The theme strongly pointed to one more scene in which a disaffected UNSA intelligence officer called Paula – soon to become Deirdre’s long-term lover – related what happened to the captive Solly during interrogation.

Roger jumped into the middle of the scene.

‘They pushed the questioning further than the usual “What’s your contact’s name?”, “How do you meet up?”, that sort of thing,’ Paula tells Deirdre.

The setting is an airfield beneath a grey German sky, and they are standing outside in the rain, having attended a memorial service officially for Ro McNamara, unofficially for her missing son Dirk as well.

Roger paused, realising he had gone too fast. The scene needed background to make sense.

He checked the context summary. Dirk, Kian and Deirdre, some time after the Zajinet attack on the first day of flight, were attacked during an anti-xeno demonstration in Arizona. The mob had thrown petrol-bombs, burning Kian badly, leaving him disfigured and initially close to death. A raging Dirk had let rip with a single, coherent biolaser pulse from both eyes, burning out the eyeballs of the mob, killing dozens, blinding the rest.

Under arrest, he had escaped and fled to mu-space in his ship, exiting directly from inside a hangar: a feat hard enough for modern, latest generation vessels.

As for Ro, she was missing, last seen departing an orbital called Vachss Station, thought to have flown into a Zajinet ambush.

He resumed the scene featuring the soon-to-be lovers, Paula and Deirdre, mourning for Dirk and Ro, and discussing the interrogation of Solly, the Zajinet agent who had planted bombs aboard the twins’ ships.

‘They asked the question’ – Paula means the interrogators – ‘that no one’s been able to answer: Why do the Zajinets hate humans? Why have they targeted Pilots, specific Pilots?’

‘So why? What’s the answer?’

‘Solly said: “They’ll allow the darkness to be born. It will spread across the galaxy, and they won’t fight back until billions have perished. I’ve seen it.” That’s what he said. “The Zajinets showed me the future, and I’ve seen it.” It may sound insane, but Solly believed.’ Paula looked bleak. ‘He was in no fit state for joking by that time.’

‘You’re using the past tense,’ said Deirdre.

‘He did not survive the interrogation. A pre-existing medical condition, they said.’

And that, of course, was the section Ro McNamara had wanted Roger to know about.

They’ll allow the darkness to be born.

It provided one hell of a motivation for Zajinets to prevent human expansion into space. Whether it also implied a basis for negotiation, or simply made them enemies for ever, he could not tell.

Why show me this?

You might say that he was the first Pilot who could appreciate the Zajinets’ viewpoint. But he thought it might be a little late for such understanding.

En route back to Tangleknot, he stole time for one more cup of daistral, and found that Dirk McNamara no longer occupied top position in the news. Settlements on Deighton, Berkivan deux and Göthewelt were burning after Zajinet raids, in each case centred on a Sanctuary location.

Whatever Roger’s future turned out to be, peacemaker was no longer an option.

SEVENTEEN

EARTH, 1956 AD

Walking back from lunch along Kensington Gore, with Hyde Park stretching away to their right on the other side of the road, the three of them slowed down for a minute – Gavriela and her friends Jane and Keith from Imperial – so that Keith could break off pieces of a Bournville bar. He handed them round, still a treat, two years after rationing had ended.

In the park, mounted officers of the Household Cavalry were taking their horses through drills. The three scientists watched, then walked on.

‘Add this’ – Jane waved her chocolate – ‘to travelling by bus instead of walking, and people are going to start getting fat.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Keith. ‘Do you still feed sugar sandwiches to your son, Gabby?’

‘Not any more.’

‘See?’ said Jane. ‘It’s starting already.’

‘And smallpox will disappear,’ said Keith, ‘communism will fall apart sua sponte, and look, is that a pig flying among the clouds?’

Jane touched Gavriela’s sleeve.

‘Gabrielle? It looks as if he knows you. That chap on the corner.’

Pinstripe suit and spotlessly brushed black bowler: it was Rupert Forrester, his hair showing grey, his taut patrician face lined like porcelain.

‘I’ll see you two later,’ Gavriela told her colleagues.

Rupert looked grave as she crossed the street.

‘Gabrielle, how lovely.’ He might call her Gavriela at times, but never outdoors or in unsecured premises. ‘Shall we walk? And perhaps a spot of tea. Or coffee, if we’re being cosmopolitan.’

‘Why not?’ she said.

They found a milk bar close to South Kensington Tube, and took a seat inside near the back. It was mostly empty, and from the way the man behind the counter ignored them after fetching coffee, he was an SIS asset, and never mind that domestic operations were the province of Five. Every service needs local safe houses.

When no other customers remained, Rupert picked up his cup and Gavriela’s – ‘This way, old girl’ – and led the way out back, up creaking stairs (good for warning of night-time intruders) to a musty-smelling room overlooking an unkempt yard.

She sat on an overstuffed couch, while he took one of the mismatched armchairs.

‘What’s happening, Rupert?’

‘The world’s falling apart, didn’t you know? Ten years ago, we knew who the enemy was. Now there’s civil unrest right here.’

‘You mean Teddy Boys ripping up cinema seats.’ Showings of Rock Around the Clock had erupted in trouble all over the country, causing Gavriela to forbid Carl from going to see the film. ‘I should have thought the real threat to Empire was the state of the pound.’

‘The PM received a confidential briefing from Macmillan,’ said Rupert, ‘concluding that there are two root causes to inflation: the commitment to full employment, and our massive defence spending. While Europe’s in a golden age.’

‘I took Carl to Paris last year.’

‘So you did.’ That was Rupert letting her know that leaving the service did not mean dropping out of sight. ‘And you’ll have seen it, Continental cities booming while we have bomb craters still, and prefab houses for the squalid classes.’

‘Oh, Rupert.’

‘French success stemming partly, I should say, from creating technical institutions along the lines of Imperial.’

‘How remarkably enlightened for a classicist.’

‘I didn’t say I approve of the necessity.’ Rupert crossed his elegant legs. ‘Nor the extinction of Empire, but it’s a fact, even if to the PM we’re still a great power.’

If Eden continued to commit the country’s budget to defence against world communism, then SIS must benefit. For Rupert to argue against it spoke of serious misgivings.

‘And Nasser has kicked us out of Egypt’ – Gavriela wanted to show she kept in touch – ‘which Mr Eden thinks is about to become a Soviet dominion.’

‘Not if he reads his JIC reports.’ Rupert meant the Joint Intelligence Committee.

For three months, the British army had been massing in Cyprus, getting ready – alongside French regiments – to invade Egypt and retake the Suez Canal Zone.

‘When the Wehrmacht invaded Poland and Belgium,’ said Gavriela, ‘it was pretty clear where the morality lay. If we invade another country, what does that make us?’

Rupert shook his head. ‘It’s a moot point, because Eisenhower won’t allow us to invade. That’s classified, by the way.’

‘Won’t allow us?’ said Gavriela.

‘The American Sixth Fleet is massing in the Mediterranean. If our ships set sail from Cyprus, the Yanks will move to stop it.’ None of this was in the newspapers. ‘On the other hand, in a few weeks’ time,’ Rupert went on, ‘French envoys will call in to Chequers, to see the Chancellor and request that Anglo-French combined forces make a move. We have this from the Deuxième Bureau.’