"You packed up a holiday in space early! Whatever for?"

Charlotte swore silently. This airship flight was affecting her more than she liked, her self-discipline was going all to hell. "I had to get back for some business, and then there was the Newfields ball. Why? Would you rather I was still up there?"

"No! Crikey, Charlotte," he said, genuinely indignant. "Don't say things like that."

She ran a hand over his chin, momentarily confounded by the lack of stubble.

Fabian drew a quick breath. "Hey, listen, I've just had a tremendous idea. We can go up to New London together. Right? You heard Father say I could go in a couple of years. Well, I will. It'll be wizard. We could spend the whole time in freefall. Unearthly delights!" He giggled and clapped his hands exultantly.

It took a supreme effort to maintain her light smile. Dear God, he was a besotted teenager who thought she was going to stay with him till death us do part, amen. Sex equals love, they all thought that at his age. How could she have been so stupid, getting herself into this situation? It could only ever end in heartbreak now.

Fabian was waiting, flushed and deliriously expectant.

"A couple of years is a long time to wait." She took hold of his hands, and placed them firmly on her breasts. "And I know some pretty good earthly delights."

Charlotte let the shower's hot spray play over her back, soapy water running down her thighs and calves. It felt good, relaxing her. The sharp jets of water pounded into her skin like a scratchy massage. Steam swirled around, warming her all the way through.

What the hell was she going to do about Fabian? He wasn't a bad kid, certainly he deserved a lot better than her and his father. The obvious thing to do was cut and run as soon as she reached French Guiana. He was young, resilient, he'd get over her fast enough. Except she knew how much it would hurt him. How much she would hurt him.

She couldn't bear the thought of that trusting, mischievous face screwed up in misery. In itself an unusual, and disturbing, admission.

God damn Jason Whitehurst for not bringing up his son properly. And God damn Baronski for not knowing what Jason Whitehurst had wanted her for. The old boy was normally so careful about what he got his girls into.

Charlotte gave her hair a final rinse and turned off the shower. She wrapped a big towel around herself, then used another to dry her hair. The robe she'd worn over her bikini to walk about in through the gondola was lying on the damp tiles, soaking up the condensation the shower had thrown out. It could stay there now. The maid could clean it. Bitch.

She sat down in front of the mirror, and combed out her hair. Her cabin hadn't got that stale stuffy taste in the air like Fabian's. It gave her room to breathe, room to move. Having her own cabin was the only real plus of this assignment. She liked the times she was on her own, an interval when she could be reflective, when every move and word wasn't an effort.

She looked at the image in the mirror, stretching, wriggling her toes. "Gawd luv us, ducks. See 'ow grand we is nahdays." She giggled. Funny, it was harder to do that accent now than the upper-middle-class one Baronski had patiently coached her in. The past really had died.

Charlotte got up and searched through her bedside cabinet. Her gold Amstrad cybofax was in the second drawer. She took it out and sat on the bed, curling her legs up. "Phone function," she told the wafer, then gave it Baronski's number. He probably couldn't help her out of her predicament straight away, but she could vent a lot of her frustration on him. It was something he was always good at, always there as a shoulder to cry on. Everyone needed someone like that, life would be unlivable otherwise. And in any case, she needed to tell him she wouldn't be going to Odessa. He liked his girls to keep in touch.

UNABLE TO ACQUIRE SATELLITE LINKAGE, the cybofax screen printed.

Charlotte stared at it. Unable? She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. The jet-black solar envelope hull of the airship curved away above her like a medium-sized moon. No wonder the cybofax's signal couldn't reach the geostationary antenna platform.

There was a standard terminal on the other side of the bed, but she shied away. If she was going to have a decent rant at Baronski about Whitehurst she didn't want to do it on the man's own 'ware. More than one of her patrons had routinely recorded calls.

Charlotte began looking through drawers for her Ashmi jumpsuit. She could go up to the landing pad, the cybofax would work from there.

Maybe if she stuck out this assignment for another month, push Fabian away gradually. That might work, no hard feelings on either side, and a wonderful memory of first love for the rest of his life. But another month of this? At least in French Guiana there would be the beach bars, and some decent nightlife.

Charlotte was zipping up the jumpsuit when there was a rap at the door. The maid came in.

"Mr. Jason would like to see you," she said.

"OK, I'll be about twenty minutes."

"He said now." There was a definite gloat in the voice.

Fabian had shown her where his father's study was, in the midsection of the lower gondola deck, but they hadn't gone in. Now Charlotte found it was equipped with ultra-modern fittings, the first she'd seen on board. Walls, floor, and ceiling were a silver-white composite; flatscreens showed homolographic maps of the globe, coastlines glowing sharply, cities and ports tagged with ten-digit codes. Jason Whitehurst was sitting behind a smoked-glass desk that resembled a rectangular mushroom. She could see tiny red and green lights inside the glass top, squiggling like trapped fireflies. It was the only piece of furniture in the room.

The heels of her leather ankle boots clicked loudly as she walked towards him.

"Chair," Jason Whitehurst said. A circle of floor in front of his desk turned grey. It extruded upwards, a smooth cylinder at first, then it began to flow, like something organic caught by time-lapse photography.

Charlotte sat tentatively in the curving scoop chair which formed. It felt as hard as rock under her fingernails.

"You attempted to use your cybofax to make an external call," Jason Whitehurst said.

"Yes."

"I must ask you not to do that again. I am conducting some very delicate negotiations at the moment."

"I won't interrupt them. It was just a call to a friend."

"You called Baronski."

Charlotte began to wonder if it had been the bulk of the airship hull which had blocked the call, after all. "That's right. He likes to know where I am, and as we're not going to Odessa—"

"He likes to know what you hear."

"Pardon me?"

"Baronski deals in the information you supply him. That will not be the case on this voyage."

"I wasn't going to say anything about you. I don't know anything about you."

"Nor will you. I purchased you purely to provide Fabian with some amusement, nothing more. Now that is all."

It took a moment for the dismissal to sink in. Charlotte rose on legs which were suddenly trembling. Once the door had slid shut behind her she rubbed her eyes. Her knuckles seemed to be very damp.