"You are talking about me," Vic said. Despite his good intentions he felt his face contract and harden. "Well then, fuck you, old man." He pulled out the Chambers gun and dropped it on the bed where it lay against Bonaventure's frail form defined by the bedclothes, its magazine a matt-black roil of particles held in suspension by some kind of magnetic field. "I'm forty years old, so fuck you."

Bonaventure winced away from the gun. He curled up and threw one arm across his eyes.

"Don't leave me, Atmo!" he cried. "Not here!"

"You're fucked with me," Vic Serotonin said. "Why should I keep coming here, for you to insult me?" He regretted that immediately. He picked his gun up again and secured it. "I'm sorry, Emil," he said. He laid his hand on the old man's shoulder. "Hey, if only you'd help sometimes," he said. "Just help out."

"You've got a low startle point," Bonaventure said finally.

Vic laughed. "It's how I survive," he said. "Come on, finish the rum. No one buys Black Heart to keep it for tomorrow!"

After he had calmed the old man down, and got him to sleep, he hid the empty bottle with several others under the bed and made his way downstairs; where Bonaventure's daughter reminded him quietly:

"He sold you a business, Vic. That doesn't make him your father."

"Does it make him yours?" Vic asked her.

She shrugged. "Say what you like to me," she said. "You're not so clever as to make a difference."

She was a black-haired woman, with wide blunt hips, who blushed up quickly under her olive skin. Whatever Vic thought, she had made her way here across the Halo, planet to planet, starting out two years old in the crook of Emil Bonaventure's arm. He named her Edith, no one knew why, and though she did not resemble him at all, was always careful not to drop her. That was almost forty years ago. She had no idea where they started from, or why, but she could still remember the endless stubby Dynaflow freighters, noncorporate rocket ports, afternoons in sawdust bars, Monas and barkeeps exclaiming over her, filling her with bad bar food and milk blued by the effort of keeping itself milk in the face of where it found itself. In return she filled the vacuum for them, the day they saw her and maybe even thereafter, as a cheap blurred smiling memory they could keep until whatever they'd been denying caught up with them at last.

In those days Edith was both pretty and talented. She had clever feet. She learned to play the accordion early, dance on a table while she squeezed. Her energy was endless, especially for any kind of public appearance.

"You can say what you like, Vic Serotonin, but we were nationwide. Emil the entradista and his Accordion Kid."

"I never heard of you," Vic said.

Some days when he said that it would make her laugh. Today it made her think of being eleven years old.

"Hey, make yourself at home," she said. "Do you want a drink? Or was the rum enough?" When Vic looked away she said, "You think I didn't notice? You shouldn't encourage him to drink." That was a caution he'd heard before, so he was surprised to find her standing in close to him suddenly, saying:

"If I gave you his book, Vic, would you leave him alone?"

"Don't joke, Edith," Vic said.

When Emil Bonaventure arrived in Saudade thirty years ago, everyone was writing on paper.

It was one of those things. They loved paper suddenly. The nostalgia shops were full of it, all colours of cream and white, blank or with feint lines, or small pale-grey squares, shining softly from the lighted windows which were like religious cubicles or niches. There was every kind of notebook in there, paper between covers you could hardly believe, from wood bark to imitation grey fur to holographic pictures from the narratives of Ancient Earth religious figures, with their fingers and their bovine eyes uplifted, who smiled and raised a cross as you turned the book in your hands in the retro shop light.

As artificial as the textures of the paper itself-an Uncle Zip product franchised out of some chopshop on another planet- these notebooks came in all sizes, fastened any way you could think, with clasps, hasps, magnets, combination locks or bits of hairy string you wrapped around and did up in a beautiful knot. Some were fastened in more contemporary ways, so you could see a little flicker in the air near the edge of the pages-if you're the wrong person don't get your fingers near those!

Everyone was buying these books because it was cute to write your thoughts in them-thoughts, a shopping list, those kinds of things.

People wrote, "Who do I want to be today?"

They wrote diaries.

Everyone suddenly loved paper, no one could say why, and soon they'd love something else. But it was more practical for some than others. Emil Bonaventure kept the habit where others kicked it, and wrote everything down until the day he" went into the Saudade site for the last time. He didn't trust his memory by then. He'd been in there once too often. The stuff he had to remember was complex-directions, bearings, instructions to himself. It was data. It was clues. It was everything you daren't forget in that trade. It was everything he couldn't trust to an operator. Work with the Shadow Boys, Emil used to say, you don't trust any kind of algorithm. Even the tame ones. Among the data he also wrote descriptions about his achievements, of which he had done more than one. He wrote observations, like: "It's always snowing in Sector 7. Whatever time of year it is outside, whatever time of year it is inside." He had the whole site divided up, Sector this, Sector that. In those days, whatever he said now, the entradistas had to believe in facts; they had to believe they knew things no one else knew.

Emil wrote it all down in that water-stained letter-as if he had to convince himself of something-in a kind of slanting disordered scribble which did not reflect his personality. Then he hid the book. He was as cagey as all those entradistas, and when Vic Serotonin bought the goodwill to Emil's business, the book was not included.

"It's no joke, Vic. You remind him of too many things. If I gave you the book would you leave him alone?"

"I wouldn't stop coming here," Vic said.

She stepped in closer, so he was just in the warmth of her. "Oh no?" she taunted. Serotonin tried to kiss her, but she was too quick for him. "Vic, if you got that book we'd never see you again. Anyway, it would be the death of you. It was as good as the death of him.

"Come here, Vic," she said. "And look at this."

Two or three little child-star costumes with short stiff faux-satin skirts a ferocious emerald-green. Pairs of black patent leather shoes with straps and taps, in ascending sizes. Accordions, and parts of them. Some of the accordions she had played until they broke or got too small, some she bought later in life because she liked them. They were all colours, electric-blue, through the same savage green as the outfits, to a kind of resonant maroon, all under a high-lacquer finish with metal emblems of rocket ships, shooting stars, snowy mountains. Each keyboard grin exposed rare ivories adopted from alien animals. The small shoes now made her cry, Edith was forced to admit. Wherever she lived she laid out these keepsakes on shelves, or in breakfront cabinets whose glass doors were etched with exotic scenes from Ancient Earth. Today she had something new to show him.

"I performed in this on Pumal Verde." Folded into yellowed tissue, it looked like some kind of marching band uniform, and actually she couldn't remember wearing it. "I was fourteen years old." She buried her face in the bolero jacket, caught odours she didn't recognise. "You would have liked me then. I was so innocent, Vic. You want to smell it too?"