“Into! What use will that be?”

“None whatsoever. Even if we don’t break apart on impact we’ll melt away into the fluid over a few days.”

“Or fly straight through to the other side.”

“There isn’t one.”

“You never know unless you try. Besides, this way has the most style.”

“Style, huh.”

They both grinned.

Dariat rolled the pod again, getting a rough alignment on the mélange. He fired two of the solid rockets. Any more, and they really would crack open when they reached it.

The cold will probably do it anyway, he thought.

There was three seconds of five-gee acceleration, then they hit. The deceleration jolt was fearsome, flinging Tolton against the couch’s straps. He groaned at the pain, bracing himself for the worst.

But the pod’s thermal coating held, defying the devastating subcryonic temperature of the mélange. The pod juddered sluggishly as its rocket motors continued to fire, thrusting them deeper and deeper below the surface. Both of them could hear the cacophony of souls outside, their shock and dismay as the rocket exhaust vaporized the fluid in which they were suspended. The cries grew fainter the further in they went. After fifteen seconds the rockets burnt out.

Tolton’s laugh had an unstable timbre. “We made it.”

The port had frosted over as soon as they struck the fluid. He reached over and tried to wipe the beads of ice clear. His hand stuck to the glass. “Bugger!” He lost some skin pulling it free. “Now what do we do?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

The Volkswagen Trooperbus carried Louise and Ivanov Robson back to London. During most of the four-hour trip she’d sat curled up on one of the big leather chairs in the cabin, accessing news reports from the arcology. The landscape held little interest for her now.

There were few rover reporters left in the Westminster dome to provide an impression of what was happening. Those who insisted on toughing it out were releasing their sensevises on a long delay, allowing them to get well clear of the area where they’d been recording. The possessed didn’t take kindly to having their activities exposed to the planet’s accessing public. Rovers who’d been caught on the first day had never accessed the net again.

What was shown by reporters still on the ground—and more comprehensively, by the dome sensors—was a rough kind of order establishing itself among the ancient buildings. The possessed were organized in small bands, walking quite openly along the main roads. It was a defiant gesture up at Govcentral. They could have been targeted easily by SD weapons, had the political will existed to do so. But as there were only ever a couple of hundred exposed at any one time, the remainder would be free to extract an atrocious retribution on the rest of the non-possessed population. Government forces within the arcology had been effectively eliminated. Highly specific fires had continued to rage throughout the night, disposing of all the dome’s police stations and eighty per cent of the local council offices. Significantly, although power grids and the communication net had also been targeted, the possessed hadn’t damaged any of the primary civic utility stations. There was still water, and fresh air; and the dome remained capable of warding off an armada storm. Somebody was controlling the possessed, ordering their activities with a great deal of precision.

The media speculated on who.

Charlie was only interested in why. If anything, the possessed were now enforcing the original curfew with a greater efficiency than the police ever had. The AI’s analysis of their movements indicated there were between seven and ten thousand of them, each with their own area to control. Enough to make sure everyone stayed indoors. Very few new possessed were being created, and there were barely a few hundred in the nine outer domes.

The only significant excursion they’d attempted was to a garage of surface vehicles. Each time they’d driven one of the lumbering machines up onto the ramp, it had been targeted by SD fire. The President himself had ordered the strikes without any urging from the B7 staff among his advisors and cabinet. The possessed had made eight attempts to leave London before giving up.

“Dexter’s preparing for something,” Charlie told Louise just before she left his dome. “There’s no way he’ll be satisfied with just London. That’s why he’s holding back on possessing the rest of the population. The way he’s put things together in there, he could do it in less than a week if he wanted. He’s far better organized than New York.”

Louise didn’t understand why Dexter was holding back any more than Charlie did. The devilsome man she’d encountered back on Norfolk didn’t seem capable of any restraint.

The only other information she received on the trip was progress reports on Genevieve. Her sister was being driven to Birmingham in another Volkswagen, along with Divinia and the first batch of Charlie’s family. From there Charlie had arranged a vac-train to take them to Kenya Station. Gen had been quite disappointed when it turned out that Charlie’s dome couldn’t fly.

It was a much shorter drive to Birmingham. Genevieve was on the African Tower ascending to Skyhigh Kijabe while Louise was still making her way across the Thames valley.

“Coming into view now if you want to see it,” Yves Gaynes called out from the cab.

Louise stirred herself and went forward to sit next to him. When they’d left London, she’d had a poor view of the domes; the direction they were travelling in was all wrong. Now the Trooperbus was pointing straight at them as it lumbered over the last few miles.

She stared at the domes that sliced up out of the rolling horizon. Only the outer nine were visible, gathered protectively around the ancient city at the centre. The sinking sun reflected vivid pillars of copper light off the vast arcades of geodesic crystal; other than that, they were completely black. For the first time, she could appreciate just how artificial they were. How alien.

Yves was looking at her. “Didn’t expect to be coming back this way quite so soon, myself.”

“No.”

“The boss does look after his people, you know.”

“I’m sure he does.” Not that she was convinced she really qualified as a B7 staff member. Then again, it could just be Charlie remote-controlling the driver, trying to reassure her, to make her more compliant. She wasn’t certain of anything anymore.

The Trooperbus drove steadily past the half-buried factory halls surrounding the arcology and dipped down a ramp into one of the huge underground garages. There were few lights on, and no activity at all among the ranks of parked vehicles. They drew up in a bay near the ramp. As the external door slid down, a navy blue car sped towards them out of the gloom. Ivanov Robson stood up and popped the cabin’s hatch.

“Are you ready?” he asked politely.

“Yes.” Louise made her voice cool. She hadn’t spoken to him since the journey started. It was an issue dominated by anger; although she wasn’t sure who she was directing it against. Him for being what he was, or her for liking him at the start. Maybe he was just too strong a reminder that she’d been so thoroughly manipulated.

She climbed down the short ladder. It was humid in the garage, but colder than she expected. She was dressed for the arcology in a short skirt over black leggings, with a long sleeved emerald T-shirt to cover the medical nanonic bracelet and thin leather waistcoat. Her hair had been battened down into a single ponytail.

Ivanov followed as she hurried over to the car, carrying the slim alligator-skin weapons case Charlie had given him. A policewoman ushered them into the car, her face devoid of curiosity. How many people have B7 sequestrated? Louise wondered. This time the car’s interior was quite ordinary. She settled back in the rear seat with Ivanov beside her, the fateful case resting on his knees.