Impulsively Agnes leaned over, cupped Shi-mi’s face, and kissed the top of her head. ‘Cat, you’re a genius.’

But Shi-mi shrank back from her touch.

Agnes immediately forgot about her high school science experiments. Shi-mi had never reacted like that before, not ever. ‘Shi-mi? What is it?’ She picked the cat up, though Shi-mi wriggled in faint protest, and inspected her body, felt her limbs – and probed her belly, where she found hard masses. ‘Are you ill?’

‘I am old, Agnes,’ the cat said, lying in her arms. ‘Or so I have been programmed to become. My body swarms with nanotech agents, ageing me day by day. And because I am old I am ill. I suffer from a meticulously simulated arthritis, and various of my organs have problems. A remarkable feat of artifice.’

‘Does it hurt?’

The cat said nothing.

‘Well, would you like something to be done?’ After only three years here, Agnes had not yet thought hard about her own future, the years when it would start to become odd if she did not show signs of age. She did know Lobsang had brought a suite of systems to allow them to adjust their appearance – but she also knew there were other options. ‘You don’t have to go through this. We could rebuild you. Fake your death. We could even call a twain and pretend it brought us another, younger cat.’

‘No. I am myself,’ Shi-mi said firmly. ‘I have long memories. I was made by the Black Corporation as a mere technology demonstrator. But I sailed with Joshua and Lobsang on their first journey together, to the High Meggers and beyond. I travelled with Captain Maggie Kauffman to the ends of the Long Earth. In these last years I have been Ben’s cat, nothing more, nothing less. I am not willing to discard all that.’

‘You wouldn’t have to. You’d still be yourself inside.’

The cat looked up at her, her peculiar LED-green eyes somewhat dimmed. ‘I could not become some rowdy kitten and still be me. In any event there is no crisis, not yet, no decisions need be made. And I—’

But now Ben came running into the yard, and the conversation was ended.

Six years old, clothes scuffed, knees grubby, face a mud pack, hair a mess, Ben was a bundle of energy. He carried a basket of grapes. ‘Agnes! Agnes! Look!’ He held out his basket, and Agnes saw something gleam on his right arm, a kind of silver bracelet.

She put down the cat, carefully. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’

‘Grapes!’

‘I can see that. On your arm.’

Hastily he hid the arm behind his back. ‘Nothin’. Can I take the grapes in? Can I have some?’

‘Come here, young man.’ She held out her hand, palm up. ‘Right hand please.’

Agnes’s authoritative voice had been honed over two partial lifetimes dealing with children of all shapes, sizes and inner conditions, and Ben was nowhere near the most difficult she’d had to deal with. And now, clutching his grapes awkwardly, he walked up to Agnes and obediently stuck out his arm.

The bracelet was a little too big for him, and she slipped it off his wrist and over his hand easily. It was a simple loop of metal, evidently silver, evidently well made, and it was heavy; it had to be valuable. Price tags in dollars and cents didn’t mean much here, but such items as this, usually brought out as heirlooms or tokens of weddings and whatnot, were prized.

Shi-mi murmured to her – too softly for the boy to hear; they still hadn’t told Ben that Shi-mi was artificial. ‘I’ve seen other children wearing such things. Rings, bangles.’

‘I suppose I have too,’ Agnes whispered back. ‘I thought nothing of it.’ She held out the bracelet. ‘What do you make of it?’

Shi-mi licked it. ‘High-grade silver,’ she said. ‘Very pure. Very finely manufactured, to very precise tolerances. This is machine-made; it didn’t come out of some home workshop.’

‘There’s nothing like that here. The nearest to home-made jewellery we have are the reed brooches Bella Sarbrook makes in the fall.’

‘Also no hallmark. So it doesn’t appear to be of Datum or Low Earth origin either.’

‘Then where—’

‘Who ya talkin’ to?’

‘Nobody, honey. Just myself. Now, where did you get this, Ben? You’re not in trouble. Just tell me. Was it the old Poulson place?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Have you been down there again?’

‘Uh huh,’ he said reluctantly.

‘In that cellar again no doubt. No wonder you’re filthy. So who gave you this bracelet?’

‘No one.’

‘Then where did you get it?’

‘Swap stuff.’

And Agnes’s heart broke, just a little, for this was the first time she was aware of that Ben had deliberately lied to her. ‘No, Ben. It wasn’t in with the swap stuff. The swap stuff in that house is leaky saucepans and broken brooms and clothes people have grown out of. That’s what the swap stuff is. Nobody puts lovely things like this in the swap stuff. So who gave it to you? Was it one of the other kids? Was it Nikos?’ Her head spun briefly with ideas of theft, or some kind of cache left behind by the Poulsons, people she’d never met …

‘Beetle man.’

The answer, totally unexpected, stunned her. ‘What did you say?’

‘Beetle man. He gave it. Nikos said it wasn’t wrong.’

‘Beetle man. What’s the beetle man like?’

Ben grinned. ‘Funny.’

She studied him, thinking hard. ‘OK, Ben. Look, it’s getting late. You run on in and wash your face now.’ When he’d gone, she said to Shi-mi, ‘When Lobsang comes in, he and I will be having a long chat. And tomorrow I’m going to the Poulson place myself. Without Ben, with Nikos. And with Lobsang, if I have to drag him by his prosthetic nose.’ She tucked the bracelet into a pocket. Then she looked down, forcing a smile, and stroked Shi-mi’s back. ‘Now, shall we see how far we can get with this pendulum business? How long a string did you say – thirty-nine inches?’

22

IN THE MORNING Agnes left Ben playing with little Lydia in the care of Marina Irwin.

Then Agnes, Lobsang and a shamefaced Nikos Irwin hiked across Manning Hill to the old Poulson place. Nikos’s dog Rio, elderly now yet still puppyish, trotted alongside them, eager to explore, eager to be involved. It was well after dawn on a relatively calm day; the furball mammals had already finished their morning hunt, and the forest was quiet in the lowland that sprawled below the hill.

‘I can’t believe you’re involving me in this stuff,’ Lobsang grouched. ‘I’ve got potatoes to top, beets to water—’

‘What “stuff”?’

‘Ben’s a little boy, Agnes. Little boys go exploring. Worming their way into things. Boys will be boys.’

‘Oh, George—’

‘Of course if they find some junk yard like this Poulson place they’re going to rummage through it.’

‘George, Ben had a solid silver bracelet. If it was a bracelet at all. If you ask around,’ and since yesterday Agnes had been asking around, ‘half the kids in New Springfield are walking about with such things. Every parent thinks it’s just them. Everyone is a bit embarrassed, I think, that their kid found such valuable stuff in the Poulson place – stuff that’s rightfully not theirs. Generally they kept it quiet. Like you did until now, didn’t you, Nikos?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Lobsang said, ‘You know, Agnes, people here are different from the urban types you and I are used to. They don’t get to deal with strangers every day of their lives. They don’t have cameras in their faces the whole time, a government taxing them, corporations endlessly modelling their behaviour so they can sell them stuff. Out here, you keep yourself to yourself.’

‘Well, maybe. But, whatever the reason, nobody put together the pattern, did they? That these precious items are just flowing out of that ruined house like it’s a closing-down sale in a jewellers’ store. But you know the truth, don’t you, Nikos?’

‘Ma’am, the silver beetles are harmless—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Agnes said. ‘We’ll see for ourselves soon enough. But they’re odd – yes? Something out of the ordinary. Out of place, even considering we’re on a jungle world a million steps from the Datum.’