“Beautiful,” Fixx muttered, looking down at Shiori’s head on the pillow. He was still marvelling at how defenceless she looked sprawling back in the afterglow of sex when he noticed the blade, back in her hand and resting lightly between loose fingers.

All the time she’d been clutching him tight, like a sloth hung from a tree, she’d had that blade in her hand, Fixx just knew it. The very thought made his balls shrivel. Gently, so Shiori wouldn’t take offence, Fixx lent forward and lifted the knife from her grip. She moued in protest but let Fixx skitter the blade right across the pod, towards the far corner this time. And without giving Shiori time to change her mind, Fixx kissed his way down the Japanese woman’s body, between her slight breasts, over her perfect stomach and on down.

Fixx used his teeth to tug gently at the narrow strip of her pubic hair, just enough to make Shiori shudder and then, as his foot found her discarded blade and pushed it even further into the pod’s corner, he buried his face gently between her waiting thighs.

Her eyes were violet, hidden under a mask of heavy makeup, her curling black hair was scraped tightly back flat to her head, as if she’d wanted to go for a crop and hadn’t quite had the nerve. Not that the heavy black plait which disappeared under the collar of her velvet coat didn’t look good. It did.

As for her body... Fixx knew the math, one human produces Xw of heat, cram twenty people into a small space and you get 20xXw — and no one could accuse the Crash&Burn of being over-large. But still the kid kept herself under wraps. Which meant she’d been infected in one of the recent anorexia pandemics.

“He said you’re famous...” The girl nodded towards the rent boy who was sulking at the bar, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “You recognize me?” Fixx asked her. LizAlec shook her head. Fixx shrugged. “Then how can I be...?”

Shiori tasted of truffle, the expensive kind people like Lady Clare grated over the top of their game soup. Dark and rich, like wet earth. Fixx ran his mouth up the woman’s perineum and pushed his tongue into her cunt, feeling Shiori push back against him. And then before she had a chance to grip him again with her thighs, Fixx slid up slightly, fastening his teeth gently over the hood of her clitoris. Shiori bucked against him, crushing his bruised lips, and Fixx dug his hands into her hips to hold the woman still, flicking his tongue over the pink nakedness of her clit.

“Enough,” Shiori said.

“No, said Fixx, “not nearly.” But he moved his mouth all the same.

“You got a home to go to?” Fixx asked, looking at the kid. LizAlec just stared back blankly and Fixx cursed himself for sounding so old. He couldn’t help it, though, he was late thirties going on forever. And she... hell, he’d probably been twice as old as this kid was when he was still only half her age.

She didn’t answer his first question, the one about having a home. So Fixx ran down his list of usual questions: did she fancy coming back to his studio? (No). What did she think of Herbert Marcuse? (Herbert who?) Did she prefer crystalMeth to sulphate? (She just looked blank.)

“How about a deck?” Fixx asked finally. He could just imagine her fingers flicking across the keys, writing code or snapping notes out of mid-air. She didn’t have a deck. He could tell that just by looking at her face. She was embarrassed, aware that somehow she’d disappointed him, and so was he.

Fixx was many things but fair had never been one of them.

Fixx had a problem and it wasn’t the clone bleeding noisily to death in the tiny restroom or the fact the woman rubbing her crotch into his face had tried to kill him less than forty-eight hours before. His problem was 230,000 miles away and a year in the past.

Pulling his head from between Shiori’s legs, Fixx crawled up her body and hooked his arms behind her legs, forcing them up towards her head. Looking down, Fixx could no longer see the Japanese ballerina: the eyes staring up at him belonged to a young girl.

Darkness swirled across the room as Fixx fought to focus his eyes and then decided not to bother, white light blazing as nitrate and orgasm combined. All the same, it wasn’t Shiori’s face on the pillow when his brain went overload. The face he saw belonged to a fifteen-year-old French schoolgirl he’d refused to sleep with, no matter how often she’d asked him. Fixx didn’t know what that said about him, but he knew it wouldn’t be good. Stuff like that never was.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Exit Music

“Madame?”

Lady Clare said nothing, did nothing and kept doing both. She was hoping that if she kept it up for long enough the voice would eventually go away.

It was raining, which wasn’t unusual. Maybe if the roof slates hadn’t been drumming with raindrops the size of pigeons’ eggs, and maybe if the Seine hadn’t once again broken its banks to flood her courtyard, Lady Clare Fabio might have taken notice.

As it was, she rolled over in her vast Third Empire bed and tried to pull the chenille cover up round her ears, protecting herself from the staccato crash of the rain.

“Get up.” The voice that addressed her was insistent. Polite as all sin but irritating in its refusal to let her go back to sleep. Which was a pity, because Lady Clare could practically feel unmetabolized alcohol sloshing around in her veins. And she didn’t need to look at the Courvoisier bottle on the bedside cabinet to know how much she’d drunk. The time lapse in her head between movement and pain told her that.

“Go away,” Clare muttered and pulled up the chenille throw over her head, curling herself up into a foetal ball.

“Madame, you have to get up...”

“There’s no ‘have to’ about it,” said Clare crossly. “You know who I am? I’m the Minister of—”

“I know,” said the voice sadly. “Minister of the Interior, aide to His Highness...” The words trailed away into exasperated silence. Exasperated because he was too polite to state the truth, that she was turning into a prematurely aged, drunken, terrified woman.

Surprised, Lady Clare poked her head over the edge of the covers. There couldn’t be too many men left in Paris who’d bother about being polite to one of the Prince Imperial’s disgraced lackeys.

Because that’s what she was, or would be soon enough. The whole of the Third Empire to protect and she hadn’t even been able to look after her own daughter. No wonder the city was holding its breath, waiting for the Prince Imperial to surrender. Focusing her pale blue eyes, Lady Clare blinked. The guards officer looked twelve, swathed in the folds of a khaki greatcoat.

Neatly cut soft brown hair flopped over a high forehead. He had the snub nose of a Gascon and clear brown eyes. He looked younger than LizAlec, which wasn’t surprising: practically everyone looked younger than LizAlec except her.

“Turn around,” Lady Clare demanded.

The boy looked blank.

“I sleep naked,” Lady Clare announced flatly. “And I may be older than your mother but that’s not the point...”

Stammering an apology, the boy swung about and stared at a point on the far wall, his whole body rigid with embarrassment.

“I’m not offended,” said Lady Clare tiredly, climbing out of bed and looking round for her old Kenzo dressing gown. Giving up the search, Lady Clare pulled the chenille wrap around her shoulders and kicked open the French doors to the balcony of her bedroom, stepping out into the rain and tossing the wrap back inside.

No one could see her. The balcony faced into the courtyard, which was deserted like the rest of the house. Apart from the young guards officer she was the only person there, and he was still staring hard at the wall. Lady Clare didn’t need to look behind her to tell that, she just knew. She recognized him now, from the shuttle launch the other night.