As she spoke, she flexed one leg and reached out with it to find his groin with her foot. Her toes brushed against his balls, his cock, stroking them, wafting like the water.

“Wait,” he said, opening his legs a little to allow her more room, “this isn’t the ‘Where Is Everybody?’ question, is it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s easy. There is no everybody. There is only us. There are no aliens. Not a single one of the many worlds shows any sign of alien contact, past or present. Their lack, throughout the multiverse, proves the point. We are alone in the universe.” Her toes were gently brushing first one side of his penis, then the other, bringing him erect.

“In all the universes?” she asked, smiling.

“In every single one.”

“Then infinity seems to be failing somehow, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Failing?”

“It hasn’t produced any aliens. It has produced only us. A single intelligent species in all the wide universe does not smack of infinity.” She supported herself by stretching her arms out to either side of the tub and reached out now with both feet, finding his erection with two sets of toes and stroking it gently up and down.

He cleared his throat. “What does it smack of then?”

“Well, it could simply be due to what the transitioneering theorists call the problem of unenvisionability, as mentioned: we cannot imagine a world that includes aliens – or perhaps, deep down, we don’t want to.” Mrs Mulverhill raised one hand and blew some bubbles from it to inspect her fingernails before looking at him and saying, “Or it might smack of deliberate quarantine, systematic enclosure, some vast cover-up…”

“Why, Mrs Mulverhill, you’re a conspiracy theorist!”

“Yes,” she agreed, smiling. “But not by nature. I’ve been forced into it by the conspiracy I’m investigating.” She hesitated, uncharacteristically. “I’ve found some examples. Ones you’ll know about. Want to hear?”

“Fire away.” He nodded down to where her glistening feet, bobbing rhythmically through the surface of the swirling, bubbling water, were caressing his cock, parenthetical. “Feel free to not stop doing that, though.”

She smiled. “The examples are from the more extreme end of the exoticism spectrum,” she told him, “but still.”

“I’ve always liked extremities.”

“I’m sure. Max Fitching, the singer?”

“I remember.”

“The green terrorist explanation was a lie. He was going to give his money to SETI research.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Marit Shauoon?”

“I still wince.”

“He was going to use his network of communication satellites to do a SETI in reverse, deliberately broadcasting signals to the stars. In his will he’d have funded a trio of orbiting telescopes dedicated to finding Earth-like planets and looking for signs of intelligent life on them. You killed him days before he was going to alter his will with just that provision in mind. Glimpsing how it’s all heading?”

“You missed out Serge Anstruther.”

“Yerge Aushauser. No, he really was a shit. He wasn’t really a genocidal racist as such but whenever he’s not stopped he ends up causing such havoc he might as well have been. Wanted to buy up a state in the US midwest and build an impregnable Nirvana for the super-rich; Xanadu, Shangri-La. Fantasy made real. A Libertarian.” From his expression she must have thought he wasn’t entirely familiar with the term. She sighed. “Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”

“You’ve obviously thought about it.”

“And dismissed it. But expect to hear a lot more about it as Madame d’O consolidates her power-base – it’s a natural fit for people just like you, Tem.”

“I’m already intrigued.”

“Well, you would be.”

“How do you know all this?”

She waggled her toes over his penis as though it was a flute and her feet were intent on playing it. “I seduce forecasters. I’ve even turned a few. I have my own now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The Concern use you, and others, to do this sort of thing more and more these days, Tem. You still get to kill the genuine bad guys now and again, but that’s become little more than cover now, not the main focus of their activities. They’ve even started going after people who’re just thinking about what humanity’s true place in the cosmos might be. There’s a guy called variously Miguel Esteban/Mike Esteros/Michel Sanrois/Mickey Sants who keeps cropping up across one batch of worlds. All the poor fucker wants to do is make a film about finding aliens but they’ve started kidnapping him too now. That’s one of the few examples we know about. I’m betting there are hundreds of others.”

“This is all back to Madame d’O, isn’t it?” he said, gripping the rim of the tub and flexing his shoulders to ease his hips forward, closer to her, so that her legs spread a little more, glistening knees appearing out of the surface of the gently bubbling water on either side while her soles and toes still grasped his cock.

“Madame d’Ortolan continues to believe in her imbecilic theories and pursue her sadistic research,” Mrs Mulverhill agreed graciously.

“It just always seems more personal,” he said, “this thing between her and you.”

“I’ve no particular desire to personalise any of this, Tem, it’s just that when you follow the relevant trails she’s always what’s waiting at the end.”

“No doubt.” He reached forward, took her ankles in his hands. “And now I think you should come over here.”

She nodded. “I think I should, too.”

The dawn began to break across the teeth of the eastward mountains, a yellow-pink stain slowly spreading. They stood, bundled in pillowed layers of high-altitude, four-season clothing, on a high circular balcony situated on the summit of the highest dome of the great empty palace. They were in the open air, beyond a small airlock, sucking oxygen from transparent masks over their noses, leaving their mouths free.

Small oxygen tanks in their outer jackets kept them supplied with the life-giving gas and a back-up system of valves dotted round the balcony stood ready to replace those if something went wrong. Even so, one could not simply step from the scented sea-level warmth of the palace into the open air of nine and a half kilometres above the ocean; the pressure difference was so great that a period of adjustment was required in the airlock to prevent discomfort. Before dawn, when the air was most likely to be still, was the best time to be here. Nevertheless, a strong, thin wind was blowing from the north. A movable glass screen linked to a man-high tail of a blade like a giant weathervane had positioned itself to deflect the worst of the blast over the balcony. Glowing figures on a small screen set into the parapet indicated that the temperature was forty below. The air, felt on the lips and the few square centimetres of exposed skin around the eyes, seemed powder-dry, sucking up moisture as much as warmth.

She said, “People will generally make whatever compromises with the world they think necessary still to convince themselves that they are the most important thing in it. The trouble with what we’re able to do – specifically the trouble with unfettered access to septus and through it to the many worlds – is that it abets and encourages this delusion to the point of naked solipsism.” Her voice, carried over the steady roar of wind, sounded calm and strong, unaffected by the thin air.

“All the same,” he said, “it’s still an illusion. The world exists without us, whether we like it or not.”

She smiled. “A hard-line solipsist would dismiss your words as mere wind,” she said. “The point is that to a true solipsist there is no distinction between objective and subjective truth. Subjectivity is all that matters because it is effectively all that exists. And to be a member of the Central Council of the Transitionary Office is to exist in a state that positively encourages such a state of mind. It is not healthy, not for the Office, l’Expédience, or for anything or anybody.”