Moyo waited to make sure he got through the hedge without any trouble, then went back inside. If it had been an adult he held hostage, there would have been no compunction, but a child . . . He hadn’t abandoned all of his humanity.

Through the living-room window he could see vehicles rumbling down the road. It was a strange convoy which Annette Ekelund had mustered; there were modern cars, old models ranging across planets and centuries, mobile museums of military vehicles. Someone had even dreamed up a steam-powered traction engine which slowly clanked and snorted its way along, dripping water from leaky couplings. If he focused his thoughts, he could make out the profile of the actual cars and farm vehicles underneath the fanciful solid mirages.

There had been a coupe Moyo had always wanted back on Kochi, a combat wasp on wheels, its top speed three times the legal limit; but he never could quite manage to save enough for a deposit. Now though, it could be his for the price of a single thought. The concept depressed him, half of the coupe’s attraction had been rooted in how unobtainable it was.

He spent a long time behind the window, wishing the procession of would-be conquerors well. He’d promised Annette Ekelund he would help, indeed he’d opened five of Exnall’s residents for possession during the night. But now, contemplating the days which lay ahead, repeating that barbarity ten times an hour, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it. The boy had proved that to him. He would be a liability to Ekelund and her blitzkrieg coup. Best to stay here and keep the home fires burning. After the campaign, they would need a place to rest.

Breakfast was . . . interesting. The thermal induction panel in the kitchen went crazy as soon as he switched it on. So he stared at it, remembering the old range cooker his grandmother had in her house, all brushed black steel and glowing burner grille. When he was young she had produced the most magnificent meals on it, food with a tang and texture he’d never tasted since. The induction panel darkened, its outline expanding; the yellow composite cupboard unit it sat on merged into it—and the stove was there, radiant heat shining out of its grille as the charcoal blocks hissed unobtrusively. Moyo grinned at his achievement, and put the copper kettle on the hot plate. While it started to boil he searched around the remaining cupboards for some food. There were dozens of sachets, modern chemically nutritious food without any hint of originality. He tossed a couple into the iron frying pan, compelling the foil to dissolve, revealing raw eggs and several slices of streaky bacon (with the rind left on as he preferred). It began to sizzle beautifully just as the kettle started to whistle.

Chilled orange juice, light muesli flakes, bacon, eggs, sausages, kidneys, buttered wholemeal toast with thickly cut marmalade, washed down with cups of English tea—it was almost worth waiting two centuries for.

After he was finished eating, he tailored Eben Pavitt’s sad casual clothes into the kind of expensive bright blue suit which the richer final year students had worn when he was a university freshman. Satisfied, he opened the bungalow’s front door and stepped out into the street.

There had never been a town like Exnall on Kochi. Moyo found it pleasantly surprising. From the media company shows he had always imagined the Kulu Kingdom planets to have a society even more formal than his own Japanese-ethnic culture. Yet Exnall lacked any sort of disciplined layout. He wandered along its broad streets, sheltered by the lofty harandrids, enjoying what he found, the small shops, gleaming clean cafés, patisseries, and bars, the little parks, attractive houses, the snow-white wooden church with its bright scarlet tile roof.

Moyo wasn’t alone exploring his new environment. Several hundred people had stayed behind after Annette Ekelund had left. Most of them, like himself, were ambling around, not quite meeting the eye of their fellow citizens. Everyone was party to the same guilty secret: what we did, what was done for us to return our souls into these bodies. The atmosphere was almost one of mourning.

The strollers were dressed in the clothes of their era and culture, solid citizens all. Those who favoured grotesquerie and mytho-beast appearances had departed with Ekelund.

He was delighted that several of the cafés were actually open, taken over by possessed proprietors who were industriously imagineering away the modern interiors, replacing them with older, more traditional decors (or in two cases retro-futuristic). Espresso machines gurgled and slurped enthusiastically, the smell of freshly baked bread wafted about. And then there was the doughnut machine. Set up in the window of one café, a beautiful antique contraption of dull polished metal with an enamel manufacturer’s badge on the front, it was a couple of metres long, with a huge funnel at one end, filled with white dough. Raw doughnuts dropped out of a nozzle onto a metal grid conveyer belt which dunked them into a long vat of hot cooking oil where they fizzled away, effervescing golden bubbles until they rose out of the other side a rich brown in colour. After that they dropped off the end onto a tray of sugar. The smell they released into the crisp morning air was delectable. Moyo stood with his nose to the glass for a full minute, entranced by the parade of doughnuts trundling past while electric motors hummed and clicked, and the turquoise gas flames played underneath the oil. He had never guessed that anything so wondrously archaic could be found within the Confederation, so simple and so elaborate. He pushed the door open and went in.

The new proprietor was behind the counter, a balding man with a handkerchief knotted around his neck and wearing a blue and white striped apron. He was wiping the counter’s shiny wooden top with a dishcloth. “Good morning, sir,” he said. “And what can I get you?”

This is ridiculous, Moyo thought, we’re both dead, we’ve been rescued by some weird miracle, and all he’s interested in is what I want to eat. We should be getting to know each other, trying to understand what’s happened, what this means to the universe. Then he sensed the alarm burbling up in the proprietor’s thoughts, the man’s terribly brittle nature.

“I’ll have one of the doughnuts, of course, they look delicious. And have you got any hot chocolate?”

The proprietor gave a big smile of relief, sweat was prickling his forehead. “Yes, sir.” He busied himself with the jugs and cups behind the counter.

“Do you think Ekelund will succeed?”

“I expect so, sir. She seems to know what she’s doing. I did hear she came from another star. That’s one resourceful lady.”

“Yes. Where do you come from?”

“Brugge, sir. Back in the twenty-first century. A fine city it was in those days.”

“I’m sure.”

The proprietor put a mug of steaming hot chocolate on the counter along with a doughnut. Now what? Moyo wondered. I haven’t got a clue what kind of coin to conjure up.

The whole situation was becoming more surreal by the second.

“I’ll put it on your bill, sir,” the proprietor said.

“Thank you.” He picked up the mug and plate, glancing around. There were only three other people in the café. A young couple were oblivious to anything but each other. “Mind if I sit here?” he asked the third, a woman in her late twenties, making no attempt to cloak herself in any kind of image. Her head came up to show tear trails smearing chubby pale cheeks.

“I was just going,” she muttered.

“Don’t, please.” He sat opposite her. “We ought to talk. I haven’t talked to anyone for centuries.”

Her eyes looked down at her coffee cup. “I know.”

“My name’s Moyo.”

“Stephanie Ash.”

“Pleased to meet you, Stephanie. I don’t know what I should be saying, half of me is terrified by what’s happened, the other half is elated.”