"I was thinking of how you always wanted to go into the site," he said. "Well, now you can." He beamed at Antoyne, who did not reply, and then at Irene, who gave him an unfriendly look and said:

"Excuse me, I got the urge for the powder room."

"It's work, Antoyne, if you want it."

"I work for Paulie," Antoyne pointed out. "Also, I don't see you for days, maybe weeks, suddenly you want me to go in the site with you. You never wanted my help when I offered."

"That was perhaps insensitive of me," Vic allowed.

Antoyne only repeated, "You never wanted my help when I offered."

"I see that," Vic said. He knew it wasn't enough, but he didn't know what else Antoyne wanted him to say. After a pause he went on, "Paulie's not feeling well. I expect you heard." He shuddered. "I got it from Paulie himself, you don't want that experience. He doesn't look good, Antoyne. It will be a while before there's work for anyone in that direction. Look around you." He indicated the gun-kiddies, desultorily threatening to shoot one another over a dice game called Three Dick Hughie. Every time someone came in the front door they all looked up at once, their little six- and seven-year-old faces full of light, in case it was Alice Nylon with news. "These guys know that. Hey, what about a drink?"

Vic sat back. Antoyne stared at him as if he was in the middle of planning what to say. They remained in that position until Irene returned from the powder room in an improved mood and accepted a cocktail, as she put it, on both her and Antoyne's behalves. "You two men can still be friends," she judged, after the drinks arrived, "if you just but trust each other. You know I'm right." She tried to catch Vic's eye.

"That's nice, Irene," Vic said, looking away. "That's as true as anything I heard. I was thinking of going in tomorrow," he told Antoyne.

Some discussion followed-on how they would meet, exactly where and when the jump-off would take place, what Fat Antoyne might expect in the way of remuneration-and then Vic went home. "That is a very lonely man," Irene concluded as she and Antoyne watched him leave the Semiramide, "whose journey is always the long way round. Antoyne, there's something I have to ask you, and I want you to think hard before you answer because it could mean so much for our hopes and dreams."

In one corner of Vic Serotonin's South End walk-up, on a small wooden chest of drawers hand-painted dark green, were arranged some items he had brought out of the site. There was nothing fatal about them. Look away from an artefact and you always feel for a moment that it lives another life-that in fact it takes the opportunity to live another life. But these were not artefacts, or at any rate they did not announce themselves as such; they were ordinary objects he had picked up in there-a brass lizard three inches long; a bowl full of beads in hot colours; one or two dusty ceramic tiles featuring pictures of fruit.

Vic examined them for a moment or two, thinking how they stood out in some reassuring way from the cheap repro which otherwise filled the room. Then he sighed, pulled open one of the drawers and unwrapped his Chambers pistol from the soft cloth he kept it in.

He swept the top of the chest clear, unfolded a second cloth and laid the gun out on that in pieces; these he inspected, cleaning the mechanical parts carefully before reassembling them. Throughout the process, the weapon itself reminded him in a gentle, persistent voice that its non-mechanical parts weren't user-serviceable. A chip was supposed to keep the physics under control, but the Chambers pistol was known as a particle jockey's nightmare, feared by humans and aliens alike. Vic had his at a discount from Paulie DeRaad, who had it gratis with a crate of other stuff from an EMC armoury sergeant up the line; they'd been in some war together. Every time he cleaned it, Vic heard Paulie's voice advising: "Treat that fucker with respect, maybe it'll kill someone else instead of you."

Once the job was finished, Vic didn't seem to know what to do next. The light moved round the room to afternoon. The air cooled and there was a mist over the far edge of the noncorporate port. Occasionally he would get up and look out the window down into the street, but mostly he sat on the bed, wrapping and unwrapping the pistol until Mrs Elizabeth Kielar knocked at his door and he let her in.

"I felt so afraid," she said.

She stood awkwardly just inside the room, as if she was expecting a further invitation. "I walked, I don't know why. I went to the bar but then I remembered you wouldn't be there." Before Vic could speak she said quickly, "Are you all right with this?" She turned up the collar of her coat, then turned it down again so that the light from the window accentuated the sharp line of her jaw. "You did tell me to come."

"Don't you ever say what you mean?" Vic asked.

He touched her where the light fell. Both of them went very still, and she looked up at him with a bemused expression.

"We never know what we mean," she said. "We act it out, moment to moment. We never know what we mean until it's too late." Then, when Vic let his fingertips slip until they found the pulse in her neck:

"Why don't you fuck me? It's what we both want."

Vic woke up later in the dark from a thick and disturbing sleep, half-convinced that someone had that moment dialled him up with the kind of message no one wanted to hear-a change of plan, a debt called in, a dead parent, the kind of message that in 2444AD could only divert your attention from the feelings that made you real to yourself. Elizabeth Kielar's satin underclothes were on the bed, pooled slippery as water. Elizabeth herself was kneeling close by, turned away a little from the waist, feet tucked under, iodine shadows delineating each muscle and rib. There was a harsh, dry smell about her, which Vic, excited, took to be her sex. She had opened up her diary and was holding it towards the window so that the street light caught the pages. When she saw he was awake, she smiled.

"Why do I do this?" she asked.

"Only you can answer that."

"I looked out of your windows while you were asleep," she said. "And I looked through all your things. Was that wrong of me?" She shivered, staring ahead as if she could see a long way off. "I write because I don't remember anything about myself. Do you remember your childhood, Mr Serotonin?"

"I'm Vic," Vic said.

He put out his hand and touched her arm above the elbow. "You don't have to panic," he said. "Read me something."

"I'm afraid of what will happen tomorrow," Elizabeth said.

"Are you reading that or is it what you feel?"

"I'm reading it and it's what I feel," she said.

"You don't have to go in there," Vic suggested, though he knew she did. She shut the diary and dropped it on the bed, began to put on her clothes. Vic picked up the diary, smelled its pages, leafed through them. He could feel her watching him, trying to anticipate what he would do. When he found an entry he could almost understand, he read it aloud. " 'Some sea-travellers,' " she had written, " 'never regain their land legs. They come ashore but from now on, for them, walking will always be as difficult as walking on a mattress. But it's worse to sit still, or try to sleep. At least when they move about the symptoms are minimised.' "

"Don't," she said. "Don't!"

" 'They call this mat de debar quement? "

She put her hand over his mouth to stop him. "What do my fingers smell of?"

Vic laughed. "The sea," he said.

"Well then, make me wet."

He turned her hand over, licked the inside of the fingers and placed them against her sex. "You do that," he was beginning to say, when his dial-up cut in and Alice Nylon's voice filled his head without warning. "If this is Vic Serotonin," Alice said, "Paulie wants to talk to you," and after that, Paulie himself came on. Vic pushed Mrs Kielar away.