“I’ll try to remember the name,” Theo said.

Hasson tapped him lightly on the back of the hand. “Listen, I’m about due to re-read some Leacock. If I pick up a couple of books perhaps I could read them to you. What do you say?”

“That sounds all right. I mean, if you have the time…”

“I’ve got loads of time, so we’ll make it definite,” Hasson said, musing on the fact that immediately he had started thinking about doing something for somebody else his own state of mind had improved. It seemed there was a lesson to be learned. He sipped his coffee, wincing occasionally as the hot fluid came in contact with a mouth ulcer, and tacitly encouraged Theo to talk about anything that came into his mind, as long as it had nothing to do with Hasson’s past and his supposed family connections with Al Werry. Theo’s interest in flying quickly came to the fore, and almost at once there were references to Barry Lutze and to a local gang of cloud-runners known as the Hawks. As before, Hasson was disturbed to hear a note of uncritical admiration manifest itself in Theo’s voice.

“I’ll bet you,” he said, deciding to risk endangering his new- found relationship with the boy, “the leader of that outfit is called Black Hawk.”

Theo looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“It had to be that or Red Hawk. Those characters always have to hide behind some kind of label and it’s amazing how limited their imaginations are. Practically every town I’ve ever been in has had a Black Hawk or a Red Eagle fluttering around the place at night terrorising the smaller kids, and the funny part of it is that each and every one of them thinks he’s something special.”

Theo stood up, carried his empty cereal dish to the recycler and returned to the table before speaking. “Anybody who wants to do any real flying has to cover up his name.”

“That’s not the impression I get from the sports pages and TV. Some people become rich and famous through real flying.” Hasson knew from the expression on Theo’s face that his words were having no effect. The phrase “real flying’, as used by youngsters, meant flying illegally and dangerously, Throwing off all petty restrictions and flying solely by instinct, flying without lights at night, playing aerial Catch-me-if-you-can in the canyons of city buildings. The inevitable consequence of that kind of “real flying” was a steady rain of broken bodies drifting to the ground as their power packs faded, but it was a characteristic of youth that it felt itself to be immune from calamity. Accidents always happened to somebody else.

One of the difficulties Hasson had encountered in his years of police work was that all the arguments were emotional rather than intellectual. He had lost count of the occasions on which he had interviewed members of a group who had just seen one of their number smeared along the side of a building or sliced in two on a concrete pylon. In every case there had been an undercurrent of feeling, akin to dawn-time superstition and primitive magical beliefs, that the deceased had brought misfortune down on himself by violating the group’s code of behaviour in some way. He had defied the leader’s authority, or had betrayed a friend, or had shown he was losing his nerve.

The death was never attributed to the fact that the young flier had been breaking the law — because that would have opened the door to the notion that controls were necessary. The nocturnal rogue flier, the dark Icarus, was the folk hero of the age. At those times Hasson had begun to wonder if the whole concept of policing, of being responsible for others, was no longer valid. The CG harness, as well as inspiring its wearer to flout authority, aided and abetted by giving him anonymity and superb mobility. A Black Hawk and his aerial cohort could range over thousands of square kilometres in the course of a single night and then disappear without trace, like a single raindrop falling into the ocean of society. In almost every case, the only way to bring a rogue flier to book was to go after him and physically hunt him down through the sky, an activity which was both difficult and dangerous, and it seemed that the number of hunters would always be pitifully inadequate. And when he was faced with a sky-struck youngster like Theo, automatically predisposed to worship the wrong kind of hero, it seemed to Hasson that he wasted his entire life.

“… thinks nothing of boosting up to six or seven thousand metres and staying up there for hours,” Theo was saying. “Just think of it — seven kilometres straight up into the sky and thinks nothing of it.”

Hasson had lost track of the subject, but he guessed it was Barry Lutze. “He must think something of it,” he said, “otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to tell you about it.”

“Why shouldn’t he? It’s more than…’Theo paused, obviously refraining a sentence. “It’s more than anybody around here has done.”

Hasson thought about his own brief sojourn on the edge of space, thirty kilometres up, but felt no desire to speak of it. “Doesn’t he think it’s a bit juvenile to go around calling himself Black Hawk?”

“Who said Barry is Black Hawk?”

“Have you got two top fliers around here? Barry Lutze and the mysterious Black Hawk? Do they never run across each other?”

“How would I know?” Theo demanded with a betrayed expression on his face as he felt for the coffee pot.

Hasson forbore to assist him, knowing that in the boy’s eyes he was guilty of prying into things an adult could never understand. For the first time in history young people could escape the surveillance of their elders, and that was a prize which was never to be relinquished. Complete personal mobility had shrunk the world, and enormously widened the generation gap. Barrie had been brilliantly prescient in his understanding of the fact that there could be no communication between Peter Pan and any member of the grown-up world.

Hasson maintained a contrite silence while Theo, aided only by memory and the thin ray from a sensor ring on his right hand, located a cup and poured himself some coffee. He was wondering how best to open peace negotiations when Al Werry entered the kitchen from the rear of the house in a flurry of cold air. Werry was breathing deeply, apparently as a result of his snow-clearing activities, Hasson was slightly taken aback to see that he had kept his uniform on while performing the household chore, but he forgot about the idiosyncrasy when he noticed that Werry was looking strangely flustered.

“Go upstairs, Theo,” he said without preamble. “Some people are coming to talk business.”

Theo tilted his head enquiringly. “Can’t I finish my…?”

“Upstairs,” Werry snapped. “Move it.”

“I’m going.” Theo was reaching for his sensor cane, which was propped against the table, when there was a sound of the house’s front door being thrown open, followed by heavy footsteps in the hail. A moment later the kitchen door opened and Buck Morlacher and Starr Pridgeon came into the room. Both were wearing flying suits and harnesses which bulked out their figures and made their presence in the domestic environment seem alien and hostile. Red patches glowed like warning pennants on Morlacher’s slabby cheeks as he advanced on Werry, while behind him Pridgeon examined the contents of the room with an amused, semi-proprietary interest. Hasson felt a mixture of outrage, sadness and panic.

“I want to talk to you,” Morlacher said to Werry, tapping him forcefully on the chest with a gloved finger. “In here.” He nodded towards the front room and strode into it without turning to see if Werry was following. Werry, after one stricken glance at his son, followed him, leaving Pridgeon behind in the kitchen with Hasson and Theo.

“You know why I’m here,” Morlacher’s voice was thick with anger, filling both rooms.

Werry, in contrast, was almost inaudible, “If it’s about that AC yesterday, Buck, I don’t want you to think…”