Petrovitch drained his glass. “What did she say?”

She fixed him with her dark eyes. “She said you were the best dad a daughter could wish for. I know you adopted her and everything, and that you’re only a few years older than she is: that was a really cool thing you did for her. I really hope you find her soon.”

“Yeah. So do I.” He sighed. “Thanks for talking to me, and I hope everything works out for you two. Keep your grades up: smart kids with qualifications go places that other kids can’t. And if things get rough, the pair of you might want to give the Freezone a call. We’re always hiring.”

Alan and Jessica looked at each other, wearing expressions of surprise and fear.

“Even if being together is what you want most of all in the whole world,” continued Petrovitch, “you still have to be useful to somebody else. Vrubatsa?”

Alan nodded nervously. Below the table he was holding Jessica’s hand.

“Right, Newcomen. Time to go.” Petrovitch grabbed his hat and set it on his head, then dragged the bottle of whiskey towards him and hid it inside his open coat.

While Newcomen laboriously dressed for the outside, Petrovitch paid the tab.

When he came back over, he pulled his gloves on, then the mittens over the top. “Remember not to look up or around as we pass through the door,” he said, and led the way into the below-freezing night air.

Out on the pavement, Petrovitch stamped off into the night, leaving Newcomen to skitter along behind. His half-silvered contacts made it almost impossible for him to see where he was going, and he kept on running into street furniture.

“Wait up,” he called, but Petrovitch was in no mood to slow down. He was angry and sad in equal measure.

Eventually Newcomen drew level and peered blindly at the shorter man. “What? What have I done wrong?”

“You’ve singularly failed – again – to understand what it is about your country that I hate the most.” Petrovitch stopped to fume. “Take those lenses out. You look ridiculous.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Then suffer. I don’t care.” He turned to go. “You really are the most useless sack of govno I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting. Do something for yourself for a change. Anything. You’re a grown-up. When I think of all the things I’ve done, then look at you…”

“No one ever asked me to do the things you did.”

“But you never even did the things you were asked to do.”

Newcomen pulled off his mitten and stuck his gloved finger in his eye. The contact peeled off and dropped to the hard, rutted ground. He did the same with the other. “I’ve done everything I’ve been asked to do.”

“Otlez’ gnida. I had to put a bomb in your chest just to make you care about finding Lucy.” Petrovitch jabbed his mitten hard against Newcomen. “Everything good that you do is dragged from you while you complain.”

Newcomen took the risk of batting Petrovitch’s hand away. “I’m not to blame that the world doesn’t work the way you want it to.”

“Yeah, well. It should do.” He started to walk again, dipping down and grabbing a handful of snow. He squeezed out a snowball and launched it against a left-turn sign. The sign bent, and shards of ice whipped through the air with the speed of ricocheting bullets.

“You’re foul-tempered at the best of times, but what’s got into you? Is it what those kids said about Lucy?”

“Or is it the fact that they hadn’t had the opportunity to say it before? Maybe you don’t think that Jason Fyfe’s parents deserve some answers about what’s happened to their son. They’re sitting at home, worried sick that their boy’s not coming back, and they don’t even know why. Are you going to tell them? Would you even know, if we hadn’t sneaked in here under the radar to ask the questions that no one else has either the wit or the inclination to ask? No, no, you’re not going to tell them.” He shrugged his shoulders at Newcomen. “I’m going to have to do it because no one on your side gives a shit. Thanks for that. Terrific.”

“You think he’s dead, don’t you?”

“I know he’s dead. He went after Lucy, and because Lucy mustn’t be found, he was disappeared. And no way am I saying that until I’m absolutely certain it’s true. Pizdets. This whole thing is drowning in a sea of pizdets.”

Newcomen caught up with Petrovitch again, putting his head down against the wind. “You’re going to tell me what was up with those kids too, aren’t you?”

“They’re not kids. He’s twenty-two, she’s twenty-one. I’d saved the world twice by that age, and that’s not a job for kids, is it?” They were back on the road out of town, heading towards the house and the hidden plane. “How are you on Huxley?”

“T. H. or Aldous?”

“Brave New World. The genetic underclasses, as represented by little Jessica, don’t really have much of a future in the society you help maintain.” Petrovitch dug his hands into his pockets. It was getting colder by the minute. “Jessica’s parents didn’t get her assayed. They didn’t grow her in a tank. They managed – as humans have for tens of thousands of years – to produce a bright, good-looking girl. Bright enough to make it to university on a scholarship. Alan’s parents, however, like your parents, selected him, tweaked his genes and grew him in a vat of carefully monitored nutrients. Imagine how they feel, spending all that money only to face the prospect of their grandchildren being just plain normal.”

“It’s a shame, for sure. But they’ve invested a lot in their son. You can’t say that his parents shouldn’t know about the company he’s keeping. It’s their right.”

“His genetic inheritance is not their property.”

Newcomen pulled the collar of his coat down and knocked off a shower of ice. “It is. That’s basic commercial law. If the boy’s parents have forbidden him to marry her, they’re committing a crime if they, you know…”

“Fuck, you mean.” Petrovitch spat the word out.

“Have children.”

“You don’t need to get married for that to happen.”

“You do in this country.”

“Yeah, because if you do otherwise, your foetus is a copyright violation.” Petrovitch’s hands came out of his pockets again, and he started to wave them around. “Yobany stos, you don’t even pretend you’re created in God’s image any more. You’re made in some recombinant technician’s idea of Homo superior. Short-term advantage over long-term gain.”

“Sorry?” Newcomen was utterly baffled.

“What makes us strong is our genetic diversity. While you’re busy making yourself practically perfect in every way, you’ve forgotten that’s how evolutionary dead ends occur. It’s not who fits their niche best. It’s who fits most niches best. Adaptability, not specialisation.”

“I don’t see you doing much to ensure the survival of humanity.”

“I’m making sure your gonads freeze and fall off before you get to spawn, aren’t I? The future will thank me.” Petrovitch growled and kicked at a lump of snow that had fallen off the roadside levee. “And I’m building a star drive, so past’ zebej. I’m doing what I can.”

“Uh-huh,” said Newcomen.

Petrovitch rounded on him. “I’m this close.” He showed Newcomen the narrow gap between his thumb and fingers, showed it to him right up against his nose. “The maths is simple. It’s the engineering that’s ludicrously complicated, but it’s only just out of reach. When I get there, I’ll give it to the world. Free. Except your lot: we’ll ban you from going anywhere. The rest of us will travel to the stars and it’ll take days, not centuries. We’ll spread out, carrying the virus of life with us, and we’ll have seeded the universe with the possibility of consciousness for as long as there is space and time.”

“And how long is that?”

“Maybe another ten billion years. Depends on whose model you buy into.” The cold was getting to him: he could feel it in his metal and his bones. It was time he stopped arguing, no matter how much fun it was. It was time they both went inside and got some sleep. “Alan and Jessica? They can come with us. They can have as many children as they like and they’ll be light years away from anyone who says they can’t.”