‘Plus there was Granny Woods’s war work,’ Brody went on. ‘All that sneaky-beaky stuff, as Mum used to call it. And her mother, Granny Gould, worked there too. They were best friends, but our father didn’t know anything about it, because of the secrecy regs.’

Lucas was going to need diagrams and notes. He ordered a second cappuccino – they were still at the same table, meal and coffee over, while most of the other tables had emptied.

‘What secrecy regulations are we talking about?’

‘The thirty-year rule and all that. Bletchley Park. Until the 1970s, no one knew what went on there. Our father, Carl, was totally ignorant about it. Granny Woods told me back in, what, 1989?’

‘Yes, because that was the year we met,’ said Amy. ‘Forty-four years ago. And I remember your Granny Woods. She was wonderful.’

Yet again, Lucas felt Jacqui squeeze his hand. So much was changing: his father was not his alone, while even Brody’s partner knew the grandmother who – presumably, if none of this was a hoax – had sent a message from the past. If it was her.

‘She was Gabrielle Woods,’ said Amy. ‘Lovely place in Chelsea. Previously known as Gabby. Your gran, I mean. Not the house.’

How had the mysterious letter been signed? Oh, yes.                                 Love,

Gavi (your grandmother!)

X X X

So here was the first inconsistency in—

‘Except,’ said Brody, ‘she was really Fräulein Doktor Gavriela Wolf, and I think she escaped from Germany, but I never quite got that part of the story.’

‘Oh,’ said Lucas.

There had been intermittent periods of silence, and another descended now. Finally, Gus announced that she had a break-fast meeting at her Seattle plant in the morning, and preferred to travel today in good time. As disappointed blinks appeared around the table, she added: ‘So I’d take it as an honour if you could all travel with me, and keep the family atmosphere going. The Lear’s at the airfield, and the limo’s big enough for all of us.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Brody.

Lucas knew the feeling. He too thought of Gus as a scientist, rather than a businessperson with astounding wealth.

‘One grows used to it,’ drawled Ives. ‘All this tedious luxury.’

Everyone laughed. As they stood up to leave, Ives looked from Lucas to Brody and back.

‘You know,’ he began, ‘I always like to judge a man by his eyes . . .’

‘Er,’ said Lucas.

‘Um,’ said Brody.

‘ . . . And your eyes are identical, the two of you. Or am I the only to notice?’

‘He’s right,’ said Jacqui, and Amy nodded.

‘He’s always right.’ Gus slipped her arm inside Ives’s. ‘But I forgive him anyway.’

They ambled out to her limousine.

FOURTEEN

LABYRINTH, 2604 AD (REALSPACE-EQUIVALENT)

Rhianna moved with the ferocity of a fighter, not the elegance of the dancer her mother once wanted her to be (as daily recreation, at best an avocation – Rhianna’s future as a ‘proper’ working Pilot was always the main goal). There was a difference: in most aggressive moves the power starts from the big toe and whips wave-like through the body, raw and violent.

Today she punished the flowmetal mannequins with elbow strikes and knees, with whirling kicks and punches both long and close-in, smashing the figures into the ground with fast-flowing throws: beating them over and over again until the rage came under control; and then she stopped, commanded the mannequins into immobility, and walked back and forth inside the shining hall currently configured as her dojo.

Within fifty seconds her breathing and heart-rate had slowed almost to normal.

I should’ve killed that fucking Gunnarsson.

Following up the reports, she had finally interviewed the idiot in person, working alongside Clayton who was professional – no wonder Max had come to trust him – and all they had learnt from Gunnarsson was that civilisation would be safer if some people were killed at birth. Not only had he allowed Schenck’s ship to fly to Fulgor and leave unchallenged – and what the hell was Schenck doing there? – but Gunnarsson had subsequently fired on and killed the Zajinets who rescued Tannier from Molsin.

Shit shit shit.

Helsen free, Schenck free, renegade Pilots en masse, Fulgor a hellworld and new data coming in from Molsin that had Uncle Max worried. Everything she had learned from Roger Blackstone’s subconscious mind, all the far-future dreams he had no conscious memory of, was coming dangerously true. One dead world at least, and probably a second, formed compelling evidence.

After the Gunnarsson interview, having relocated to an officers’ mess within the Admiralty’s Orange Zone – where classified matters could be discussed, up to a point – she listened as Clayton told her about the white-and-red memory flake sent through from the past, from half a millennium ago, identifying the galactic anti-centre as the direction from which the darkness was advancing. Strange evidence, but consistent again with Roger Blackstone’s dreams.

‘And Max is happy with you telling me this?’

‘If he weren’t, I wouldn’t be telling you.’

‘Fair enough.’

At the back of her mind was a humbling thought: the galaxy was vast, as was its (literally infinite) corresponding volume in mu-space; yet both were lost in the greater immensity of their respective continua. Even in realspace, galactic clusters and superclusters were separated by cosmic voids, and the timescales on which the darkness operated went far beyond the limits of human intuition: hundreds of millions of years at the barest minimum. If it operated according to some hyper intelligent purpose, how much further could that intellect – or myriad intellects – develop over the aeons?

She wished she could dismiss these notions as delusion.

‘And the Zajinets.’ While Clayton was here, it was worth picking his brains. ‘You think they’ll retaliate?’

‘What, you think they won’t?’ he said. ‘If they’d hit us sooner, I’d have been less worried. If they’re massing for an all-out strike, I hope Max knows about it, because the rest of us don’t.’

From the open area of the mess, a murmuring grew. Rhianna and Clayton looked at each other, then popped up urgent bulletin holos and saw what was causing a stir: the reappearance of a big name from the past, Admiral Dirk McNamara, back into mean geodesic timeflow after another relativistic flight. He had been missing for decades, had aged perhaps minutes.

Rhianna knew that young Roger Blackstone was one of the few Pilots to have talked with the famous Dirk’s mother, the reclusive Ro, who used slowtime layers of reality to likewise absent herself from normal timeflow. Some people, Rhianna thought, just had to discover how the future played out: given the capability, they could not resist the urge. Or perhaps these two simply hoped someday to find out what had happened to the mysterious Kian, Dirk’s disfigured twin, long lost but rumoured to appear from time to time, guiding Pilotkind to peace.

Some hope, these days.

‘The First Admiral’s son,’ said Clayton. ‘Back from the dead yet again.’

‘He killed the first Admiral Schenck, remember.’ Rhianna clicked her fingers to dismiss the holo. ‘Be nice if he could manage the same for the grandson.’

It was of course a landmark on Borges Boulevard: the volume of spacetime asymptotically approaching eternal stasis, inside which Schenck, loser of the duel against Dirk, was torn apart in the moment of death for ever.

‘I read once,’ said Clayton, ‘that the tragedy of Dirk McNamara was the continuing absence of war. Maybe he’s about to come into his own.’

Pilotkind had never produced a great military leader – had never needed one. Most would say that was a good thing.