"You're both always trying to hide how really worried orupset you are. All stressed andpressured, as if you were responsible for looking after the rest of us, and socan't show when you're overwhelmed. Youmust know we're not so unfair as to expect you to produce some miraculoussolution."

She couldn't catch any response. The icepacks remained steady, and the onlysound was Pan and Nash putting dishes away.

"I expect that of me, though," Fisher said finally,voice almost too low for her to hear. "Call it ego, or...I had so much I wanted to do, and it's beentaken away from me, and I seethe and grind my teeth and shake with this need to sow vengeance and regret."

He paused, took an audible breath, then said: "For thatwe need to bring down the Spires. I haveideas on how to find a way to do that, but I keep coming up against what itwill take to gain the information we need. And my courage fails me."

It was an admission, weary and subdued. Madeleine wished she could see hisexpression, but resisted the impulse to turn, instead asking: "Did youfeel that way in the first days after the dust, when you were trying to identifythe best way to treat Greens?"

He turned the icepacks again. "I knew I would kill people." A simple statement of fact. "Dividing up boys of about the same condition, and giving one groupsugar water and one saline sounds innocuous, but what if the Conversion wasmore efficient with an infusion of electrolytes? What amount of energy did their bodies needto survive? Raise their temperature orlower it? Keep them active, keep themstill? When one option appeared morepromising, I couldn't just switch them all to it immediately, had to keep acontrol group in case it was a false positive. I had constant nightmares about the data I was accumulating, this logicpuzzle of life and death written in permanent ink, with no option to erase itall and start over. I will never forgetthe faces of those in the groups where treatment clearly wasn't helping. Never. But the knowledge that that was just the first wave, those exposed inthe first hours, drove me on. Doingnothing was the worst option.

"With the Spires, doing anything could result in anotherrelease of dust or...or anything else the Moths consider a suitable'reprimand'. Endangering hundreds ofthousands of people who only need to wait two years to be safe. And every time I hear Pan or Emily say 'Allfor one, and one for all' I wonder how that will work if one of us ispossessed. Everyone here wants to dosomething in the abstract, but to get anywhere, to find a way to fight them,we're going to have to gamble everything."

"Have you stopped trying to find a way, then?"Madeleine asked softly.

"No."

"Are we ready to actually do anything?"

"No."

She shook her head. "I've been around Pan too much, and all his dramatic speeches – itmakes me want to try one. I feel sostrange and unlike myself, possibly the least social person on the planetsuddenly part of this group of people which can seriously consider the ThreeMusketeers' motto as something which fits us. But yesterday none of us ran. Weall held together and fought, because we are...we've become more than justpeople in the same place, trapped by circumstance. If any of us comes up with a plan, we'llthink hard about what we mean to do, and then we'll all face the consequencesof fighting back."

"Together." He sounded sad, exhausted. Thenbriskly stood, lifting the icepacks away. "That should be enough. I'llgo kick a few people out of the way so you have room to lie on yourstomach."

He went upstairs, and Madeleine trailed up to change hershirt, wondering if she'd helped at all. And if her imagination was running overtime or, as he turned away, he'dbrushed a finger across the nape of her neck, just below the knot of her hair.

Chapter Fifteen

Sinuous bodies wove a mid-air ballet, so beautiful andstrange that Madeleine could not help but sit spellbound as the pair ofdandelion dragons twined a pas de deux betweenbridges and skyscrapers.

Machine gun fire rose, a rat-tat accompaniment which sparkeda new form of dance. Dipping, twisting,wildly joyous: driven by countless wings in a madcap obstacle race merehandbreadths above rooftops, from air-conditioning plant to scaffolding andfire escape. It was so obviously agleeful game, exultant and playful, that its culmination in a tumbling human figuremade her gasp in protest.

"Where is it this time?"

Madeleine started. Atnearly two in the morning, she still had an hour to go on intruder watch. Judging by his hair-on-end, rumpled and crossappearance, Min had simply given up trying to sleep.

"Pittsburgh," she said, as a rifle began firing.

"Pointless." Min sniffed disparagingly at the gunshot punctuation.

"They did hurt one once."

"And what did that achieve? A glowing thing spitting up its load of dustin the middle of the street." Heshook his head, then crossed to the patio door and slid it open despite thechill, kneeling in the entrance to light incense before the statue he'd placedjust outside.

The reprimand had begun the day after the Rio de Janeirochallenge, late night Sydney time, and dawn on the east coast of the United States. The many-winged flying serpents which servedas air transport for Mothed Blues had appeared innumbers, and flown riderless to the non-Spire towns and cities nearest toWashington. The first sighting had beenat a large hall housing Washington refugees, where one dandelion dragon simplythrust its enormous head through upper windows and vomited a great gout of dustover hundreds of sleeping families.

Two weeks after the appearance of the Spires, small outbreaksof stain had occurred in countless non-Spire towns and cities, and breathingmasks were ubiquitous, some even managing to sleep in them. But it had been established that the Conversioncould infect through contact with eyes, and masks could only do so much forthose who woke coated in dust. Even whenpeople stayed home, when there were no convenient large groups for the dragonsto target, the increased concentration of dust had soon led to thousands of newcases of Blue-Green. The sheermanoeuvrability of the dragons, and their relative indifference to sprays ofbullets, made them almost impossible to stop.

"I think we can safely say that the chances of anyoneelse trying to shoot a Spire have dropped into the not worth betting onrange," Min said, standing and sliding the door shut. "There been any let-up in numbers?"

"No." Almostthirty hours in, a new attack was still being reported roughly every hour.

"Coffee? Damn,this milk is still solid." Minthumped down the carton Madeleine had taken out of the freezer an hour ago,making dishes rattle, then sighed. "Green tea?"

"No thanks. Iguess I should go to bed," Madeleine said, but didn't move, wondering ifshe should be worried. Min was usuallyvery even-tempered. "Would itoffend you if I asked what you pray for each morning?"

"Mostly for my brothers to be reborn as slugs in a saltmine," Min said flatly. "Oh,they deserve it, don't worry. I'mvirtuous by comparison. Normal." He gave her asardonic look. "The contrast worksthe other way here, among you would-be heroes trying to do the right thing, allcaution and common sense. No-one's evengotten into the liquor cabinet. Noi's planning this surprise birthday party for Pan, yetthinks it's a bad idea for us to cut loose."

"Alien invasions aren't exactly the time to getdrunk."

"If there was ever a time to get drunk, alien invasionsare it. We could lock ourselves in thestudy first, and let Millie play lookout. But you all insist on being so dull and supportive with your musketeersand your stick-together attitude. I keepexpecting to find the lot of you sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya."