They touched right fists and bowed, all very formal.

‘The others probably went to the house first. Have you seen it yet?’

‘No. You?’

‘Thought I’d wait till later. Bet the girls take the best rooms.’

‘More than likely. There’s seven of us, right?’

‘Yeah, and our tutor is Dr Helsen. You talked to her?’

‘No,’ said Roger. ‘What’s she like?’

‘Interesting.’

A circular blue table rose on a short stalk, budded by the balcony floor. Seven stools morphed into being, and Rick sat down. He gestured, and a goblet grew from the table, sparkling liquid swirling inside.

‘Can I get you anything?’ He broke off the goblet and sipped. ‘Mm, nice.’

‘Not yet, thanks.’ Roger pointed to a group of three young women ascending the central stalk by flowdisk. ‘They’re coming this way.’

‘I wonder which one’s scheduled for upraise.’

‘Upraise? But a Luculenta in the group—’

‘Don’t tell anyone I said that. And until it happens, she’s just one of us, right?’

‘I guess.’

The trio approached, their leader pale with white-blond hair, another thin and young-looking, her hair striped in black and cobalt blue, and a heavier girl with downcast gaze.

‘I’m Stef,’ said the blonde. ‘She’s Trudi and she’s Gella, short for Angela.’

‘And I’m Rick, short for Ricardo Mbuli. Hi.’

‘Roger.’

‘Well, good.’ Stef seated herself first, then waited for everyone else to settle. ‘Has Petra Helsen appeared yet?’

‘Is that what you call Dr Helsen?’ asked Rick. ‘And citrolas all round, does that suit everyone?’

Roger and Trudi nodded, while Stef gave a movement of her lips that was both acceptance and dismissal. Amused, Roger played a mnemonic game that Dad had taught him, exaggerating everyone’s features in his mind while adding their names and keywords. Haughty was emblazoned on his mental image of Stef.

‘My father studied with her, I believe,’ said Stef.

Did that mean they were students together, or that Dr Helsen had taught her father? Roger was about to ask when a faint musical chord stopped him. Then it was gone, and he had no idea why it had caught his attention, or why his stomach had felt curdled, just for a moment.

‘He was under her, your daddy?’ said Rick. ‘She seems the kind of person who’d like to be on top, right enough.’

Stef’s chin went down and one eyebrow went up.

You’re braver than me, Rick Mbuli.

Roger took a swig of sweet citrola, filling his mouth with cold effervescence, letting his tongue absorb the taste before—

‘If you love me, you’ll swallow,’ said Rick.

And Roger’s head jerked forward, drink spurting through both nostrils, spraying down. Then he began to laugh, at himself and at the three girls’ shocked faces; and in a moment everyone was laughing - Stef included - while he was convulsing with it, tears down his face.

‘I guess that settles your orientation,’ Rick went on. ‘Sadly enough.’

That seemed just as funny, and laughter took hold again.

‘Shit. I need to wipe myself down,’ said Roger.

‘I like to leave ’em wet and sticky.’

‘Somebody save me.’

He pushed back from the table, crossed to the balustrade, and leaned against it, still chuckling as he rubbed his face. Someone was saying something behind him, but there was a flicker off the edge of his vision, and a repetition of that strange musical chord followed by another, a cold vibration along his back. He turned his head from side to side, not quite catching the dark movement that was just beyond what he could see.

Suddenly he zeroed in. Across the plaza, by a settled bronze aircar, two people were talking. One was a bearded man, holding a foreshortened silver trident in one hand; the other was a slender woman, blond hair tied back. Around them, darkness was twisting.

He triple-blinked his smartlenses, zooming in, but the darkness failed to magnify while the faces grew clearer. Shadows rotated at right angles to everything. This was no optical effect, but something different. And from the casual-looking passers-by around the plaza, it was something only he could see.

‘You okay, Roger?’

‘Sure.’ He rubbed his face, blinking his lenses back to normal. ‘I think I’ve recovered.’

Except his old vertigo was back, powerful now, accompanied by the sense of music playing in his bones: da, da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da.

Then, from the other side of the plaza, the blonde woman turned to stare straight at him. Even without magnification, he could tell.

‘Oh,’ said Rick. ‘Is that Dr Helsen over there?’

‘Where?’

But Rick meant the blonde woman.

It’s like the outdoor nightmares.

Twice when he was young, he’d seen dark shadows like this, both times in public places with Mum. She’d wanted to take him to see neuromedics, despite the risk of revealing his true nature; but Dad had talked calmly on both occasions, questioning him and then reassuring Mum there was nothing wrong, that it was a child’s active imagination, nothing more.

‘I’ve seen the same kind of thing myself,’ he had said. ‘Though maybe not as strongly.’

Now, replaying the old memory, Roger decided that Dad had told the truth, but that what it meant was different from Mum’s interpretation.

It’s something real.

He rubbed down his clothes as the fabric cleansed itself, then returned to the table. Rick and the three girls stared at him for a moment, then Stef said: ‘So what’s Petra Helsen like, Rick?’

‘She’s a little different,’ said Rick. ‘That’s all I can say.’

Roger tapped the table, ordering himself a fresh citrola, confused by the images twisting in his head.

In the great airy atrium, a newly extruded quickglass table held Rashella’s find: a slick black cylinder the size of her forearm, still speckled with soil. She stood there regarding it, her clothing cycling through many colours, reflecting her indecision. For her, hesitation was unusual, therefore a worry in itself.

She tuned her gown to black, ordered her thumbnail to razor sharpness, and slit through the null-gel coating. Revealed, the cached object was a silvery cylinder, looking too big for what it surely was.

‘They put things like this inside themselves?’

Several drones entered the atrium, directed by the house system that was unused to hearing Rashella speak rhetorically aloud.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, sticking with ordinary speech. ‘I just can’t believe what my ancestors went through.’

Touching the golden studs on her forehead, she called up a mental schematic, a virtual holo displaying the plexnodes webbed throughout her body. They were part of her nervous system, as much as the natural organic brain and neural cords, the ganglia and synapses, and the receptors of all the major organs, the orchestra that played the peptide symphony of human emotions.

Imagine having to extend your brain with clunky plexcores embedded in your body . . . but that was what the oldtime Luculenti had to do.

This cylinder was inert . . . but once powered up, what inchoate fragments of thoughts and feelings and memories might it possess? She reached forward, then stopped herself and pulled back. And flinched, feeling or hearing a wisp of sound.

‘Why not?’

She whirled, trying to locate the whisper’s source, seeing nothing save the drones that awaited her command.

‘This is stupid.’

With her thumb, she pushed the null-gel back in place. Perhaps a hundred years ago, when it was fresh, the material would have sealed up; but now the slit remained, revealing a sliver of plexcore.

‘You want to try,’ came the whisper that was not there.

‘Shut up.’

The drones backed away as she stalked from the atrium, gown whirling, odd patterns spilling across the fabric as her concentration wavered.