What do I do?she asked her crew.

Their minds merged, awash with compassion and distress. The answer, she felt, was inevitable.

Syrinx walked over and took Erick’s cold, damp hand in hers. “All right, Erick,” she said softly. Wishing once more for a single second of genuine communication. “We’ll put you in zero-tau. But I want you to promise me something in return.”

Erick’s eyes had closed. His breathing was very shallow now as he datavised several files into the toroid’s net. Caucus was exuding concern at the read-out from the diagnostic scanner. Hurry, he urged.

“What?” Erick asked.

“I want your permission to take you out of zero-tau if we find a proper solution to all this.”

“You won’t.”

“But if we do!”

“This is stupid.”

“No it isn’t. Edenism was founded on hope, hope for the future, the belief that life can get better. If you have faith in our culture to preserve you for eternity, you must believe in that. Jesus, Erick, you have to believe in something.”

“You are a very strange Edenist.”

“I am a very typical Edenist. The rest just don’t know it yet.”

“Very well, deal.”

“I’ll talk to you soon, Erick. I’ll be the one who wakes you up and tells you.”

“At the end of the universe, perhaps. Until then . . .”

Alkad Mzu hadn’t seen snow since she left Garissa. Back in those days she’d never bothered indexing a memory of winter in her neural nanonics. Why waste capacity? The season came every year, much to Peter’s delight and her grudging acceptance.

The oldest human story of all: I never knew what I had until I lost it.

Now, from her penthouse in the Mercedes Hotel, she watched it falling over Harrisburg, a silent cascade as inexorable as it was gentle. The sight made her want to go outside and join the children she could see capering about in the park opposite.

The snow had begun during the night, just after they landed at the spaceport, and hadn’t let up in the seven hours since. Down on the streets tempers were getting shorter as the traffic slowed and the pavements turned slippery with the slush. Ancient municipal mechanoids, backed up by teams of men with shovels, struggled to clear the deep drifts which blockaded the main avenues.

The sight didn’t exactly bode well. If the Tonala nation’s economy was so desperate that they used human labour to clean the streets of their capital . . .

So far Alkad had managed to keep her objective in focus. She was proud of that; after every obstacle thrown in her way she had proved herself resourceful enough to keep the hope alive. Even back on the Tekas she’d thought she would soon be retrieving the Alchemist.

Nyvan had done much to wreck her mood and her confidence. There were starships docked at the orbiting asteroids, and the local astroengineering companies could probably provide her with the equipment she wanted; yet the decay and suspicion native to this world made her doubt. The task was slipping from her grasp once more. Difficulties were piling up against her, and now she had no more fallback positions. They were on their own now: she, Voi, Lodi, and Eriba, with money as their only resource. True to his word, Prince Lambert had taken the Tekas out of orbit as soon as they’d disembarked. He said he was flying to Mondul, it had a strong navy, and he knew people there.

Alkad resisted accessing her time function. Prince Lambert must have made his third ZTT jump by now, and another potential security hazard was no more.

“That’s a new one,” Eriba announced. He was stretched out along the settee, bare feet dangling over the armrest. It meant he could just see the holoscreen on the far wall. A local news show was playing.

“What is?” Alkad asked him. He had been consuming news ever since they arrived, switching between the holoscreen and the communications net’s information cores.

“Tonala has just ordered every border to be closed and sealed. The cabinet claims that New Georgia’s actions are overtly hostile, and other nations can’t be trusted. Apparently, the SD networks are still blasting each other with electronic warfare pulses.”

Alkad grimaced. That clash had been going on when the Tekas arrived. “I wonder how that affects us? Are those the land borders, or are they going to prohibit spaceflight as well?”

“They haven’t said.”

The door chimed as it admitted Voi. She strode into the big living room shrugging out of her thick navy-blue coat and shaking grubby droplets of melted snow on the white carpet. “We’ve got an appointment for two o’clock this afternoon. I told the Industry Ministry we were here to buy defence equipment for the Dorados, and they recommended the Opia company. Lodi ran a check through the local data cores, and they own two asteroid industrial stations along with a starship service subsidiary.”

“That sounds promising,” Alkad said guardedly. She had left all the organization to Voi. The agencies would be looking for her; zipping around town would be asking for trouble. As it was, using the Daphine Kigano passport when they arrived was a risk, but she didn’t have any others prepared.

“Promising? Mary, it’s spot on. What do you want, the Kulu Corporation?”

“I wasn’t criticising.”

“Well it sounded like it.”

Voi had slowly reverted to her original temper during the voyage. Alkad wasn’t sure if the waspy girl was recovering from her father’s death or reacting to it.

“Has Lodi found out if there are any suitable starships for hire?”

“He’s still checking,” Voi said. “So far he’s located over fifty commercial vehicles stranded insystem due to the quarantine. Most of them are docked in low orbit stations and the asteroid ports. He’s running performance comparisons against the requirements you gave us. I just hope he can find us one at a Tonala facility. Did you hear about the border restrictions? They’re even closing down net interface points with the other nations.”

“That’s a minor problem compared to the one we’ll have crewing the ship.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our flight is not the kind of job you normally give mercenaries. I’m not sure money will guarantee loyalty for this mission.”

“Why didn’t you say so, then? Mary, Alkad, how can I help if you keep complaining after the fact? Be more cooperative.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” Alkad said mildly.

“Is there anything else we should know?”

“I can’t think of anything, but you’ll be the first to be told if I do.”

“All right. Now, I’ve arranged for a car to take us to Opia’s offices. The security company which supplied it is also providing bodyguards. They will be here in an hour.”

“Good thinking,” Eriba said.

“Elementary thinking,” Voi shot back. “We’re foreigners who have arrived in the middle of an Assembly-imposed quarantine. That’s hardly an optimum low-visibility scenario. I want to downgrade our risk to a minimum.”

“Bodyguards ought to help, then,” Alkad said prosaically. “You should go and take a rest before we visit Opia. You haven’t slept since we landed. I’ll need you to be fresh for the negotiations.”

Voi gave a distrustful nod, and went into her bedroom.

Alkad and Eriba exchanged a glance and smiled simultaneously.

“Did she really say low-visibility scenario ?” he asked.

“Sounded like it to me.”

“Mary, that detox therapy was a bad idea.”

“What was she like before?”

“About the same,” he admitted.

Alkad turned back to the window and the snow softening the city skyline.

The door chimed again.

“Did you order something from room service?” she asked Eriba.

“No.” He gave the door a worried look. “Do you think it’s the bodyguards Voi hired?”

“They’re very early, then; and if they’re professional they would datavise us first.” She picked up her shoulder bag and selected one of the devices inside. When she datavised the penthouse’s net processor to access the camera in the corridor outside there was no response. The cut crystal wall lights began to flicker. “Stop!” she told Eriba, who had drawn his laser pistol. “That won’t work against the possessed.”