Towards dawn she went back upstairs to see to the old man.

He was still awake, staring ahead of himself as if he was spectat-ing at some event no one else could see; but he must have known she was there, because he took her hand and said, "The worst things we ever brought out of there, we called them 'daughters.' Bring out a daughter and you had nothing but trouble. A daughter would change shape on you. It wasn't alive, it wasn't technology either: no one knew what it did, no one knew what it was for."

Edith squeezed his hand.

"You told me that already," she said.

He chuckled. "It was me who started calling them that. Whatever you brought out, it had better not be a daughter."

"You told me that a hundred times before."

He chuckled again, and she squeezed his hand again, and after a while he went to sleep.

She stayed with him. Every so often she looked round the room, at the painted wainscoting a warm cream colour under the low-wattage lights, the old bed piled up with coloured pillows, bits of mismatched cloth she liked, or thought the old man might like. We saw worse places than this, she thought. There was a flare from the rocket field, then another; they lighted her strong profile and cast its shadow on the wall.

4

At the Club Semiramide

Liv Hula opened her bar in the late mornings. However she caned it the previous night she could never sleep more than two or three hours, but after that would wake suddenly from dreams of being sucked down, listen in a daze but hear nothing except the usual sounds from Straint Street outside-a rickshaw rumbling and bumping downhill into Saudade on the uneven pavement; a woman singing. Or she would have dreams of some other planet, from which she always woke thinking, "Where was that? I had a better time there." These minute, crisp little visions of her past not connecting one with another, or to here and now, she would look round at the room with its clean bare white walls, then get up suddenly and kick last night's clothes around the floor.

It was easier to be downstairs. Sweep, push tables about, wash glasses, breathe the stale air, splash cold water on your face from the bar sink. You unlocked the door, daylight poured in on the slant and the shadow operators flickered about in it for a minute or two like reef fish before retreating to their corners. At about the same time Liv Hula retreated behind the bar. She always stood in the same place. Polished the zinc with her elbows, moved the cash drawer in and out. By now her feet fit a dip in the springy floorboards. She didn't want to remember how many years she spent behind the bar in Black Cat White Cat.

Check stock, order food, watch the chopshop traffic, watch the light swing slowly round the room, and by early afternoon she would have her first customer. She was glad to see anyone. Usually it would be Fat Antoyne, but Fat Antoyne hadn't been in since Joe Leone died. Or if it wasn't Antoyne it would be Vic Serotonin the travel agent, who at that hour hardly looked better than Liv herself.

Today it wasn't either of them.

When Vic Serotonin did arrive, it was with that preoccupied air of his-hands in pockets, shoulders in a permanent shrug, needy eyes fixed away from everything-as if he was thinking so hard about his life he didn't know what part of the city it was going on in. He leaned on the bar and said:

"Rum."

"Hi, Vic," Liv Hula said. "Nice to see you."

After a pause she said in a fair imitation of Serotonin's voice, " 'Nice to see you, Liv.' "

"Cut it out," said Vic Serotonin.

"When you pay your tab I will," she said sweetly. "Black Heart over ice? Well, how did I know that?" She let him drink it- standing a little back from the bar with something between satisfaction and amusement in her eyes-then said, "Your client's back, Vic."

Vic looked round and saw the client had been sitting there all the time on one of the window stools, staring out the misty glass into the street. Her face was tilted so the light fell evenly across it and, without disclosing anything, gave it a milky, transparent look. A cup of hot chocolate was in front of her. She didn't seem to be drinking from it. The moment Vic saw her he was aware of other images spinning off her, too quick to really see. He had images of running, then a board fence green with lichen in the rain. An abandoned street from a wrong angle.

Generally Vic would walk away from anything difficult. Clients came to him, he looked them over; he knew a time-waster.

"I don't want to see you here agaift," he said.

He walked quietly up behind her where she sat on the stool and put his mouth near her neck and said, "I don't want to see you here again." He was startled by his own intensity. She stared at him for a moment, as if she was trying to understand something in a foreign language. Then she got to her feet and began to fumble in her bag, out of which eventually she took a business card. She said:

"This is where I live. I wish you would help me. If you change your mind, I still feel as if I want to go in there."

"That's the problem," Vic said.

"I'm sorry?"

Vic said, "I know my mind. You don't know yours." He stood in the doorway and watched her walk away down Straint. This time she was dressed in a black tulip skirt to midcalf. Over that was a little silver fur peplum jacket with lightly padded shoulders; the jacket came with a matching pillbox hat. She hailed a rickshaw and got in it.

"She wishes you would help her, Vic," Liv Hula called from behind the bar. Vic told her he would like another drink.

On the card the woman had given him was an address in Hot Walls, which Vic recalled as tall old-fashioned townhouses on the wrong side of being corporate, run down twenty years ago when the current generation of executives traded up into the purpose-built complexes of Doko Gin. He wished he hadn't said anything to her at all, because that made a connection between them.

"Why would a tourist have an address on Hot Walls?" he asked Liv Hula.

"I'd ask how she got your name, Vic."

"That too."

Liv watched him tear the card up and toss the pieces on the bar. Later, though, he collected them together and put them in his pocket.

Vic got another call from Paulie DeRaad.

DeRaad seemed irritated. At the same time he was dissociated and vague. He wanted to talk about the artefact he had bought, he said. He said he was puzzled. He said he wasn't sure what he had. But each time Vic asked him what was wrong, his attention seemed to be somewhere else. "Is something going on where you are, Paulie?" Vic asked him. "Because yaw should attend to it if there is, especially when you don't have anything to say to me."

"Hey, be polite, Vic," Paulie advised him. Eventually, he said Vic should come over to his club, the Semiramide. That would be the best way of doing it, he thought. There was something Vic should see; he could see it for himself.

"I've got other things to do," Vic said.

"You haven't got things more important than this," DeRaad said. "Hey, Vic, I'll send someone to pick you up, save you any trouble."

"There's no need for that," Vic said.

The Semiramide lay midtown like a cruise ship at dock, placed to attract a mix of tourists and local players, class and income to be decided by Paulie himself. When Vic got there, six-thirty p.m., he found an ongoing situation. It was empty but for the customary DeRaad footsoldiers, a dozen contract gun-kiddies sitting round the back tables excitedly comparing weapons and throwing dice. Some of the furniture was tipped over and a couple of charred holes in the walls indicated someone had let go recently with a reaction pistol. Paulie's people seemed less connected than usual.

"Paulie won't be happy you go in there," one of the gun-punks informed Vic when he tried to get in the office.