Do you think he attacked Neeves and Sipika?

No. Joshua was not in the Ruin Ring when those other scavengers disappeared.

So he must be psychic.

I cannot logically refute the hypothesis. But I don’t believe it.

You, acting on a hunch!

Where you are concerned, I act on my feelings. Ione, you grew inside me, I nurtured you. How could I not feel for you?

She smiled dreamily at the ceiling. Well, I do think he’s psychic. There’s certainly something different about him. He has this sort of radiance, it animates him more than any other person I know.

I haven’t seen it.

It’s not something you can see.

Even assuming you are correct about him being psychic, why would your child retain the trait? It’s not exactly something sequenced into any known gene.

Magic passes down through families the same way as red hair and green eyes.

This isn’t an argument I’m going to win, is it?

No. Sorry.

Very well. Would you like me to book you an appointment in the StAnne clinic’s administration processor?

What for?

An in-vitro fertilization.

No, the child will be conceived naturally. But I will need the clinic later to take the zygote out and prepare it for storage.

Is there a specific reason for doing it this way? In vitro would be much simpler.

Maybe, but Joshua really is superb in bed. It’ll be a lot more fun this way.

Humans!

The hot rain falling on Durringham had started shortly after daybreak on Wednesday; it was now noon on Thursday and there had been no let-up. The satellite pictures showed there was at least another five hours’ worth of cloud waiting over the ocean. Even the inhabitants, normally unperturbed by mere thunderstorms, had deserted the streets. Scummy water swirled round the stone supports of raised wooden buildings, seeping up through the floorboards. More worryingly, there had been several mudslides on the north-east side of the city. Durringham’s civic engineers (all eight of them) were alarmed that an avalanche effect would sweep whole districts into the Juliffe.

Lalonde’s Governor, Colin Rexrew, received their datavised report phlegmatically. He couldn’t honestly say the prospect of losing half of the capital was an idea which roused any great regret. Pity it wasn’t more.

At sixty years old he had reached the penultimate position in his chosen profession. Born in Earth’s O’Neill Halo, he had started working for the astroengineering giant Miconia Industrial straight after university, qualifying with a degree in business finance, then diversified into subsidiary management, a highly specialized profession, making sure semi-independent divisions retained their corporate identity even though they were hundreds of light-years from Earth. The company’s widespread offices meant he was shunted around the Confederation’s inhabited systems in three-year shifts, slowly building an impressive portfolio of experience and qualifications, always putting his personal life second to the company.

Miconia Industrial had taken a ten per cent stake in the Lalonde Development Company, the third largest single investor. And Colin Rexrew had been appointed Governor two years ago. He had another eight years of office to run, after which he’d be in line for a seat on Miconia’s board. He would be sixty-eight by then, but some geneering in his heritage gave him a life expectancy of around a hundred and twenty. At sixty-eight he would be just hitting his peak. With a successful governorship under his belt, his chances of nabbing the board seat were good verging on excellent.

Although, as he now knew to his cost, success on Lalonde was a slippery concept to define. After twenty-five years of investment by the LDC, Lalonde wasn’t even twenty per cent self-financing. He was beginning to think that if the planet was still here in eight years’ time he would have accomplished the impossible.

His office took up the entire third storey of a dumper on the eastern edge of the city. The furniture itself was all made by local carpenters from mayope wood, Lalonde’s one really useful resource. He had inherited it from his predecessor, and it was a trifle sturdy for his taste. The thick bright jade carpet of kilian hair had come from Mulbekh, and the computer systems were from Kulu. A glass-fronted drinks cabinet was well stocked, with a good third of the bottles in the chiller containing local wines, which he was acquiring a palate for. Curving windows gave him a view out over the cultivated rural areas beyond the suburb, a sight far more pleasing than the backward mundane city itself. But today even the neat white clapboard houses were afflicted by the downpour, appearing dowdy and beleaguered, the usually green fields covered by vast pools of water. Distressed animals crowded onto the island mounds, bleating pathetically.

Colin sat behind his desk, ignoring the datawork flashing urgently on his screens to watch the deluge through the window. Like everyone on Lalonde he wore shorts, although his were tailored in the London arcology; his pale blue jacket was slung over one of the conference chairs, and the conditioner failed to stop sweat stains from appearing under the arms of his pale lemon silk shirt.

There was no such thing as a gym on the whole planet, and he could never bring himself to jog from his official residence to the office in the morning, so he was starting to put on weight at a disappointing rate. His already round face now had accentuated jowls, and a third chin was developing; a smattering of freckles had expanded under Lalonde’s sunlight to cover both cheeks and his forehead. Once hale ginger hair was thinning and fading towards silver. Whatever ancestor had paid for the geneered metabolic improvements which increased his life expectancy had obviously stinted on the cosmetic side.

More lightning bolts stabbed down out of the smothering cloud blanket. He counted to four before he heard the thunder. If this goes on much longer even the puddles will develop puddles, he thought bleakly.

There was a bleep from the door, and it slid open. His neural nanonics told him it was his executive aide, Terrance Smith.

Colin swivelled his chair back round to the desk. Terrance Smith was thirty-five, a tall, elegant man with thick black hair and a firm jaw; today he was dressed in knee-length grey shorts and a green short-sleeved shirt. His weight was never anything less than optimum. The rumour around Colin’s staff said Smith had bedded half of the women in the administration office.

“Meteorology say we’re due for a dry week after this passes over,” Terrance said as he sat in the chair in front of Colin’s desk.

Colin grunted. “Meteorology didn’t say this lot was expected.”

“True.” Terrance consulted a file in his neural nanonics. “The geological engineers up at Kenyon have finished their preliminary survey. They are ready to move on to more extensive drilling for the biosphere cavern.” He datavised the report over to Colin.

Kenyon was the twelve-kilometre-diameter stony iron asteroid that had been knocked into orbit a hundred and twelve thousand kilometres above Lalonde by a series of nuclear explosions. When Lalonde’s first stage of development was complete, and the planetary economy was up and functioning without requiring any additional investment, the LDC wanted to progress to developing a space industry station cluster. That was where the real money lay, fully industrial worlds. And the first essential for any zero-gee industrial stations was an abundant supply of cheap raw material, which the asteroid would provide. The mining crews would tunnel out the ores, literally carving themselves a habitable biosphere in the process.