties style of instant slums.

They were twenty storeys high, identical in every way right down to the cheap low-efficiency slate-grey solar-cells clinging to every square centimetre of surface. Heat shimmer twisted the blocks' harsh geometry, blurring edges; it was as though nature was trying to distort the inhuman ugliness which their desolate lines delineated. The ground between them wasteland. Less than half of the estate's intended employment workshops had been built, and those that the council had completed were abandoned, either burnt out or gutted. The Trinities gang symbol was scrawled everywhere, brash and sharp, a closed fist gripping a thorn cross, blood dripping; She'd heard of the Trinities, even in the kibbutz. Anti-PSP in a big way.

Mucklands Wood could've been deserted. Nothing moved; worse, there was no sound: there should've been something coming from those hundreds of grimed windows, music or shouting. Their footsteps crunched loudly on the badly nicked limestone path.

She stuck close to Greg's side, eyes darting about nervously. "Is this part of your past?" she asked.

"Briefly. I taught some of the people who live here."

"I never knew you were a teacher."

"Tell you, not your sort of teaching, school and such. I trained them in streetcraft."

"Streetcraft?"

"Techniques to break police ranks, ambush their snatch squads, how to counter the assault dogs. That kind of thing. It's a reversal of the counter-insurgency courses the Army gave me."

You wanted to know, she told herself. Her eyes dropped to the crushed yellow stone fragments of the path.

"Stay calm," Greg said quietly.

She glanced at him, puzzled. His eyes had that distant look. He was using his gland.

Then the Trinities boy stepped out from his hiding place behind a crumbling employment workshop wall, he did it fast and smooth, simply there. And it was all she could do not to yelp in surprise. He fitted her image of an urban predator perfectly, almost a stereotype. Asian, somewhere in his mid-twenties, with hair cropped close, wearing a filthy denim jacket with the arms torn off, slashed T-shirt, and tight leather trousers. Two bowie knives and a compact stun puncher were clipped on to his belt. There was some sort of gear plug in his left ear. A taut strap running round his neck held his throat mike. The Trinities emblem was painted on his jacket.

He leered at her, and she knew he could read her fright. "What the fuck are you arseholes? Hazard junkies?"

There were more Trinities spreading out of the ruins behind her and Greg, dressed in a grab bag of camouflage jackets, jeans, and T-shirts. Faces hard, carrying weapons ranging from knives up to things whose function she couldn't guess. They fanned out, forming a tight blockade.

"Cool it, mate," Greg said levelly and put a bag down, holding out his right hand, very slowly.

The youth's sneer faded when he saw the Trinities card Greg was holding. "Where you get that?"

"Same place as you."

"No shit?" He pulled out his own card and showed it to the one in Greg's open palm. Confusion twisted his features as his card acknowledged Greg's authenticity. "I don't know your face."

"I don't know yours," Greg said.

"Don't smart-arse me!" he shouted.

"Greg's one of us, Des," a throaty female voice said from behind Eleanor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a small figure with spiky mauve hair, wearing tourniquet-tight leopard-skin jeans and a sleeveless black singlet. The girl's age was indefinable; thin-faced, she could've been anywhere between fifteen and thirty. She was cradling a big gauss-pulse carbine casually across one arm. Bandolier straps crossed her flat chest, loaded with red-tipped slugs. Additional power magazines were clipped to her belt. Her face was one big smirk.

"Shut the fuck up, Suzi," shouted the boy confronting them. "Hear me? You could drive a fucking tank through that mouth of yours. This is my turf, I'm the Man here. These could be Party."

Eleanor held on to Greg's forearm with her free hand, pinching. Suppose the card wasn't good enough?

Greg grinned faintly. "Hi, Suzi."

The mauve-haired girl gave him an impish thumbs up.

Des's face darkened. "You know these?" his jabbed at Greg.

"Sure," said Suzi. "Greg's been Trinity from way back. Taught me all kindsa things." Her eyes met Eleanor. "Good, too, isn't he?"

Eleanor kept her face perfectly blank, emotions frozen, just as they'd been for all those years in the kibbutz. "Depends on the material he's got to work with, dear." Not the greatest comeback in the world, but pretty bloody good, considering. Even Greg seemed vaguely surprised; approving, too, she suspected. Suzi started laughing.