"No, really, I wanted to go." He started swimming beside her. "Well, all right, not the trees and caterpillars and things. But I would like to see Devil's Island. And the beaches, with you."

Charlotte steadied herself on the side of the pool by the window. She looked down thoughtfully on the water below. "Where are we now, do you think?"

Fabian held on to the side, eyes on her rather than the water. "It's the Atlantic, we're west of Africa. I can get you the exact co-ordinates if you want."

"No, thank you Fabian, that's all right. It's just a pity we missed seeing Gibraltar. Have you ever been there before?"

"No."

"If the Colonel Maitland comes back to the Mediterranean some time, then remember to ask your father to show you. The Straits drop flow is quite something, that tiny little gap is the only place the Mediterranean basin can fill up from. Thermal expansion didn't raise the Mediterranean's level as high as the oceans, the water was warmer to start with. So the Atlantic is still a good couple of metres higher, and that's after nearly twenty-five years. They won't reach equipoise for a long time yet."

"Did you ride it?"

"No. I was too scared, the drop flow is over five kilometres long. I watched the macho loonies doing it, through. You sit in one of the overhang cafes on the rock, and your bones shake from the turbulence round the base, the sound is like one continual thunderclap. They reckon the rock itself will be gone in a few more decades. Nothing can resist that sort of pressure."

She remembered more, the sleek canoe-like capsules that people rode the Straits drop flow in, like phosphene dots zipping across her vision as she watched that incredible surge of white water from the safety of the café. Three of the people in her group had wanted to try it, knowing full well the drop flow claimed a couple of lives a week.

She thought at the time how little regard they had for their own lives. There was a degeneracy building in the world's rich, becoming more advanced with each generation. There used to be a kind of adventurism in the excitement they sought, the power boat racing, desert car rallies, polar trekking. But now the element of calculation was missing from the risks they took, superseded by recklessness, a return to the live fast die young ideal. She supposed it was an answer to the increasing jadedness of their existence, in this world so much pleasure could be bought on the cheap. Their urge towards self-destruction set them apart from the poor again.

"Sounds great," he said.

She realized he hadn't really been listening. He was still looking at her, query and longing bound up in his worshipful stare. What would he be like when he was eighteen? "I'll do a deal with you, Fabian."

"What?"

"If you take my bikini off, I'll pull your trunks down."

Fabian's bedroom had been furnished with the same expensive care and attention lavished on the rest of the airship—an antique dresser, upholstered Nordic chairs, Chinese carpet, two pale still-life paintings in slim plain gilt frames. But the drawer had scratches, and a very odd purple stain that was still sticky; T-shirts, towels, and shorts hung all over the chairs; shoes and blade roller skates dotted that carpet; bawdy holograms of bimbo bands had been tacked up on the walls.

Fabian was a pretty ordinary teenager after all. One den the size of a small warehouse wasn't nearly large enough for all his rubbish.

Charlotte had only ever seen it when the light was low, in daylight it was even worse. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, with her bikini back on, watching Fabian. He was squatting on his towel in front of the big wall-mounted flatscreen; it was tuned to French MTV, playing an old Rolling Stones track, the sound muted. But he was looking down at his cybofax, doing the London Times crossword with one hand, holding a choc-ice bar in the other.

She had never seen anyone do the crossword so fast. He would take a bite from the ice-cream and read the clues, then his fingers would dance over the keys. There was never any hesitation, no referring back to the cybofax's dictionary function. She was tempted to ask him about a bioware node again; but that would make an issue out of it. Besides, she didn't think Fabian had lied back at the pool yesterday. She didn't think Fabian would know how to lie to her about anything.

So how could he demolish the crossword like this?

"Doesn't the maid ever clean up here?" Charlotte asked.

Fabian looked round with bemused curiosity. "The staff take my clothes and stuff to be washed. But I'd lose everything if it was put into drawers."

She picked up a metre-long model of an old-style military tilt-fan. It was heavier than she'd expected. The miniature missiles looked very realistic. "What can you do with this indoors?"

Fabian flipped his lock of hair aside. "Nothing, stupid. I fly it from the Colonel's landing pad. Do you want to come up and try it? I'll let you use the remote, it's dead easy."

"Maybe later. Where do you get all this stuff from? You must go on week-long shopping expeditions when the Colonel Maitland reaches a town."

"Oh no, I pick it all out from catalogue channels, and have it forwarded to our next airport. The Gulfstream collects it for me."

"I see." Jason Whitehurst hadn't been exaggerating when he said he kept Fabian on board the Colonel Maitland the whole time. She didn't approve of that at all. Not that she could ever say so.

"I'll have the maids clean it up if you don't like it," Fabian offered generously.

"I don't think your father could afford the overtime bill."

Fabian burst into gleeful laughter. "How do you do that?"

"What?"

"Everything you say is always just right. The clothes you wear make you look utterly fantastic. You can swim well. You're a super dancer. You know about everywhere in the world, not just what countries look like, but their politics as well. You're like a superwoman, or something."

"That's age, Fabian. When you're as ancient as me, you'll have learnt it all as well."

Fabian dropped his eyes. "You're not old."

"You're very sweet."

"You said you wouldn't call me things like sweet and cute again," he said petulantly. "Not now I'm your lover."

"Sorry."

"Charlotte?"

"Yes."

"Can we do it again?"

He might be bright, she thought, but he had a grasshopper mind. "I think we might, yes."

Fabian scrunched up the choc-ice wrapper and lobbed it in the direction of the bin, then bounced on to the bed beside her. "I forgot, you're incredibly sexy too." He said it timidly, as though he was swearing in church.

"Thank you." Charlotte straightened her legs, and lay on her side next to him. "Remember what I like?" She kissed him, hand running over his belly. Her voice deepened. "How to make me ask you for more?"

Watching her face closely, Fabian reached out and undid the bikini top. He smiled greedily as the triangular scraps of fabric came free in his hands, and began to stroke the length of her ribcage the way she'd taught him. "What's it like in space?"

Charlotte groaned, the mood spoilt. "Oh, heavens, Fabian. I've told you all I possibly can. If you want to know any more, you'll have to go there."

"No. I meant, you know, that… freefall sex."

"Oh. Unearthly delights."

"What?" he choked.

"Unearthly delights, that's what the New Londoners call freefall sex."

"Wizard! So what's it like?"

"I don't know. Never had the chance to try it."

"No?"

She could read him like a book. He didn't believe her. "No. But I admit I was thinking of it; I met a nice local boy while I was there. But I cut four days off the end of my holiday and came home early. So I never got the chance in the end. I expect it's overrated, tourist board propaganda."