“I’m sure you thought you did what was the right thing.”

“Indeed I did, Stephanie Ash. Unfortunately, I didn’t think enough, for it was not the right thing to do. Not at all.”

“Well hey, it don’t matter no more, man,” Cochrane said. “The fat babe’s been singing out loud for a while now. We’re like going home.” He offered Soi Hon his joint.

“No thank you. I do not wish to introduce poisons to this body. I am simply its custodian. I may soon even be held accountable for any ills I have inflicted. After all, past the end of this queue we shall be facing them again, will we not? And we will only be equals.”

Cochrane gave him a sour look and dropped his joint, grinding it into the mud under his heel. “Yeah, right, man,” he grunted.

“What about Ekelund?” Stephanie asked. “Where’s she?”

“Back at her command post. She refused the offer to return.”

“What? She’s crazy.”

“Undoubtedly, yes. But she sincerely believes that once the serjeants have gone, then this land will be free. She intends to found her paradise here.”

Stephanie looked back at the patch of scabrous land that was Ketton.

“No,” Moyo said firmly. “She has made her own decision. And she certainly isn’t going to listen to you of all people.”

“I suppose not.”

Even at the rate of one possessed every few seconds, it took over seven hours for everyone to be repatriated. The procedure was simple enough. Where Tinkerbell touched the cliff face, several oval tunnels had opened up, leading deep into her interior. Their walls shone with a soft aquamarine light that grew progressively brighter until it eventually filled the cleft. You just walked through, vanishing into the light.

Stephanie wasn’t the very last in. Moyo and McPhee had quietly and insistently stood behind her. She smiled in good-natured surrender and passed over the threshold. The air thickened in conjunction with the light, slowing the movement of her limbs. Eventually it felt as though she was trying to walk through the crystal itself. There was an insistent pressure exerted against every part of her. She felt the force move through her flesh, enabling her to speed up again. The aquamarine glow faded away, showing that her body had become transparent, a pattern of light conducted by crystal. When she looked round she saw the body she’d possessed standing behind her. The woman was holding her hands up, an expression of revulsion and satisfaction straining her face.

“Choma?” Stephanie asked. “Choma, can you hear me? There’s something I need to do.”

“Hello, Stephanie. I thought this might happen.”

Occupying a serjeant’s body was the simplest thing. One waited for her, immured in crystal, completely passive with its big head bowed. It didn’t matter which direction she walked in, she was always walking towards it. They merged, and it thickened around her, returning the opaque aquamarine light. The sensations were peculiar; the exoskeleton had no tactile nerves, yet it was somehow rigged to provide proof of contact. Her soles were definitely pressing down on a surface, air drifted over her as she moved forwards. The aquamarine light cleared from her eyes, allowing her to focus with remarkable clarity.

She walked out of the oval tunnel, back onto the crusty trampled-down mud of Ketton Island. The rivers of coloured light which emanated from Tinkerbell’s internal coruscations meandered over the ground. Nothing else moved.

It was a long slog back across the island to its central town. Even in the serjeant’s robust body it took her an hour and a quarter. Tinkerbell departed when she was a third of the way there, arching away above her in a opalescent blaze, then shrinking at an improbable speed. Stephanie began to pick up her pace. The air was stirring, slowly expanding again now the serjeants had gone, a gentle breeze gusting out over the edge of the cliff. Their wishes remained for a while, of course, impregnated on the fabric of this realm. But without their active presence to reinforce them, what was normality here began to return.

It was a lot brighter when Stephanie trotted up to the boundary of the town. The air had thinned considerably now, allowing the continuum’s persistent blue-white glare to shine down with unrestrained power. Every step sent her gliding a couple of metres above the ground. Gravity had reduced by about twenty per cent, she guessed.

Ekelund’s headquarters were prominent at the very centre of the razed town, the big tent perched atop a mound, faintly luminous. She came out as Stephanie bounced her way up the slope, lounging against the tentpole, smiling softly.

“It’s a different body, but I’d know those thoughts anywhere. I believe we’ve had our last goodbye, Stephanie Ash.”

“You have to leave. Please. You’ll destroy Angeline Gallagher’s body and her soul if you stay here.”

“Finally! It’s not my well being you’re concerned about. A small victory for me, but I consider it significant.”

“Come back to Mortonridge. There are still some serjeant bodies available to host your soul. You can live a life again, a real life.”

“As what? Trite little housewife and mother? Even you can’t live your old life again, Stephanie.”

“I never believe that a baby’s future is preordained. After birth, you’re on your own to make what you can from life. And we are being born again in these serjeant bodies. Make what you can of it, Ekelund. Don’t kill yourself and Gallagher out of misplaced pride. Look around! The air’s all but gone, the gravity’s failing. There’s nothing here anymore.”

“I am here. This island will bloom again once it’s free of your influences. We came here to this realm because it offered us the sanctuary we needed.”

“For God’s sake, admit you are wrong. There’s no shame in it. What do you think I’m going to do, stalk you and gloat?”

“Now you get to it. Which of us was right. That’s what it’s always been between you and I.”

“There is no right. An entire army flocked to your banner. I had a lover and five mismatched friends. You win. Now, please, come back.”

“No.”

“Why not? At least tell me that.”

Annette Ekelund’s stubborn smile flickered. “For the first time ever, I have been me. I haven’t had to defer to anybody, to ask permission, to conform to what society expects. And I’ve lost that.” Her voice shrivelled to a hoarse whisper. “I led them here, and not one stayed. They didn’t want to stay, and I didn’t have the strength to force them.” A tear emerged from her left eye. “I was wrong. I got it wrong, God damn you!”

“You didn’t bring anybody here. You didn’t order us. We came because we desperately wanted to. I was a part of it, Annette. When we lay there on the mud after the harpoon strike, and the serjeants were going to throw us into zero-tau, I helped. I was so frightened that I poured every drop of my power into leaving Mortonridge behind. And I was glad when we got here. We are all to blame. All of us.”

“I organized Mortonridge’s defence. I brought about the Liberation.”

“Yes, you did, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. It could even have been me. We’re not responsible for the way to the beyond being opened up. Ever since that began, the outcome was inevitable. You’re not to blame for fate, for the way the universe is put together. You’re not that important.”

Annette had to suck hard to fill her lungs with air. The sky had become very bright. “I was.”

“So was I. The day we took the children over the firebreak, I’d accomplished more than Richard Saldana ever had. That was how I felt. I loved it, and I wanted more of it, the way my group looked up and respected me. Typical human failing. You’re nothing special, not in that way.”

“Smug, smug, smug, God I hate you.”

Stephanie watched the dry flakes of mud lift gently from the ground, flicked up by the last wisps of air. They floated around in a lazy cloud, rebounding off each other, slowly moving higher. There was no gravity left, the only thing keeping her feet on the ground was sheer willpower. “Come with me.” She had to shout, the air was all but gone. “Hate me some more.”