"We're all wet," Vic said.

"Shut up, Vic."

They watched appreciatively as the convertible roof, which was the same shade of white as the upholstery, closed slowly over their heads. Then Aschemann said, "Vic, this woman here had a fire-team set up to bring you in." He chuckled. "That's how determined she is. They're still up there in the fog somewhere, trying to find their way home. Visibility's down to ten yards and the site is cooking their communications. She expected more trouble from you. To be honest, so did I. How's your arm? That numbness will wear off.".

When this didn't get a response, he shrugged. "The reason you're in custody is this: you didn't give me what I want. Never underestimate that as a cause for arrest."

"What about the tourist?" the policewoman wanted to know.

"We'll have to leave the tourist," Aschemann said, without much reluctance. "After all, they come here for the risk." He leaned over the back of his seat and said to Vic Serotonin, "You know, I could wish it was Emil sitting here instead of you. Emil would be more interested. He never saw the site as a career opportunity; it was always an adventure he couldn't extricate himself from. I respect that. Vic, how was Emil last time you saw him?"

"He wasn't good."

"He wasn't good the last time I saw him either. But Edith seemed fine." To his assistant Aschemann said, "Start the engine. Let's take Vic away."

This proved more difficult than he could have imagined. They were in the middle of one of the Cadillac's wallowing long-wheelbase turns when a rickshaw lurched round the corner at the other end of the Baltic Exchange and sped towards them, trailing a stream of ads in colours that crackled against the soft wet air, lighting up the puddles around the Annie's thudding feet. She pushed hard into her shafts, breathing like a horse. Vic could hear a voice calling from inside the rickshaw, but not what it was saying; nevertheless, it gave him the sense that things had become too complicated to control.

From the other end of the Exchange, two dozen figures emerged wearing the signature rainslickers and waterproof hats of gun-punk chic. As soon as she saw them, Aschemann's assistant knocked Aschemann off the seat beside her and pushed him down into the footwell so that the engine was between him and the danger. Then she shoved open the driver's door and rolled out into the rain, shouting commands into her dial-up. Her tailoring had cut in by now; she was visible only as a sort of fibrous blur. Aschemann, his neck bent at an odd angle, blinked at the carpeted transmission hump. "What's happening?" he asked Vic. "Can you see what's happening?" Meanwhile the Cadillac continued to swing through half a circle, slowing down as it went, until it halted side-on to the approaching rickshaw. The driver's door now hung open to its full extent, allowing Vic to recognise the little figure of Alice Nylon riding the rickshaw step.

"This is a fucking disaster," he said to Aschemann. "Warn that lunatic of yours not to shoot at anyone." He leaned forward and stuck his head out. "Alice," he shouted. "For fuck's sake, Alice, it's me. It's Vic."

"Hi, Vic," Alice called. "Look at me!"

"Call your kiddies off," Vic told her. "No one wants an incident. And don't ride the step like that," he added. "It's not clever and you'll only get hurt."

Before Alice could respond, the rickshaw pulled up.

"Three-up's two too many," the rickshaw girl said, "even for a pony my size." She leaned forward in the shafts, vomited with practised accuracy between her own feet and examined the result. "Nothing a dexamil won't cure," she decided. "I got plenty if anyone else wants it."

A thick yet curiously musical laugh came from the rickshaw's interior.

"Nice car, Vic," the occupant said.

"It is a nice car, Paulie," the rickshaw girl agreed. "1952 roadster. Pushrod V8, 330 ft lbs at 2700 rpm; I respect an engine can pull. You know?"

"Jesus," Paulie DeRaad said. "Everyone an expert here on Radio Retro. Open this thing up, Alice, so I can get a look at my old friend Vic."

"Paulie, don't have anyone shot," Vic said.

"Paulie me at your own risk," DeRaad promised him. "What are you fucking looking at?"

When Alice Nylon unlatched the hard apron of the rickshaw, a faecal smell rolled out and you saw immediately that Paulie was in a bad way. They had crammed him in with the remains of the Point kid and the two of them were embracing awkwardly, as if it was new to them despite all the practise they had. They were breathing gently into one another's eyes. Neither of them had much on, and their china-white bodies were covered in a thin, slick, resinous film which, though it looked liquid when you first saw it, was constantly hardening and cracking off, like something they exuded to protect them from the air. Paulie was still roughly the right shape, but the boy had begun to fatten, soften and blur. He had aged thirty or forty years since Vic first saw him in the building at Suicide Point. However you looked at him, he seemed to be out of focus. He had no idea where he was, or what was happening to him. Despite that, he came across as happy. Every so often, motes of light emerged from his mouth like very small moths, accompanied by a note or two of music.

Paulie, less satisfied with his condition, flailed one arm about. "Alice, it's fucking stuck to me again," he said.

Alice peeled them apart carefully so her employer could get out of the rickshaw. It made things difficult that Paulie couldn't bring himself to look at his own body. "You got to help me, Paulie," Alice begged; but he kept looking up and away from himself, and from Alice too. He didn't want to admit she was helping him. Eventually she manoeuvred him on to the concrete in front of Vic Serotonin, where he stood swaying and stinking and opening his arms. Part of his face went out of focus, then back in again.

"Do you see, Vic? Do you see what you did?"

Vic was saved from answering by Lens Aschemann, who clambered out of the Cadillac on the passenger side, buttoning his overcoat. "This rain," the detective complained, "will never stop. You should stay out of it, Paulie, because you don't look well." He gave Paulie a thin smile. "Better still, go to a Quarantine bureau, where I'll be able to find you."

Quarantine wasn't a realistic option for DeRaad because of what would happen to him there. Leaving him to contemplate that, Aschemann went over to the rickshaw and stared down with a kind of puzzled anger growing on his face. "Don't you want me?" the Point kid sang out in his three voices. It wasn't clear how, but he could feel the detective there. He laughed. "No one wants me."

Aschemann stayed bent over the rickshaw for some time, like an old man studying a baby. "What you've done here isn't good for anyone," he told Vic Serotonin without looking up.

Out on the Lots, a wary truce had developed.

Alice Nylon's gun-punks patrolled restlessly, whispering to one another in a gluey-sounding battle language they had refined from the fight argots of Preter Coeur. Aschemann's assistant wasn't prepared to try them out, despite the superiority of her chops. Things couldn't change, she decided, while her fire-team remained trapped up there by a conjunction of bad weather and site-side interference. But the situation wouldn't last forever and then she would see what happened. In keeping with this decision she had switched herself off and now lounged against the offside rear-quarter scoop of the Cadillac, from where she could exchange sneers with Alice Nylon, or stare with a kind of amused distaste at what had happened to Paulie DeRaad. Things could only get worse for Paulie. If he survived another twelve hours, which seemed unlikely, Hygiene would sequester him in an orbital facility. There he would be intubated in every natural orifice, plus some extra. They would run a bunch of wires up through the roof of his mouth and into his brain, in the hope some heavy-duty operator might gain access and fry the code before it became a full-scale escape. Either way he was dead. Meanwhile he presented as a danger to everyone around him, and without Alice's support he would be running out of friends.