‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Not many people get a chance to see it.’

If Roger lived here, perhaps this would be a major deal, a highpoint of his life. When he stepped into the spherical chamber, he was impressed but not stunned; or perhaps he was simply worried, wondering what would happen next.

They were standing, he and Tannier, on part of the terracotta-like pattern of the curved wall. Tannier found a convenient protrusion to sit down on, and gestured for Roger to do the same nearby.

‘All right,’ said Roger. ‘Does this mean we’re waiting for something?’

‘Your lady friend made a request, and I’m carrying it out. I like her, by the way.’

‘Request? Oh, shit. What was that about an implant?’

The block he sat on had already absorbed his legs, wrapping them in solid quickglass.

‘There’s no need to hold still,’ said Tannier. ‘Or rather, there is, but it’ – he slapped the block he sat on – ‘will handle everything.’

Quickglass encircled Roger’s torso, banded tight around upper chest and hips, but allowed him to breathe. Then it reached his neck, cupped his chin, and hardened around his jawbone, holding his head in place.

The insertion was a pinprick in the back of his neck.

Cold, the slithering quickglass.

As it reached up into his cerebellum, he closed his eyes, going deep inside himself, beyond the neurosomatic discipline open to every human being, to a mode only a Pilot could experience: the thrum of inductive neurons, resonating now with the quickglass nerve-analogues.

There was a point he would not go beyond.

Complete neural integration requires two-way flows. Visual information propagates forward in the skull, from the parietal lobes at the rear to the cerebrum at the front; yet most of the neural flow points backwards, in tight reverse loops. Adding a new control-system modality opened up Roger’s brain to potential manipulation – but only if he allowed it.

Got you.

He burned out portions of the major two-way bridge as it formed between the sensor-lobes (newly created in his brain) and the control circuits of his cerebellum. Only someone who was both a Pilot and a product of Fulgor’s intensive, neuroware-dominated education system – where so many had aspired to upraise, to become Luculenti – could have reconfigured such an implant as it occurred. As the quickglass restraints flowed away, he opened his eyes and nodded to Tannier.

‘Very kind of you,’ he said.

The big holoviews above the arcade showed Roger and Tannier taking in the applause, touching fists with the lottery hosts and then hugging them, before waving to the crowds and pointing to the golden starburst trophies they held as symbols of their prize: the trip to Deltaville’s official celebrations, to take place as soon as the birth happened.

None of this had occurred in reality.

Maybe they could have faked everything.

As Roger and Tannier, amid the partying crowd, watched their pseudo-selves overhead, Roger wondered whether he could have stayed with Leeja while the authorities created a virtual bait for Helsen, rather than risking him for real. But Helsen might not rely on public info feeds if she were hunting him. The more succulent the bait, the more effective the trap.

‘There they are,’ said Tannier. ‘The rest of our party.’

‘Oh, please.’

Roger had thought his own formal clothing ridiculous, but on the golden dais by the view-window, a woman was dressed in a sweeping confection of dark-blue and gold, her massive coiffure wound through with gold thread and winking holo stars. The man beside her, in his diamond-encrusted surcoat and silver-dominated trews, would have stood out anywhere else. He looked relaxed, not caring that the woman had eclipsed him.

‘She’s Rhianna Chiang,’ said Tannier. ‘Socialite and artist. Well, mostly socialite. And that’s Faubourg, no other name. Everyone knows who he is.’

‘Like Tannier, then,’ said Roger.

‘Apart from me being unknown and not a fop, yeah.’

Roger looked from Tannier’s callused knuckles to his facial scar.

‘La-di-dah,’ he said. ‘You think Helsen’s not going to notice you?’

‘What are the chances,’ said Tannier, ‘that you’d win this lottery fair and square?’

She would know he was a Judas goat. Of course she would.

‘So if she comes after me, it’ll be all-out, with some devastating attack.’

‘Probably. Right now, it’s show-time.’

Tannier led the way to the dais, where they climbed up, and someone in scarlet uniform made the introductions – Roger, Tannier, and of course this is Rhianna, and you’ll know who Faubourg is, naturally – while the quickglass surroundings recorded everything for the public’s viewing pleasure.

‘Look.’ Rhianna pointed to the great view-window. ‘Did you see?’

A massive tidal ripple swept along the length of Deltaville, floating a kilometre away. Then another. The crowd’s voice became a sort of hum, low but strong, then raised in pitch as quickglass split from quickglass, and the complex-but-roughly-spherical rearmost mass changed colour, reddening, beginning to pull from the mother city.

Outside the view-window, a promenade extended, a finger pointing into the void. A thin yellowish film covered it, transforming the extrusion into an elongated pavilion. Rhianna slipped her arm through Roger’s, while Faubourg did the same with Tannier – Roger forced himself not to laugh – and they walked through the liquefying window and into the promenade, just the four of them. They walked right to the end – which later, presumably, would form a docking-point with Deltaville – to watch the birth unfold.

Glancing back at Barbour’s upper hull, Roger saw streamers and pennants and tendrils flicking their teardrop-ends through an intricate choreography. It took a moment to realize that each teardrop contained a dancer or an acrobat, pinpoints of humanity against the city’s vastness.

‘Sky Dance,’ murmured Rhianna. ‘Very nice.’

All around Deltaville, a profusion of towers clenched, the great mass rippling and convulsing, pushing hard.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ said Faubourg.

The corner of Rhianna’s mouth twitched. Perhaps her true thoughts were like Roger’s: that Deltaville’s giving birth looked painful, an extended agony of effort, the sort of process that felt wonderful only in the aftermath, when everything was over. When everyone was partying, letting down their hair.

Letting down their guard.

TWENTY-FOUR

LUNA, 502019 AD

While Gavriela remained asleep, she awoke to that other reality, the one that would slip from consciousness in that long-past morning to follow, imprinted only in her subconscious mind, in the molecular depths of her mortal brain.

As always, the hall was airless, and she adapted to vacuum without thought as she swung her living-crystal legs down from the bier and stood. She checked the axes, spears and shields on the walls, and the pinpoints of light glowing below the ceiling. All was unchanged.

There were sounds as she walked through to the greater hall, but only the natural sounds from within her. She stopped at the entrance to the corridor leading to the external balcony, where she might stand and stare at the moonscape. But Ulfr and Kenna were seated at the conference table in their high-backed chairs, and they were looking at her, their crystalline faces glittering.

Kenna tilted her head.

—You are most welcome, Gavi, though unsummoned.

—Unsummoned?

—Not summoned by me. Brave Ulfr and I are exploring the concept of contingent battle plans. Perhaps you are drawn to it.

Spectra shifted inside Ulfr’s shaking head.

—Or maybe you’ve come to say thank you.

—I …

—But I enjoyed it, however brief, sweet Gavi.