“Why does this matter?” Dane said.

“No,” said Billy suddenly, staring at the bizarre familiar. “Oh you’re shitting me.”

“Yeah,” Wati said. “You got it.”

“What?” said Dane. He stared at the statue and at Billy. “What?”

YOU HEAR ALL THE TIME, BILLY TOLD DANE-AND HOW GOOD IT was for him to be telling Dane something-about the influence of pulp science fiction on real science. It is an admission both shamefaced and proud that some large proportion of scientists claim inspiration from variously crude visionary blatherings they loved when young. Satellite specialists cite Arthur Clarke, biologists are drawn to the field by the neuro- and nanotech visions of entertainers. Above all, Roddenberry’s leaden space-pioneering meant a demographic bulge of young physicists attempting to replicate replicators, tri-corders, phasers and transporter rooms.

But it was not only the hard sciences. Other professionals grew up with the same stuff. Sociologists of the network went rummaging in old imaginings. Philosophers stole many-worlds, grateful to alternative-reality merchants. And, unknown to the mainstream, such invented futures were the seminal viewing for a generation of London’s mages, and they were no less keen to imitate their favourites than were physicists. Alongside technopaganism and chaos magic, Crowleyism and druidical pomp, there were the reality-smiths of the TV generation.

Ornerily, it was not the fantasies that inspired most knackers, not Buffy, Angel, American Gothic or Supernatural. It was the science fiction. Time travel was out, the universe not having fixed lines, but sorcerer fans of Dr. Who made untraditional wands, disdaining willow for carefully lathed metal and calling them sonic screwdrivers. Soothsayer admirers of Blake’s 7 called themselves Children of Orac. London’s fourth-best shapeshifter changed her name by deed-poll to Maya, and her surname to Space1999.

There were those magicians who expressed allegiance to more recherché series-empatechs who would not be quiet about Star Cops, culture-surfing necromancers hooked on Lexx-and a younger generation naming themselves for Farscape and Galactica (the remake, of course).

But it was the classics that were most popular, and just as for NASA technicians, Star Trek was the most classic of these.

“Simon’s familiar’s name,” Wati said, “is Tribble.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“’COURSE I’VE SEEN STAR TREK,” DANE SAID. “BUT I DON’T KNOW what a fucking tribble is.”

They were by London Bridge. Simon’s last-known address had been empty for months. They hunted.

“Well, it’s one of those things, basically,” Billy said. He was back in silly student getup too young for him. He peered into the plastic bag he carried. Within shivered Tribble. Billy stroked its dirty fur. They passed slate-top figurines and plaster statuettes on buildings. Ill-clothed mannequins. From each of them came Wati’s whispered voice, soothing Tribble, keeping the un-animal calm.

“We sure we’re going the right way?” Billy said.

“No,” said Wati. “I’ve been trying to track the link backward. I reckon it leads round here. If we get close enough I’ll feel it.”

“What is the fucking deal with this tribble thing?” Dane said.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Wati said. He spoke in little gusts from all the statues. “Simon was totally into that stupid show. He went to conventions. Had the collections, the figures, all that stuff. Half the time he dressed in that stupid uniform.”

“So?” Dane said. “So he’s talented, made money and pissed it away on tat. He’s a beamer who made himself Mr. fucking Spock.”

“Scotty,” Billy said. He looked at Dane over the top of his glasses, schoolmarmish. “Spock didn’t beam anything.”

“What? What? Whatever. Listen, there’s different ways of porting, Billy. There’s folding up space.” Dean scrunched his hands. “So places far apart touch each other for a moment. But that ain’t what Simon does. He’s a beamer. Disintegrate whatever it is you want, zap its bits somewhere else, stick them back together.”

“Wasn’t there an auction of Star Trek stuff?” Billy said. “A couple of months ago? At Christie’s or somewhere? I think I remember… All the auctioneers wore the uniforms. They sold the starship model for like a million quid or something.”

Dane half closed his eyes. “Rings a bell.”

“It’s going weird in-between,” said Wati from a scuffed stone dog. “I think it wants us to turn left.”

“We’re circling,” said Billy.

They slowed. They had done three turns of a towerblock, orbiting it as if the ill-kept concrete pillar were the sun. They were not alone on the street, but none of the pedestrians paid them any particular mind. “It wants to take us there,” said Billy, “but it’s scared.”

“Alright, hold on,” said Wati from a plastic owl, a bird-scarer on a chemist roof. “I’ll have a look.”

WATI WENT TO A TINY COSY PLASTIC DASHBOARD VIRGIN; TO A cemetery and a headstone angel, seeing through birdlimed eyes. Staccato manifested moments to the base of the tower, eyeing the building from a bouncing horsey in the children’s playground.

He could feel familiars in a few of the flats. All union members. Two on strike; the other, a-what was that?-a parrot, still working but with dispensation for some reason. The unioned three felt their organiser’s presence with surprise. He stretched out, found a child’s doll in the ground floor. It took him scant moments to see through speck-sized Barbie, to go again, finding a terra-cotta lady in the next-door flat, seeing again, nothing of interest, moving to a China shepherdess on next-door’s mantelpiece.

He slid through figures. His moments of statued awareness proliferated in a cloud. He strobed through floors in doll figure carved-soapdish rabbitsextoy antique relic, seeing, fucking, eating, reading, sleeping, laughing, fighting, human minutiae that did not interest him.

Three storeys from the top, he opened his consciousness in a plastic figure of Captain Kirk. Feeling the seam of his moulding, the hinge of his little arms and legs, the crude Starfleet uniform painted on him, he looked into a ruinous apartment.

Less than a minute later he was back in a novelty alarm clock shaped like a chimney sweep, in the window of a shop where Billy and Dane loitered.

“Hey,” he said.

A clock is shouting at me, Billy thought, so loud anyone with a hint of nous would have been able to read it. He stared at Wati. Little while ago I was a guy worked in a museum.

“Third floor from the top. Go.”

“Wait,” said Dane. “He’s there? Is he alright?”

“You’d better see.”

“JESUS,” WHISPERED BILLY. “IT STINKS.”

“I told you,” said Wati. Dane held him out like a weapon. Wati was in a ripoff toy, a “Powered Ranga!” they had brought.

The curtains were drawn. The stench was of rotting food, filthy clothes, uncleaned floors. The rooms were littered with mouldering rubbish. There were tracks-cockroaches, mice, rats. Tribble whimpered. The ridiculous scrabbly thing pulled itself out of the bag and half rolled, half hairily oozed into the living room. From where came sounds.

“More of you?” A voice stretched taut. “Can’t, can’t be, I’ve accounted, or you have, you’re all done, aren’t you, that’s us, isn’t it? Tribble, Tribble? You can’t speak, can you, though?”

“That’s him,” said Dane. “Simon.” He drew his speargun.

“Oh Jesus,” Billy said.

On every surface was Star Trek merchandise: model Enterprises; plastic Spocks claimed emotionlessness more convincingly than the character they represented; Klingon weapons hung on the walls. There were plastic phasers and communicators on the shelves.

Sitting on the sofa, staring at them, Tribble on his lap, was a ghastly looking man. Simon’s face was pale and thin, scab-crusted. His Star Trek uniform was dirty, the insignia one blot among many.