…25. 4712425. I am 4712425. I am -

Bobby flipped his hand over and replied. Got you. 4712425. 5650982 one, 8736540 other.

Good we’re good at last, the reply came, brisk and sure. Come now.

The stranger led them off the main street and into a maze of alleys. Bobby and Kate, still holding hands, kept to the sides of the street, sticking to the shadows wherever they could. But they avoided the doorways, most of which — before doors heavily bolted — were occupied by pan handlers.

Bobby slipped his hand into the stranger’s. Think I know you.

The other’s hand, with an iconic form, registered alarm. So much for ’Shrouds and numbers bloody useless. She meant the anonymous ID number each member of the worldwide informal network of Refugee tribes was encouraged to adopt each day. The numbers were provided on demand from a central source, accessible by WormCam, rumoured to be a random number generator buried in a disused mine in Montana, based on uncrackable quantum-mechanical principles.

Not that, he signed back.

What then. Shape of big fat arse can’t conceal even with ’Shroud.

Bobby suppressed a laugh. That was confirmation enough that “4712425” was who he thought: a woman, southern English, somewhere in her sixties, barrel-shaped, good-humoured, confident.

Recognize style. Handspell style.

She made an acknowledegment sign. Yes yes yes. Heard that before. Must change.

Can’t change everything.

No but can try.

The handspelling alphabets, with the fingertips brushing the palms and fingers of the recipient’s hands, had originally been developed for people afflicted with both deafness and blindness. They had been adopted and adapted eagerly by WormCam Refugees; handspelling communication, taking place inside cupped hands, was almost impossible to decipher by an observer.

…Almost, but not quite. Nothing was foolproof. And Bobby was always aware that WormCam observers had the luxury of looking back into the past and rerunning anything they missed, as often as they liked, from whatever angle and in as tight a close-up as they chose.

But there was no need for the Refugees to make the lives of the snoops any easier than they had to.

Bobby knew, from scraps of gossip and acquaintance, that “4712425” was a grandmother. She had retired from her profession a few years earlier, and had no criminal record, or experience of unwelcome surveillance activity, or any other obvious reason to go underground — like, in fact, many of the Refugees he had met during his years on the run. She just didn’t want people looking at her.

At last “4712425” brought them to a door. With a silent gesture their guide had Bobby and Kate stop here and adjust their ’Shrouds and heat masks to ensure nothing of themselves was showing.

The door opened, revealing only darkness.

…And then, in a final misdirection, “4712425” touched them both lightly and led them farther down the street. Bobby looked back, and saw the door closing silently.

A hundred metres further on, they came to a second door, which opened to admit them into a well of darkness.

Take it easy. Step step step, two more… In pitch darkness, “4712425” was guiding Bobby and Kate down a short staircase.

He could sense the room before him, from echoes and scent: it was large, the walls hard-plaster, painted over perhaps with a sound-deadening carpet on the floor. There was a scent of food and hot drinks. And there were people here: he could smell their mixed scent, hear the soft rustle of their bodies as they moved around.

I’m getting better at this, he thought. Another couple of years I won’t need to use my eyes at all.

They reached the base of the stairs. Single room maybe fifteen metres square, “4712425” handspelled now. Two doors off at the back. Toilets. People here, eleven twelve thirteen fourteen, all adults. Windows opaqueable. That was a common ruse; rooms which were kept dark continually were liable to become renowned as nests of Refugees.

Think okay, Kate spelled out now. Food here and beds. Come on. She began to tug at her ’Shroud, and then at the jumpsuit she was wearing beneath.

With a sigh, Bobby began to follow suit. He handed his clothes one by one to “4712425,” who added them to a rack he couldn’t see. Then, naked save for their heat masks, they joined hands once more and entered the group, all of them anonymous in their nudity. Bobby expected that he would even exchange his heat mask before the meeting was over, the further to confuse those who might choose to watch them.

They were greeted. Hands — male and female, noticeably different in texture — fluttered at Bobby’s face. At last somebody picked him out — he had the holistic impression of a woman, fiftyish, shorter than he was — and her hands, small and clumsy, stroked his face, hands and wrists.

Thus, touching in the darkness, the Refugees tentatively explored each other. Recognition — sought with difficulty, confirmed with caution, even reluctance — was based not on names, or faces, or visual or audible labels, but on more intangible, subtler signs: the shape of a person in the dark before him, her scent — ineradicable and characteristic despite layers of dirt or the most vigorous washing — her firmness or weakness of touch, her modes of communication, her warmth or coolness, her style.

At his first such encounter Bobby had cowered, shrinking in the dark from every touch. But it was a far from unpleasant way to greet people. Presumably — Kate had diagnosed for him — all this non-verbal stuff, the touching and stroking, appealed to some deep animal level of the human personality.

He began to relax, to feel safe.

Of course the anonymity of the Refugee communities was sought out by cranks and criminals — and the communities were relatively easy to infiltrate by those seeking others who hid, for good or ill. But in Bobby’s experience the Refugees were remarkably effective at self-policing. Though there was no central coordination, it was in everyone’s interest to maintain the integrity of the local group and of the movement as a whole. So bad guys were quickly identified and thrown out, as were federal agents and other outsiders.

Bobby wondered if this might be a model for how human communities might organize themselves in the wired-up, WormCammed, interconnected future: as loose, self-governing networks, chaotic and even inefficient perhaps, but resilient and flexible. As such, he supposed, the Refugees were no more than an extension of groupings like the MAS networks and Bombwatch and the truth squads, and even earlier groupings like the amateur sky watchers who had turned up the Wormwood.

And, with their taboos and privacy being stripped away by the WormCam, perhaps humans were reverting to an earlier form of behaviour. The Refugees spoke by grooming, like chimpanzees. Suffused by the warmth and scent and touch and even the taste of other people, these gatherings were extremely sensual, and even at times erotic — Bobby had known more than one such gathering descend to a frank orgy, though he and Kate had made their (non-verbal) apologies before getting too involved.

Being a Refugee, then, wasn’t such a bad thing. And it was certainly better than the alternatives on offer for Kate.

But it was a shadow life.

It was impossible to stay in one place for very long, impossible to own significant possessions, impossible even to grow too close to anyone else, for fear of betrayal. Bobby knew the names of only a handful of the Refugees he’d met in his three years underground. Many had become comrades, offering invaluable help and advice, especially at the beginning, to the two helpless neophytes Mary had rescued. Comrades, yes, but without a minimum of human contact, it seemed, they could never be true friends.