‘I guess so,’ he said.

Roger was halfway along a crowded gallery when his tu-ring flared, and a private holo unfurled in his smartlenses, the narrow-collimation audio surrounded by anti-sound. He backed up against a quickglass buttress, out of the flow of people.

‘I tried pinging you,’ said Jed, ‘but you were still hiding away somewhere shielded. That was against instructions, mate – trying to contact you, I mean – but I’d have got you offworld if I could.’

It was a recorded, non-interactive message, as before.

Against instructions?

In the holo, Jed looked frustrated, and his voice was tight.

‘They’ve declared quarantine. Molsin’s powers-that-be are receiving notification that no Pilot ships will be visiting the planet. They’re not giving a reason, not in actual clear speech, but there’s something about “recent events concerning a new arrival” that points at what’s-her-name, Helsen.’

Had Tannier and Bendelhamer known of this? Or were they only just learning of the quarantine themselves?

‘Check the auth-codes, appended,’ Jed added. ‘We’re leaving you funds to live on.’

The message had been sent while Roger was in the medhalls, not Leeja’s place. He was going to have to change his tu-ring to warn of loss of contact, a condition that on Fulgor had been inconceivable.

‘I’m really sorry, mate. I’ll be back for you as soon as I can, right? Shit. Take it easy.’

The holo winked out.

‘Shit is right,’ said Roger.

He went to the great reception hall where they had offloaded the med-drones from Jed’s ship. No one was there, apart from him: tiny in the huge, echoing space. Insignificant and lost.

Cut off from Pilotkind.

From her, growing so fast in Ascension Annexe.

What am I supposed to do?

But the notion of caring, benevolent authority was no longer relevant. He did not need anyone to tell him what to do, to give him a purpose.

Not while Helsen was free.

Leeja smiled at him, her chin dipped, her eyes alight.

‘Come in, lover.’

The door flowed shut behind him.

At some point in the night, they were awake together. Leeja touched his lower lip.

‘You said her name, darling. In your sleep. Your girl from Fulgor.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Earlier, he had told Leeja that his friend from Fulgor no longer knew him, thanks to medical science.

‘I’m not going to see her,’ he added. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Mm.’ Leeja wriggled, put her hand on his stomach. ‘And is she beautiful?’

‘She’s in the past.’

Leeja kissed his earlobe.

‘But is she beautiful, this Gavi?’

‘She— What?’

‘What do I have to do so it’s my name you moan when you’re asleep?’

He rolled on top of her.

So warm, soft and exciting.

‘I’m not sleepy,’ he said.

They rode to the stars once more.

FOURTEEN

EARTH, 1941 AD

Gavriela rode in a train compartment whose other occupants – two men in uniform, two in heavy tweed overcoats and three-piece suits – nodded as politeness dictated, but conversed only in small, meaningless bursts during the entire journey. At Paddington, she felt nervous as she walked along the platform while the blackness of the engine loomed, steam banked overhead, and pigeons swooped amid metallic echoes bouncing from the steel-arched ceiling.

The ticket-inspector, old and efficient, stood at the black-rubber barrier, one thumb tucked in his waistcoat pocket as he checked each traveller in turn. He nodded at Gavriela’s travel warrant, and gave her a kind smile.

‘Thank you,’ she managed to say.

Her body wanted to collapse concertina-like, folding at hips and knees; but she used force of will to walk on, and a train-whistle sounded as her head began to clear.

Checking tickets, that’s all.

The Gestapo had no power in England, at least not yet.

Frank had arranged the warrant, at her inveigling. Her excuse was a desire to talk to the code-makers at SOE, to get another perspective on the more intractable signals passing through Hut 27. What’s more, she had managed to obtain a day’s leave, so that she did not have to report to Baker Street until Friday, while tomorrow she had free rein.

THE DARKNESS COMMMANDS THAT YOU MEET THE EAGLE AT?? O’CLOCK THURSDAY IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE

Yesterday, she had peeked at every intercept she could, trying to find another signal with the EAVI prefix, or anything else that might suggest a message from the same source. There had been nothing, no extra data: therefore no chance of deciphering the two-digit time.

I can’t do this.

But she had to, because the clunky German content of the message implied an English agent composing it. If she were sure that it was Germans meeting in Trafalgar, she could have bluffed her way into decrypting the message in full view, showing it to the team, and getting Frank to make a phone call. As it was, the people at the rendezvous could be anybody, possibly part of the British establishment and above suspicion.

This was a machination of the darkness, not the German war machine. Even with all she had seen years before, it would have been delusional to believe a strange power was intimately directing the actions of key Nazis. The reality was subtler, the shared visions of a glorious, blood-soaked future arising more from known insanity and the contagion of mob psychology than from unknown forces. But a tiny deflection, applied in a timely manner, can bring about a massive change in trajectory over an extended duration. Poincaré had pointed that out, several years before Gavriela’s birth, in his papers on dynamical systems.

And a bullet is such a small object.

That was what scared her: not the travel arrangements, which were all in order – alles in Ordnung, such a Teutonic concept, more than the sum of its words – but the possibility that someone might notice the weight of her handbag, and ask her to open it. She had tried to fabricate cover stories to justify carrying a loaded Webley; but all of them sounded in her mind like the desperate, lightweight lies of a guilty child.

A revolver has only one purpose, after all.

The boarding-house room in Swiss Cottage was comfortable enough, but sleep came in short, incomplete bursts. No one knocked on the front door, no constables demanding she accompany them to the station; but someone must have noticed the gap in the display case at Bletchley. She would have preferred to raid the armoury proper, but it was guarded always. She had settled for Frank Longfield-Jones’ firearms-and-fishing-rod collection, on display in the snooker room at the mansion house.

At dawn she left, bundled up in coat, headscarf and gloves, the Webley in her handbag. From the Tube station she caught a southbound train, heading for the West End. Two of the stations she passed through bore the chaotic signs of use during the night: lost blankets and general detritus. The people who had sheltered from the bombs were gone, back above ground. She wondered how many had found their homes destroyed, their pets killed or lost, or their neighbours dead.

At Trafalgar Square, she worked out where to watch from: the area between Charing Cross Station and St Martin-in-the-Fields. The square itself, with the neo-classical National Gallery to the north, had the same imperial sensibility as the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, even the Reichstag: not a comparison to win her favour, should she ever share it.

And so her long day of watching began.

The station’s proximity was useful, along with the subterranean lavatories; but every time she gave in and took a break, she came back wondering if she had missed everything. On three occasions, she fell in with small groups of wives and girlfriends waiting for men to arrive home on leave, and joined in the chat with her fictitious tale of a husband due home today, but not knowing the time of his train. Once, she made sure a policeman overheard the story. It helped that her gloves hid the absence of a wedding-ring.