‘Oh, my God.’

Rekka had not talked about this so openly with Simon. Perhaps because Angela was a near-stranger – or a brand-new friend with no shared history between them – the facts had been easier to verbalize.

‘My adoptive parents were Canadian. Pulled me out of the Pavilion before the flames went up. They took care of me. Took me with them when they left India.’

Angela’s eyes were wet.

‘Oh, Rekka. That’s … But good for them. Good work.’

‘Yes.’

Not knowing why Angela was so affected, Rekka patted her shoulder.

‘We …’ Angela stopped, stared down the street, then looked at Rekka. ‘We can’t have kids, Randolf and I. We’ve been talking about adopting, and your story …’

She pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.

‘Sorry,’ she added.

Rekka shook her head, then hugged Angela.

It was three in the morning when Amber called. In the grey semi-darkness, wrenching herself out of sleep, Rekka blurted: ‘Simon?’

Silver metallic sockets in place of eyes. Not Simon.

‘Rekka, what time is it with you? I’m sorry.’

‘Amber, no.’ Rekka rubbed her face. ‘Are you all right? How’s Jared?’

At four months old, he would still be a worry. When did a mother start taking her child for granted? Ever? A real, caring mother, that was. Not like—

‘He’s … Oh, shit. He’s OK.’

‘Well,’ said Rekka. ‘Good.’

She was still trying to pull her faculties together. Amber was in a bad state and not saying why.

‘How have you been coping, Rekka?’

‘Me? Er, working hard. Too many hours to leave time for thinking.’

‘Enough to forget the bastard? You do it, girl.’

This felt like Rekka’s first night in Singapore, with the timelag messing up her perceptions, the world appearing off-balance when really it was herself out of kilter.

‘I hate them,’ said Amber. ‘I hate them for leaving me no choice, even if it’s the right one for Jared.’

‘Oh. UNSA.’ Rekka was beginning to understand. ‘You’re going back to UNSA, to your ship. And sending Jared to an UNSA school?’

But he was only four months old.

‘I don’t have tear ducts, you know that? Well of course you do.’ Amber shook her head. ‘Makes it worse. Maybe it makes me a worse person, too. Maybe if I could cry, I’d still have a partner and so would you.’

What?

Rekka tried to ask: ‘P-partner?’

‘Fucking Mary,’ said Amber. ‘Fucking Mary fucking fucking Simon, that’s the problem, isn’t it? And vice versa. Shit, I hate them.’

Rekka coughed as if punched.

‘I … Rekka?’ In the image, Amber reached up with one hand. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

‘N-no.’

Mary. Simon and Mary.

‘Simon didn’t call you? Didn’t …? Oh, God, Rekka.’

Six thousand miles apart, linked only by technology, the two women bawled; and for the next twenty minutes, Rekka produced enough burning tears for them both.

FORTY-NINE

MOLSIN 2603 AD

He ought to kill Hansen, assuming he found her.

I want to. I really want to.

Roger knew he could kill. Or perhaps he only thought he knew. Maybe he had the emotional toughness, or whatever you called it, but lacked the physical ability. After all, Helsen had got away with so much already. She had killed an entire world.

Rhianna was staring at him, her black Pilot eyes glittering.

‘Maybe I can’t,’ he told her.

‘What’s stopping you?’ she asked.

It was a classic question from neurorhetoric studies, and she must have known it would trigger the traditional counterpart: What would it be like if you could?

‘Helsen can alter your thoughts,’ he said. ‘Make you see things that aren’t really there.’

‘My thoughts?’

‘Well, mine, I guess. But—’

‘How do you know? What evidence do you have?’

Her eyes were vast, deep-space obsidian.

‘The medics who failed to see her walk past them. The, the …’

In his mind he saw enthralled men in brownshirt uniforms staring at collective visions of helmed warriors wielding blood-axes and war-hammers, and a one-eyed poet casting armed men into confusion as they slew one of their own, a young man tied by leather ropes to a longhall’s entrance-post, crying out as tumbling axes chopped into his body, butchery ended only by the casting of a mercy-spear, releasing the poor man’s—

‘… deeper and deeper,’ came Rhianna’s voice, ‘into this relaxed and dreaming state, and my voice will go with you as you sink ever …’

—shade to be borne on dread Naglfar, Hel’s vast ship formed of corpses’ fingernails – such a multitude of the dead – to the realm of Niflheim, unless by chance the Death-Choosers of Óthinn had taken Jarl to train among the bravest of warriors, to prepare for the distant future when Ragnarök would be upon them—

‘… because your unconscious now can keep you safe as you find the trance inside the trance to go deeper than you ever have before your eyes can close again, that’s right …’

—and they would fight, the warriors of living crystal, those who led from the high command established on an airless moon, while in the night sky there shone the homeworld of humankind, banded now with crimson and silver, once thought to be the entirety of the Middle World – of the nine worlds, the only one to support living humanity – while it seemed now that baryonic matter was the true Midgarth, while the danger came from the realm of, of—

‘… all right, everything is fine, and you can relax your breathing because all is well and here, now, everything is safe as you are safe and let it go …’

—and she was there, the only woman he would ever love for true, long dead and not yet living, his Gavi, his most beautiful Gavi with the crystal smile that grew as he—

‘… rising up to become fully awake as I count five, four, three …’

—cried out as the visions twisted away, dispelling—

‘… two, one. Now.’

—as Roger blinked, shuddering into wakefulness.

There were tears on Rhianna’s face.

Afterwards, as they sipped daistral, Rhianna explained: ‘I was in a deeply altered state myself, in full sympathy with you. It’s the fastest way to get someone to relax far into trance.’

‘I didn’t figure you for the kind of person to cry easily,’ said Roger. ‘And I was a bit surprised. But why crying, exactly? Did I tell you something sad?’

His memories of trance had faded. He could feel them waiting, tucked around some corner in his mind, retrievable perhaps in time, not now.

‘That depends,’ she said, ‘on whether you were being metaphorical or literal. What you told me was far more … wide-ranging than I expected to hear.’

‘Er, do you want to explain that more clearly?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Oh.’

‘But I will teach you how to induce trance in useful ways. You already know how to pitch words within sentences so they act as covert commands. So let’s add to that. Use your peripheral vision to watch my breathing. Do it now.’

Roger directed his gaze at her face, his attention on the tiny motions of her shoulders.

‘OK.’

‘Now synchronize your breathing with mine, and if your commands correspond to the deepest part of my exhalation, so much the better. Try it now.’

‘Er …’

‘Just feel confident in what you’re doing.’

‘All right,’ said Roger. ‘So relax the muscles around your eyes …’

That night, Roger dined alone in a small restaurant called The Single Helix. Rhianna was off being her public self … and for all he knew, conducting high-level espionage at the same time. It would have been nice to fly back to Barbour to spend time with – to make sensuous love to – his wonderful Leeja. But then there would be no excuse to return here to Deltaville, where Rhianna had effectively begun a crash course in being an intelligence officer, with an eclectic syllabus geared towards his needs, at least as she perceived them.