"Jesus, Paulie," Vic said.

Paulie told him he didn't know anything yet. Along with the smell, there was a kind of bubbling sound. Lying on Paulie's cot, partly out of its clothes, was the entity that called itself "the Weather." Last time Vic saw it, they were at Suicide Point together. Somehow it had choked on Vic's artefact, and the two of them were glued together at some level no one but another Shadow Boy could understand. A wedding had taken place. Whatever tied the knot had also wed them to the proxy. They were all three stuck with one another-although, to judge by the Point kid's unfortunate condition, not for long. He looked frightened and ill. He had tried to undress himself and get under the blanket, for comfort as much as warmth. His shorts were half-down, his skin a fishy white under the low wattage illumination. Every so often he convulsed, his mouth gaped open and he threw up what looked like cold tapioca.

"So what's this, Vic?" Paulie DeRaad wanted to know.

The kid heard Paulie's voice. It sat up trembling and looked from one to the other of them. It caught Vic's eye. It recognised him. He could see the operator far down inside, and the Point kid, and in there with them both the artefact, still white and unknown, some animal-like thing running towards Vic across the event site. There was no way to avoid the directness of this: something wrong was happening. Wherever Vic and Paulie situated themselves in the room they couldn't hide from it. They still caught flashes of the Shadow Boy's unhomely charm. For a moment the foul air would be full of rain falling through sunlight, the smell of the sea. Between moans from the proxy and bursts of code like music, they heard its voice.

"Am I here?" it appealed to Paulie. "I can't seem to see myself." "This happened two or three days afterwards," Paulie said to Vic. "I can't pass this off on my buyer. I can't use it for myself, even if I knew what it was. This ain't good business, Vic." "I see that," Vic said. "Can we get out of here?" The Point kid laughed. "No one gets out of here," it whispered, in three separate voices at once.

"I'm revolted," Paulie DeRaad said.

He locked the kid back in and the rickshaw returned them to the Semiramide, where the evening had warmed up a little. The air was thick with music and talk. The tables were full. Monas wafted between them on four-inch urethane heels, reeking mainly of peppermint or vanilla essence, though some had chosen cinnamon when they bought the package. Images from EMC actions at Cor Caroli and Motel Splendido were showering across the walls, along with footage of Paulie DeRaad's old ship, the Hellflower, going up in a silent flat-plane blast after it took a hit from some top-end Nastic asset. Vic and Paulie sat down in the office again, and Paulie had Alice Nylon shut the door to keep the noise out. They got drinks, and Paulie said, "You see the direction I'm thinking. I have to ask, Vic: did you bring something bad from in there?" "Everything in there's bad," Vic said. "You know the risks." "I'm the buyer," Paulie reminded him. "You're the one with the professional skills." He seemed to be having trouble with his swallow reflex. Also, his hands had a tremor which was new to Vic Serotonin. "You take the risks," said Paulie. "Not me. What if I caught something from that thing?"

"Well, then, you would begin to feel bad. But you look fine to me, Paulie."

"I ain't fine," Paulie said. "I got a temperature ever since this started. I don't care about my food. You bring a Mona in, I even forget she's there for a moment or two. I get vague. What sort of life is that?"

"One thing," Vic advised, "you should shoot it."

Paulie stared.

"I tried that right away. But it reassembles itself, Vic. White lights rolling together from all over the floor. Eeriest fucking thing you ever saw, crying and whining the whole time." He added, as Vic got up to leave, "By the way, I got your boy Antoyne working for me now, that's OK with you."

Eleven p.m., too late to go anywhere, too early to go home. Vic was puzzled by everything he had seen and heard. He thought about going to visit Emil and Edith Bonaventure. He thought about going home to bed. In the end he didn't do either of those things. On his way out he stopped at the table where Fat Antoyne Messner sat. Antoyne, who was wearing a brand new royal blue drape suit over a yellow shirt, had been joined by one of the club Monas. At close quarters this vision turned out to be Joe Leone's ex-squeeze, Irene. Irene was leaning in close so Antoyne could see deep into the promise of her hot-ochre Mexican-style blouse. She had her fingers on his wrist as if she was taking his pulse, and they were both drinking those pink and yellow drinks he liked. "Hi, Irene," Vic said, "Fat Antoyne! Nice suit!" He had to shout to be heard over the crowd. "Why don't I sit down with you?" he suggested. When they looked at each other then back at Vic and didn't answer, Vic made a What can you do? gesture, as if the general noise levels were causing him to mishear what everyone said, and sat down anyway. He ordered drinks.

"So: everyone works for Paulie now?"

"It's temporary, Vic," Fat Antoyne replied quickly, as if he had been expecting that question.

"It's work," Irene corrected him, at the same time giving Vic a look. "Everyone has to work," she said. "I don't care how direct I am when I say that."

Naturally, a person with Antoyne's skills sought port work, shipyard work, Irene went on to explain; but the civilian yards weren't doing as well as anyone thought. "He looked everywhere, and evidently I found him this opportunity instead." Things were tough all over, she reminded Vic, and in a shortening labour market you couldn't always have your first choice: luckily Paulie DeRaad was there to fill the gap. She had always found Paulie to be a fair employer, also he was known for good pay. Vic could see how well it was working out, she said, by the new sharp way Antoyne could afford to dress.

Vic agreed he probably could.

"I didn't have no real place there," Antoyne said suddenly, meaning Liv Hula's bar. As he saw it, that was the problem. "All I wanted was a chance to fit in, Vic."

"Still," Vic said, "don't you miss those nights we caned it with Liv?"

"Another benefit is, here they just call me by my name. Which I prefer that. Not 'Fat Antoyne' like in some other joints."

"It's great you lost weight," Vic said.

To Irene, with her honed Mona instincts for the feeling nature of life, Vic Serotonin had the face of someone who walked around the town a lot on his own. When he finished his drink and said goodbye to them both, and added courteously to Irene, "Be sure and have a nice night," she felt all the things Vic didn't know about himself quiver in her own nerves. She watched him make his way through the Semiramide crowd, passing a moment with Alice Nylon on the door, and told herself sadly, "I knew a million men like him." With his black hair and sad hard eyes, he looked like the New Nuevo Tango itself, she had to allow. But he had no idea about other people, and less than no idea about himself. She couldn't express it any other way. A man who walked around a lot on his own and despite that knew himself less well than others knew him. She put her hand over Fat Antoyne's.

"Vic Serotonin," she said, "will learn too late about the realness of the world, and how none of us is put here in it long."

Fat Antoyne shrugged. "We don't need to think about him."

This was his signal they should return to the conversation they were having before Vic interrupted them. It was the same conversation they had every night since Joe Leone died, the mythodology of which was: they would soon leave Saudade and travel the Halo again, but this time together. Which was surely, as Irene pointed out, the simplest and most direct of gestures, since travel had by definition brought them both here and together in the first place. "I've washed so many planets out of my hair, why not this one?" she said. "Joe would want it for me," she said. "I know he would!" Her eyes were reckless and bright. "Oh Antoyne, wouldn't it be so nice?" Antoyne, less certain, was anyway pleased she said it. Each time they had this talk, he felt bound to warn Irene she could find more rewarding travel companions than himself-and better men, though he had had his day, that was certain. In response, he would always hear her say: