 
Panoptic

By Jacob Magnus

Copyright 2011 Jacob Magnus

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1

Blood ran down his scalp. He wiped it and tried to rise, but the guard kicked him in the chest, then pressed him into the ground with his boot. Soro struggled under the weight and looked for a way out. All he could see was the man's shadow, a mere silhouette against the brightly lit cherry blossom tree. As he looked up, the guard raised his baton, another shadow against the pink and purple blossom.

The shadowy baton fell from the radiant tree, a fragment of black blossom, rotten before its time. Soro watched it fall, seeming as slow and graceful as drifting blossom, and pictured the moment when it would strike, and raise a red flower from his skull.

The instant seemed to expand, as if a god, in his black humour, wanted him to appreciate the wonder of existence, in the very last moment before it was extinguished. His mind sped free, and sought safety in the past.

...

He pulled up in a dingy side road, the tarmac a flickering wash of grey and green in the light of old, rusted streetlights. The air smelled bitter, tainted by fumes from the factories on either side, their spartan concrete lurid with graffiti. A huge blue-skinned Cyclops gazed at him, his eye winking in the flickers of the lights. It was so beautiful it made his fingers itch, but the street lamp flicked on and off with a broken rhythm, the promise of a ruined shot. He tasted copper and sulphur, and the acrid stink of burnt plastic.

He left the rental there, hoping it would still have all its tires when he came back. The night was quiet, the air still, warm and muggy, too humid for spring. He wiped perspiration from his brow as he jogged along silent streets towards the New Verity compound.

He didn't mind running, but something felt wrong, more than just the uncomfortable warmth. He felt odd, out of place, the same kind of feeling he always had when he'd been spotted on a job. But that couldn't be it. He'd parked five blocks down from the compound, to be sure he wasn't seen making his approach.

He knew the value of stealth.

But still he felt that gnawing irritation, eyes on his back, searing the skin. He tried to shake it off. He'd been on a hundred night jobs, a thousand. He'd crawled under fences and snuck over rooftops, and he'd always captured his prize. He didn't need to get the freeping critters over this, a simple vegetable snap.

Pum pum pum.

He narrowed his brows, but he kept running. Leaves rustling in the wind. A hot engine cooling. Marshmallows falling through a time warp. Not footsteps.

Not footsteps.

Pum pum pum.

He flinched, halted, turned around. He swept his eyes over the street, from the graffitied walls to the shadowed back doors, the scratched, rusting lamps. He saw a scrap of shadow lurch behind the nearest, dented and bent, the victim of some sloshed driver. He peered closer, and tried to ignore the beating in his chest, the cold moisture that trickled down his back.

It moved again. Small, lumpish, quick.

His shoulders, hunched before, now relaxed, and he sighed. "Squiz!"

There came no answer.

"Squiz, I know it's you. Allons! Get back to the car, camerado. Wait for me."

No reply.

"I know you hate it, but you have stop following me. People don't understand. It's dangerous. Allons!"

A small dark shape detached from the lamp post, hesitated, and darted away into the night.

Soro waited until he could no longer hear the sound of scampering. Then he turned, and hurried on his way.

...

He caught sight of himself in the jutting mirror of a truck as he passed by. The hazy light gave his reflection a ghoulish pallor. His blue jeans looked even more scratched and worn than usual, the pockets of his sleeveless denim jacket bulged with obscene mystery, and his grey polo neck looked like a garment stitched together from corpse hide. He couldn't see the scuffed climbing boots in the mirror, and he wished he couldn't see his face. The curve of the mirror distorted his features. It took his sharp jaw and cheekbones, his aquiline nose; it twisted and stretched them into an eerie form, suited for wearing flayed skin, better suited for feasting on cadavers. The mirror warped and shifted all his features, except his eyes. They shone orange brown, even in the pallid street lighting, and they gazed with such intensity it startled him to see it.

...

Soon he came to the compound. He'd chosen to approach it from the east, away from the front entrance. From here, the chain link fence, and the squat buildings beyond, looked like any number of others. There was nothing unique about the sight, nothing to make it stand out. He felt a trifling sense, akin to vertigo, that he was in the wrong place.

He reached up to his shoulder, and experienced a momentary shock as his hand failed to encounter the comforting presence. His sense of unease deepened.

"Stupid. Stupid. Throw it off. Toss it out."

He took a deep breath and drew nearer the fence, under the twisted branches of an elm that fought paving slabs and pollution. No large and melodious thoughts fell on him. He'd have to make them himself.

"Get in. Get it. Get what you came for."

...

He walked up to the fence and brushed it with his hands; he felt chilly steel, surprising in the warm air. Some rust flaked off on his hands, and when he brushed it off, he caught the metallic taste of it in the back of his throat. Crouching down, he found the spot he'd seen before. Those roaming street map vans had brought their owners a lot of bad press, and for good reason, he mused. But for someone like him, they were proving a useful resource. Down at the ground, the roots of the elm tree had twisted, had writhed in slow motion, probing, pressing, thrusting through the soil with inexorable force. The men who had built this fence had made it well, but they hadn't counted on nature and time. The elm's roots had riven cracks through the paving slabs, bent the lower bar of the fence, and gouged a rent in the compound's security.

Soro added to it with the help of a prying iron.

He felt a twinge of guilt as he helped nature and entropy to damage the fence. On the other hand, he prided himself on doing no harm, or as little as possible. And what he had come for he would steal away without changing anything. No matter how much he took, the firm's owners would lose nothing.

"They should pay me," he muttered as he strained at the fence. "I'm doing them a service. Think of all that publicity, and no charge, thank you, sir."

He leaned back to assess his handiwork. The gap under the fence looked big enough to accommodate a fat rabbit. "Good thing I'm small."

He crawled under the fence. This was why he wore rough, scratched jeans, why his denim jacket bore so many marks and scrapes, and why his climbing boots had long ago lost their new leather lustre. No matter how many times he got them cleaned or repaired, or bought new clothes, his gear would always look ragged and shabby.

In the end, you learned to take pride in the ragamuffin look.

With much sweating and soft cursing, he slithered out on the other side of the fence. He stayed low, hunkered down, and scanned the interior of the compound. Ahead he saw the low blocks of the labs, faced with yellowish bricks, and ringed with a well-lit walking path. He saw security cameras covering that path, and...

But no.

"Where are they?" he said under his breath.

According to his research, the Verity labs were patrolled by private security, professionals contracted out from Gell Shield, a serious, respected firm. When he'd learned they were working the labs, he'd felt a frisson of nerves, but it had passed. As always, he'd told himself that he and the guard had mutually compatible interests. If he kept out of their way, they'd never know he was there.

Until the pictures sold.

Even so, he'd played it cautious; he'd spent a week longer on planning than usual, and he'd come ready to bolt at the slightest sign of bad news. You did not want Gell Shield to give you their full and enthusiastic attention.

He should have been happy to see they were absent.

But he wasn't.

"It's not the guard you see that gets you," he muttered, double checking to be sure he hadn't missed some vital detail. "It's the guard who sees you."

Checked and re-checked, clear remained the coast.

He shrugged. "No arguments."

Soro made his way around the buildings. He'd entered from the east side, and now he walked to the north, with the labs on his left, and the fence on his right. He kept his eyes open, and he listened for footsteps, voices, or, worst of all, the gruffle and murmur of dogs. Though he heard nothing, he didn't relax. He couldn't. He wasn't a thief, or any kind of crook (so he told himself), but that wouldn't keep him out of trouble if a guard caught him in a moment of lapsed vigilance.

His route brought him around to the front of the compound, to the gates, and the car park. He strained his senses to the utmost.

The growl of a distant car. The ozone smell of train tracks nearby. The wail of a baby, reduced by distance to a plaintive whisper. The guard shack at the main gate glowed from within, and he saw, through the toughened glass, a computer, a control panel, a phone, and an empty chair.

"I could have walked in the front!"

He felt aggrieved at having wasted so much effort, but welcomed the opportunity, and moved on, though the mysterious absence sent cold thrills down his back, and made the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle. He kept to the grassy verge of the compound, close to the chain link fence, away from the well-lit path that ran around the labs. The scent of the grass tickled his nose, but here too he caught an odd tinge; the warm night air wafted a damp, pungent aroma, as if the fresh spring grass was already wilting and rotten. The silence, loneliness and unpleasant odours combined and lent strength to the anxiety of trespass.

He felt like a fly on the lip of a biting plant, at the moment when the sweet scent of nectar gives way to the stench of digested flesh.

His discomfort grew, and he sensed an almost palpable force pressing him back, even as it drew him on. For the first time, he thought of giving up, of going home.

What would he lose?

"Pride. Self respect. Confidence."

Not good enough.

"The prize. Special. Unique."

Yes, that was it. Beauty. On this dark night, in this forbidding, fenced-off place, stood something special, a unique work of art. No one had seen it yet, no one off of Verity's personnel roster. He would be the first.

"And she will give her first to me," he said, and smirked.

"Allons."

He wished Squiz was with him.

...

Sinews strengthened, determination regained, he squared his shoulders, and walked on. The northernmost building in the complex of yellowish labs jutted out. He approached it, and rounded the northeast corner.

And he saw it.

Not what he'd come for. According to the information he'd gleaned, that lay further still, in a grove on the west of the complex. No, he saw the front entrance, up close. He saw something that had, until then, been blocked from sight by the guard hut. He saw the front gate itself, smashed and rent, hanging off its hinges.

He saw the tire tracks, deep gouges across the grass, veering off to the west, around the buildings and out of sight.

And he heard the screams.

Chapter 2

From around the corner of the labs he heard them, the howls of a woman in pain. Caution told him to slow down, back away, avoid trouble. Caution told him to mind his own skin.

He ignored it.

He followed the trail of ripped grass and turf. He followed the woman's anguished cries. He turned the final corner, and froze.

He'd found the Gell Shield guards.

The car tracks ran west, in a wobbly line to the edge of the company's private grove. They terminated in a grey green army jeep, circa World War II. He saw a tight group of guards clustered around the halted jeep, waving their batons and cursing. He couldn't see their captive, but he could hear her. She wailed like a cat in an oven.

His trained eyes saw the jeep and the huddle of guards as a foreground; in the background of the picture lay the grove. The trees gleamed against the dark, lit by halogen beams set in the soil. They made a shining semicircle, framing New Verity's prize creation. He couldn't see it, but for a flash of vivid pink when one of the guards shifted on his feet, but he knew it was there. The picture was framed by earth and sky, grass as black as space.

Again, the itch. His fingers longed for the camera.

He had a perfect opportunity. He'd known he'd have to evade the guards, and he'd come prepared to make a distraction, at least to take their attention off the precious grove long enough for him to get what he'd come for. He hadn't expected anyone to beat him to it, and he had never imagined that his competitors would be so generous as to make a diversion for him. The stalled jeep and its yowling occupant had the guards all in a bundle.

It was a perfect opportunity.

All he had to do was walk around, staying in the shadows between the fence and the lighted path, and Gell Shield would never know he'd been there. That was a benefit worth paying for; the firm was always getting sued by someone. Excessive force. Brutality.

The screams continued to sound in his ears. They set his teeth on edge, and made his heart shudder.

"It's not my fault," he muttered.

No one answered him.

"I didn't ask you to come. I didn't want you to come."

The screams dwindled to silence.

"What am I supposed to do, anyway? I don't have a gun, and if I tried to use one, I'd probably blow off my own ear."

A warm breeze moved through the trees, making the leaves rustle, and carrying the scents of sap and the perfume of cherries. Left alone with his heart, Soro sighed.

"I hope I live to regret this," he said.

Whatever was going on at the jeep, he was sure the Gell Shield boys wouldn't shoot their captive out of hand.

Kind of sure.

...

He walked to the front doors of the labs, careful to stay out of the line of the cameras. He might have to play the hero, but he wouldn't play the stupid hero.

He crept up to the double doors, which some convenient, helpful guard had left open, peered inside at the blue carpets, cream walls and white Styrofoam ceiling tiles, and spotted the telltale nozzle of a sprinkler set in the ceiling. Nearby he saw the round, flying saucer shaped smoke detector.

Grinning, he pulled a long yellow tube out of his pocket, and twisted the end.

The yellow tube grew hot.

It burned his fingers, so he tossed it through the double doors. Then, without waiting to see what was going to happen, he grabbed a drain pipe by the doors, and climbed.

An electronic shriek pierced the silence.

Mouthing his choicest curses, he scrambled up the pipe even faster, and swung himself up onto the low, flat roof. The speedy climb cost him scratched knuckles, and a bruise where his knee bumped the edge of the roof. He sucked down the pain and hoped that the worst of it had passed.

The smoke bomb had done its work, for sure. He'd had it custom made by a friend at a special effects company. It was guaranteed to spew out choking gouts of black smoke, impenetrable to the eye, enough to make any smoke alarm scream for its salt. The smoke was produced by a chemical reaction, not combustion; fire messed with his composition.

Just then, he wanted to do some damage to the fire alarm. The thing wailed like all the souls in Hell, and he, lying flat on his belly on top of the lab, had no way to escape. If he stood up, his silhouette would be obvious, and he'd be sure to be spotted. If he rolled to either side, he was likely to fall off the roof.

It felt like a bad trap, and that cold feeling in his gut wasn't only because of the chilly concrete pressing into his belly.

But he hadn't heaved himself up onto the roof for exercise or penance. He crawled to the edge, and shuffled until he was lined up with a vent for an air conditioner. It had the stink of mildew and harsh solvents, and he didn't like to imagine what went on the labs it ventilated. This was a biotech firm, after all, and for all he knew, they had vats full of human hearts, grown from a single mass of cultured tissue, beating in time as they pumped artificial blood through clear plastic tubes.

He tried to push the image out of his mind. He failed.

Using the air vent as cover, he peered across the grass to the jeep. Last time he'd seen it, it had been surrounded by a pack of Gell Shield guards. Now he'd see if his improvised distraction would do the trick.

He saw nothing, not grass, not the trees in the grove, and none of the guards. He saw the black void of night. It rippled and shimmered, and then it broke up into a fine black mist.

His smoke bomb had worked all too well. But as the night breeze wafted the cloud of smoke away from the entrance, he heard loud, anxious shouts, the soft pad of boots on grass, then the hard thud of men running on a solid path. The smoke roiled and gaped wide, giving him a moment's clear view of the stretch of ground between the entrance and the jeep, just in time to see the last of the guards disappear under the rim of the roof.

"Got them all," he whispered, unable to repress a grin of triumph. "And that means..."

He looked up, and saw the jeep. It stood where it had been, immobile, and, as far as he could tell through the billowing smoke, neither surrounded nor occupied.

It would be a problem if the guards had taken their captive with them, but he was banking on a panic reaction. If they proved to be quicker on the uptake, he could do little about it. He hadn't come here on a rescue mission.

He crawled to the edge, checked the path for guards and cameras, and found a single camera covering the patch of ground where he wanted to make landfall. Scowling, he thought fast, and then he shifted around behind the camera, and, using its own steel mount as a hand hold, he swung down, and dropped the last little way to the ground.

He landed on the path, and although he bent his knees, he still felt a jolt run through his joints, from ankles to hips.

He looked over his shoulder, and saw the doors almost obscured by thick, dark clouds of smoke. He thought he saw a couple of figures moving in the darkness, but it was so thick, he might have been mistaken. The siren continued to howl, and back on ground level, it came to him as an almost physical assault on his ears. He also got a good lungful of his own smoke, which was oily, and stank like a dying barbecue. He choked, and started to cough, which made him fear he'd be heard by the guards, but for this he was grateful to the siren, for it sounded so loud that it drowned out any noise he was making. It was so loud that he couldn't hear his own coughing.

He didn't waste time. He ran across the grass to the jeep, and as he ran, he coughed, and spat to rid his mouth of that foul, oily taste.

Moments later, he came to the jeep. As he neared it, he saw it was a real old army jeep, grey green, dented and scratched. It looked like something from the props department of a film studio. He also found the source of the screaming.

She sat in the front seat, pulling and jerking at the wheel. For a moment he thought she was drunk or crazy, but then the glitter of metal at her wrist told the story. His distraction had worked, but Gell Shield didn't employ stupid men. Before dashing off, one sharp fellow had cuffed his prisoner to the wheel.

But why hadn't she just driven off, and dealt with the steel bracelet later?

"They took the keys too, I guess," he said.

"No shit, you stack fuck freak," she yelled over her shoulder.

She paused in her struggle to jerk the wheel off the car, and twisted in her seat. "You're not one of them," she said.

"Guess not."

"What do you want?"

The corners of his lips turned up. "I was just taking a walk, enjoying the fine air-" He broke off coughing. "What do you think, pigtails? I came to help you out."

"Pigtails?"

"Pigtails and ribbons," he said. "As far as I can see, that's what you're all about."

That much was true. She wore a pale grey jump suit, but he didn't think it was her usual attire, because it contrasted way too much with the mass of pigtails, braids and pink ribbons that sprouted from her head. She had blue green eyes and the appealing features of a Hong Kong kung fu starlet. He saw a glint of gold at her ears, but when he looked closer, he couldn't understand where it had come from, because she looked to be wearing plain black earrings, of an unusual, heavy looking oblong shape.

"Who says I want your help, you dirty strip of-"

She fell silent as they heard a rustling noise from the trees. He scanned the grove, but he couldn't make out anything except trees. Not just any trees, either. In the centre of that grove, hidden before but revealed now, he saw the tree.

He saw the cherry blossom.

New Verity might have been a heavyweight biotech firm. They might have had the professional ethics of a fluke worm. They might have been the spearhead for an invasion by vicious brain-sucking aliens from the Horse Ass nebula. Soro didn't know what evils they had hidden behind the corporate logo and the Gell Shield mob.

He didn't care.

Soro cared about one thing: beauty. Not the elastic plastic of Hollywood or the Paris catwalk. They were good in their way, and he didn't sneer at them, but they weren't handcrafted, they were bulked out by the barrel. They tried so hard to be beautiful that they ran together, like the spill from a row of paint pots when that sagging, overloaded shelf gives way.

They weren't unique.

Soro lived for beauty. He saw it every day, in countless places. He saw it in the crooked smile of the waitress when she saw a pair of young lovers share an ice cream sundae. He saw it glimmer on the roofs of old brick houses washed by the dawn sun. He saw it in the ripple and shine of a stream where an old hobo sat fishing under the shade of a pear tree. Soro didn't need to seek out beauty. He found it wherever he was, and if he tried to ignore it, it had a way of insinuating itself into his day.

Just as he hadn't needed to search for beauty, neither had he needed instruction when his father had given him his first camera. The cool, silvery plastic casing had fitted his hand as if it had been made just for him, and he'd known, even at the age of nine, that this was what his life would be.

Soro didn't need to go looking for beauty. But when he'd heard about the cherry blossom that had taken New Verity's bioengineers a decade to perfect, he'd been seized with an overwhelming need to find it, to see it, to take the very first photo by an outsider. It was unique, and that picture would be unique.

Now, as he stood by the jeep, he forgot about the choking smoke in his lungs, about the wailing sirens at his back, and the team of armed guards who could, at any moment, realise they'd been deceived, and come rushing back to take him.

He forgot everything as he gazed into that semicircle of light and shade, that chiaroscuro made by the play of halogen brilliance on the bent and reaching branches of the trees. For there, in the centre, lit with bold beams, the cherry tree rose before him, glorious as a tiered crown bedecked rose quartz, pink pearls and silken lace petals.

Her voice rose behind him. "What are you doing? Why did you come here? Don't gape at it like a slack brained slagger!"

"I come here for the same reason as you, Sakura," he said with a chuckle.

The itch in his fingers was almost unbearable.

"Sheep shagger! Muff stuffer! I'm from New Zealand, you prize dimmy, and I'm nothing like you!"

She spoke with such vehemence that he turned to look at her, his eyes wide, lips half-curled, half-twisted with laughter at her odd cussing. There was no humour on her face. How he'd thought she was pretty, he didn't know. Her teeth were clenched, her lips peeled back, and her eyes burned. She looked like a fury.

He thought about ditching the hero act, but he couldn't abandon her. He had to make allowances, she was cuffed to a jeep, and he could imagine what kind of threats the guards had made.

"Cool down, hobbit," he said. "I'll get you out of here in a second."

"No rush," she said, tossing her head to one side. "It's not as though there's fifty thugs jonesing to try out their shiny new tasers."

"Yeah. Let me take one quick picture, and then we'll get out of here."

"Wait," she said.

"It'll be okay," he mumbled, fiddling with his camera as he turned.

"No, wait. Look out!"

He turned, and saw the man's silhouette against the vivid pink backdrop of the cherry tree. He saw the baton, a dark blur, and then he felt the blow.

Hot jags of pain jabbed into his skull, and he found himself lying on his back staring up at the shadow of a man. By the angle of his head, Soro could tell the guard was looking down at him. His imagination filled in the picture; it lent the guard a heavy jaw, a red, thickset face, all snarls and sneers. Whatever his true features, they remained invisible against the illuminated backdrop of the tree.

The guard stepped towards Soro, who felt much smaller than usual.

"No," shrieked the girl. "You leave him alone!"

He felt a tingle of surprise. The guard loomed over him and raised the baton.

Soro had a moment to anticipate the blow. His head already felt cracked. The next strike would smash his skull open, and splatter his brains all over the soft grass. The howl of the fire alarm faded. He could still hear it, but it was muted, as if the intervening air had been stuffed with cotton wool. The girl yelled something, but her voice, too, was so faint he couldn't tell if she was speaking, or giving vent to panic.

He saw, in his mind's eye, the scene when the baton smote his skull a second time. Instincts born of habit and experience began to frame the image; his body would lie in the foreground on a bed of soft green grass, while the background would stretch out to encompass the complex of labs. Black smoke would roil out of an entrance surmounted by light; the cloud would dwindle to a single misty tendril, stretching forth to touch the blood welling from his head.

The picture shone clear and vivid in his mind, and made him wish he had his camera.

But he did.

It was a special camera. He still had the first one his father had given him, all those years ago, but since he'd found that people liked his pictures, wanted them, and would pay surprising sums of money to put them on their magazines, posters and ads, he'd got himself the best kit available anywhere. Most digital cameras took a few tenths of a second, if not more, to find their range, adjust for lighting conditions, and focus the shot. Not this one. Like every picture he took, it was one of a kind, handcrafted, and irreplaceable. It still performed all of those functions; he didn't sneer at modern technology, and he'd grown up in the digital age. Unlike its more common brethren, however, this camera took mere nanoseconds to turn a finger press into a permanent image the quality of diamond.

And of course, it had a flash like a supernova.

There was only one small problem, he reflected, with his plan. His fingers, reaching into his jacket pocket, found nothing but the texture of rough denim.

The guard said something he didn't understand, the import of the words lost in the haze of noise and pain.

The guard stepped closer, and kicked him in the knee, and he understood that well enough.

Trouble.

The girl shrieked, and he heard her yank at the steering wheel, frantic. He hoped, if she did manage to break loose, she'd have the sense to run. This guard hadn't bothered to give a warning.

He kicked Soro again, a hard blow in the gut that left him twisted up and winded. He scrabbled at his pockets, unwilling to give up the search. And if it came to the worst, if these were his last moments, he'd be damned if he'd die without his camera.

Maybe he'd have an NDE, and come back with holiday snaps from Heaven.

The guard bawled at him, loud enough to be heard over the fire alarm. "You amateur idiots! We know how to deal with thieves around here."

Soro might have laughed, if he'd had the breath.

"No one cares what happens to a pair of dumbass thieves," shouted the guard. Soro heard him now, well enough to wish he couldn't. "No one's gonna miss you. But I tell ya, the biotech boys down in tissue culture are gonna be grinning tonight. They're gonna get their samples free and fresh! We're gonna scrape them off your hide!"

If only he had a weapon, but no... The mere thought was as comfortable as snuggling with a crocodile. But by the oaths flying from her lips, the girl sounded as if she'd be thrilled to take a few tissue samples from the guard.

He began to despair, but then he saw it, a glint of light on the black mirror of the view screen. It was off to his right side, near his boot. It had to have slipped out of his pocket when the guard blindsided him. He prayed the fall hadn't damaged it.

He stretched out his hand for it, but it was just beyond his reach. The guard didn't appreciate the effort, and rewarded him with another kick, one that sent a sharp spike of pain up through his ribs.

"I'm not a hard man," said the guard. "I'd be inclined to give you a free pass. It's the company, don't you see? The company's got a reputation, and it takes work, it takes upkeep. You try to remember that... It ain't personal." He sniggered. "Mostly."

Soro tried again, but he knew it was futile. He heard something almost too soft to catch, a scurrying, padding sort of sound.

If the guard had noticed, he didn't show it.

Soro fought through the agony, willed his arm to grow and stretch, and came close enough for his fingers to brush the cool plastic casing of the camera.

"I don't like it when you squirm," said the guard. He raised his foot to stamp on Soro's hand, giving him a sickening vision of mangled fingers.

A dark blur flew up from the grass. A monstrous cry made him wince and hunch his shoulders. It was the guard's turn to shriek in horror as a small shadowy figure leapt up into his face, scratching and biting.

"What in Heaven?" said the girl.

"Squizzle," said Soro.

He felt new strength flow into his limbs. The pain lingered in his gut and ribs, but it seemed to diminish, and he felt renewed, better able to fight through it.

As the guard stumbled away, clawing at the enraged creature, Soro clambered to his feet, grabbed his camera off the grass, and shoved it in his pocket.

The embattled guard tore the animal off his face, and hurled it to the ground. He raised his foot to stamp on it.

Anger ignited in Soro's gut, and spread up his spine. His face twisted into a terrible scowl, and his fingers curled into fists. A peaceful man, he could not abide the sight of the guard readying to crush his pet. He felt fury such as he'd not believed was in him, and when he moved, it was the fury that animated him, and not his own self.

He shot forwards, with speed and strength he hadn't thought to possess, shoved the guard back, and saved the animal from getting squashed. His fist whipped out, without thought, without plan, and smashed the guard on the jaw.

There had been more vehemence than skill in the punch, and Soro half-believed the guard was felled by sheer surprise. Whatever the cause, the man hit the grass like a sack of lemons. His fist sang with agony, it felt as if he'd need to stuff it in the freezer for at least a week, but the pain was worth it.

"No one hurts Squizzle, you vicious-"

"Hey, Jane Goodall, cut the righteous wrath and get his goodies."

The torrent of anger washed away in embarrassment, and he turned and shot her a raised eyebrow.

"The keys, twit," she said. "The cuff keys! Get these mumping chains off me, and I'll give you a free ride."

His eyebrow twitched.

She coloured. "I mean I'll give you a lift in the battle wagon."

He saw no mileage in hanging around, so he rummaged through the guard's uniform until he found a pair of weird little keys. He tossed them to the girl, watched her undo the cuffs and massage her wrists.

"That's half a ton better," she said. "Now c'mon."

He turned away, and reached into his pocket. There was still time.

He heard the jeep's engine shake and grunt.

"Get in," she said.

"I can't leave yet," he said, gazing at the cherry blossom.

"There's no time for this."

Squizzle ran to his side, and tugged at the hem of his jeans.

"Et tu Squiz?" he murmured.

He fumbled with the camera, and then raised it to his eye. His hands shook; the kicks he'd taken made him shudder when he drew breath, and his right hand didn't want to grip. He aimed at the cherry tree, resplendent in the luminous pinks and pale purples of its blossom. It stood out, proud, bold against the dark, and seemed to tower above the other trees, to dwarf their paltry gifts.

"You don't get in the wagon now," said the girl, "you never will."

"One second."

"We don't have one- Argh! They've seen us. They're coming back!"

He gritted his teeth, mustered the last vestiges of strength, and willed the camera to become steady in his hands.

"You're gonna get us clobbered! It's not worth it for a stupid photo."

He grimaced, and then he focused on the image he saw through the viewfinder. The lighting looked impressive, but it made it hard to get a picture; these lamps were set in the ground, to shine up at the tree, similar to shooting on the beach on a cloudless dawn, golden brilliance reflecting off the water, a beautiful sight, but hard on a poor photographer. Worse yet, the background wasn't just bad, it was missing. If he'd had the time, he'd like to have moved further away from the cherry tree, and zoomed in from that range, to capture the vivid pink cascade of blossom with the other, less extravagant trees curving around to frame it.

There was no time for such vain wishes. Even he could hear shouting over the siren, and at least one pair of booted feet slamming into the turf.

Never or now.

He took a deep breath; put all of his effort into concentrating on the image before him. There followed a moment of intense pressure, a sense he'd never been able to describe, that the world itself resisted his attempt to catch it and cram it into a tiny plastic box. He focused harder, pushing away all the pain and fatigue in his body, the noise around him, the cold fear in his gut. He narrowed his attention to a tight beam, to a laser, and as if the fancy had some physical counterpart, he felt the familiar cool spot on his forehead, as if someone was pressing a penny against the skin, just above and between his eyebrows. He made one last, tremendous effort, and something changed, deep within his being.

It was as sudden and as thorough as clicking on the light. In one moment he stopped being little scratched-up Soro, standing in a field, pointing a device at a plant. Everything went away, everything except the cherry tree. There was no grass underfoot; there were no feet. There was no car beside him; he had no sides. There were no wrathful men running to get him, to catch and punish him. He was not a thing to be trapped or hurt.

He was not a thing at all.

There was the tree and only the tree, but it was no tree. New Verity's prize creation had been a thing of sap and cell, of root, bark and blossom. That thing was gone. In a sense, it had never been. Instead there was a pristine, self-luminous arising of glory, infinite yet complete, all space, all time transcending.

From an unthinkable distance, he heard a miniscule click. A hand reached into timelessness, grabbed his shoulder, and yanked him backwards.

At once he was a man again, in a body, being jerked towards the jeep. He was a man, with a tired, injured, hurting body, and liable to suffer worse insults if he hung around.

The girl had left the jeep to get him. He wouldn't forget that.

He shrugged away her hand, and leapt into the driver's seat.

"Hey!" she said. From the look on her face, she wouldn't forgive that.

"Grab something firm," he said, as he gunned the motor.

Her shrieks of fury were lost in the roar of the engine.

He spun the card around, tearing yet more tread marks into the once-perfect grass. Ahead he saw his aim, the rent gates. The jeep had come in that way, and he thought there was a certain pleasing symmetry in taking it out again. It wasn't as simple as that, however. There were guards ahead.

Lots of guards.

Worse yet, he realised something was missing.

"Don't stop now," the girl said.

He ignored her. "Squiz! Where are you, Squiz?"

"Have you gone insane? This is no time to babble at your invisible friend."

He heard the patter of tiny feet on the back seat, and then the little fellow vaulted into his lap, where he blinked up at him with wide, orange brown eyes, and gave him a cryptic smile.

"What the malking scrag is that?"

He let the question go unanswered. It would take all of his concentration to get out of there. The guards, in spite of whatever personality defects they had, were professionals. As soon as they'd seen the jeep jerk into life, they'd fanned out, and dumped the batons for something a little more muscular. He saw the glint of metal in several hands. At least two of them had shotguns.

"We've left it too late," the girl said. "They've got us now, we're trapped! I blame you."

He narrowed his eyes, and changed his grip on the steering wheel. "Save your blame. You might need it later."

He saw her point. The guards' uniforms were blackened with smoke, and their heads must have been in agony from the fire alarm. The girl had wrecked their gates, left one of their number on the ground, unconscious, perhaps dead. They couldn't know he was sleeping off a tap to the jaw. They couldn't know that their intruders were more interested in photos than mayhem. They were harassed, hurting, their pride was injured, and one of their buddies was down.

They would shoot.

He crushed the accelerator underfoot, and the jeep lurched into motion.

"Are you mad?" she said.

He swung the car around in a tight arc, until they were heading back the way they'd come.

"You are mad," she said. "There's no other exit. We can't get out that way."

He grinned.

"I know."

"What's going on in that box of broken junk you're using for a brain?"

He eyed her sidelong, and noticed that gleam of gold at her ears again. He looked closer.

She yowled. "Keep your eyes on the ro- Grass."

"Books," he said.

"What?"

"Black books with golden leaves. They're beautiful."

"...oh." She blinked. Then she shook her heard. "Don't distract me!"

"You need all your attention for screaming?"

Her jaws clenched, and she dug her nails into the sides of her seat.

The cherry tree shone up ahead. It flashed towards them.

"This old machine can go quite fast," he said.

"In the wrong direction."

"Whatever can you mean?"

"The tree. You're going to ram the tree!"

"I certainly hope they think so."

She gaped at him, and for a moment the halogen lamps lit more than the grove; they lit up her face, and he noticed how her eyes sparkled green on blue, opalescent, like emeralds on the ocean.

She found her voice, although she had to shout over the engine to make herself heard. "I pray to himself almighty that you know what you're doing. 'cos if you don't..."

Her words trailed off.

She gripped the sides of her seat so hard he saw her knuckles turn white. Squizzle yelped and slid down between his feet, squeezing his ankles in fear. Even Soro caught himself crushing the wheel in a death grip.

The tree rushed towards them.

Either the men behind had fallen for his bluff, or they hadn't. He was gambling they would have standing orders to protect the fruit of New Verity's labours. He was chancing everything on the hope, the slender, almost groundless hope, that given a choice between waiting to trap a couple of interlopers, and running to prevent damage to their employer's prize creation, they would choose the latter.

He was praying.

"Take a look over your shoulder, would you," he said. "This creaking jalopy doesn't have much in the way of reflective surfaces."

"Oh God! They're coming after us."

"Perfect."

The tree loomed over them, and its beauty had acquired a fearsome aspect, the way a battleship could be both a grand work of art, and an open threat. It rushed down on them, as if it had been hurled by a giant. The beautiful purples and pinks of the blossom shivered in the night breeze, revealing glimpses here and there of twigs, branches, and the bark of the trunk, dark, hard, and able to smash their bones and turn their bodies to sacks of blood-soaked pulp. He tried not to see that image; he tried to push it out of his mind, but it was one case where his visionary talent worked against him. He couldn't stop himself from picturing that scene, in which the old jeep, survivor of many wars, finally found its end as a twisted hunk of broken metal, its grey-green frame painted red with the wash of blood that had rushed out of the tangled, mashed bodies of the two people.

And Squiz, he thought. And poor little Squiz.

Not while I'm alive.

Not tonight.

"Grab on!" he shouted over the engine noise.

He waited until the last possible moment, and then he twisted the wheel with savage strength born of both fear and hope.

The girl didn't even scream. She bit her lip hard enough to draw a bead of blood, and one hand came up to squeeze his shoulder.

Squizzle, down by his ankles, couldn't see what was going on, but the creature could sense it, and he, too, grabbed onto Soro, and clung to him, chattering in terror, big eyes squeezed shut.

The jeep had no roof and no windows, so the wind that howled into his face lost several degrees, and felt like a chilling gale. Then, as he turned, jinking the jeep so it skimmed past the cherry tree, the air turned livid pink. He'd cut it too fine, he saw, and instead of shooting past the tree, he'd brought them in through the foliage.

"Heads down!"

The girl obeyed, and Soro shrank down in his seat, just in time to duck under the massive branch that whipped through the space where his face had been.

His hands and face turned white, and his heart tried to tear out of his chest.

Pink gave way to black. They were through.

He raised himself up in his seat, and swung the motor around. "Let's see if that was worth the cost of all those fliers and handbills," he said.

The girl didn't reply.

He turned to look at her, and started to laugh, but he choked it when he saw the light in her eyes. Blue green like the sea, he thought. Stand on the beach and look at it, you'll feel an odd longing, but it can pull you down and drown you in a second. The sea is full of salt, but it'll never shed a tear.

The odd mood passed, as he angled the car for their second swing at escape. "Looks like congratulations are in order," he said.

She unfolded herself, slow, tense, and regarded him with bright, dangerous eyes.

"Squizzle can be our best man," he said. "Best monkey, I guess. 'fraid he ate the ring."

"I'm in Hell," she said, with no expression. "No," she paused to correct herself. "Marrying you would be Hell. Listening to you spout insanity while you try to give me a heart attack is like a trailer, a sneak preview, and I want to get out of the movie theatre, and I can't."

He turned the car further around, giving the guards time to close in before they broke out of the grove. "Don't take everything so seriously," he said. "Maybe it wasn't our wedding. Maybe we crashed some other poor schmoe's party. It's just... Look at yourself."

The girl frowned at him. She turned her head away, but her eyes lingered on him, as if she were afraid to let him out of her sight. When at last she looked down at herself, she gasped.

"Pretty, isn't it?" he said.

They had raced through the boughs of the cherry tree, its branches laden with flowering buds of pretty pink blossom. They had driven with all the speed the aged jeep could give, and their passage must have made a terrific wash of air currents. Like playful zephyrs, those invisible currents had reached up through the branches, and plucked hundreds of pink petals. Soro, the girl, the entire jeep, all were sprinkled with blossom.

"In some countries," he said, as he aimed the car at a gap between two trees, "this means we're married."

The jeep shot through the trees, and her reply was lost in the roar of the engine and the singing of trees.

Once again he saw the squat yellowish labs, wreathed in choking black smoke that spread thick tendrils across the grassy gap between the labs on the right and the chain link fence on his left. He'd forgotten about the fire alarm. Somehow it had faded in to a background murmur during their trip through the grove, and that trip, though it had felt like a week's vacation in Paris, had taken scant moments. Now he would see if his gamble had been wisdom or folly.

He leaned forwards, jaw working, hands tight on the wheel. The guards had broken their half-circle, and formed a ragged band, running at their employer's prize creation. He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and sagged in his seat.

"You son of a mutant pig," said the girl in a breathless whisper. She leaned across, and kissed his cheek.

He burned past the startled guards, and shot out through the torn front gates.

Chapter 3

He turned left at the corner of a textile warehouse, shot down a road lined with maple trees, their fresh green leaves waving in a gentle breeze, and drove to the end of the road, then turned left onto a dingy lane.

"Do you know where you're going?" she asked.

He shrugged.

"Well that's just splendorific," she said, and rolled her eyes. "Here and I thought I was being rescued, and instead I've been kidnapped by captain clueless."

"They had a parking lot back there."

"And trees and buildings and a pretty path."

He eyed her sideways. "They could be following us in those cars."

It was her turn to shrug. "If they are, they've got cars with cloaking devices. God!"

He looked startled. "You feeling all right?"

He knew, as the words passed his lips, he'd made a mistake.

"Feeling all right? Feeling all right? My uncle's car's a wreck, I'm being chauffeured down the winding road to Hell, I was chained up by a gang of steroid junkies with shotguns, who are maybe hunting me right now, and just to make sure I get the absolute day of my dreams, I couldn't even get the photo I risked everything for!"

She slumped back in her seat, her chest heaving.

Soro tried to think of something he could say. "Umm... If it makes you feel any better... You can have mine."

She winced, and flared her nostrils. "I can have yours."

He flashed her a smile. "If you want it."

She looked at him with narrow, suspicious eyes. "Just why in sweet Hades were you there at all?"

"It's what I do," he said.

"What you do."

"Always have." He held out his hand. "My name's Soro."

She flinched, then her lips pressed together, and she slapped his hand aside.

"Hey now," he said.

She punched his shoulder.

"W-"

"Soro!" she said.

"Every day of my life," he said, his eyebrows fighting to raise and lower at the same time.

"I thought it couldn't get any worse."

He turned left on a much larger road, flanked on both sides by abandoned waste ground. The tarmac was rough and pitted, and a heap of junked cars sat in an open space on his right, no signs, no fences, no reason they should be there. The wrecked cars, dumped on the wasted earth, made him feel an odd sense of lonely loss.

"You're not cuffed to the wheel of a dead car," he said. "That's not so bad, I guess."

"No, I'm not, I'm stuck in my car, sitting next to the sell-out of the century."

"That's harsh."

"Of the millennium!"

He chewed his lip. Maybe if he turned around, he could give her back...

"I've seen your pictures, Mr Soro the Sell Out."

He perked up "Oh good!"

"I loathe them."

His shoulders slumped, and he rubbed the back of his neck.

"You've got a gift, a genuine gift. Oh, people yammer about talent and promise, but you've got the it."

"I've got the it?"

"You've got the it! That's a real gift, an ability no one can match. But what do you do? You take your pictures, and then you sell them to anyone with a wad of bucks."

"You're not being fair," he said. "I always try to make it even. Take the shoot for Kujyll Co."

"Where you took publicity shots for a campaign to promote animal testing."

"I guess, but I also gave my pictures to the Animal Freedom Front, for their campaign to oppose Kujyll Co." He grinned at her. "So it balances out, see."

If possible, she looked even more aggrieved. "That's worse! You've got a gift, a real, true gift from God, or the anima mundi, or the holy spirit of evolution, and you don't care what effect it has on other people."

"I care-"

"Right, yes, of course! You care so much that you make sure you don't change anything. You balance your efforts so that no one wins. Whatever impact, whatever benefit you might have had on the world, you take pains to negate. You don't need enemies, Mr Sell-Out Soro. You've made them redundant."

They came to the next intersection, but he was so taken aback he drove straight on.

After a time, when he thought she had calmed down, he shot her a mournful look. "If I'm so hateful," he said. "Why did I bother to save you?"

She laughed. "I think we can put that down to a momentary lapse. And besides, if you keep turning left at every corner, you'll be able to deliver me back into their paws any minute now."

He gave a dejected mutter. "Turn left 'cos most people turn right. S'posed to keep us safe."

She turned in her seat, and glared at him. Then her expression softened, and her eyes became clear, like a pair of placid pools. "Tell me this. If I wanted your picture to use it to campaign against GM agriculture, would you give it to me?"

He nodded. "Sure. I've done that lots of times."

"But what if it wasn't me? What if we never met, and instead, New Verity sent a guy in a swish suit and tie, and offered to buy your picture, your stolen photo, for a promotional poster, would you bite?"

He opened his mouth, closed it, and then he turned his eyes onto the road.

She sat back and sighed. "I thought so."

"...I-"

"Drive," she said. "Drive wherever you want, then get out."

..

The morning sun touched the glass-paneled side of the UN building, and lit it up like a burning torch. Belle Stakker looked out of her window on the twenty third floor, and stared at the city. Most personnel with a permanent posting to the headquarters of the UN favoured a window with a view of the harbour and the sea, but Belle would not have traded her office for any other. She loved to look down on the city. She loved to see the people made small, to watch them scurry about their affairs, oblivious to her distant gaze.

Some days she would stand there for hours, watching the city exchange electric for natural light, watch the people of the dark hours give way before the people of the day. All of it under her beneficent, monitoring eyes.

But not today.

She rubbed her fingers and thumbs together and stumped across to one of the filing cabinets beside her antique mahogany desk. Unlike most UN personnel, her desk did not have a modern, powerful computer. It did not have a slow, creaky, antique computer. It did not have a computer at all. Whereas most of her fellows would have sat down in their comfy leather swivel chairs, and pulled up the data they needed on their screens, Belle had no choice but to pull open a squealing metal file cabinet, and leaf through a wodge of yellowing paper files. Her stubby fingers pored through them. By then she'd gone through this procedure so many times that she'd didn't need to turn on the fluorescent strip lights to find what she sought. Her fingers could identify individual files by the crinkles and creases in the paper.

She found what she wanted, and took the files with her to the desk, but she didn't sit down. She wanted to. Her stout little legs protested at standing through the long dawn vigil, but she couldn't sit down. She knew that if she did, her educated hands would find their way to the bottom drawer of her desk. She knew they would pull the drawer open, reach inside, and once again betray her to her secret shame.

She brushed her fingers and thumbs together, and patted at her tailored pinstripe suit, as if flicking away lint. ddShe resisted temptation as best she could, though she knew she would submit later on. If not at dawn, then around eleven a.m., when the pangs started, or during the afternoon slump.

But not yet.

She fingered the files. She didn't need to read them. She had already memorised their contents.

...

Light in New York meant darkest night in Astana, but the Kazakh capital was as active and lit as any great city. The air hummed with an almost palpable tension that night, centred on the national arena.

Oleg Tsiolkovsky ducked a shattering right hook, and struck back with a left jab that rocked Zamran Turki's head, and loosed a spray of blood across the ring.

It was fight night in Astana.

When the country had at last thrown off the shackles of the Soviet empire, her people had faced a tremendous struggle to assert their independence, to restore their pride, to be the free nation they had dreamed of all through the long communist night. They laboured to create new institutions, and learned the hard truth that political freedom does not mean instant success and happiness. But they had a strong fighting spirit, and the drive to prove to the world that they could be a modern country, and one to envy.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the world of sports. Kazakh athletes proved time and again that they could compete on the world stage, and their greatest achievements took place in the boxing ring.

Zamran wiped his face with the back of his glove, and then he leered at Oleg, blood trickling down his swollen lips. Oleg circled, watching for an opening.

A hush fell on the audience, and then came a might shout as Oleg launched a flurry of devastating blows. The crowd screamed as Zamran absorbed the punches as if they were mere swats from a child, and returned with another crushing hook that hit Oleg's jaw with a crack that could be heard in every corner of the arena.

The cheering died as Oleg staggered back, weaving as if drunk, and then it returned with a triumphant shout as he righted himself, and struck back at Zamran with a shot to the liver that left the challenger bent double and gasping.

The thrilled cries shook the arena.

Throughout the battle, one man remained silent. A handsome black man, broad-shouldered and muscular, watched the entire fight without uttering a sound. He kept his hair short and neat neat, and his blue sweater and cream cargo pants contrived to look smart, but no amount of skilled grooming could conceal the pale network of scars around his eyes, or his blunt, crooked nose. The large, costly camera he carried seemed puny in his powerful hands, as if it might fall apart if he gripped it too hard.

And he did grip it hard.

His fingers squeezed the camera with enough force to make the plastic creak, his soft brown eyes narrowed and creased, and he breathed through clenched teeth. He winced with every punch that landed, and he looked away when blood spilled.

But he held his ground, and when the fight was over, and Oleg raised his arms as if to embrace the cheering crowd, the watcher had enough pictures to satisfy his employers.

...

The two little chimps cavorted through the branches of this little patch of the rainforest. Today the rains had soaked the upper canopy, and the band had descended to seek shelter and food among the lower branches. Rain pattered on leaves and trickled down in rivulets to splash on the distant forest floor. The rain muted the sounds of the forest, so there was little to be heard besides the soft wash of the rain, and the mournful cry of a distant macaw. The littlest chimps had downcast expressions, until one of them spotted a tiny baby monkey. So like them, and yet so different, it made a fascinating, if unwilling playmate. They chased it down through the branches, all the way to the ground, where it scrambled from root to branch, rusty brown fur shining with rain drops. It paused in a thicket at the foot of a tree. The baby chimps split up, and one of them watched the tiny monkey, which stared back at him with blinking black eyes, while the chimp's playmate circled around, as he'd learned by watching his elders.

A man crouched in the foliage, watching the baby chimps at play. He wore round-lensed glasses with gold rims and black arms, and the solid red glass tinted his eyes, and made it impossible to tell their natural colour. He wore loose, ill-fitting green jungle fatigues, jutting khaki shoes, and a white silk scarf wound around his neck. As he watched the chimps, he took the scarf in one of his long, bony hands, and wiped perspiration from his face and his gleaming dome of a head. He had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair on the back of his hands or neck, not even stubble on his long, drawn cheeks. On his left ear hung a golden scarab, and on his right middle finger he wore a gold ring with a square face, engraved with a minute Aquila. The ring looked awkward on his slender finger, and so did everything about him. He looked as if someone had attached clamps to his hands and feet, and stretched him every day of his life, until his body had become a grotesque mockery of the human form. He tucked the moist scarf back into his collar, inured to the stink of his own sweat. It came to him as a faint background to the too sweet perfumes of forest flowers, the earthy scent of rotting leaves, and the sickening odour of decaying flesh from the tiger's last kill.

His attention never wandered from the furry black bodies of the little chimps as they rustled through the forest undergrowth, chirruping to each other, and hopping in excitement. So absorbed were they in their game, they failed to catch the cries of alarm passing between their kin, higher up in the trees.

The watcher heard the cries. He knew the meaning of that sound. He should, for he'd been waiting long enough.

The baby chimps took their game to a new level. As one backed away, the other charged forward, and sent the tiny monkey screaming and running, straight into the path of the other chimp, who jumped forwards, brandishing a twig, howling and jumping up and down. The poor monkey, terrified and bewildered, yelped, turned, and ran right back into the other chimp's trap.

The baby chimps shook their little arms, stomped their feet and guffawed, delighted with their game.

The watcher changed his grip on his camera, and shifted his weight; he'd sat for hours, days, in this camouflaged hide. His tendons and ligaments had grown tight and sore, his muscles cramped and stiff. His stomach growled; he hadn't had a good meal in two weeks, and he'd sweated out several pounds from his already spare frame. His skin clung to his bones. He knew he looked more skeletal with every passing day, but still he kept up his watch. It wouldn't be long now, he thought. No, he felt it, sensed it with some organ other than eyes or ears or skin. He could smell it, could taste it on the air.

He heard a padding footstep.

The baby chimps, captivated by their game, failed to catch the warning sound.

The watcher tensed and leaned forward, though every slight movement sent pains through his stiff body. He quivered with suppressed excitement, mingled with anxiety, even fear. He was not afraid for his own skin, nor had he formed an empathic bond with the chimps he had come to film; he was too detached an observer to identify with them, to lose his control for the sake of a pathetic illusion of kinship. His fear, when it came, was of failure. He needed to catch this footage.

"I can't fail this time," he whispered to himself. "I can't afford another Strachan Bing. It's too risky."

The jungle did not reply.

As fast as it had begun, the rain stopped. The pattering ceased to sound overhead. The water that had streamed down to splash on the leaf-strewn bed of moss, dirt and twigs dwindled to an occasional drip.

The baby chimps, engrossed in play, paid no attention to the passing of the storm. They didn't react to it, neither did they catch the ominous silence that followed. The animals that had hid in the boles of trees or burrowed underground should have begun to peep out of their hiding places. Instead, if anything, they dug down deeper.

The watcher in the hide sensed the moment coming, felt it as a tension in his solar plexus, and a sub-audible tingling in his ears.

The tiny monkey, eyes wide, fur standing on end, ran shrieking from the paws of one chimp, straight at the waiting hands of its brother. The chimps hooted and chortled, dancing from one foot to the other. The monkey froze halfway between them, its little head darting left and right. The baby chimps gaped at it, barked and waved their hands, but they failed to elicit a reaction. One chewed his lip, the other drummed his feet in exasperation. This wasn't supposed to happen. Tiny monkeys weren't supposed to ignore much bigger, stronger chimps, even if the chimps were just kids.

The monkey continued to ignore them, spun around, stared into the undergrowth, and then ran away in a blur of speed. The chimps exchanged a puzzled glance, and then an orange-patched shadow shot through the clearing, pounced on one of them, and vanished, splashing the other chimp with a spray of arterial blood.

The remaining chimp remained frozen where it stood, pawing at its bloodstained face, steaming urine pouring down its legs.

Fury consumed the watcher in the hide. He bolted upright, starting a dozen explosions of agony in his legs, his arms, and his back. "God damn dumb monkeys!" he shouted.

Stifled, exhausted, and feeling cheated, he blundered at the zipped door of the hide, and when his creaking fingers failed to find it, he unstrapped his jungle knife, and slashed a hole in the thin fabric. He stepped out into the moist jungle air, wiped sweat from the elongated dome of his head, and jerked the camera up to his face. He pounded on it with the handle of his knife, denting and scratching the plastic.

His pictures flashed on the screen. The chimps appeared, and their living toy. The monkey vanished, and a moment later, one of the chimps disappeared in a dark, blood smear blur.

"Useless!" he cried.

He threw the camera down on the ground, and slammed his heel down on it. The plastic cracked, but held together.

He stamped on it again and again, until the expensive camera was reduced to flinders.

Chapter 4

Belle Stakker thrust the files aside and started up from her chair, the stuffed leather sighing as she moved. She paused, and her thick lips fell open as she caught sight of her hand. Even as she'd been poring over the yellowing papers, running her right index finger along each printed line, her left hand had betrayed her. It had crept down out of sight, acting on an impulse that emanated from deep within her psyche. Ignoring, defying her conscious will, it had snuck down to the drawer, slid it open, and pulled out the garish pink packet.

"By my eyes," she said. "By my eyes."

She bent to put the packet away, but the sight of it, the feel of the wrapper as it crinkled against her skin, the gentle waft of sugar, the scent of artificial preservatives, of synthetic strawberry cream, the total sensory impact of the packet arrested her motion.

"Why not," she breathed.

She tore open the packet, and called for her secretary, Roe Dorrens.

When Roe, a slim, perky redhead given to wearing white brocade blouses, skirts and stockings, appeared, Belle imagined the sight she must present: a squat, stubby creature, her grey eyes bulging from their sockets, her short blonde hair poking out of her scalp, her distended gut pushing at the material of her pinstripe suit. A toad, she thought. A pregnant toad, stuffed into human clothes, that's what she sees.

She brushed crumbs from her lips, and proffered the packet of strawberry creams to Roe. "Have a cookie," she said.

Roe gave her a pretty smile, and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Miss Stakker," she said. "I'm on a diet."

You would be, thought Belle. You, who need it least, can do it with ease.

"Have one," she said.

Roe's smile died on her face. It didn't go away; it remained in place, and decayed, like fallen, unloved corpse. "You're a generous employer," she said, taking the snack. She nibbled at it.

Belle felt a void within her, a hunger that neither her cookies nor her play of authority could satisfy. She'd thought to win some pleasure from dominating Roe, and instead she felt less sated than ever.

She dropped down into her chair, but regretted it. She'd thought that comfort and ease would salve her feelings; instead she found that she had to tilt her head to look up at Roe, and the awkward position reminded her of her stubby, ugly form. It reminded her of the disparity between them.

Roe seemed to sense her displeasure, and she turned her eyes away, resting them on the scale model panopticon that took up most of Belle's large mahogany desk. "It's really very impressive, your project," she said.

She had a way of making the most blatant flattery sound warm and genuine. A good thing, Belle reflected. She'd hate to have an honest underling.

"My project is more, much more than just one building," she said.

"Of course, Miss Stakker."

"And it calls for more than the meagre assemblage of low-rent talent you've provided."

"I'll send a memo to the scouts this minute," said Roe.

Belle began to feel heat and tension in her gut. Roe had a way of agreeing with her that, instead of placating her, left her more frustrated.

"I think we need more than that."

"I'm at your service, Miss Stakker."

"If you're at my service, then give me the man I want."

Roe pursed her lips, and flicked her eyes at the floor. "He's...unavailable."

"He doesn't want to be available."

"We've offered him every incentive. He's... Had better offers."

"No," said Belle. "No he hasn't. That's not the reason."

"You're correct, of course, Miss Sta-"

She cut her off with a wave of her stubby hand. "Stop Stakkering me and get to it."

Roe chewed the tip of her tongue. "He wouldn't accept until we gave him the details."

"The complete story, or just the cover?"

"The complete story. You know who he is. We couldn't buy his name with money. He could have held out forever, and he saw right through the contest."

"So you told him."

"...Our agent talked to me, and I-"

"You told him."

"I know how important this project is to you, so... But his reaction! I'm sorry, Miss- I'm sorry, but he won't do it."

"Not for any amount of money. Not for any award. Not even for charitable donations."

Roe looked down at her shiny red high heels, and shook her head.

No matter how pretty she was, no matter how quick her mind, she's failed me, thought Belle. She's no good now. I have to do it myself.

"I have a new idea," she said. "Our boy has a brother."

Roe tilted her head, and looked at her askew. "I suppose we have a file on him"

"It's time to reach out," said Belle. "Sit a while, and talk to me about him. And Roe, have another cookie."

...

It had been a bad week.

It had taken just over a fortnight for Soro's bruises to fade, scratches to heal, and the lump on his noodle to go from a mountain to a love bite from a mountain lion.

He'd taken the time to recuperate. It wasn't as if he had a tight schedule. No boss, no job, no wailing alarm in the dark hours of the morning, no hustling for the commute, shivering on a subway platform or packed on a shuddering bus, the air flesh hot, blood hot, muggy with sweat, thick with the scents of perfume, deodorant, tobacco or, trending just now, nicotine gum. No schedules, no deadlines, no pressure.

True, he did seem to spend a lot of time running, jumping, clambering up and over and often under things. There were the occasional bumps on the head, the sprained ankles, the fractured arm and the dislocated shoulder.

There were the bills to pay, and incomprehensible tax forms to file, and while his income was often remarkable, it was irregular.

But he had no complaints.

When he was working, he was all intense concentration. During downtime, he loved to take Squizzle to the park, and watch him scoot up the big weeping willow. More often than not, he'd climb up after the little monkey, and they'd chase each other across the thick, crooked branches. Later he might go to a bar or a cafe. The local owners all knew Squizzle, he was guaranteed a plate of nuts or raisins, and he got plenty of attention from the local folks, especially the kids.

And the girls. Squizzle had a way with the girls. He'd look up at them with his big, warm, orange brown eyes, and his cryptic smile, and soon the young lady would sit him in her lap, coo over him, and feed him raisins.

It didn't hurt Soro, either. He met a lot of people that way, not all of them attractive single women, although Squizzle understood his role and played it like a pro.

This time the girl was called Misty.

"No way," she said.

He gave her a soft smile, raised his shoulders a trifle, and tilted his head.

"But you can't be. Not Soro, not the guy who won a prize for the covers of Vogue, New Scientist, and Soldier of Fortune in the same year."

"They offered a prize... Well, some prizes. But..."

"They say you can make anything beautiful."

He regarded her. She had a small nose, and full, seductive lips. Her eyes were yellow, her hair a curling mass of brown silk, and her off-the-shoulder blue dress clung to the curves of her trim body, offering a teasing glimpse of her pert breasts. He tasted her perfume, a subtle hint of jasmine and honey.

"I can't make anything beautiful," he said. "I can see beauty. I can bring it out. You can find beauty in the most unexpected, overlooked places." As he spoke, he gazed into her face with an expression of rapt interest, even devotion.

She coloured, looked off to the side, and bit her full red lip with bright, even teeth. Her lips made him think of the petals of the cherry tree, and a chill passed through him.

"You're just handing me a line," she said.

"Who me?" he said, his eyes half-lidded. For an instant he saw the girl, the tree, dark figures moving around them, and caught half-heard whispers somehow near and far.

She giggled. "Don't stop."

For a moment, he wavered. Then habit and appetite took over, and he leaned forward, fixing her with an intense look. "I can make you immortal."

They walked, laughing, to his place.

...

Walking back, he felt cooler than he ought, for though the night was cloudless, the day had been fine, and the city always trapped some heat. And besides, he had the girl on his arm, and she was warm. The stars danced in her eyes as they walked or floated back to his home.

And he took her picture.

After, she looked around his place. "It's so small," she said.

"I guess."

"But these pictures on the wall, the Grand Canyon, the field of clouds, they make it feel bigger. And how could you get lonely, with these people staring at you?"

She had passed to the row of portraits he had framed under the landscapes, under the visions of nature. "Why, this old man is speaking to me," she said, with a twinkling smile.

"Oh, he never shuts up."

"I believe he's giving me a warning." She flashed him a dark look, but the crinkles at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. "He's telling me to get away from you. I'm in terrible danger with you."

He stroked his jaw. "He's a seer and a prophet. Heed every word, lest fate take you by surprise."

She batted her odd, yellow eyes, and laughed. "Fate should be careful I don't take him by surprise."

As she spoke, he caught her scent again, her perfume of jasmine and honey, strong upon him. He felt as if she'd infiltrated his haunts, his home, his person. Her smell was sweet, her words playful, but he felt his chest tighten for a moment, a fleeting instant of tension, as if his body heard something in her voice, a sinister undertone that had escaped conscious notice.

Perhaps she felt his unease, or perhaps his unformed fears were true, and she saw he'd begun to see through her lies. Her face clouded, and she turned her back on him, perhaps studying his photos, and perhaps not.

Jesus, he thought. I'm getting paranoid.

"Who's this man?" she asked, tapping a portrait with her nail. "In this one, with the lake and the mountain in the distance. You two look happy. Fishing buddy?"

He snickered. "Not even close."

"So I have to guess? Hrm... Brokeback buddies?"

She stunned him into silence, and then he burst into gut-shaking peals of laughter. "You swing for the mark, girl."

"Damn," she said, smirking. "The only book you've got in this place is that old copy of Leaves of Grass that was on the bedside table."

"Was?"

"Someone knocked it down. Only book here, unless you've hidden the rest to trick me. Do you want me to take another guess? I can hit pretty hard if you make me."

He shook his head, and walked over beside her, his limbs easy and loose, all that anxiety dissolved and washed away by laughter. "I give," he said. "That's Sam."

"Oh," she said, nodding with an exaggerated scowl. "So that's Sam!"

"My brother. Bigger. Prettier. Won every award for photography they make."

She raised her eyebrows. "I thought you'd won them all."

"He's won more. He's won awards they don't even have."

Her brows contracted, and she pursed her lips. "How come...?"

"You know my name, and not his? Sam's an artist."

Her eyes flicked towards Squizzle, who perched on a coat tree in the corner, munching a handful of roasted almonds. "And you're a monkey wrangler?"

"Part time monkey wrangler," he said, deadpan. "I'm on unpaid probation until I get me certified."

She rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, well," he said. "Sam's an artist. He doesn't touch commercial projects."

"And you?"

"I'm as commercial as they come, apparently," he said, looking into the distance, reminded of a girl with blue green eyes and pink ribbons in her braided black hair. "I do anything I want. If someone wants to pay me for it... I'm no saint, to live on wood chips and toasted ants."

"And your non-commercial brother," she said, watching him sidelong, "he needs the odd spot of help... For his wood chips."

That tension returned, a tight knot in the centre of his chest. He felt jarred, knocked off-balance by her insight into his life.

"You'd make a good detective," he said.

"Spy, you mean. Not girlfriend, not wife." She gestured at a lower row of pictures, portraits of women, most of them young and pretty. "They told me that."

"Just now?"

"The second I walked in here." She gestured at the row of portraits, at those bright smiles, at that pair of demure, downcast eyes, that furtive half-lidded glance, at the woman whose lips were pressed together as her eyes shimmered with budding tears, and at the one who wept into her hands, the sparkling liquid flowing through her fingers.

"Auburn and ashen, brunettes with braids... You have an extensive collection."

Somewhere along the way, Soro had lost track of the conversation. He felt adrift, without land or sails in sight. "I guess."

"And now you have me."

He took a deep breath, felt his chest swell, felt the pressure in his lungs. He held it, and then let out. "I have your picture," he said.

"And a clean conscience. Please. Don't grow guilt spots over Misty. She's not a little girl; she knew what she was doing. You invited me to play, like you invited these other girls. Frankly, I think the sex was just an excuse for the photo."

He almost choked. "You don't talk like most girls."

She chuckled. "Most girls are insipid, shallow beasts. You have my face, but you'll never take a picture of the real Misty." She walked to the door. She paused on the threshold, and bent down to a table laden with photographic paraphernalia. She toyed with an empty picture frame. "But that doesn't mean you can't play with your...luck, again." She took out her lipstick, and wrote her number in thick red script. "Bye bye, Eye Guy," she said, and slipped through the door.

Soro leaned against the wall and watched the door swing shut, his head spinning. He had a feeling he'd just played a game without knowing the rules.

Played, and lost.

Chapter 5

The sense of unease that Soro had begun to feel after he'd met Misty did not disappear. It grew over the passing days, and though the marks on his body from his New Verity exploit faded from the surface, he felt an inner discomfort, as if they were not healing, but burrowing deeper, chewing through his flesh to settle on the bones.

When he went outside, he felt eyes on his back. When he stayed home, he felt trapped, cut off from the world.

His feelings communicated themselves to Squizzle, who began at first to sit on his shoulders and groom his scalp, but when that failed to soothe him, Squiz tried shock tactics; he marched up and down in front of Soro, shooting nervous glances at the sofa and the fridge, and when he heard a loud noise from outside, he leapt up in the air, hair jutting out like a porcupine, and then he scrabbled for cover in the hidey hole under the wooden cabinet where Soro kept his keepsakes locked away.

Soro resisted it, but the tiny monkey was a born comedian, and the act broke him down into peals of laughter.

"You're right, Squiz," he said, sitting on the couch, tickling the critter's fur. "I've been acting like Hamlet on a bad day. Let's get some air."

He thought he'd thrown off the gloom for good, but when he got back, it was waiting for him, in a more insidious form than before.

Sam and Soro were close enough that they didn't need to talk every day. Between the two of them, they had such a common understanding that they could be apart for a week, a month, even a year, and then one day they'd sit down together over a pot of coffee, and show each other their latest pictures.

That was their bond, the uncommon talent with cameras they shared. Not a blood bond, gene bond, gift from giving parents, though that pair had given them other things. It was just something they had, something that set them apart from other people, and pulled them closer together.

But you can't sit down, drink coffee, and share pictures when you're a thousand miles apart. Well, they had the internet, but if it wasn't the same for a human, it was impossible for a monkey. Squiz loved Sam too, but he had no more patience with the web than he had for the cats that tried to stalk him from time to time, without effect. Squiz was more than a match for a street cat.

When they were apart, he and Sam kept in touch with picture postcards. Not the store-bought variety, with a pretty if unmemorable photo of some local delight, but something more personal: they made their own cards, with pictures that they took wherever they were, glued to squares of high grade cream-coloured card made in only one store, Vertigues, in their neighbourhood. Wherever one went, he made it a point to stop at Vertigues on the way to the bus terminal, train station or airport, and pick up a lasting supply. They both had portable digital printers, their small size worth the big money it cost to maintain this private connection.

When he saw the card, poking out of his mail slot, on his way home, he felt as if a warm breeze blew over him on a cold winter's eve. He plucked the card from the slot, felt a jarring, eerie tingle in his fingers, and then it passed, and he hurried upstairs to look at the picture, and read the note.

Squiz jumped and chirruped when he saw him, and ignored the proffered raisin, in favour of sniffing over the card. The little monkey rolled his eyes and puffed out his lips, snatched the raisin and bounced away.

"Weird," said Soro. "Maybe Sam forgot to shower." He glanced at the card, and wondered if he ought to wash his hands.

He dropped down on the sofa with a mug of steaming black coffee, enjoying the aroma. Squiz made a face, and strolled into the kitchen to look for more raisins. Soro grinned and sipped his drink. "You're young, Squiz. One day you'll appreciate the finer things."

He looked at the picture. He saw the sun rise over a mist-wreathed mountain range, sweeping away to the horizon. In the foreground stood a wizened Andean woman, with a floppy red hat and a polished wooden pipe that looked as though it had once belonged to Sherlock Holmes. He frowned. Something was off about that picture, but he couldn't say what it was. He turned the card over, and read the message.

He almost spilled his coffee.

"Dear Soro," he read aloud, "having a great time in the Andes. Won't be stateside for a while. Try to behave yourself until I get back. Best wishes, Sam."

He dropped the card on the cushions and stared into the glimmering pool of his coffee, his brows furrowed, almost meeting in the middle. From time to time he shook his head, or drummed his fingers on the end of his nose. Squiz came up and sat beside him, brushed his arm and gave a low murmur. Soro continued to frown at his coffee.

At last he came out his reverie, and noticed the weight of the mug in his hands. He lifted it to his lips, and grimaced. The coffee had gone cold.

He set the mug down on the coffee table and went to his bedroom. He'd been right about Misty; she'd have made a good spy. There, on the little table by the unmade bed, sat his only book, a first edition of Leaves of Grass. He picked up the volume, and leafed through it. The book appear fatter than most, for although it had only the first handful of Walt Whitman's poems, it was bulked out by the cards.

Every few pages his fingers encountered, not paper, but the harder edge of a postcard. He opened the book, and looked at a card. "A child went forth," he read out the beginning, "to the old world, to France, and what he saw he took into himself, like baguettes and Notre Dame." He flipped over the card, and there he saw the great Gothic cathedral, a beautiful monster carved out of shadow and rock.

He carried the book back into the living room and sat cross-legged on the sofa, ready to take as long he needed to undermine his concerns. He couldn't yet call them suspicions.

He turned from card to book, and back. He rifled through the pages, searching for some slender thread. Even the most tenuous connection would let him relax, but nowhere he looked, in the arrangement of words, in their mere selection, nowhere on that card could he find a trace of Whitman's substance or style.

"It's not here, Squiz," he said.

The monkey hopped up on his knee, and cocked his head, looking up at Soro with warm, puzzled eyes.

"Sam never misses the game. We've got two things in common, only two: pics and Leaves." He shook his head. "Even the cardstock feels wrong; the grain is too fine. Vertigues uses cotton fibre. I could feel the difference when I picked it up."

He felt a sudden impulse to leap up, so he stood, but where could he go? What was he supposed to do? He stumped back and forth in the living room until his feet hurt. Then he made another cup of coffee, but his restless mind wouldn't let him enjoy the taste. He set it aside, for Squizzle to sniff at, and wrinkle his cute little nose, and when Soro remembered to drink it, once again it had gone cold.

"It's no use," he said. "I've turned it this way and that, and back to this again. Sam didn't write the card."

Squizzle looked at him, and his big, orange brown eyes shone with such intelligence that Soro half-believed the monkey understood every word.

"It could be a joke. It could be a new game. Maybe I'm supposed to figure it out. Sam, what are you japing on? I don't know, Squiz. I bet if you did understand, you'd give me good advice."

The monkey blinked twice, nibbled his toenails, and then he reached out, and put one small hand on Soro's thigh.

Soro raised one eyebrow. "Either you're coming on to me, or that's a splendid idea."

He wrote his own card, and he did it right. "What do you see, Sam's Soro? A mystery, I'll tell..." After he'd posted it, he felt a little better. Then he tried calling Sam's last known location, a Peruvian hotel. That didn't work, so he tried several other ways, calling or emailing Sam's eco-minded pals, and some agencies he'd worked with. He also contacted the American embassy in Peru, in case they had news.

At the end of it, he hadn't got in touch with his brother, or heard more than fragmentary stories about some mysterious project in the Andes, but he'd reached out as wide as his arms would go.

I should feel satisfied, he thought. Or worried. Instead I feel exhausted. He flopped down on the sofa. Squiz curled up in the crook of his arm, warm and fuzzy, and together they slid into oblivion.

...

He woke in darkness, unsure what had awoken him, but with a strong urge in his gut, an urge to run. On his heart rested fingers that tightened in a murderous grip.

My God, he thought. My God, what has happened? What's happening to me?

Panic welled up inside, as the hand on his heart gripped tighter. Confused half-images flashed through his sleep-weighted mind, faces mishmashed together; some parts he recognised, others were strange or grotesque. One had the eyes of his brother under the billowing red hair of the first model he'd slept with, and in her mouth, tucked behind those full, pouting lips, stood rows of twisted grey teeth, stunted and deformed into a monstrous parody of human teeth. Drool flowed over them, with the foul stink of bile, and the coppery hint of blood.

The creature lunged at him, but he opened his eyes, dispelling the dream monster. The pressure in his chest did not vanish. Those crushing fingers developed claws, claws that dug into the palpitating meat of his heart.

I'm having a heart attack, he thought. Dear God, I'm having a heart attack. I'm going to die and I'm only twenty four!

He felt weak, no, that wasn't it. He was afraid to move, afraid to test his body, lest it betray him, lest his attempt caused his embattled heart to collapse.

I can't just lie here, he thought. If I do...

He shifted his right hand, under the twisted, sweaty sheets, reaching for the edge of the bed. The pain in his heart did not diminish. The fingers squeezed, the claws stabbed, and his fear remained strong.

Without any preamble, he felt something grasp his finger, something small and leathery and warm.

"Squiz," he murmured.

The monkey replied with a cooing sound.

"I'm not alone," he said. "I'm not alone after all."

The pain felt less, and he thought he would be able to move. He eased himself up into a sitting position, with his knees up at chest. With every shift, every breath, he feared his heart would give in, that the invisible claws would clench and rend it. When he focused on that image, his heart kicked, and the pain grew.

His brow and back were streaked with cooling sweat, and his eyes too were moist. He felt a lump in his throat, and without meaning to, he sobbed.

No, he decided. I'm not crying and I'm not dying.

He stroked Squizzle and whispered the monkey's favourite words to him in a singsong voice. "Nuts, raisins. Nuts, raisins. Dried figs and prunes, pumpkin seeds too." The monkey shivered, and not from the cold. He looked up at Soro, and gave him that odd, enigmatic smile. Soro knew of few animals, besides man, that could smile. Off-hand he could only think of dolphins, but a dolphin couldn't sit in your lap or perch on your shoulder.

He concentrated on the little monkey, stroking him, whispering to him, remembering the places they had been together. Little by little, the pain faded, and with it went the fear.

Later, as he drank his coffee and looked out the window at the deep shadows cast across streets and houses by the rising sun, he asked himself what had happened.

Heart disease?

Nonsense. Twenty four, and fit. Besides, he more or less lived on the same diet as Squiz: nuts, seeds, and fruit.

Damage from some violent encounter, unsuspected, and now making itself felt?

He shook his head. There had been more than enough falls and knocks, but not around the heart.

Poison?

He laughed.

Shared pain via empathic or psychic link?

Again he shook his head. "You watch too much science fiction on TV," he said.

Psychosomatic illness caused by stress or anxiety.

He opened his mouth as if to speak, but his left hand twitched, a minor involuntary convulsion. His brows came down over his eyes, and his lips pressed together, thin and pale.

He glared out of the window, the vista forgotten. He spoke to hear his thoughts. "Not money. Not a girl. Not trouble with some ogre of a boss. Not health, now my head's all healed. Not nuclear Armageddon," he chuckled. "Not the planet; it's still pretty. Then..."

He knew the answer already. He'd known it before he'd asked the question. It had been the last thing on his mind before he slept, and the first thing in his heart when he'd woken.

"That damn card... Sam, find a phone, return my calls! This isn't like you, man. If I did something to piss you off, I'm sorry, but..."

No.

There had been no fight. Perhaps their one usual point of contact was a card, but if one of them fired out a dozen messages, the other would find a phone.

"Unless you can't."

...

He got to the post office before it opened. The morning air blew chill kisses at his lips and cheeks, carrying the city's perfume of stale cheese burgers, the hot chemical reek of the launderette, the yeasty goodness of bread rising in the bakery oven.

His feet felt cold in his brown leather loafers; he'd forgotten to wear socks. His jeans, scratched and ripped without regard for current fashion, let in more of the cold than he could have wished, and his dark grey polo neck, though the long sleeves covered his arms, offered little help. Only when he walked out of the thick shadows, and into the golden blaze of the sun, did he feel warm.

He waited on the street, jogging on the spot or rubbing his hands together. When the post office opened, he dashed inside, hoping against reason that a new card had come.

No luck.

He shivered as he trudged back towards his place. He stopped on the way to pick up steaming hot coffee and a paper sack loaded with fresh, sweet blueberry bagels. He sipped the coffee, and chewed on a bagel as he walked, his brow twisted, heart low.

His mind was so absorbed in anxiety for his brother, he didn't notice anything was wrong until he walked into it.

He turned the corner and saw his block up ahead, and an unmarked black van parked out front. That wasn't remarkable, but the two men leaning against it were something else. They wore plain black overalls and peaked caps pulled down low to shield their eyes. They looked like TV repairmen or furniture movers, except that they bore no insignia, and neither did their van. And it was early, surprisingly early for the service industry to be alive and active.

He shrugged, thinking nothing of it, except that it might make an interesting picture series: Men of the Dawn. No, he thought, if there are men about this early, there must be women, too. What about The Dawn of-

He was juggling his coffee and bagels as he fumbled with the door, when he felt a rough hand grab his shoulder, and yank him off-balance.

Soro was not a large man. The fellow who caught his shoulder pulled force. Soro spun like a top, and the sack of bagels exploded, rings of bread flying in all directions.

And then there was the coffee.

Soro had a splintered glimpse of a crew-cut blonde, his peaked cap sitting on the back of his head, with a jaw better suited to a barbarian pit fighter than a modern son of the streets. Then his hand closed in an unconscious convulsion, and crushed the tall paper cup full of steaming coffee. The hot liquid sprayed up into the man's face, which turned an ugly red. He fell away, clutching at his eyes, moaning like a broken old man.

Luck saved Soro once, but he couldn't see it happening twice. The crew-cut blonde had a partner, a heavyset man with fat fingers and a fatter nose, who snarled at him like a vicious dog, and clawed at his arms with those huge, powerful hands.

Soro fell to his knees, a move that his assailant hadn't expected. He then dove forward, under his outstretched arms, and rolled across the tarmac, causing the driver of a battered green semi to scream curses at him.

He ignored the swearing, jumped up, and ran. More shouts, and the squeal of brakes, told him the fat fingered attacker was on his tail. He didn't bother to look behind him. He ran.

"Left, left, left," he repeated to himself, but some quirk of unkind fate took him down a bunch of streets and alleys with no left turns. He began to feel as if he was running, not a rat's maze, but one of those winding processional routes the ancient Celts followed, circling, ever circling around and around to the altar at the centre.

And at the altar, his memory told him, oh, such fun they had.

He hoped, he wished, he prayed for a real intersection, a crossing place, a choice. If he had a choice, whichever choice he made, he'd have a fifty-fifty chance of throwing off his pursuer.

Good enough.

But there were no choices. The breath rasped in his throat, his legs felt heavier and slower, and he developed a pain his side. Sweat poured down his brow and soaked his polo neck, so it clung to his chest and back. He wanted to look over his shoulder, hoping to see the fat-fingered man running out of steam. A guy that big, surely he was taking a bad chance with his heart, running a chase like this.

The sound of heavy, thudding footfalls told him a different story, and even to think of hearts reminded him of nightmares and the agony of the dark.

He turned a corner and gasped when he saw a blank wall ahead, but then he realised his prayers must have attracted the attention of some beneficent archangel. The alley stretched away both left and right; both choices were shrouded in solid shadow, for the sun still lay close on the horizon. His choice was blind, but at last and at least he had a choice, and his pursuer would face the same difficulty as he.

Habit and reason pulled him left, and he did not argue. He willed forth a spurt of extra speed, and dashed down the dark alley. In moments he found he had to slow down, because the shadow was so thick, so profound, that he couldn't tell where the air met the wall, or which was which.

He had a sudden urge to giggle, which he suppressed with an effort, because it seemed just too splendid; how could anyone find him now? In the effort to run him down, the fat-fingered man would be likely to run right past him, close enough to touch, close enough to taste his breath.

He considered that, but soon realised he didn't want to stand in the shadows all morning. And even if he had wanted to, he couldn't; the sun would rise, and the shadows would vanish. He could still hear those heavy footsteps, though they came quieter to his ears. He didn't know if that meant his pursuer was running in the other direction, or if by some evil chance he'd chosen the same path, and was following at a slower, more cautious pace. In either case, standing still could only serve him for a short time, and the alley was narrow enough that the fat man might brush against him by accident.

To be caught by accident would be as bad as to be caught by intent. He would still be caught. Whatever these men wanted with him, they hadn't even bothered to try a peaceful approach. He couldn't gamble on their goodwill.

He plunged on along his dark path.

He kept his hands stretched out in front of him, and that was a good thing, otherwise he would have discovered the end of the alley with his face. As it was, when he banged his fingers against the cool bricks, it cost him no more than some scraped skin.

He could hear those heavy steps behind him.

He felt along the wall to his left, and a moment's exploration told him he couldn't go that way.

The footsteps sounded closer.

His heart thumping in his chest, he felt his way along cold bricks to the right. The wall continued, and continued, and... He realised that he'd turned off the alley, had entered another branch. And a few moments later brought him into a lighted section.

His hoped raised, and he drew breath, overjoyed to see the dark red bricks he'd followed, the cracked grey paving slabs underfoot, the green moss that crawled up the walls. Then his heart sank.

He'd entered a cul-de-sac. Ahead, the wall rose to a high ledge, beyond which he guessed lay another street, much like this one. He saw a smelly old dumpster against the wall, and, on the sides of the buildings to the left and right, he saw a few dirty windows, and the humming white blocks of air conditioning units.

The footsteps at his back came louder and faster.

He knew a moment of panic, his heart hammered faster, and his legs trembled, weak, almost exhausted. He felt dizzy and sick, and he felt angry with himself, for making such an effort when the outcome was so stupid, so worthless.

He wished Sam was there. He wished Squiz was there. By Hell, he even wished that annoying jeep girl was there. She knew how to keep her head, and even if she lost it, he'd be better able to handle things if he knew her fate were riding on his success.

Tired, afraid, alone...

"Not alone. Never alone. I am large," he said. "I contain multitudes."

The familiar words, so often repeated in the past, took on new meaning. He drew comfort from them, and strength.

He was boxed in, but if he jumped up on the dumpster, he might be able to clamber over the wall.

"Good plan," he said to himself. "But it needs a spot of finesse."

Getting up on the ledge of that wall took an effort that wrenched his joints, scraped patches of material from his clothes, and skin from his hands. His instincts screamed for him to cross over the wall and run, but he knew it wouldn't be enough. He had to end this, so he bent back down, and worked, though the smell appalled him, his heart seemed to beat a hundred times a second, and he could hear those steps drawing closer.

That worried him. If the fat-fingered man found him too soon, all his work would be wasted, and he'd be unable to escape.

So he worked.

It proved easy enough to climb over the dumpster. The hard part came when he leaned back into it, reaching for the thing he'd seen. Lowering his head over it, he felt as if he was clutched in the clawed grasp of a winged demon, held face down, to dangle over the stygian abyss. A mephitic reek of rotten cabbage, unwashed socks, and the decaying flesh of some small animal wafted up into his face. He tried not to breathe, but his lungs laboured as he worked, clinging to the wall, his face red, his head too full of blood. Small insects shone and scurried in the dumpster, and something brushed his hand. He prayed it was just a piece of worn-out clothing, but from the softness, warmth, and matted fur, he swore it was a rat.

With a squealing noise, he yanked the thing into place, and then he hauled himself up on top of the wall, with no time to spare. If the fat-fingered man hadn't been sure where he was, the metallic scraping had to have alerted him. He walked out of the darkness, and glared up at Soro. His flushed face shone with sweat, and he'd lost his peaked cap. "I got you. Get down from there, you dirty little monkey."

Soro perched on the edge of the wall and looked down at his pursuer. He got ready to jump down the other side, and he'd do it if he had to, but he had a chance to examine the man who'd ambushed and chased him. It wasn't the first time he'd got into trouble, and he felt confident he could handle it, but trouble did not make a habit of sending burly chaps to his front door. He was in the dark, and he liked a mystery even less than trouble.

"You slobbish ape," he said. "You couldn't get your saggy ass up here, not with a team of sherpas and an elephant!"

"Why you scrawny pipsqueak! I'd like to..." he trailed off, but the clawing, strangling motions of his big hands were eloquence enough.

"You'd have had three heart attacks before you laid your littlest finger on me."

If the man had been flushed before, now he was a scarlet beacon. He looked as if he might really have a heart attack, or a stroke. What did the old time doctors call it, thought Soro, death from an apoplectic fit? He's not just on the threshold, he's walked right in and sat down by the fire.

Soro let himself slip just a tad.

The other man gave him a cruel grin. "You're trapped, little monkey," he said.

Soro chewed his lip. "Maybe your saggy ass has a point. But I could hold on here a long time, and I bet you don't want to wait."

"So I'll come and get you. With my little finger," he added with thick sarcasm.

"I'll kick you in the face."

The man scowled.

"That's right. You're too strong to fight, but if you come up after me, you'll be caught between my leather hammers and gravity. You'll get me, I guess, but it'll hurt."

The man shouted filth at him, and kicked the dumpster so hard it shook. Soro felt himself turn pale; he tried to keep his eyes off the thing, but he feared that another kick would mess up his handiwork.

He'd have to accelerate matters.

"Think you can knock me out of my tree with a few bad words? It'll take more than that. A lot more. Come up and get me, elephant boy."

"I'll make you wish you'd died in your sleep," said the fat fingered man, and he began to clamber up the dumpster.

Soro found, to his surprise, that he really did want to jump over the other side of the wall. He wanted to escape. He felt it in his muscles, his bones, his writhing gut. He forced himself to hold on as the fat man climbed up to get him.

"I'm gonna take it out of your pretty flesh," said the fat-fingered man. He hauled himself upright on top of the dumpster.

On top of the metal sheet Soro had placed over the open mouth of the dumpster.

Soro saw his moment, and he struck. He gripped the wall with his hands, lashed out with both feet, and whacked the projecting edge of the metal. He'd balanced it just so, and he'd been unsure it would even hold the heavy man's weight. Now, as he kicked it, it slid aside, and tumbled into the dumpster.

The fat man in the sweat soaked overalls had time to gape at Soro, unbridled horror on his slack face, and then he slid down the falling metal sheet, into the yawning mouth of the dumpster.

Moving with a speed that would have surprised even Squizzle, Soro hopped down to the ground, grabbed the lid of the dumpster, slammed it shut, and snapped the catch in place.

The entire dumpster shook as the fat man pounded and screamed. Soro couldn't make out the words over the pounding; it sounded like an elephant playing the drums.

"I want to know-"

The drumming drowned out his words.

"Tell me-"

The noise made it impossible to hear himself speak.

"You wanna get outta there or not?" he yelled, hammering the side of the dumpster to lend emphasis to his question.

Silence.

He drew a deep breath, paused, and let it out in a long, relaxing sigh.

"I can't have shaved trolls come to my house and loom by my door. It lowers the tone."

He heard muffled swearing, but no drumming this time.

"So I want you monster types to back off, give me some space."

He heard a word, too low to make out.

"Say again, hefty pants?"

The man shouted it, loud enough to be heard through the thick plastic. "Can't."

"I know, you're just the hired oaf."

Curses.

"Keep spouting that filth, and I'll leave you in the trash!"

Silence, except for the rasp of harsh, heaving breath. Couldn't be a lot of air in that space, and none fit for human types. He began to feel guilty.

"Tell me who sent you."

A painful groan.

"Tell me! You don't give the orders, so tell me who does."

A brutal curse. Then, "Gell. Gell Shield. I work for Gell Shield."

Chapter 6

He hurried along lightening streets, trying to ignore the crawling fear in his belly, and the chills that ran up and down his spine.

Gell Shield. Gell Shield wanted him. Worse, they knew him, knew his home. He shook his head. It didn't make sense. If they had his picture, if they'd recovered his prints from the charred shell of the smoke bomb, they could have had him arrested weeks ago. If an investigation had only just turned up some such damning evidence, they must have had the police contacts to get him locked up without the rigmarole of staging an ambush at his front door.

Ambush.

He didn't want to go home. The Gell Shield mob had to be watching it. If they were Gell Shield. He didn't know if he could trust the fat-fingered man that far. He didn't know why he would lie, and if he was working for someone else, he couldn't see how that someone else would know he'd tangled with the apes from Gell. No, he had to have told the truth, no matter how strange it was.

But Soro had an eerie certainty that it wasn't the entire truth. He half-wished he'd stuck around and carried on the questioning, but no matter how angry he was, he couldn't have kept any man locked in a reeking dumpster all that long, and he could never have left him to suffocate. His hand had trembled when he'd flipped open the catch, and then he'd run before his prisoner had time to emerge.

Prisoner. They had planned to take him prisoner. But why? He'd crawled under their fence, taken a few pictures, and bruised his knuckles against some dude's jaw. What the hell?

He still didn't want to go home. Gell Shield had a record of brutality, even if their excesses rarely came to court. They did not, as far as he knew, have a record of tracking citizens to their homes and abducting them, or of taking them to some Rancho Muerte to be slaughtered with chainsaws, but who knew what didn't hit the papers and blogs?

He circled around to his home, avoiding the direct approach. He climbed up the fire escape of the building adjacent to his apartment block, and eyed the front of his building from the roof. The black van had moved.

A few minutes more careful observation revealed that it hadn't vanished; it had been driven into a small side street, close by his building, and a man in dark overalls and a peaked cap stood on the corner, ostensibly cleaning graffiti off the wall, but Soro noted that his head tilted more to the nearby apartments than to the job under his nose.

He began the most risky part of his return. In fact, he would not have gone back at all if he'd had a choice, and he intended no more than a flying visit. But he did have to go back, for two compelling reasons.

As soon as he'd seen that flight was necessary, they'd come to his mind, so close together that he couldn't say himself which one had come first, which second.

His camera.

Squizzle.

He could pick up new clothes anywhere, he could access his accounts from any computer, organise train or plane tickets, hotels, whatever he needed. As long as Gell Shield didn't have a hacker to track him, though he could never be sure of that.

There were other personal items at his home, most especially the cards from Sam, and his copy of Leaves of Grass. Besides those few things, he didn't own much he couldn't replace. But two things could not be replaced: Squiz, who was a live and unique person, and his camera, which was a part of his body. Detachable, hungry for batteries, and mortally afraid of water, it was nevertheless as much a part of him as his tongue.

He had to leave town. So he had to swing by home.

He went to the rooftop corner nearest his building, found a convenient drain pipe, and slid down. The thing was damp and slick, and it shook with his weight. He bumped his knees on the wall, and scraped some skin from his knuckles. He was light, small, and he made it. He found a guy in black overalls and a peaked cap watching the back of his building, but he'd been expecting that.

About halfway down, he'd noticed that the drain pipe jutted out to go over a concrete lip, like a narrow path running around the outside of the building. He felt good to have something firm under his feet, although he didn't dare look down; just thinking about that narrow ledge made his legs tremble, and his insides try to pull free of his body.

He moved along the ledge with minute, cautious steps, hugging the wall, though there were no handholds. So intent was he on each creeping step that he never noticed the barrier until he barged into it.

The building whirled around him, and the distant ground sang up at him.

He clamped his teeth shut, put his arms out at his sides, and lowered his weight, though he had to bang his knees against the wall to do it. The last move saved him from falling. This was it, the moment he'd been expecting and dreading.

He shuffled on the ledge, using the right hand wall as a support, and turned until he was facing away from the building. Straight ahead, he saw the black iron railings of the fire escape leading to his own window. There was a platform between flights of stairs, just a short distance ahead, and a little below him. It had looked an easy jump from the roof. Now it looked like a leap across the gaping mouth of a titan.

He closed his eyes and wondered what it would be like if he stayed there. He had a nice view, if you like birds' eyes and alleys. He'd probably get a little rainwater from time to time, and as many pigeons as he could stun with his mighty fists. It might make a half-decent picture series, except...

No camera.

He gritted his teeth, sucked in air, fought through a pincer of nausea and vertigo, and hurled himself from the ledge.

There came a moment of incredible freedom, as if he'd grown wings. It seemed to last for an age, and then he crashed down on the iron railings, felt them shiver beneath him, and felt spikes of agony stab through his knees and elbows where they struck metal. Though agony made him want to go foetal, he had sense enough to roll onto the stairs, to be small and hard to see. He feared the man watching the back would hear the noise. He'd expected the iron platform to ring out, to make a clamour that would bring Gell Shield down on his head, but the sound of impact was subdued; instead of clanging like a bell, the metal shook, making a low note like a tuning fork.

If the man below heard or saw anything odd, he didn't show it.

Soro sighed with relief, forced his tormented limbs to carry him, and slipped into his home.

...

Something leapt on him.

He gasped with surprise, fell into a crouch, his muscles tight and ready for action, all before he realised his assailant had the size, shape and texture of a child's teddy bear.

"Squiz," he said, and though the word was spoken with relief and satisfaction, it came out as a sob.

The monkey sat on his shoulder and tousled his hair, chirping like a happy little bird. Soro patted him, stroked his fur, and found him a handful of raisins in the kitchen.

"Even if everything else has turned inside out..." he muttered.

He grabbed his camera off the nightstand, and was about to disappear when he heard the phone ring.

Soro had a cell, of course, but he tended to keep it switched off, and the battery in a different pocket. It wasn't just paranoia; if he'd had the GPS active during his New Verity infiltration, he'd have left himself wide open to legal reprisals. Since he was never sure when he'd be taken by the urge to roam and snap, he kept his cell out of action, except when he needed to contact someone.

He'd been happy with the arrangement, but Sam had not. "You've got to leave a channel open, Soro," he'd said. Hence the landline, a sturdy black phone that sat in the living room, by the sofa.

He put his hand on it, and paused. "Could be a trap," he muttered. The watchers might have seen something as he made his approach. If he answered, they'd have confirmed he was back, and then he'd have trouble come smashing through his door.

"I've run enough," he said. "I got away once, beat their men, and I can do it again."

He didn't dwell on how luck had helped him; the coffee spill, the handy dumpster. He told himself if those things hadn't come along, he'd have made some luck of his own.

He lifted the handset. "Open Road Pizza," he said.

...

"Hello Song."

He gasped, choked, and his eyes grew round. He tried to speak, but his voice had gone into hiding.

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded syrupy and smarmy, like a patronising school marm. "This isn't a bad time," she said.

He grunted, and found his voice. "I didn't say it was."

"But you were about to."

"I don't know why you'd think that."

"Perhaps because of the men watching your home. The men who tried to steal you away this morning."

He exchanged a worried glance with Squizzle. "You must be with Gell Shield."

"Oh, you know about them. That saves me the bother of explaining their agenda to you."

"Agenda... Listen, what the h-"

"No, you listen, Song."

"Stop calling me that!"

"But it's your name."

"Nobody uses it."

"Except, perhaps, your brother."

"My-" He caught himself. He rubbed his forehead, and Squiz patted the back of his head, making a soothing cooing sound. He grinned at the monkey, and turned back to the receiver. "You were right. Or wrong. Anyway, this is a bad time. Let's play this game another time, like in fifty million years."

He started to put the phone down, but the woman spoke fast enough to catch his interest. "Because of Gell Shield? Would you like them to leave you alone for good?"

"No," he said, nettled. "I'd like them to tie me up and sing to me."

If his sarcasm irritated the woman, she didn't show it. She carried on in her superior tone. "I know you can see their vehicle from your window. It's a black van."

"No, really?"

She had to be wearing a sarcasm proof vest.

"Go to your window and take a look. Then decide if you've got time to take my call."

He put the phone down, but he muttered loud enough to be heard, "if this is what it takes to get rid of you..."

He sidled up the window, afraid for some reason that this was a set up for a sniper with an abysmal sense of humour. He peered out of it sidelong, and saw the black van down the street; he couldn't see the whole thing, just the front where it poked out of the side street.

A blue car drove past, and then a red car. A seagull flapped between buildings, surprising hell out of a pair of pigeons. The sun continued to shine.

"To Alaska with this," he muttered, turning away.

A squeal of tires caught his attention.

He turned back to the window, and saw a police car pull up by the side street, and a couple of cops in dark blue uniforms got out and approached the side street. Seconds later a second patrol car screeched to a halt in front of the side street, but by then the first two had already emerged, shoving a couple of men in black overalls toward the patrol car. He couldn't be sure at that distance, but his trained eyes caught a glint of metal at the wrists of both Gell Shield men, one of them had lost his cap, and he thought he saw a splash of red on his nose and upper lip.

The first patrol car took off, and the second rolled at a lazy pace towards his building, and then past it and down his street.

He ground his teeth together, rubbed his jaw, and frowned out of the window. Of course he was happy for the police to lock up Gell Shield's overzealous agents, but he hadn't called them. The woman on the phone had to be powerful, or she had to be representing someone with influence. And whoever it was, they had taken a close interest in his affairs.

His skin crawled, and he couldn't keep his brow from getting narrow. He felt uncomfortable.

He strode back to the phone, stared at it in silence, and then he snatched it to his ear.

"You've made some kind of point, Miss Mystery," he said.

"Call me Belle."

"Okay Belle," he said, perched and stiff on the edge of the sofa. "So whaddya want?"

"Why don't I tell you in person."

...

He looked up at the UN building. He'd been here a few times before, scoping it out for pictures, but he'd never found it an appealing subject. It rose above him, a tower of glass and reinforced steel, and it shone in a sort of pretty way when the sun hit it at the right angle. That was about all he could say for it. It lacked the grandeur of the Empire State Building, or the aesthetic appeal of the Chrysler Tower. It didn't have the stately majesty of the Capitol or the White House. It was a seat of power, yes, and when you remembered that, when you considered the men and women who worked there, how diverse their backgrounds, how wide their influence could spread, then you could imagine it as a place of import. But it took a tremendous imaginative effort to see it so.

Soro's talent, what had made him valuable and then famous, was to find the beauty in all things, even the most common. But something about the UN building defied his skill. He looked at it, willing it to be beautiful, demanding that it show its sweeter face to him, but the tower stood over him, obstinate. It seemed to say, I am not come to be beautiful. My splendour is not for the eyes.

He knew he was delaying the moment, but something held him back. He couldn't call it a presentiment, nor even fear, but some intangible sense that once he crossed the threshold of the tower, he would put himself into the hands of an unknown.

He gritted his teeth, and went forth.

"Call me Belle," she said when he entered her office.

He caught a strong smell of sugar, then cloying, chemical strawberries, and a touch here and there of cinnamon or ginger. The woman clumped over from her desk, and thrust out a hand that reminded of the man who'd chased him. He accepted the hand, but he remembered that man, and how he'd left him, wallowing in stink and garbage.

She didn't shake his hand, as he'd expected. Instead she pulled him inward, and for a horrible second, he thought she wanted to kiss him, or worse. The sight of her, a hefty brute, vacuum-packed into a black pinstripe suit, goggling eyes and a face even a mother would try to forget, did not put him in a kissing mood. Quite the reverse.

With relief, he saw she wasn't going to kiss him. She half-led, half-dragged him past her desk to the window. As they crossed the room, he saw the huge model building that dominated her desk. It had a large cutaway section, so you could peer inside, and see hundreds of tiny rooms, each one connected to a central chamber by...spokes?

She whisked him on before he could get a better look. He noticed one other thing about her office; stacks of overflowing filing cabinets surrounded her desk, crammed together and drooling yellowed paper, but she had no computer.

The filing cabinets alone would have suggested something odd, but the missing computer and the enormous model building on the desk, together they made him confused and uncomfortable.

They reached the window, but still she held onto his hand. He felt more and more edgy, but he was dealing with an unknown creature here, maybe a helpful beast and maybe a dangerous monster. He didn't want to antagonise the woman, so he allowed her to continue clutching his hand in her hot, moist, oversized paw.

"Look," she said, waving her free hand out across the city. "Isn't it beautiful?"

He looked out at New York. He saw tall office towers, grey in the afternoon light, at the wrong angle to glitter. He saw a bunch of cars stacked up at a broken traffic light. He saw a gang of schoolchildren herded down the street by a harassed young teacher, her long red scarf trailing behind her.

"Well?" asked Belle.

"Wait," he said, frowning down at the city.

She shifted on her feet, cleared her throat, and he felt her hand grow even more damp. He had the sense that she was unused to waiting on others, and didn't enjoy it.

She coughed. "I said, isn't it-?"

"It has some appeal as a panorama," he said. "But the light is bad. If we waited until nightfall, the city lights would make it more striking, although we'd lose a lot of detail. No, at present it would serve better as the background for a more specific image. Say, perhaps, that woman, that teacher with the trailing red scarf. She'd make a good subject, herding her flock through the metropolis. Their colour and buoyancy would contrast with the grey palette of the city materials, with the smoke from the road, with the cold, lustreless sheen of the window glass in those towers. And," he continued, eyeing her sidelong, "with the wire fence and armed men guarding this building."

She flushed, and pulled away from him. At last he had his hand back, and he had a strong wish to wipe it clean on his shirt; he'd changed after his morning's ordeal, and now wore an unbuttoned red shirt, loose like a jacket, over a black t-shirt and a pair of new blue jeans. The jeans were as yet unmarked, and he wondered how long they would stay that way. The red shirt had fewer pockets than a real jacket, and he couldn't have crammed them with snacks for Squiz. He hadn't wanted to leave the little fellow alone, but he wasn't sure the UN was ready to accept monkeys.

"Very... Very comprehensive," said Belle. She beamed. "I'm glad I called you. You're an expert photographer, of course, but with your special gift, you're exactly what I want."

"What you want."

"The concrete jungle. The urban wasteland," she said. "Ever since cities came to dominate, ever since they became the centre of our civilisation, we've had pundits and cavillers spout such hateful slogans. Isn't it true?"

"I guess."

If she was unperturbed by his lack of reaction, she buried her feelings, and went on with greater fervour. "Look at our works of art. Take 1984 and Brave New World. Take Blade Runner and Logan's Run. Each pair shows an incredibly different vision of modernity, yes, different on the surface! But underneath, it's all loathsome, sick, rotten. You have to seek out the crassest fantasy to find a warm, pleasing, genuine celebration of the modern world, and the focus of that world, the city. We have poets and singers for the beauty of the ancient world, for the splendour of Earth and nature. Where are the songs of the city?"

He thought of Whitman, and others like him, and knew she was mistaken. There were voices, and good, strong ones, speaking and singing on behalf of modern life, of cities, of the machine age. But he had seen the fanatic zeal in her bulbous eyes, and he had no reason to antagonise her. "You speak well," he said. "Perhaps, though, you could use a better audience. I'm not sure where I come into this."

"You stand in the centre of it!"

He raised his brows, and glanced around.

"No, no," she shook her head, frowning. "Not here, not this... You! Your gift. Your talent, whatever you want to call it. You can see the beauty that others overlook. You can select it and enhance it, you can make it visible. You can take a little, broken, ugly thing, stand at the right angle, and see it as beautiful, as glorious as a rose and as a star."

Soro was not unfamiliar with compliments and celebration. This, however, so effusive, so fulsome, it brought colour to his cheeks. "You're too kind," he said. "Way too kind. I just shoot what's there. Anyone could do it."

"But they don't. They can't."

"I don't know why not."

She waved her hand as if to brush the question aside. "Who knows? That's a question for the philosophers, or perhaps the neuroscientists. You have a gift. Let's use it. We can do something wonderful for the world. We can give the city back its dignity. We can return to man his pride, his self respect."

He noted the transition from 'you' to 'we'. He felt a crawling sensation across the nape of his neck, and an uncomfortable tremor in his chest. "You talk well," he said.

"You said that."

"I meant it. Your project, or proposal, or whatever it is, is quite interesting, but it isn't why I came here."

"I helped you," she said.

"I believe you did. I would like to know why."

She leaned towards him, her eyes swollen and feverish. "I want you," she said, "to enter my contest."

Chapter 7

"Contest," he said. "Your contest."

His confusion must have shown on his face, because she patted his arm with her large, damp hand, and gave him a mothering look. "You poor lost little boy," she said.

Irritation warred with nausea, making his lips and nose wrinkle. There was something cloying about the woman; just as the office stank of sugar and sweet things, she smelled of condescension.

He shrugged off her hand. "Look," he said. "Thanks for helping me before, I guess, but I didn't come here to get your views on art and culture. I've got plenty to do; I'm busy enough without entering some mysterious contest, and I don't need whatever prize you might care to offer. Thank you, really, and goodbye."

He walked away, wound past the big mahogany desk and the model building that sat on it, seeming both minute and massive, like a castle built by pixies.

Belle called from beside the window. "It's very prestigious, my contest."

"Thank you again," he said over his shoulder, going on his way.

"You could play hob the nob with a good many famous people, lots of beautiful girls...and boys."

He shook his head, almost at the door.

"Of course," she added, her voice rising and desperate, "there's the prize money...a million dollars isn't much these days, but..."

He opened the door, and walked out through it.

"I see. If I can't offer anything else then salut!"

The door swung shut behind him, but he halted as her last word sank into his mind. "Salut," he muttered. "Salut?" He shook his head. "No way. No, no... But on the phone, she called me Song."

He bent his head forward, squeezed his eyes shut, and massaged his brow with one hand. She hadn't said it by accident. She was American, they were in New York, and nobody he'd ever met there used colloquial French to say farewell.

Damn! He'd thought he was free of her.

He turned around in her outer office, and the secretary, a slim, attractive woman, shook her head. "Don't go back in there," she whispered.

He gave her a half smile, and shrugged. He pushed the door open, and strolled back in, doing his best to look nonchalant. Maybe he was caught, but he didn't have to show it.

She batted her eyes and beamed at him. "I'm so pleased that you changed your mind."

"I haven't," he said. "About your contest, anyway. But you called me Song, so you know..."

"That your brother's name isn't Sam," she finished for him.

He walked halfway into the room, and leaned against her model. She flinched, then gave him a hurt expression, but he remained in place. When it became evident that he wasn't going to move or speak, she sniffed, brushed a few crumbs from her lapel, and simpered. It was as pleasant as a pug dripping with maple syrup.

"Beautification," she said. "The Beautification." She managed to pronounce the capital letters.

"Hrm."

"That's the name. Of my contest. You have to-"

"I wasn't interested before, and I'm not interested now. You know something about my brother."

She carried on, unperturbed. "You have seven days, in seven cities, picked at random from the entire world. In that time, you and the other contestants will photograph the most beautiful scenes of modern life. We've spent so long being ashamed of progress, embarrassed by modernity. It's time to change that. It's time to be proud of who we are, all of us, even the little and the small, to stand up and say-"

"Fuck me, that dude has a camera!"

She gaped, flushed, and her hands balled into shaking fists.

"Hey," he said, "did I trip your train? Gee, I'm sorry, that seems to happen a lot, especially when my big brother disappears, and Neolithic types come bearing gifts of cracked ribs, shattered skulls and sore toes."

She shuddered with suppressed fury. "If you don't want my help, you don't have to have it," she said. "Go back to your rat hole. Go back and see how long you last with Gell Shield hunting you. Go back and try to find your brother without my help. I'm standing here trying to offer you my resources, trying to save you unnecessary and fruitless efforts, but no, you're self-reliant, you're self-sufficient, you're happy in your shack at Malden, and to heck with everyone else."

"Walden," he said.

"Schmalden!"

He took his arm off the model, uncomfortable and unsure of himself. She looked red-faced and puffy about the eyes, as if tears were imminent, and though he'd been annoyed by her hard sell, he hadn't meant to hurt her.

"You can really help me find my brother? You know where he is, why he... Why I can't reach him?"

She nodded, and rubbed her hands. "Yes, I- I mean I suspect."

He cocked an eyebrow. "You suspect."

"I have certain resources."

"You said that."

"My position here as head of the global culture mission within the UN affords me discretion to allocate people and funds to many projects, for example-"

He rolled his eyes. "I don't need your résumé."

"For example, you."

"...me."

"If you enter my contest, I can employ my discretionary powers on your behalf. I can find your brother. I can help him."

"And if I don't enter your contest...can't you help me then?"

She shook her head. "I'm so sorry, but regulations..."

He put a hand on her desk, and drummed his fingers on the smooth, varnished surface of the wood. "I don't suppose you can prove you know what's happened to him."

"I know his real name, and yours."

"Your secretary could have dug those up! It's not as though they're national secrets."

"As it happens, I know much more than that. You and your brother are both world-class photographers."

"Thank you for the flattery," he said, irritated at his own pleasure.

"This contest is a world-class affair. Not everyone is in it for the work. Some are in it for the win."

He stared at her, unable to hide his disbelief. "You're saying that another contestant has...what, kidnapped my brother? Has taken him out of action to win some competition? That's insane! Nobody's dumb enough to risk jail for a photo contest."

She gave him a knowing look. "People have risked much more for so much less. And don't forget the million dollars. Not everyone shares your careless attitude to...treasure."

...

He marched down the street, oblivious to the people in his way. He might have been on First Street or Fifty-First. He walked in a straight line, numb, mechanical, stopping at the red lights, crossing with the green. He didn't notice the smell of the traffic, gas and oil, smoke and burnt rubber. He didn't taste the odours of the crowds, of the people who walked beside him for a time, or of those who barged past. Their perfumes of aniseed and ambergris, rose petals and saffron failed to excite him. He didn't catch the smell of coffee and fresh, hot muffins from this cafe, or the sweet aroma of honey and pancakes from that. He marched in a straight line, from one end of Manhattan to the other, until the paving slabs beat his feet to blisters, and the blisters burst, and he walked on torn skin, and still he felt nothing.

He strode as a man dead to the outer world, but inside he seethed, he burned with thoughts too dark, words too cutting to speak.

Before, he'd only suspected that Sam was in trouble. Belle Stakker had confirmed it. She hadn't given him anything tangible, but her assurance, and the way she'd dealt with Gell Shield, had been enough to convince him that she knew plenty about Soro and Sam.

Too much.

But the way she'd operated...she'd come across as a sweet, matron type, like the headmistress of an elementary school, but then she'd hit him with a series of ploys like a cynical manipulator. It made him furious. It also made him suspicious. If she was singing with the angels, why would she withhold her aid? If her hands were tied, how had she dealt with Gell Shield?

"Too neat," he muttered. "Too damn neat."

He was missing, not just a piece of the puzzle, but massive chunks of it. Again, if one of the other contestants had taken it on himself to whittle away the competition; if she knew it for an approval stamped fact, why in all hells hadn't she brought in the Feds?

He asked himself if she could be behind it all, but he dismissed it. Who would go to such lengths for a stupid competition? She was well-fed and powerful. No one sane would risk that, and the chance of a long holiday in the steel nation, to rig a photo contest.

"There's more here," he told himself. "More than I know." The recognition depressed him. He was just a photographer, and he didn't understand what was happening. He wanted to run back to his apartment. He wanted to curl up with Squizzle and hide. He wanted Sam to come back, laugh off tales of kidnap, and show him his latest pictures from the high Andes.

"Got a good reason why shouldn't I walk right into the nearest police station?" he'd asked her.

"Here in the UN headquarters...it's rather like an embassy. You do know how difficult it would be for the NYPD to stroll into the Moldovan embassy and throw their weight around, don't you?"

"How can I trust you? You obviously know something about Sam, and you haven't helped him."

She'd given him an enigmatic smile. "I've told you all I can, and I think I've been more than forbearing. The competition begins tomorrow morning. The ship New Dawn sails from Port Authority at nine a.m. If you want my help, get your passport and your toothbrush, and be on it."

He'd shaken his head. "And if I'm not?"

Her eyes and mouth had drooped. "For now, I am holding Gell Shield between my fingers. Once the New Dawn sets sail, my hands will be full, and those rascals may slip free. If you are not on board the ship when it sails, I can do nothing but wish you success in evading their onslaught, and in aiding your brother. After you find him."

He marched on, and never noticed the moment that the the sun, illuminating his path when he crossed the road, sank below the western horizon, and gave way to the ghoulish white or hazy orange glare of the street lights. He didn't catch the glaring lamps of the cars that came towards him, or the red as they sped away. He didn't hear the growl of their engines, or the sounds of thumping music from the bars, nor the excited chatter of the cafes and restaurants.

He did not see himself, tiring, slowing, trudging along a dark street, alone and oblivious to the myriad flashes of beauty that yesterday his talented eyes would have seen, his fingers itched to snap.

At last, when the sounds had died, and the street lay silent and empty, a lone figure stood just outside the lighted pool of a street lamp. It made his eyes hurt, so he looked away, and spoke into the shadows. "What do you see, Sam Soro?"

Not a car hummed, nor a bird crooned. Neither life nor sign broke the silence.

"Nothing."

...

Waves lapped against concrete balustrades, and murmured under the sighing breeze. Clouds massed thick overhead, and shone red as neon, with here and there a flash of purple or gold. If the clouds had been a cloak, it would have been fit for a king. The sun lingered on the horizon, fat and gleaming through the clouds. The air carried the smells of salt, diesel, and fresh, briny fish.

The New Dawn stood at anchor, rocking on the waves. The UN had saved no pennies to put on the Beautification. She rose high above the waterline, a fully equipped cruise ship, her hull and facings pristine white, and although the sun hid his face behind the clouds, she sparkled red and gold under the fire-tinted sky.

A crowd gathered on the rear deck, milling along beside the white railing, to look back at the harbour, or up at the sky, or to clump together, and talk. Soro couldn't hear them speak, but he could guess what their minds were on: the contest. Who were they playing against, and how much of a threat were they? What would be the first day's location?

He couldn't hear them speak, but he could see them from the harbour's edge, where he stood, gazing up at the ship. Two sailors in neat white uniforms eyed him from the lower deck, where they manned the gangplank. He'd heard them making bets on whether he'd embark. He checked his watch: ten to nine.

At nine, the New Dawn would sail. What would happen if he wasn't on it? Belle Stakker would be upset, of that much he was sure. Would she really release Gell Shield to make more attempts at revenge? Would she continue to withhold knowledge of his brother?

He felt stifled. He felt like a blindfolded ape, straining at his bars, with no knowledge who had taken him, where he was going, or why. He hated that feeling. His heart kicked, and hot rage flared in his chest. He wanted to throw the thing back in Belle's face. He wanted to show her she couldn't manipulate him.

Squizzle, sensing his feelings, shifted on his shoulder, nuzzled his ear, and chirruped.

Five to nine.

He sighed, and then he winked at Squizzle. "I hope you don't get seasick."

He strode across the gangplank.

...

As soon as he set foot on the ship, he heard a man call down to him from the upper deck. "Ho there, welcome aboard!"

He looked up, and started, for he seemed to see a skeleton leering down at him, white bone arms leaning on the white metal rails. Squizzle shivered, and pressed himself closer to Soro's skin.

"Thanks, I guess," said Soro.

The bony apparition stalked down the steps from the upper deck, and as it approached, he understood. White bone resolved into white cloth, and the grinning skull changed into a man's head, unusually high and thin. The skin was not as pale as it had appeared, but it was drawn, so stretched across the man's long, sharp features that it appeared almost translucent. Soro had the creepy feeling that if he squinted hard enough, he would see through skin and flesh to the bones beneath. The man wore a fine white suit that would have gleamed, had the day been brighter. He smiled, and it would have been a warming welcome, but for the final touch, that had completed the skeletal illusion: he wore a pair of glasses with tiny round lenses. The arms were of white gold, and the lenses, which concealed his eyes, were that blue of the edge of the sky, when darkness devours the last light of day. From a distance, they had looked like gaping holes in a face without flesh. Up close, they merely looked creepy.

Closer, there were a few other signs that this was a living man, with blood in his vein, and tastes in his heart. He wore a scarab ring at his left ear, and a thick gold ring on the right hand that he thrust out. Soro concealed his misgivings about that long, bony item, accepted the hand, and the stranger shook with strength and vigour that belied his appearance. "Tigh Strugg," he said, in a Boston accent. "You must be Soro. I've been hoping you'd show up, and what's more," he glanced at the upper deck, and then spoke quietly through the side his mouth. "Had a little bet with Jack. Poor darling actually laid money you'd stand there by water's edge, and watch us sail into the red yonder. You've won me a spot of money, enough for trinkets and postcards." He spoke louder. "Thoroughly glad you've come to join us. Let me take you upstairs, or up-deck, whatever the bonny blazes these nautical fellows say, and introduce you to the rest of the penitents." He glanced at Squizzle, his expression unreadable through those dark blue glasses, and then jerked away.

Soro let Tigh lead him to the upper deck. He felt as if he'd been caught up in a whirlwind, the man spoke so fast, and moved with such energy. He'd had a shock when first he'd seen him, and again when the man had mentioned postcards. And the look he'd given Squizzle...what had that meant?

He set aside his misgivings as Tigh led him to the little crowd of photographers who'd thrown down for the Beautification. Whatever had caused the man to look starved three days past death, Tigh couldn't help having that body, but he spoke with warmth and enthusiasm. Soro liked people on an individual basis, but he'd never been fond of crowds, unless they were posing in front of his camera. Tigh, on the other hand, whirled him through the group, greeting, joking, laughing.

He met Evra Sofronian, a rounded man with frizzy hair and laughing eyes, then Joshua Vermont, who had eyes as blue as the sea, but pale cheeks shading to green, evidently battling a pre-emptive strike of seasickness. Tigh led him to Koober Kangan, a dignified old black man with a shaved head and a neat grey beard, his brown leather jacket worn but well cared for, and a serene distance in his eyes, as if he observed all things from atop some Himalayan peak.

Tigh took him from one person to another, never at a loss for words, never fumbling over an unfamiliar name. He must have had a boundless memory, for he seemed to know, not only their names, but the towns and cities of their birth, their career history, and the accolades they had won. This one took a golden laurel at Avignon, that one a singing star at Turin.

"And of course," said Tigh, "one woman who needs no introduction from me."

There came a lull.

Soro looked up at the woman, no, the lady before him. Her blonde hair flowed past her shoulders like a river of stars, and her face was a model of classical beauty. She wore a long white dress of shimmering lacework, dancing filigree at the hems, and though high cut and sleeved, it hugged her ample figure, and contrived to create a sensuous effect magnitudes greater than something less modest. Her legs, her feet, her shoes, if any, disappeared beneath the billowing folds of her dress. She was beautiful, and more, she was majestic. And yet her eyes, when he came to them, shone with the cold light of dying suns. As he stood in the rays of those twin stars, he felt himself in the presence of a goddess, and he knew a thing: he could admire this woman, but he could never love her.

She gave him a smile, a slight tilt of her head, and then Tigh led him away. He realised he had been dismissed.

"Don't take it too hard, old bishop," said Tigh. "She's like that with every man. Lifetime of shooting male models will make a girl, shall we say, jaded? But here," he steered him to a solitary man, leaning against the rails. "Yes, here, a good man and a real man. Let me introduce you to my new and good friend, Jack Johnson."

Once again, Soro had too peer up to take in the figure before him. Jack Johnson was a tall black man, with tremendous shoulders and chest. He had short hair and a handsome face, marred by a patchwork of scars around the eyes, and a nose long ago hammered almost flat. He wore black jeans, a loose white shirt, and a photographer's vest, one of those with countless pockets that would in ages past have been stuffed with spare film, and now carried batteries, memory cards, and a satellite phone. He gave Soro an appraising look, with the hint of a rueful smirk playing about his mouth.

"Pleased to meet you," said Soro. "Jack Johnson, hmm? Aren't you some kind of boxer?"

Jack stiffened, and his eyes tightened into a hard stare.

...

Jack Johnson scowled down at him.

Soro was moved to consider his size. Most days, if he thought about it at all, he felt grateful for having been born a little smaller than most men. He could slip through gaps others couldn't, climb up holes, crawl under fences, creep through cracks. He could squeeze himself into tighter spaces. Earlier, for instance, when he'd been forced to take the long way home, he'd stepped onto that narrow ledge, and if he'd been a bigger man, he'd likely have slipped off and died.

The ledge...

Forget the ledge! Had he been any heavier, that drainpipe would have torn away from the wall, and cast him down, to smash his bones, pulp his liver, paint his blood across the street below.

No, his body was not small; it was the right size for a free and untamed man of the lens and shutter.

Even so, as he stood under Jack's withering scowl, he felt that perhaps size had its own advantages.

"You shoulda stayed on the dock, little man," said Jack.

His heart rocked, but he wasn't going to run away from a bad attitude. He was on a ship. Where could he go? He tried humour. "Never been strong on brains, I guess," he said.

Jack's eyes narrowed even further.

"Don't get sore at a guy for knowing the name," said Tigh. "He's a nice fellow. Anyhow, you're just mad because you lost. Cough up whatever in Hell you owe me like a good sportsman."

Jack turned his glare on Tigh Strugg. "You're worse than he is," he said. "Maybe he don't know what he said, but you do, Typhoon."

Tigh twisted his mouth in a wry smile. "The power of a name. It's like walking west at sunrise. No matter how far you go, that shadow's always there before you."

Soro exchanged confused glances with Squizzle. He knew now there was something off about these men. Either they were actors, playing at being Tigh Strugg and Jack Johnson, Dadaist actors, or they moved in a circle he had never known existed.

He shook his head, hoping these useless thoughts would tumble out of his ears and fall away. He had a purpose, and he couldn't afford to let things like this distract him. He had to move among the contestants, scope them out, and learn who was behind his brother's disappearance.

And he couldn't investigate anything if Jack used his head for bowling practice.

"Jack," he said. "I'm real sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I-"

Jack looked down at Soro with hotter, harder eyes than before. "Hurt my feelings," he said in a low monotone. "Hurt my goddamn feelings." His voice began to rise. "What in God's good name do you know about my feelings, you insolent mouse?"

Soro took a step back, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest. Then he gritted his teeth, and squared his shoulders. He hadn't come looking for a fight, and he had no idea what he'd do if one erupted, but he wasn't going to let some sensitive ex-boxer push him around.

Tigh stepped in between them, put a hand on Jack's shoulder, and his mouth near Jack's ear, talking fast and low. Jack tried to shove him aside, but Tigh held on in spite of the bigger man's obvious strength.

"I'm not gonna stomp the mouse," said Jack. "I'm just gonna hear him squeal."

Squiz reared on Soro's shoulder, and hissed at Jack.

"What the f- I thought that was a toy. What kind of weirdo are you? It doesn't matter. I'm gonna-"

The ship's horn sounded, a deep, mournful bellow that drowned out Jack's words, along with the chatter of the other contestants. Soro was kind of curious what Jack had been about to say, but he figured he wouldn't have to wait too long to find out.

A shudder ran through the ship, then a lurch, and then it began to pull away from the harbour.

"Hey!"

A girl's voice, high and frantic.

"Hey you!"

They turned to face the receding dock.

"Stop, you sons of albino goats!"

"No way," said Soro.

Standing at the edge of the dock, waving her hands and hopping up and down, he saw the girl with the jeep. Her black braids, pigtails and pink ribbons waved in the breeze, and her blue-green eyes flashed with the sun's fire as she jumped up and down. She wore a neon blue jacket over a purple t-shirt that showed a storm of pink lightning. She had a short, black leather skirt over white leggings, and on her feet she wore a pair of heavy brown walking shoes. She also had a tiny green rucksack, and a hefty white leather purse.

"By the nose of God," he breathed. "Sakura! Is that you?"

"You!" She shook her fist at him. "You evil-brained sack of donkey testicles! You did it. It was you!"

His brow wrinkled. What was with this day? Everybody seemed mad at him for no reason.

"I'm gonna miss the contest because of you," she screamed.

Now that was simply unfair. He couldn't resist a parting jibe. "So jump, bitch!"

And she did.

...

The girl's caterwauling had drawn a clump of people from the gathered crowd, to watch her performance with, variously, surprise, amusement, and fear. A collective gasp rose from the group when they saw the girl run at the edge of the dock. Some shook their heads in disbelief. The crew had pulled in the gangplank. The ship was already some metres from the dock, and gaining speed. She had to stop short. She had to, or she'd plunge into the cold water of the harbour.

Soro grabbed the rail with both hands, knuckles white, breath trapped in his frozen lungs. He tried to shout, warn her off, tell her to stop before it was too late.

She couldn't make it.

Time seemed to slow, and events passed in beats, pulses of motion, like a series of frames on an old movie reel. In one, the girl stood a few paces from the edge of the dock, her face pinched, eyes tight and calculating. In the next, one arm shot forwards and one back, her legs bent and tense. In the next she was a blur of neon blue, black, and shimmering white. Then she stood over the edge of the dock, locked at an unnatural angle, her feet poised on the hard edge of the concrete, her legs folded under her like a pair of powerful springs.

No, he thought. You can't make it.

The next frame shone before his eyes, of the girl flying through the air, her body stretched out in a straight line from nose to toes, her arms thrust forwards, hands grasping at the receding ship.

He almost believed she would succeed.

She vanished.

Time returned, and it seemed to move faster than natural, as if it resented the intrusion of human forces. He heard a crash and a scream, and more screams from the crowd. He heard Jack swear, and saw a ghoulish look on Tigh's face, a grimace twisted between horror and excitement. Squizzle leaped off his shoulder and shot down towards the lower deck, and he had less than a second to take everything in and digest it, because then he saw it.

A hand. A small, pale hand, clasped on the edge of the lower deck.

He ran.

He raced down narrow metal stairs that shook and clanged with his steps, heard a pounding echo behind him, ran harder, and threw himself at the lip of the deck.

He crashed down on his chest, and the impact with the metal forced the breath out of his lungs, and smashed the world into dancing stars, but somehow he caught the girl's hand in both of his, and somehow he held on.

His vision cleared. He sucked air into his lungs, and prayed that the techno beat in his chest wasn't a sign of an impending heart attack. He gripped that hand with all the strength he had.

"I'm not gonna let you fall," he muttered. "I'm not gonna let you go."

He didn't let go. His hands didn't slip, in spite of the sweat that now began to course down them. His hands never slipped.

His body slipped.

The girl shrieked.

He mustered his breath, and shouted. "It's gonna be okay. Hold on, it's gonna be okay."

"I'm dangling over the Devil's blender," she screamed. "How is that okay?"

"Oh God," he said. "The propeller..."

He ground his teeth, willed strength into arms that grew weaker with every breath, and strained to lift the girl.

He heard a pounding, clanging racket that ran from the deck into his body, to shake his bones. Was the ship tearing apart? He saw shoes, and felt a tiny spot of relief. It wasn't the sound of metal being rent apart. It was the way footsteps sounded when you pressed your head against a metal floor.

He couldn't look up. It was all he could to breathe and hold the girl's hand, and it was getting harder to do both.

The newcomer crouched down, and Soro's heart sank. He saw, on the dim edge of vision, the strong, marred features of Jack Johnson.

"Hold on," said Jack.

"No, I think I'll let her fall," said Soro.

"Be that way, you snarky son of a bitch," said Jack.

"Don't you dare," yelled the girl.

Jack crouched at the edge, and braced himself against the railing. "Reach up, girl," he said.

"I can't!"

"Reach up your hand, or I'll leave you with monkey boy."

"Monkey boy?" muttered Soro.

There came a pause, and then the girl grunted. He couldn't imagine what effort it cost her, but Soro felt proud of her. She wasn't giving in. Her other hand rose over the edge of the deck, and Jack grabbed her arm.

"Together now," said Jack.

With Jack's help, Soro managed to get his legs under him, but the effort of holding on had drained him. He didn't want to say anything, for fear the girl would lose hope, but he shot Jack a look that said it all.

"We do this together," said Jack.

Soro's jaw sagged.

"I can't do this by myself," said Jack under his breath.

Soro understood. He set his jaw, took a deep breath, and together he and Jack heaved the girl up, up, up, over the rail, onto the deck.

She collapsed on the deck, and Soro swayed, and slipped to one knee. Jack stood, upright and firm. Soro glanced up at him, and although the man did not smile, his eyes sparkled. Then he strode away, and disappeared into the depths of the ship.

...

"So you saved the yacht?" said the woman.

Tigh grinned. "If you can call it a yacht, with no mast, no rudder, a ruined upper deck, and a hull as watertight as a machine-gunned melon."

The group roared with laughter. Soro joined in, more out of politeness than amusement. It was kind of funny, the tale of how Tigh had earned his nickname. By then everyone had started calling him "Typhoon", and repeated the request to hear how his attempt to follow the course of Magellan's grand voyage had come close to failure, to wreck and briny death when he'd been struck by not one or two, but five sea storms, each more terrible than the last.

Soro listened, and enjoyed the stories, although he gave no credit to Tigh's seeing a many-limbed monster leap out of the water and take to the air off the shores of Peru.

He gave the man little credit, except for his skill at telling stories, because whenever he thought back to their leave-taking, back to when the girl had thrown herself at the ship, he recalled how only Jack Johnson, anger issues Jack, had run to her aid.

And me, I suppose, he thought. But if Jack hadn't acted too...

The cruise ship had a grand restaurant, serving a smorgasbord of delights. He'd sampled the caviar and the smoked salmon, the quail's eggs and the 'hard tack'; actually a delicious kind of oatcake made, if the waiters were to be believed, in the ship's own bakery. The chamber rang to a live violin concerto and garrulous chatter, the air tasted of roast pork and beef, of fresh sushi, of baked potato and steamed rice, of oregano and ginger, and more, of red wine and white, of good foaming beer, of sparkling champagne.

Soro had heaped his plate with delicious, aromatic food, but when he took his place at the sweeping oval table, the gleaming steel fork felt cold in his hand. He picked at his food, and felt no appetite, though he knew his body needed fuel and vital supplies. His back, chest and his arms were leaden and aching from their roots in his shoulders down to their tips at his fingers. He had to make slow, careful movements, or he'd reignite the fires of agony, and this left him feeling, and looking, he figured, like a much older man.

He couldn't join in the laughter, or the flowing conversation. He felt like an intruder, an imposter. These were serious professionals, here to compete for a world-class prize. He was a young man, probably a kid in their eyes, and he cared nothing for their prize.

I shouldn't be here, he thought. Dammit Sam, where are you?

He tried to eat, but after a few bites he felt heavy and full, almost nauseous. He felt exhausted.

He started up from the table, thought about clearing away his plate, and decided to leave it. He felt guilty, but the waiters could clean it up. They'd probably seen worse things at sea.

"Leaving so soon?" said Tigh.

"I'm done in," he said.

Tigh smiled at him, and again he looked like an amused death's head. "Shame. Wanted to hear your story. Suppose I'll have to get you later."

Soro shrugged, and went to find his cabin.

Chapter 8

Tired as Sisyphus, he dragged himself back to his stateroom. As he came near, something made his neck hairs prick up, and gave him a creepy sensation in his gut. Something was off. When he got closer, he saw it.

The door was ajar.

Soro knew he hadn't left it open. He patted his pocket, and felt the hard plastic rectangle through his jacket; the slim key card hadn't left him. Fear began to mingle with his fatigue.

He remembered Belle Stakker's warning. One of the other contestants was behind Sam's disappearance. Perhaps they hadn't had their fill of kidnapping. Perhaps they had a quota to meet. Perhaps they had decided to skip the abduction, and go straight to mutilation and death.

His guts filled with chill, seething mercury.

He paused on the threshold, fatigue weighing him down, caution holding him back.

Is this it? He asked himself. Is this all I've got?

He felt the way he had when Jack Johnson had scowled down at him. He liked the memory. He used it. Picturing Jack's scowl, he reversed the role, and saw himself as Jack, and painted the man's fury on his own face.

Anger gave him strength. Not much, but enough to push through fear and fatigue. Enough to push open the door, and walk through it.

Just as he'd been surprised by the New Dawn's grandeur, he'd been impressed by the chambers provided. He'd never reckoned his home too small, though his brother would insist on calling it a hobbit hole, with a grin and a wink. His stateroom, however, made it seem a mouse hole.

It wasn't that he had any more rooms; they'd given him a bedroom and an off-suite bathroom, but they'd made them huge. The starry patterned walls rose to a ceiling almost twice his height, and the bed, with cream silken sheets, could have supported four people without forcing any more intimacy than they wanted. If he took his boots off, he'd lose his toes in the red shag pile carpet. The mirror wasn't full-length, not for him. He couldn't have made it full-length without standing on his own shoulders, and jumping up and down.

He didn't consider these things as he entered his room for the second time, and yet they acted on his psyche, reminding him, at a level below the threshold of awareness, of how small he was, and how vast could prove the forces ranged against him.

He entered the room, legs tense, ready to bolt. His jaws tightened hard enough for his teeth to squeak. His hands curled and uncurled, half-raised, but unsure. He told himself he was ready for anything, but the sickly cold in his gut belied his thoughts.

When he saw what waited for him, he jumped. No matter how hard he'd tried, he would never have expected this.

The girl sat on the edge of his bed. She'd changed out of her pink, lightning-crossed t-shirt, her black leather skirt and her leggings. She wore an elegant black dress, low cut and strapless. It clung to her figure, suggesting, rather than displaying the curves beneath. Her hair was still a dark chaos of braids, pink ribbons and pigtails, and below she still wore heavy walking shoes, but in between, she made an appealing sight.

"Are you done?" she asked. "Would you like me to turn around for you?" Her voice, though laden with sarcasm, had a softer quality than before, and the corners of her mouth turned up. Squiz murmured with sleepy content, snuggled in her lap, her hands in his fur.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

She blinked several times, and colour rose in her cheeks. "Is that all you're going to say? I come here and wait for you, and all I get is 'what are you doing here?'"

He stiffened. "I shouldn't have asked."

She bit her lip, and watched him.

He shook his head. He felt as if he'd run ten marathons, climbed ten mountains. His fear fled, but in its place came anger, fury, hate for Gell Shield, for turning his home into a trap, hate for Belle Stakker, who'd forced him to board this ship to Wherethehell, hate for the people who'd taken his brother. "I shouldn't bother with dumb questions. You've come to continue your infiltration, and turn my life into an unremitting nightmare."

She flinched, and her cheeks flushed dark red. "You- You-"

"Yes, I know," he said in a deadpan voice, leaving the door ajar, and walking into the room. He rubbed his face. "I'm a monster, a beast. I screw up all of your plans. I show up where I'm not supposed to be, all to torment you, because I exist to cause you pain."

He stopped in the middle of the room, and shame rushed on him. He hadn't meant to say those things. He hadn't meant to be so mean. He wanted to pour his wrath on the nameless men who'd done...whatever they'd done to Sam. But she was there, and it was so easy to be angry.

She clutched the edge of the bed, clawing at the pristine duvet. "You're so horrible! I don't know why I came."

He sank into a chair and bowed his head. "I'm... What does it matter?" She was better off hating him, he thought. The people closest to him were doomed to suffer.

She stood up, dislodging Squizzle, who muttered in sleepy annoyance, slid down, and clung to her ankle. "Maybe it doesn't matter to you," she said. "Maybe nothing matters to Mister Perfect Picture. But some of us are decent folks. I came here to thank you. What d'you say to that?"

He flicked his eyes up at her. "Thank me?" he said.

"Yes!"

"You?"

If she'd been red before, she was now moving into infra red. If she went further, she was liable to leave the visible spectrum, and become an invisible girl, a floating black dress wreathed in steam. Perhaps her blue-green eyes would remain, to float and glare. "You son of a brinky muncle!"

She started for the door, but Squizzle clung on. She tried to shake him free, but he refused to budge, so she marched to the door with him weighing on her ankle, his tail curled around her leg.

"If you want to thank someone," he said to her retreating back, "you should go to Jack."

She didn't look at him. "Who?"

He sat up. "Jack Johnson. He pulled you onto the deck. He's the man you should thank."

She paused at the door, her head cocked. She stood there for a long, awkward moment, and then she turned around. She looked at him from the doorway, and her eyes shimmered with tears. "He did that," she said. "And I will thank him. But... Oh! You're so mean, you're making this so hard. I'm going to thank him second, because if it hadn't been for you..."

He leaned on his knees and looked up at her, a confused frown on his face.

"If it hadn't been for you... When I jumped, I thought I was going to die."

"You caught the edge," he said. "You almost made it."

Humour flashed across her face, and then she hid it. "Almost. But I couldn't hold on, one hand slipped, and I felt the other one going." She gazed at him, her eyes no longer hot, but warm. "You caught me. You saved my life. So I came here... I came to say thank you."

His heart kicked, and he had to swallow. "Hey... It wasn't so far down."

"Yeah, but..." She looked at her feet. "I can't swim."

He gaped at her. He couldn't find the words, but his attitude toward her underwent a comprehensive, if split second re-evaluation. She'd hurled herself at the New Dawn, knowing that one mistake would likely mean her death.

In a way, she'd done it at New Verity, too.

He rose, and started towards her, framing the words, but before he could reach her, before he could say what he needed to say, she turned and ran. Her swift, darting movements surprised Squizzle, who fell on his back, his big golden brown eyes blinking at the ceiling. Soro checked he was okay, and then shot out into the hallway.

Left and he saw nothing, right and he caught a fleeting glimpse of a dark figure vanish around a corner. He ran after her, surprised at his own concern. He couldn't leave it that way, not after the things he'd said.

He turned the corner, and came onto a central landing, with four corridors coming off it and stairs going up and down. He jerked his head around, and strained his ears, but he caught neither sight nor sound.

"Hey," he called. "Hey! I don't even know your name."

He stood there, unsure of himself.

The girl's voice called to him, from where, he couldn't tell. "Arima."

"Arima," he said. Then again, louder, "Arima!"

She did not answer again. After a time, he gave up. She had vanished into the labyrinth of the vast cruise ship.

He trudged back to his stateroom, yet though exhausted, his heart sang.

"Arima," he murmured.

He flicked off the lights, and kicked off his boots, but he was too tight to peel off his clothes. He crawled into bed. Then he remembered Squizzle.

"Squiz. Hey, Squiz," he called.

The monkey ambled in through the open door.

"Good t'see you," said Soro. "Shut the door, would you?"

His head sank into the deep, soft pillow, and he fell into blessed oblivion.

...

He fell or swam through depth upon depth of interstellar ocean, every layer lit by a differently coloured sun, every layer formed from coalescing gases with a different refractive index, so the light as it passed through one would shift and cavort as it reached the next. The suns shone with a myriad dazzling hues, some orange-red, some deep blue, some a shimmering green. Adamantine dust, a powder of diamonds, flecked the nebulous haze, casting scintillating rays in every direction.

He swam or fell through the interstellar light show, and his hand itched, but in this place no product existed but the gifts of stars. Nothing could exist in that circus of stars except the game of stars, and his own formless consciousness.

An impossible thing occurred: a tiny hand plucked at a head, a head that could not be in this place between the stars.

The hand plucked at that head again, and he felt an irritated tremor ripple through his body. That, too, was a thing of another space, another kind of space.

When he sensed it draw near a third time, he tried to avoid it; he attempted to swim, or float, or fall away from the grasping hand. This attempt failed, for instead of retreating into the comforting, bodiless abyss of light, he pressed his face into his pillow, found he was smothering himself, lurched upright in bed, and coughed.

Awake.

No stars, no light show.

All a dream.

The hand came again to worry at his head, accompanied by the soft grunts of a distressed monkey. Perhaps it was not entirely a dream.

"Mrrffgh?" he said, squinted, and rubbed bleary eyes, eyes that felt sore and swollen, as if he'd spent fifteen hours poring over the Great Soviet Encyclopedia by candlelight. He peered out from the warm embrace of the covers, a wasted effort if ever there was one, for the lights were off, and the state room had no windows, or other source of illumination. He saw black silk, swathed in shadows, painted with tar.

The room looked brighter with his eyes shut.

Squizzle's tiny fingers touched his head, brushed his hair, found his ear, and clung on.

"Rrgh. Geroff, Squiz."

The monkey held on, and even tightened his grip. At the same time, he began to shuffle and then jump up and down on the pillow. Soro felt this as a tug that soon became a painful yanking. If the monkey didn't let go, they'd have a one-eared photographer on this contest. He wondered, in his quarter-awake way, if that would change Belle's plans, and help get Sam back faster.

Probably not.

He sat up in bed, a move that cost him greater pain, for Squizzle, accustomed to climbing and swinging, had tough little fingers. The monkey clung on, and the only change was that now he was hanging from Soro's ear.

"That's enough, you scraggly little furball!"

He tried to push the monkey off, but that didn't work, so he resorted to prying at the little fellow's fingers. That did it, and Squizzle would have tumbled flat onto the bed, had Soro not held up a hand to catch him. He felt pretty sure the little guy couldn't hurt himself falling onto a big soft bed, but no matter how annoying or agonising the ear pull had got, he'd never have let him go splat on a hard deck, and he wasn't going to risk his hairy hide on a soft one, either.

He rubbed his ear. "Sorry, Squiz," he said. "You didn't give me much choice."

The monkey was having none of it. He burrowed under the covers, which were taking on a faint, greyish shade as his eyes adjusted.

"What happened to you, anyway?" he said. "Nightmares? Central Park squirrels ganging up on you again?"

He listened, but the monkey had gone silent.

He frowned. "Squiz?"

Then he heard it. Breathing. Not the soft sound of a mini monkey, but the harsh whisper of a grown human straining to suppress the sound of his breath. If he'd been uncertain, a second breath came, not in front of him, from the bed, but behind, from somewhere in the big, dark stateroom.

Soro came awake. His heart jumped and began to drum. His hands and guts went cold, and the hairs on his neck and back pricked up. He gritted his teeth to keep them from rattling, and turned around.

The chamber still lay in darkness, but his eyes continued to adjust, and if he paid attention to his peripheral vision, he could make out the shapes of his table and chair, the shapeless shadow of his bag on the floor, and the faint glimmer of the mirror in the off-suite bathroom, half visible through the open door.

His senses yelled at him. Something was off about the picture. The room should have been in total darkness, and even the most well adjusted eye, even a damn cat's eye couldn't see in the utter black.

The door. The door hung ajar, and allowed a trifle of light to seep in from the dim night lighting of the corridor outside.

It came back to him in an instant. He'd dropped into bed, as weak as a wilting flower, and the door... He'd left it open. Someone had entered through the open door, and now they were hiding in his room with him. Whoever it was, he moved with stealth, or perhaps Soro had just been too depleted to rouse, but he hadn't counted on Squizzle's superior senses.

Does he want to slash my throat? No, he'd have done it already. But maybe Squiz woke me just as he was about to do it.

The thought galvanised his tired body. Screw waiting around in the dark. He shot for the door.

He would have made it, if he hadn't paused and turned, stopped by fear for Squiz. The little monkey was resourceful, but not indestructible. As he turned back towards the bed, someone slammed into him, knocking him towards the door. He made a thud as he hit the door, and drove it shut. He staggered back into the room, winded. He'd have a fine new bruise on his chest the next morning.

If he saw the next morning.

He heard shoes on the carpet, but now true darkness lay on the room. He saw nothing, until something hit his temple, and stars exploded in front of his eyes.

He slipped, fell backwards, and as he fell, his hands shot out by instinct, clutching at the air. His right caught nothing but a handful of air molecules, but his left snagged something blocky and cool, about the size of a fist. He heard a snap, and then he heard his own body crash into the floor. Whatever he'd grabbed, the fall flung it from his hand.

He heard shoes pound as his assailant ran across him, threw open the door, and rushed out into the corridor.

He massaged his brow and picked himself up. He swayed as he walked back to the door, and poked his head out. He peered through the fog of pain, but saw nothing to the left or right. He shrugged, continued to rub his head, and shut the door. He clicked on the lights, checked the door was as locked as it got, and headed to the fridge, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the glare.

He didn't find any ice, but he did turn up a can of Brazilian cola, which he pressed against his temple. He sat on the edge of the bed and called Squiz. The monkey crawled out of the covers, climbed up his back, and perched on his shoulder, where he sat, shivering, and pawing at his hair.

He patted the monkey. "Good thing I got a night monkey, little buddy," he said. "If I'd got a day monkey, we'd both be in trouble."

His temple pulsed with hot pain, and the only effect of the cola was to chill and numb his hand. Still, he held it in place, and after a while he began to feel better. He might even be able to get back to sleep, and as soon as the idea came to him, it grew into an insistent pull.

He checked his watch. It was a little after three AM. He thought about calling the ship's security, or whatever nautical item served for police, but he was too tired, and he'd be way too embarrassed when they asked how the intruder gained entry.

He lay down, too tired to turn out the lights. But just as he sank into the soft mattress, something grabbed his attention, and refused to let go.

In the brief struggle, he couldn't call it a fight, he'd snatched something. He'd heard a snap. Now he saw, under his table, a boxy black object, trailing a long grey nylon strap.

"Not in a sonth of Mondays," he said.

He retrieved it, and sat up in bed, Squiz in his lap, and together they examined the thing. He'd got himself a new, expensive, Moniker digital camera. Moniker specialised in handmade cameras and accessories, toys for the stupidly wealthy. He clicked it on, and saw a bunch of shots of a pretty young woman with sad violet eyes and angelic features, surmounted by a shimmering blonde halo. She posed on the nondescript streets of a nondescript city. Apart from those pictures, he found a bunch in some jungle. He asked Squizzle, but if the monkey knew those glades, he wasn't talking.

He lay back in bed, and tried to sleep.

It took a long time.

Chapter 9

By the next dawn, he still hadn't got used to being onboard the New Dawn. It wasn't just the way he had to climb three flights of stairs to find anything resembling an 'outside', or the mysterious odours, some harsh and metallic, others chemical or even floral, that wafted through the corridors, perhaps emanating from the engines, perhaps from the laundry rooms. It wasn't even the constant hum, the vibration that ran through the ship from bow to stern, although that was one of the strangest points of being aboard ship; he even felt it in his bed, during the night; it had given him an eerie feeling of being about to tumble out, although that was barely possible with a bed that size. It had translated itself into dreams of floating on a sea in the sky, to plummet down to an ever receding earth.

But it wasn't even the unending hum that gave him the weirdest feeling, although it challenged for that role when he noticed it in his plate and fork, his food, and his very body at breakfast. It was, instead, when he stood on the foredeck, or the aft deck, or somewhere along the side. It made little difference to look at the vast blue ocean before them, or the foam and churn they left behind. He knew the waters teemed with life, but they concealed it below a choppy, grey-blue surface that glinted now and then under the bright but cloudy sky. The salt smell of the waters came to him on the same breeze that carried the oily smell of the diesel engines, with sometimes a tang of ozone. He could look in any direction, and see the same sight: white grey sky and grey-tinted wavelets, extending to the arc of the world.

The ship was a trap.

Back on land, anywhere on land, he could walk or run, he could crawl, climb, sidle, leap; he could move. He could be confined, but with ingenuity, effort, and a spot of luck, he could get out and go.

Here there was no getting out. Any attempt to go would lead him to plunge through the waves into the chill waters of the Atlantic. The mere thought made him shudder, and Squizzle must have felt it too, because he turned away from the sight of the waters, and clasped Soro's head, nuzzling against it. The voyage had affected him, too, Soro noticed; the monkey's spirits had been low ever since they'd boarded.

And why the thought of escape? Why did he care that he couldn't vault over the side, make his getaway? He looked once again at the camera he had 'borrowed' from his intruder in the night. The expensive Moniker branded device confirmed what Belle had intimated; one of the other contestants was a criminal, and interested in him.

"Interested hell!" he said, making Squiz jump. "The creature was about to get hazardous, and I was lucky you warned me before he had a chance." He patted the little monkey.

He'd had enemies before, of one sort or another, but never had he been locked up with them, trapped on a ship. What made it worse was that now he knew his enemy was a fellow contestant, he couldn't trust any of them. The Moniker camera spoke of wealth, of success, but these people were the refined gold of his profession. Any one of them might have had this camera, either as something they'd bought, as a prize won in some past competition, or as a gift from an overjoyed client.

"That narrows it down to just about everybody," he said, grinning in an effort to burn through his frustration with grim humour.

He tangled with the problem until the captain announced that a special event would occur soon after breakfast, and would all the passengers go and take their meal.

The thought of food held little appeal, but when he sat down in the ship's restaurant, and the waiter served him a stack of steaming fresh pancakes, smothered in maple syrup and filled with good vanilla ice cream and fruits of the forest, his saliva glands began to work overtime. He wolfed down the pancakes, and called for more.

"Big appetite for a little guy," said a woman with a familiar, lilting New Zealand accent.

He looked up at her, an eyebrow raised, and a retort rising to his lips, but she held up her hands for peace.

"Sorry," she said. "Force of habit. You've earned a good breakfast, and I'd like you to keep up your strength. May I sit?"

"I guess."

She smirked. "A lady loves to feel welcome."

He blinked, surprised by how different she seemed. She'd lost the dress, changed it for white jeans and a t-shirt printed with rolling green hills under a blue sky, but more than her clothes had changed; her entire attitude towards him had softened, although he sensed her punkish persona lay under the surface.

He surprised himself, too.

He stood, and pulled out a chair for her. "Please," he said, and motioned for her to sit.

"Very courtly of you," she said as she took her seat.

She tucked into her pancakes, and he had seconds. "This is delicious," she said. "They know how to treat us."

"Yeah," he said, unable to keep his mind off the camera, and his mystery assailant.

"The ship is fully stocked," she said. "Two movie theatres, three or four restaurants, a gym, a pool, a tennis court... But you'll have to show me the boxing ring."

He peered at her, and then he saw she was looking at the bruise on his temple. Her attention reminded him of the pain he'd been ignoring all morning, and he cursed under his breath as it began to throb.

"Come on," she said. "Looks like you've got a story."

He shook his head. "Nah. Like you said, a bit too much vigorous exercise last night."

"Last night... When you looked like you were about to fall off your feet, you were so tired."

He sighed. "I can't talk about it."

She looked hurt. "You saved my ass. Odd's balls, you saved it twice! If you can't trust me... I don't agree with your professional ethic, and I don't like your fashion sense, and I'm not sure you should really have an owl monkey on your shoulder, and basically you're all kinds of ass, but somewhere, deep down, like really, really deep, you're an ass with heart. I don't care if you got that lump trying to steal the captain's pubic hair trimmer, I'll back you up."

He gaped at her, and then his feelings caught up with him, and he had to look away, lest she see the tears start in his eyes. He'd felt so alone, so lost and alone, but Arima had changed that.

He wanted to tell her how much her words meant, but he didn't know how to begin, so instead he said, "does the captain really have a pubic hair trimmer?"

She rolled her eyes, and then they both laughed, though he knew it was far from the funniest joke in history.

"You're right," he said, wiping his face and eyes with his napkin. "A lot happened last night. But it didn't start there."

"You'd better go back to the beginning," she said.

So he did.

...

She listened with rapt attention, her blue-green eyes never straying far from his face. She didn't interrupt, and she didn't try to shoot him down with snarky comments. That last surprised him most; he knew himself, and that kind of talk was never far from his lips. He'd seen it in her, too, and braced himself against it, but the assault never came.

"I see," she said, when he'd brought her up to the morning's quandary.

"You see?" He couldn't resist testing her. "You see what, the hole in my head that's been letting in all the crazy?"

"Don't be a snunky munkle," she said, but her eyes laughed as he said it. "You forget, I was there at New Verity, I was with you. You say some Gell dudes tried to jank you yesterday."

He frowned. "Dudes...jank?"

She clawed at the air in mock annoyance. "I can't get the hang of your New York lingo. Everything I learned from TV is out of date, so I'm playing ahead of the curve."

A slow grin spread across his face. "Yeah, I can get with that. So, the janking..."

"Right. I was there, I saw how you handled yourself at New Verity, and I can easily believe you've made some guys so pissed they want to carve angel wings in your liver."

"Thanks."

"You're remarkably welcome. So," she picked up a chunk of pancake, oozing with syrup, and jabbed it at his face to emphasise her points. "I can accept that they'd try to get at you. Reckon they probably want to scare you, or shake loose whatever you took-"

"But I didn't take anything! I mean, except a couple of pictures, and...you."

"Yeah, but what do they know? And maybe they had more going on than we saw. Maybe they think we're some kind of activists, or thingummy, investigative reporters. Maybe they think I was there to distract them, while you snapped their recipe for secret sauce."

As the pancake slice jerked towards him for the umpteenth time, a droplet of maple syrup flew through the air and splash on his lip. Arima's eyes and mouth went wide, the start of an apology coming from her throat, but Soro flicked his tongue, and licked it away. Then he winked. Arima tried to go from contrition to ire, but got lost on the way, and wound up giggling, a blush on her cheeks.

She cleared her throat. "It makes sense, anyway, is what I'm saying. That the Gells would be out for your head. Mine, too, although they haven't caught up yet."

"I'm just too pretty," he said.

"Careful, or I'll call them here myself. But what I don't get is this business with the contest, and your brother. It seems too weird that the Gells would come after you at the same time as some other slub trickler would kidnap your brother. And as for one of these dudes," she waved the pancake slice in a lazy sweep, to take in the crowd and hubbub of the other contestants at their tables, chatting over breakfast. "They didn't get to play at this level by breaking stuff and snatching folks. They're professional photographers, with famous names. Their photos have world recognition. I mean, I can't name all these people, but that guy with the leopard scarf shot the photo of the island girl shark fishing, you know, the poster for that massive Polynesian tourism campaign. And that blonde woman, she did all those muscle man covers for Vogue."

"Oh, I know all about muscle man covers on Vogue," he said, tongue in cheek, "but what's this business about island girls?"

She scowled at him. "Look, if some sunken kunk wanted to keep you out of this competition, he wouldn't kidnap your brother and then forget to tell you."

He stiffened, leaned his arm on the table, and rubbed his furrow brow. "I don't know what a real hoodlum would or wouldn't do," he said. "I don't know how he'd think. But I can't get in touch with Sam, no one's heard from him since he left for Peru, and this," he banged the camera on the table, "and this," he tapped the bruise on his temple, drawing a sympathetic wince from Arima, "tell me someone here is not my friend."

"But it doesn't make sense-"

"Neither does life," he said, frowning at her. "A billion suns in the galaxy, and we're wiping maple syrup off our fingers. What the hell? Can't explain it. Can't understand it. Gotta run with it."

She bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said. "I forgot how real this is for you, how painful it must be-"

He waved his hand, eyes half-closed. "Forget that."I'm stuck on this train." He laughed. "Boat. Cruise ship thing. You don't have to be. You can... Uh, take a life boat, or something."

She caught his hand, and held it in her cool, soft palm. "No way. I'm with you. Tell me the plan."

The cool, soft feel of her hand raised all kinds of sensations he didn't want to think about just then. He eyed the camera. He disengaged his hand from hers, with regret, and picked the device up. "We got some lost property here. Let's find the owner..."

"And see if there's a reward," she finished for him.

They both grinned.

"Your professional ethics still suck," she said as an afterthought. Then her expression softened. "But that could change."

...

When he thought of a ship's captain, Soro pictured a dashing, handsome man, no longer young, but rugged and stern. He'd wear a pristine naval uniform, and stand bolt upright, with never a sign of fatigue or strain to dim the light in his eyes.

Captain Fiddler was not what he had imagined. If you took Santa, stripped off his red outfit and stuffed him into a pair of shapeless, iron grey trousers and a knitted blue sweater a size too big, then gave him the swollen red nose of a man who swigged gin at every meal (for digestion), and before every meal (for appetite) and before bed (for sound sleep), then you'd have a good likeness of Captain Fiddler.

"And now," he bawled, in a voice that warbled and quavered, "the high point of the morning. You've waited for it. You've been up all night anticipatating it. It... It's time to find out... Our first destiny- Destino- Destination! Mr Crawken-snifft, the hat, if you please!"

"This ought to be good," muttered Soro, watching the show. In moments the captain would announce the ship's first destination, and the New Dawn would change course to carry her passengers to the first city of the competition.

It seemed a bit too much of a production to Soro, but he hadn't planned the thing.

Captain Fiddler reached into the hat. "And our first destination is...

Chapter 10

Soro wanted to pick out the night's intruder by passing around the camera, asking if people recognised it, and watching for shock, anger, or more subtle reactions. Arima disagreed. They could wave the camera under people's noses, yes, but what if someone asked them where they'd got it? Was he going to tell everyone about the intruder? Someone was bound to ask why he hadn't reported it to the crew.

"We'd start to look mighty suspicious," she said.

He couldn't argue with that, but he needed more than good critique. "Got a better idea?"

She had. "Everyone's sitting here watching Captain Fatpants mess around with that old magic show prop. Let's slip out, and get ready."

"For what?" he said, but she was already on her way, and if he wanted to know what she'd planned, he had to follow her.

She led him out of the restaurant, then paused, a frown marring her features.

"Your plan fall apart already?" he said.

She pouted at him. "You're mean."

"Just figure that out? Tell me what you need."

"I want to print some pictures off this camera, and paste them up outside the restaurant. Then we can..."

"Set up in a good spot and get reaction shots as they come out," he finished for her.

She nodded. "Right, but we need a printer."

He thought of the postcards he would have sent, if Sam had been able to receive them. "No problem," he said. "I've got one in my stateroom." He caught himself enjoying the word, the floaty opulent of it.

She chuckled. "We make a good team. I'm the brains. Now go. Run! I'll make sure no one leaves until you get back."

He didn't ask how she'd manage that, although it made his imagination do interesting things. He ignored it, ran as fast as he could, wishing he'd eaten a few less pancakes, and soon he was back at her side.

"Sweet kit," she said, handling his printer. They hooked it up to the Moniker, and in seconds they'd printed off a glossy, full-colour print of the woman with sad violet eyes.

"It's not very big," said Arima. "I don't even know how we'll stick it up."

He waved a packet of adhesive gum. "Here. And who said we had to print just one?"

"Great! Let's cover the whole wall opposite the doors, then we just need to pick a spot to shoot from."

As they stuck up the pictures, he thought some more. "There aren't many good spots to wait in this hall; there's the staircase over there on the right, and the gift shop on the left. As they come out, they're bound to pass by the spot, and I don't want everyone to know it's us doing this."

"We would look oddish. Okay, let's do both. Rock paper scissors."

She won, and chose the gift shop.

"Guess I'll get comfy on the stairs," he said.

They shot off to their positions, he to loiter on an upper landing of the stairwell, camera aimed at an odd but serviceable angle, she to browse the rotating stacks of key chains, fluffy pandas, picture postcards, lip gloss, butterfly earrings, and other bits of bric-a-brac sold by the gift shop.

They got in place none too soon. The other contestants began to slip out of the restaurant in twos and threes. Some missed the wall of photos opposite the doors, but one of their companions would always draw their attention to it. The reactions varied; some gasped, some laughed, several shrugged, and more than a few began to critique the quality of the picture. Surprise showed on many faces, but not the anxiety, fear, or recognition that would mark their target.

Soro and Arima had to be careful to look nonchalant, and hide their cameras when anyone passed by. It proved difficult to get all the pictures they wanted, but by working together, they doubled their chances.

At last, the restaurant had emptied, and still no one had shown obvious guilt, or anything else they could use. Arima beckoned to him, and he joined her at the gift shop, where they pretended to browse the shelves, while they talked.

"If I get a good caption writer," he said, "I've got material for a whole archive of funny photos."

"I got nothing too," she said, the corners of her mouth and eyes drooping.

He patted her shoulder. "It was a good idea. I was sure it would work."

She glared at a purple penguin flippering a tiny guitar. "It was a great idea."

"It didn't work-"

"It didn't work because your midnight ninja wasn't there."

"But we watched everyone come out."

"No we didn't. Either you had a visit from the ghost of Daguerre, or we missed someone."

He pursed his lips, and nodded. "You know what we have to do."

She gave him a glum nod. "We gotta look at all these pictures..."

"And find who's missing."

"There's something we have to do first," she said. "It's important."

He raised his eyebrows.

"I've been here so long... You gotta buy me this penguin, or the shopkeeper's gonna have a stroke."

As they left, they passed a member of the ship's crew ripping their pictures off the wall.

...

"We've got a lot of shots here," he said, as they took seats by the window on one of the upper decks. The day was brighter now, the ship left a widening wake of shimmering water, and the waves sparkled as they rose and fell in the sun. Indoors, they were insulated from the cool breeze that caressed the hull, although they could hear it whisper against the window.

"A lot," she nodded, frowning.

"This could get old."

"I didn't see any strange reactions. Surprised ones, but no weirdness, no guilt. If we want to find your ninja..."

"He's not my ninja," he said. "But you're right, I guess." He brightened up. "I've got an idea."

He still had his mini printer, so he plugged in each camera in turn, and made the machine shoot out a whole lot of little pictures.

"Great," she said, a sarcastic edge to her voice. "We've gone back to the paper age."

"There's a lot of duplication between our shots," he said. "You know the best way to find who's missing? Let's play snap."

She warmed to the idea. The time flew by, and they laughed a lot. Soon they'd finished their game, too soon, for Soro. He was beginning to wish they could forget the painful business, and just hang out. He was sure this cruise ship could afford them a pleasant day. But it would have to wait.

"I know who's missing," she said.

"So do I," he said, "and you're not going to like this."

She frowned. "I don't get it."

"I'd think you'd be sad," he said, eyebrow raised. "After all, Jack helped you out."

A lot, he added, in the privacy of his mind.

"Jack?" she said, confusion in her eyes. "Drood's koods, you're right! He's missing too."

It was his turn to look shocked. "Too? But... Who could you have caught?"

"That skeleton man with the bug jewellery. What did they call him, Storm? Hurricane?"

"Typhoon," he whispered.

He couldn't believe it, not after the welcome the man had given him. He wouldn't have known the names of half these people without Tigh's help, but the pictures couldn't lie.

"He's a friend...?"

He chewed his lip. "I thought so."

They wandered away from the comfy window chairs, meandering through the long halls of the ship, moving in no definite direction. They passed the gym, and then the swimming pool. As they went by, a blonde woman emerged, a woman with cold beauty.

Arima flinched, and Soro glanced at her, but she waved him on. A few minutes later, when they'd taken a few turns, she halted, and gripped him by the wrist.

"I've got one more for our list," she said.

"Not her," he said. "She's some kind of fashion photographer."

"Yeah," she said. "Triolet."

"You know her name?"

"What? I read the glossy mags, just like any girl." She grimaced. "Don't give me that look. I know I dress like an extra from Star Trek, it's a personal choice, okay."

"Right, right... So. We've got a list of three possible enemies."

"Make that four," she said.

"Huh?"

"I'm beginning to hate you again."

He gave her a wounded look.

She punched him on the shoulder, then winked.

...

"So what's the next step?" asked Arima, as they ambled along the top deck drinking ice-blended coffee. Most of the other contestants had split up into pairs or small groups, and wandered off to explore the New Dawn's possibilities.

"We can be sure that our nautical ninja, whoever he is-"

"Or she."

"Or she," he nodded, "Is-"

"Or they," she said. "Could be a whole nest of nautical ninja."

He eyed her. "Indeed."

"A naval nest of nautical ninja!"

"Note to self: do not, repeat, do not give Arima caffeine."

She stuck her tongue out at him. He rolled his eyes. They giggled.

He shook his head to flush out the thoughts he shouldn't be having. "As I see it, we can do two things: we can search their rooms, and we can follow them. But that gives us a whole new set of problems..."

"There are only two of us."

"And we need to get their keys."

They walked on for a bit, listening to the murmur of the engines, and the swish and lap of the waves.

Arima paused, and leaned against the railing, staring out at the distant horizon. "I have dealt with locks before."

"Yes," he said, remembering those torn, rent gates at New Verity. "But I'm pretty sure you left your jeep in Manhattan."

"What I meant was, there's probably more than one way to open those doors. This thing is a floating hotel, and I've never been in a hotel where the manager didn't keep a spare key, in case a guest died in her room, and he had to get the body out before it stunk the joint out of business."

"Full marks for insight, and an extra point for the revolting image." He whipped out his camera.

She jumped, tensed like a doe in the woods, ready to run. "What are you doing?"

"I've got to capture this moment. Show future generations your diabolical genius."

She slapped his arm hard, and the camera hand shot out across the railing. The camera slipped out of his hand, and he felt his heart lurch, but his fingers closed on the trailing cord, and he plucked it out of the air.

He sighed, and turned wide, shocked eyes at her. "What in the seventh-"

She had her hands over her mouth, her face white, eyes even wider than his. "I'm so sorry," she said through her fingers. "I'm really, really sorry. I didn't mean-"

"I, uh..."

She took one hand away from her mouth, and brushed his shoulder, her touch light, tentative, as if she was afraid of him. "I didn't mean to do that. It was a reflex. I... I don't like having my picture taken."

He blinked several times, and then he frowned. You don't like to have your picture taken? But you're a photographer! Pictures are your life."

She looked away, hiding her face. "Other people's pictures," she said. "Not mine."

He wanted to ask her more questions, to understand what painful secret could cause her to react in such a way, but she swung back to face him, a tight smile on her face.

"You hit the button just after I whacked you," she said. "I heard it."Let's see your picture."

"Um, but-"

"I want to see it."

He chewed his lip, reluctant to drop it, but he could see she wasn't ready to talk about her past. "Okay," he said. "Let's take a look together."

He held up the camera, and she burst out laughing. "What a runkling classic! I can see why you're famous, bloke."

He bridled. "I generally do my best work when I'm not being smacked around by kung fu elves."

She glared at him sidelong. "Watch it with the elf crap. We get enough hobbit jokes as it is."

The little screen showed a dark blur on the left side, shot through with two streaks of vivid colour, one pink, one turquoise. The rest of the screen was taken up with a panorama of the ocean, where water and sky were mixed along the crazed line of a staggered horizon.

"The longer I look at it," she said, "the more I realise something..."

"Yes?"

"You should never take my picture."

He made a face. Then he made an uglier face, as the low battery warning blinked on his camera. "What the- I swear I charged it yesterday."

"Your camera does not concur."

He scratched his brow. "But..."

"Come on; let's go find the manager's office, or whatever they have on a floating hotel. And let's pretty you up a bit."

"What?"

"How else are you going to turn his head while I snibble the keys?"

She ran away before he could grab her. Snarling, he chased after.

...

It was Squizzle snibbled the keys. Actually he snibbled one key, but as it was the master, it counted for the whole jangling bunch.

The little monkey had danced and chirped all the while Soro had been locked in conversation with Arima. When Soro had noticed, he'd coloured a little, knelt down, and offered the monkey a contrite look and a hand for him to climb up to his favourite perch atop his shoulder. Squizzle had shot him a glare, replete with wide, crazy eyes and flaring nostrils, flicked his head aside, and stalked off. Arima had crouched down, offered the monkey a handful of raisins, and enticed him to crawl up her arm. She'd tried to get him to sit on her shoulder, as she'd seen him do with Soro, but instead the monkey had chosen to cling to her neck, and drape himself over her chest.

She'd tried to shift him, shrugged, and said, "at least he has good taste."

Soro had tried to bite down every comment, but one escaped. "Fickle."

Arima had peered down at the monkey as it snuggled against her breasts, and shaken her head. "Perverted."

But if Squizzle was in a mood, he still understood the value of a good day's work, or, in this case, theft. They argued over the best time to make the snatch, Arima favouring night and quiet, Soro pointing out that below decks, night was as bright as day, and even noisier, if you got too close to the karaoke bar on the fifth deck.

"Besides, in day time people are busy, doors are open. More distractions, more opportunities."

He prevailed. They struck during the crew's lunch.

First they followed a map to the private offices on the sixth deck. They ignored signs that the area was off-limits, but a locked door gave them pause. Like their cabins, it opened with a key card. Like their suspects' cabins, they didn't have that card. Arima began to look for air vents to clamber through, but Soro had a different idea. He drew an adhesive patch and a length of nylon cord.

"What's that for?" asked Arima.

"You'll see."

He used the patch to stick the cord to the bottom corner of the door, on the side away from the hinges. Then he led her around the corner, the cord in his hand.

"What," she said, "are you going to pull it open with the incredible magic string?"

"Watch my back."

They waited in silence for a long time. Arima took to fiddling with her ribbons, and Squiz started to chew his toenails. Even Soro was beginning to think about forgetting this skulky business, and taking a hammer to the door, when one of the ship's officers, a man with classic good looks, a smooth, firm jaw, and a white shirt strained across his powerful chest, walked out through the door. He paused on the threshold, and Soro felt his gut tighten, sure the man would come their way, or turn back and notice their nylon-slinging shenanigans. But the officer turned and walked in the other direction, soon to vanish into the lower decks.

They breathed a collective sigh of relief, and then Soro waved Arima to run up and grab the door handle; he'd been holding it ajar with the nylon cord, but the door was heavy, the cord thin, and strangling his hands.

"Nice trick," she said, holding the door open. "May I make a suggestion? Next time, try it with gloves."

They found themselves in a suite of offices, which they crept through, Soro feeling they were intrepid mice, delving into the cat's territory. The carpets, once soft and pink, were worn down by years of service, and the air had a mixed aroma, in which coffee predominated.

Soro marveled at how far they could get on sheer audacity. And luck. He couldn't deny the value of luck. They threaded their way through the tight maze of offices, and discovered, to his horror, that even ships have cubicles. Soon after that, they came upon a room labelled HM.

"Hotel Manager," said Soro.

"Hell's Master," replied Arima.

He cocked an eyebrow, and offered the door handle to her. She offered it right back. He narrowed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and gripped the handle. If they failed here, they'd have to come up with a whole new plan, as well as some way to explain their presence in the restricted area. He sure couldn't use the string trick in the crew's offices. To his surprise and pleasure, the handle turned, and the door opened on yet another office, the desk piled high with guest room status reports, cleaning requests, and other hotel type stuff. He didn't care about that. He cared about the key cards that hung on one wall.

"That's it!" said Arima, and she grabbed the master key.

"Eek!" said Squizzle, and he leapt in the air, snatched the card from her hand, and ran out of the room.

"No," said Soro, and they raced out.

Right into the path of an oncoming crewman.

Chapter 11

Imagination and fear would have painted him as a husky eight foot terror, with shark's teeth and troll hide. He was not troll-born. If any mythic creature had played a part in his ancestry, it was most likely a boggart. The crewman who stood blocking their escape wore what would have been a neat, crisp white uniform on a man with the right proportions, but as he lacked the square shoulders and the long arms and legs, as he, in fact, had a shape best described as a potato with twig limbs and a grey, sardonic face with sagging jowls and salt and pepper hair that looked like the spines of an aged, balding porcupine.

"Whaddya think y'r doin'?" he said, in a voice that contrived to both rasp and warble.

For once in his life, Soro had no idea what to do. He'd been acting under a tremendous strain, spied on, hunted, and now betrayed by Squizzle, his constant companion, the one man, guy... The one dude monkey in his life he could always rely on. And then, to be accosted by this weird, weird little man, like a creature out of a horror story, it was more than he could deal with.

He stared at the apparition, his jaw sagging, his hands grasping at the air, as if he could pluck a story out of the dry, recycled air.

Arima had no such problems. She spun around and wrapped her arms around Soro, clamped her lips to his, and gave him a kiss that did not belong in church. He stiffened at first, and then, as he felt her warm, firm body press against him, he began to experience feelings he had neither expected nor planned for. He didn't want to take advantage of her, but he had to trust her intuition, and act the role she'd handed him. He wound one arm around her back, and one hand came up to stroke her hair.

She leaned against him, pushing him back against the still open door, and their combined weight closed it with a snap. Then she continued to ravish him.

After a pause, the crewman cleared his throat.

Arima unwound herself from Soro with exaggerated care, gave him a grin, and tapped the end of his nose before she faced the crewman, her face flushed, eyes wide. "Oh, hey, good... When's all the karaoke?"

Soro knew something was off the moment she spoke. In truth, he'd known as soon as she'd clasped her arms around him, and clamped her lips to his. But when she spoke, it was different. Her words came out slurred, with a wavering edge that suggested she was on the verge of giggles or hysteria. She stood with her weight on her left foot, and put an unsteady hand out to support herself against the wall.

The crewman frowned suspicion at her and then at him. His brow knotted and his lips pursed, uncertainty written on his face.

Arima leaned forward and touched his chest. "Aren't you the cute one," she said. In the same motion, she reached back with her left hand, concealed by her body, and prodded Soro.

He jumped, and then began to sway himself. "Join us," he said, affecting an extreme southern twang. "We got the best of the King, all the day and all the night."

The potato shaped crewman shuddered. "Why do I allus get the crazies, every single time?"

"Crazy for karaoke," said Soro, gaping a grin.

"I don't have time for this infantile idiocy. If you two want to pickle your liver, fine, but don't do it outside my office!"

"...You mean this isn't the karaoke bar?" said Arima.

"Get out of here! Just go down that- Oh, forget it, you'd probably pass out and choke on your own vomit. You're supposed to do that sort of thing in the passenger areas! Go this way. Go, go!" He herded them back the way they'd come, and when they got to the final door, he didn't bother to say goodbye; he just shoved them out, and slammed it shut.

They stood silent, gazing at each other with wide eyes and slack jaws. At length, Soro rubbed his brow, and shook his head. "I thought we were dead."

"I don't know," she said. "You seemed pretty lively to me."

He spluttered. "Me? You had more life than Frankenstein's-"

She coloured. "Oh, so I'm a monster?"

He threw out his hands. "No, that's not-"

"You think kissing me is like sticking your tongue into a reanimated corpse!"

He felt the floor fall away, and the world spun in a crazy whirl. "Nonono! Kissing you is great. I only meant-"

Her anger vanished, and she put her fingers on his lips, to shut them. "That's settled, then." She grabbed his arm, and led him away. He followed her lead, more confused than ever. "I don't want you to get the wrong idea," she said. "I only did that to get us out of there."

"Right, I-"

"It's not something I do every day."

"No, you-"

"Or with just anyone."

He chewed his lip. "Uh..."

"And it's not important right now. The essential thing is to find that mini monkey."

"Yeah..."

She paused, and scowled at him. "This doesn't mean I approve of your professional ethics." Then she softened. "But it was a nice kiss."

...

Soro didn't know what was going on in Arima's pretty beribboned head, but he did know one thing. "They're going to miss us at meal times."

They stood once again in the gift shop, pretending to be entranced by the miniature pink elephant in a bottle, and the wind-up singing skulls. Squiz had returned to his perch on Soro's shoulder, once they'd found him capering along the rails on the upper deck, master key card safe between his teeth.

"Lunky munkles," said Arima. "They wouldn't notice a green gorilla unless they were getting paid to shoot it."

"A green gorilla, hey? That sounds too interesting not to shoot."

"Yeah, I figured you'd say that." She toyed with a Weeping Minny doll. "You're not like them."

"I'd like to swell up like a balloon, but I sense you've got a needle to pop my pride."

"You're not like them. You're the opposite."

"Sounds good."

"Does it?" She flashed a look at him, and went back to Weeping Minny, teasing and tilting the baby doll. "They get a job, they get a target, off they go and shoot it. Straight up contract work. You wander around all wide-eyed and starstruck, and when you see some shiny bauble, you whip out that camera and zap snap! You're not trying to achieve anything. You don't want to change anything or, God help us, preserve anything. You ache for the shot, and when it's done, you move on. Maybe you sell the pic, maybe you leave it in a dusty cabinet, or on an aging memory stick. Whatever uses it might have had, you leave to someone else, or to fate."

He didn't say anything for a while. He peered into the bottle, and tried to figure out how they'd got the pink elephant in there. Maybe they popped it in while it was still in the larval stage...

"Wow," he said. "You've spent a lot of time thinking about me. Perhaps I should be flattered."

She rolled her eyes. "That's it? I meant what I said. Dammit, Soro, I want to like you. You're intelligent, gifted, you're kind to animals, oh, and you saved my sweet little self a couple of times. You're not stupid or callous. Why can't you see the effect you've had?"

"I can see the effect you've had on that doll," he said, pointing at the trickle of water weeping from those painted plastic eyes.

"Groggin' skogs," she said, dropped the thing on the shelf, and wiped her hands on her top. "Back in the jeep. Did you mean it when you gave me that little speech? Sell to the evil corporation, sell to the protestors? That balancing act is dumb. Don't you want to stand for something? Don't you want to be remembered?"

"I know one thing," he said. "Someone will remember this." He tapped the key card in his pocket. "I want to finish our detective game before they miss it. And one other thing; the restaurant's full. Or anyway, I saw Jack Johnson go in with Typhoon just now, and Triolet is on the way up the corridor. Time to go."

...

They went back to the living quarters as fast as they could. Soro paused halfway, and struck his head. "How could I have been so stupid?" he said.

"Hard work, luck, and inherited disposition," said Arima.

"It's the hunger making me hallucinate," he said. "Not you saying bad things. That's not you at all." He explained himself; he'd got so caught up in the plan to search the rooms, that he'd forgotten he didn't know where each of their targets was staying. "So what the hell do we do?" he said.

She smiled at him. "I wondered how long it would take. Don't worry, I can find them."

"Huh? I'd like to see you achieve that."

"I found you, didn't I?"

He couldn't argue with that. He didn't know what to think about Arima. At times she seemed a drag, a hindrance. He didn't appreciate having to fence with snarky comments all the time, and she had a habit of getting into trouble. But at other times she showed remarkable presence of mind, and great compassion. He didn't know what to make of her, but just then he was glad to have her along.

They got to the first room, Jack's quarters. Soro searched it, while Arima watched the hall, ready to warn him if Jack came back early.

...

He found nothing suspicious in Jack's stateroom, and he hadn't expected to. Neither had Arima. They had agreed to search his room first, just to clear him off the list, as they both felt he was a good guy, although Soro still thought he was a little too sensitive about his more famous namesake, someone Arima had known of and told him about. In truth, that knowledge had made him a little closer to Jack; he knew all about growing up with an unusual name.

"Who's on second?" said Arima. But she didn't give him a chance to reply. "I bet it's that frosty momma. Let's hit her place."

He raised his eyebrows.

She shrugged. "I'm just saying. You don't think that's fair? Rock, paper, scissors, bro."

"...are you trying to put on an American accent?"

She looked guilty.

"It makes you sound like a twelve year old. But okay, rock, paper, scissors."

They played, he lost, they went to Triolet's stateroom. They had a spat outside about who should go in. "It's a girl's room," she said. "You shouldn't be in there."

"A girl who's maybe involved in kidnapping."

"Innocent until you find a blood soaked hammer?"

She looked serious. He waited in the hallway, and told himself that he'd let her have her way. But he knew the truth. He hadn't 'let her' have anything. She was tough, in spite of the pink ribbons.

"No blood soaked hammers?" he said when she slipped out of the door.

"Not even a sharpened hairpin." She looked disgusted.

They came to the last door. "I don't like this," he said. "Tigh was nice to me when I first came aboard. I didn't know anyone, and he showed me around. I wouldn't have met Jack Johnson or Triolet. I wouldn't even know who they are."

"You'd still have met me, right? Helped me?"

He shrugged. "At least once, I guess."

"And Jack, too. He would have helped me, I mean. Maybe he reacted badly when you got him confused with that boxer, but that didn't stop him from giving a hand when he could."

He had to agree with her, but he didn't feel comfortable about it. "Maybe this plan is cockeyed," he said. "Maybe we missed someone else, someone we wouldn't have thought to take seriously."

"Now you're just making excuses," she said. "I've got a passenger manifest."

"How did you get that?"

"That's not important right now. Hey, you're not the only one who likes to sneak around in the dark. Anyway, that's how come I knew where these guys were staying."

And how you found my room, he thought.

"We're wasting time," she said, and stamped her foot. "You came to me with a sad story about your brother and about a bunch of Gell Shield monkeys, no offence to Squizzle."

He thought she'd got some of that backwards; he didn't remember going to her, or asking for her help. He chose not to mention it.

"I've been risking my neck all day, and I've missed a couple of meals to do it. I'll help you find your brother, and I'll help you put the Gell mob back in their box, but I can't do a thing for you if you lose your nerve the moment we get outside your happy place. Are you serious about this, or has it all been a gronking game?"

Her words didn't make him feel happier or more comfortable. Instead he felt the added pressure of her expectations and her safety, as well as the subtle fear he had for his brother, and, more immediate but less worrisome, the concern he had for the sanctity of his own personal skin. However, this was not a weight he could throw aside, something he could dump by the road, and roam on in his usual carefree manner. In the past, his choices had affected no one but him, or perhaps he was wrong, and they'd always affected other people, and he'd turned his head aside, eyes fixed on the next shining image. Now he was responsible for two other people plus himself again, and even though he hated the anxious tension it brought, he had to bear up.

"What's that look mean?" she asked.

He felt tightness in his eyes, lips and brow. He hadn't realised it, but the feeling told him he'd been glaring at her. He eased his features into a smile. "I just had a rare lucid moment."

"Hmm?"

"You'd make a good drill sergeant."

He unlocked the door and bolted through it before she could attack.

...

The waiting was beginning to fray Arima's nerves, so that when the door shot open and Soro poked his head out, she almost jumped out of her ribbons.

"For the love of-"

"Shh," he said. "I need your camera."

She looked at him, puzzled. "What happened to your camera?"

"I need yours."

"But-"

He gave her rolling eyes and an exasperated grin. "There's really no time, unless you want to wait for our visitor to come back, so I can ask him. Oh, wait, I already have his camera. He dropped it when he broke into my room last night!"

"So take the jubbling thing!" She thrust it at him. He snatched it from her hand, and vanished back into Typhoon's stateroom.

She couldn't be sure if he could hear her or not, so she let loose a torrent of her choicest curses, as loud as she could. He could be so good and kind, and then he could treat her like some sort of amoeba. It was frustrating.

She paused mid-profanity when she saw someone come around the corner at the end of the corridor, and begin to walk towards her.

Triolet...and Skeletor himself, Mr Typhoon.

She paused, her train of thought a flaming wreck. They were some distance down the corridor, strolling like people who've hunted up some live conversation, and don't want to let it get away. They made an odd pair, the bony figure of Typhoon, gilded with his jewels, his bald head and long teeth glistering, taking slow strides beside the beautiful woman with the majestic air and the cascade of blonde hair. They could hardly be death and the maiden, but Typhoon looked every inch the reaper man. She was surprised she didn't hear the rattle and clack of bones as he moved.

She eyed the door, and half-raised her hand to give a warning rap. She paused, afraid the movement would attract the approaching pair's attention. They seemed not to have noticed her yet, and she wanted to avoid their eyes. But even as she felt that desire, she realised it was futile. They were coming this way, and she knew, in her gut, they would stop at Typhoon's room. Perhaps they would settle in and stay there for the rest of the night, and perhaps they would instead pause to pick up something, perhaps an album or some medicine for Typhoon, for he looked as though he could use it, and then continue on their way. It didn't matter. If they entered that stateroom, they would discover Soro, and she knew that could have bad consequences for him and perhaps something unthinkable for his brother.

She didn't want to go anywhere near a midnight burglar, a possible kidnapper, perhaps even worse. The thought of it made her skin crawl, but if she didn't, her only choice was to dart away, and leave Soro to his chances.

She couldn't do that. He'd saved her life. If the plunge at the dock hadn't killed her, the water would have. She couldn't swim. She didn't care that he'd goaded her a little; she would have jumped even without a crowd. And although she'd been massively irritated by her first meeting with him, at the grove at New Verity, he had saved her then, as well. She didn't know about destiny, but she'd met few men who would throw themselves at danger to save her skin. That was special, besides any question of debt.

She narrowed her eyes, straightened her back, and took a deep breath. She had to keep Typhoon from going into his room. No matter what it took, even if it was dangerous or embarrassing, she would do it. She had to.

She took a faltering step towards the pair, tongue between her teeth, then she narrowed her eyes and made herself march. This galvanised her will, and made it feel easier to believe she could succeed. Moments later she realised that such a forceful approach would lend her a visible sense of purpose, and it would not match the character she intended to assume. Again she took up her shuffling, uncertain walk, but this time she exaggerated it, and added to it by darting nervous glances at Typhoon, and then looking at the floor. She hoped she gave off the right signals; she was going for the timid stalker.

She came close to them, near enough to taste their combined scent. Triolet wore a subtle French perfume, the essences of a dozen varieties of orchid combined so as to suggest a colourful field of flowers, tall, straight, and unconcerned with human affairs. Typhoon wore deodorant in which predominated the acid aroma of electrocuted melon. Beneath it, she caught a whiff of sweat, and something chemical, almost like creosote. Over their personal scents, she noticed they carried the smells of the restaurant. Her empty stomach growled as she tasted or imagined hints of French bread, steamed rice flavoured with saffron, grilled pork, smoked salmon, roast duck, heaps of dainty sugared pastries stuffed with marzipan and other delights.

For one moment she wished she'd never met Soro. She wouldn't be trembling in this corridor, nervous and half-starved. Then the two closed in, and she had no more time for such thoughts.

"Oh!" she said in a loud voice, and she quivered with what she hoped looked like excitement. "Oh, Mr Strugg! Tigh Strugg! Typhoon Tigh Strugg!"

As she spoke his name, she was aware of how strange and silly she must sound. It felt like an incantation, as if she was conjuring some prince of the pit to make a visible appearance.

The two paused within arm's length. Typhoon stared at her with wide eyes that seemed to start out of his half-starved face. If she hadn't seen him eat in the restaurant, she'd have believed he lived on water and salt. Triolet regarded her with a neutral expression, except for the tension around her eyes.

A moment passed. "Yes?" said Typhoon.

Arima took a deep breath. This was going to be embarrassing. If she was lucky, no one would ever know. "Oh, Mr Strugg, I've been waiting and hoping for this, and I was beginning to believe I'd never get my chance, and here you are, and I'm so excited I could just burst!"

Typhoon glanced sideways at Triolet, who rolled her eyes. He looked down at Arima - he loomed over her like a great tree - and showed his long white teeth in something that was almost a smile. "Do you think you could be a little plainer?" he said. "I can see you're a happy little girl, and that's very nice, but I can't understand what you're getting at."

She plastered a silly smile over her face, and spoke in a loud, squeaky voice that threatened to break in squeals, like an excited schoolgirl. Oh, I'm sorry Mr Strugg, I didn't think. I couldn't think, I was so excited, I am so excited-"

"Yes yes," he said.

Triolet cleared her throat. He glanced at her, and she spoke in a low voice. "Tigh..."

Arima saw the danger. She jumped and waved her hands. She thought she might be overdoing the crazed fangirl, but it was too late, and she could never compete with Triolet in the restraint department. "Mr Strugg, it's an honour and a privilege to join you on this cruise, and this competition. You're the reason I came."

That dragged his attention back to her. "Oh?"

She plunged on. "Ever since I read about your heroic battle with the elements, your splendid triumph over storms and death, your survival, against the gronkiest odds, I knew I wanted to be like you. You're a survivor and a hero, and I, I...."

"Go on."

The words didn't want to pass her lips. By a sheer act of will, she forced her face to take on an expression of wide eyed sincerity. "I want to be just like you."

She gazed up at him, afraid he'd see through her act. If he got away now, she knew she couldn't get him back. If he carried on and went into his room, he'd find Soro there, and he'd know she'd tried to trick him. If Soro was right about evil this man was mixed up in, she refused to picture what he would do to her.

The effect was greater and more awful than she'd expected. He straightened his spine, thrust out what chest he had, and fingered his lapel. He cocked his head at a jaunty angle, and beamed down at her like a proud mayor at his re-election party. "I can't blame you in the least," he said. "I've often wish that more young people would see things the way you do, see clearly as you do, and follow the example I have tried to set."

She gagged, but held her expression of earnest, nay, devout fascination. "Yes, go on."

"I see my life as a model for others to follow," he said, speaking as one who'd rehearsed this speech in front of the mirror six or seven times before breakfast. "I see my triumph, my single-handed triumph, over nature, over isolation, over fear, over the mortality of flesh, as a living example of the heroism that today we know only from the dusty scrolls of ancient sagas."

Arima gazed at him, horrified. Had she known what terror she would release, she would have found another way, any other way. She wondered if it was too late to grab a hammer and smash him in the skull. Or she could smash her own skull; it had to be better than listening to this torrent of inflamed pride.

She caught Triolet watching her from hooded eyes, and she had a surprising insight into the woman. Triolet hated her. She didn't understand it at first, and then dawn broke. Triolet was too proud to fawn over Typhoon, but she still wanted him. By playing the utter sycophant, Arima had won him far more thoroughly than she, for Triolet, in spite of all her charms, was cold.

"...and that's why young people such as yourself, especially young ladies such as yourself, and attractive young ladies, I might add, need to have firm guidance from those of us who have achieved..."

She tuned him out, and hoped that he took her glazed look as a sign of an enchanted trance. More than that, she prayed that the noise spewing from his mouth didn't bug Soro, and bring him out of the stateroom. Time was pressing, and she knew Soro wouldn't stay inside forever, and even if he didn't pop out, Typhoon would, well he probably would tire of speaking, and then he'd go into his room.

She had to get them moving.

She watched for him to take a breath. He kept her waiting so long it became painful, like being stuck in a queue for the ladies' room. At last he paused, and she put a hand on his arm. "Mr Strugg," she said, letting her hand and voice tremble. "It would mean so much to me if you would... No, it's too much to ask." She looked down, but continued to hold his arm.

He put a bony finger on her jaw, and turned her face to look up at him. "Don't be afraid," he said. "Take courage from my example, and speak on."

She fought the urge to vomit. "Mr Strugg, would you... Could you let me...?"

"Yes?"

"Could you have your picture taken with me?"

He laughed. "Is that all? Come, we can do this right here. Triolet, would you lend a hand?"

"Are you sure you need my hands?" said Triolet, in a peevish voice.

He frowned. "It'll only take a second."

Arima gasped. "Wait!"

They stared at her.

"Um, what I mean is, maybe... Your battle with the ocean, well, it's such a great- I mean, this hallway... If we took a picture outside..."

"It's dark," said Triolet. "The sky is cloudy; there's no moon. No sun, no moon, no light. No light, no picture. Honestly child, I don't know how you got a place in this group, you don't seem to understand the first thing about photography."

Arima bristled, and for a moment she came close to lashing the arrogant woman with her tongue, although to have done so would have been to smash her chances of success.

Typhoon came to her aid. "Now really my girl," he said, turning to Triolet. "There's absolutely no call for abuse. If the young lady wishes a picture outside, why should we not honour her request?"

"It'll be a bad picture," said Triolet through gritted teeth.

"But a good deed," he said, the soul of smugness.

Arima was more grateful to him than she could express, and she didn't have to feign the smile she wore as he took her arm and led her to the upper deck.

Chapter 12

The cork burst from the bottle and rocketed out across the scrubby grass, to rebound off a tree some yards away. Foaming champagne jetted out of the chilled green bottle, and splashed on the dusty ground under their feet, to fizz and boil under the glaring sun. Arima shrieked with laughter. He sloshed champagne into her glass, and then his own. The liquid whispered and sparkled, translucent gold in the sun.

They raised their glasses and clinked them together, and Arima called for a toast. He sniffed his drink, and relished the sweet tang of the champagne. "To victory," he said.

She hooded her eyes. "Unwise, young man, to claim that before you carry away the laurel." She poured a little of her champagne on the ground. "I offer a libation to the gods of this land. Forgive young Soro, and aid him as you did that other man of sorrow, ages past."

He raised one eyebrow. "I've never seen your religious side."

She waved a hand around her. "This crooked tree that shades us, and this stone that seats us. That white temple, gleaming in the sun, the house of Hephaestus, and rearing above us, the high rock, and on it, the house of Athena, who is mighty in war and in reason. This place, Soro, doesn't it affect you?"

He gave her an indulgent grin. "You were born to be an oracle, and speak for the gods."

She sighed, and looked at the temple, nestled in trees a short walk away. The white marble columns had been restored, and the sides of the roof shone almost too bright to look at in the hard sunlight. "You can joke, but it doesn't take an oracle to tell you this plan is insane."

"My plan? It'll work. It's going to work."

She shook her head, staring at the temple. "After what you found... The pictures you took... I don't think we should be doing this ourselves. I think we need help."

"The police, you mean. No. I've already seen how much influence these people can wield." He remembered looking out of his window, and watching as a patrol car disgorged its men, to catch, cuff, and cart away the Gell Shield thugs. "We're fighting on a level above the police."

"Fighting?"

He looked down at the dirt and dry soil, at the tiny brown ants that crawled over it, scratching out their existence. "I don't know... Wrangling?"

She giggled.

"Set it aside for a minute," he said. "As you told me, we're in this incredible, beautiful city, surrounded by relics from the dawn of our culture. Let's shoot some snonking photos."

She peered at him over the rim of her glass, and shook her head. "Your snonking mimicry is as bad as your snonking plan." Her features softened. "But I'm on your snonking team."

He grinned. "That's our toast!"

Her brow knotted. "Snonking?"

"Team! Here's to Team Owl Monkey."

Her eyes flashed with laughter. "Team Owl Monkey."

They clinked their glasses, and drank. The champagne tasted as sweet as the first warm sun of spring.

...

In Sydney they docked at Circular Quay, and everyone headed for the Opera House. Arima wanted to follow the swarm of photographers, hungry by then to compete for the perfect shot of modern beauty. Soro held her hand, and held her on the quay. She tugged at him, excited by the opportunity. "So many of my friends have come here on holiday, but I've never been before. I can't miss a thing!"

He grinned. "You won't. We'll work our way around to the Opera House."

She stamped her foot like a little girl, and made her black book earrings swing back and forth. "But I want to go now!"

He took both of her hands, and looked into her eyes. He spoke in a low, calming tone. "The Opera House will still be there tonight, gleaming in the floodlights, brilliant as the moon against the backdrop of space. But the pack of crazed photographers will have got tired, hungry for food, and gorged with the beauty of that remarkable creation. And we..."

She gazed up at him, and her lips parted in a sigh of surprise and delight. "We'll have it all to ourselves."

They strolled along the quay, taking in the sights, sounds and smells of the austral metropolis. After touring the ancient cities of Athens, Rome, and beautiful, mediaeval Dijon, it came as a shock to stand in the shade of towers raised from concrete and steel, faced with glass, burnished in the sun. Life on the ship had made them accustomed to the salty tang of the sea, and the oily edge of diesel. Here they caught the aromas of exhaust smoke and ozone from the trains that ran underground, and from the monorail that rattled overhead. They ambled through Chinatown, and smelled roasting duck, hot sesame oil, and a wash of spices. They passed through a playground packed with screaming, laughing children, clambering over climbing frames, through plastic tunnels, whooshing up and down on long swings. Beyond that, they came to Darling Harbour, where a huge modern mall loomed over them, and countless tiny cafes nestled in the space between the walls and the edge where the pavement fell away to the sea.

...

"The key to a good picture isn't the light," he said. "Or the contrast between foreground and background. It's not in the use of a startling image; merely to arrest attention is work for an ad man, and not a true photographer."

She slurped her blueberry-banana smoothie, laced with piracetam and other nootropic drugs, and watched him with a playful tilt of the eyebrows and jaw. "No master," she said. "Of course not. And we know there's no lower form of life than-"

"What's the purpose of a photograph?" he said, pursing his lips and squinting as if he couldn't quite bring her features into sharp focus.

Taken aback by the interruption, she jerked in her seat, then eased back into a comfortable position and looked out, across the water, to the towering office blocks, and the slender spire, surmounted by a doughnut, of Centrepoint Tower. She waved her arm across the cityscape. "To change all that."

"Change," he said, the hint of a smirk playing about his lips.

"Yes," she said, nettled by his smug attitude, his condescending tone. "Change. We forgot what our life is based on, what it requires to sustain itself. We forget that the food we eat today was slaughtered yesterday, and alive before that, with hopes and dreams of its own."

"If a cow can dream. Or a sprig of corn."

She slammed her drink down on the table, and it sloshed a few drops into the harbour waters below. "Alright, you snunky munkle. Cows don't dream, and corn grows without thought at all. But people dream, and we weave the cows and the corn into our dreams whether they like it or not. Take New Verity. Take your precious sakura."

"Delighted," he murmured.

She ignored him."They've got tree DNA, and cut and sliced and spliced. Now they've got the perfect cherry blossom. Well hoddle my trumps, let's break out the dandelion ale!"

He looked at her, a quizzical expression on his face. Sometimes her dialect became impenetrable. He thought of asking for a translation, or perhaps a phrase book, but the light in her eyes could well have been fire.

"I'm not saying the natural order is right and we should all run back to the stoney ages. I'm saying we keep changing things and calling it progress, when really we have no idea where we're going. Once, we thought we were heading for Eden. Then we found New Zealand, and that dream became obsolete."

He choked on his fizzling ginger ale, and she laughed.

"But without Eden, or the kingdom of Heaven, where are we going?"

"My nose tingles in the presence of rhetoric," he said. "Go ahead, answer your own question."

"I can't."

He blinked. "All that spiel, and you say 'I can't'?"

She shrugged. "I don't know either. But I know an abuse of power when I see it. And so would anyone else, if they bothered to look. I'm not the only one. I'm one girl out of a big crowd who wants to show the world every bad, dangerous experiment that's going on. If we show them, if we keep on showing them, there's a chance that the people who need to see, who can understand where we're heading, will notice our signs and give us the guidance we need."

She leaned back in her chair, her chest heaving, sweat prickling on her flushed cheeks.

"Wow," he said.

"Wow?"

"I understand why you wear those little books on your ears. They're bibles, tiny black bibles, aren't they?"

She blushed harder.

"You're a true believer. You're honest enough to admit that you don't have a solution for all the world's problems, humble enough to believe that there are people smarter than you, and devout enough to hold faith that they will appear and do their work, if you do yours."

She lowered her eyes and nibbled the end of her tongue. She looked upset and embarrassed. "I talk too much," she said.

"No," he said. "This is a new side of you. I haven't seen it before, and I like it. I didn't understand why you went to New Verity, or why you entered the contest. I understood why I did those things, but not you. It makes sense now."

"Gee, I'm glad you figured me out," she said. "But you still make no sense to me."

He gave her a wry grin. "Arima, I'm not so difficult to understand. What's this contest called? The 'Beautification', right? That's a dumb name."

"Not if we-"

"Wait. I haven't finished."

She sucked on her straw, and nodded for him to continue.

"The world doesn't need a hundred photographers to beautify it."

"There're only-"

"Details. The world, even this poor, ignorant, all-devouring blind wanderer of a modern world, as you would have it, doesn't need a makeover. It doesn't need a takeover. All it needs is for people to wake up for a second, look around them, and notice what's always been here. You asked how and why I take pictures, emphasis on the whatinthehell, I suspect. All I do is look, and the world shines in its own glory. When I look through the viewfinder, I don't see a smoky, stained, stunted heap of wreckage. I see glory. When I shoot a flower or a face, I don't see pretty yellow petals, or long dark eyelashes. I mean I see those things for a moment, but when I focus, I come into a clear, peaceful place, where there's just me and the flower. Then, when I'm ready to take the shot, even those things disappear. There's no face, no flower. There's no camera, and no intervening space. There's nothing and no one around me, and no 'around me' at all. There's no me." He paused, and his face twisted as he struggled to find words to express something that couldn't fit, that spilled out from anything so clumsy as speech. "There's no me. There's no you. There's no space and no time. I'm not there anymore, and there's no there to be. But it's not nothing. It's the most alive, wonderful, magical state, when a flower unfolds and opens a window on eternity."

He sat back, his eyes distant, and though he faced her, he seemed to be looking into deep pace. He paused, and the sun played on his face, then it passed, and he sighed, and looked at her with his usual humour. "Then my finger twitches. Programmed reflex I guess, and I'm back on planet Earth, with one more file on my memory card."

She gazed at him, and perhaps it was the smart drugs, or the warm, peaceful day in a strange yet beautiful city, but she gave him a look of deep, warm compassion.

"So," he went on, pursing his lips, "you were right when you told me I toss aside my pictures without thinking where they go, or what use people make of them. I do that, and worse. I give them to people for whatever money I can get, and I don't give loyalty to anyone. I'm already loyal, loyal to my vision. Every time I take a picture, I want it to be the last. Because..."

She didn't need to hear any more. "Because one day you'll take the perfect picture, and you won't come back. You'll have found, not a sninky little peephole, but a door, a door into eternity."

He bowed his head, then peered up at her, like a penitent sinner. "I still love the world, you know," he said. "It's just... It's already beautiful. More beautiful than we could make it."

Her eyes widened, and the flush returned to her cheeks. She ran the tip of her tongue along the curve of her lip. "Take my picture," she said.

He blinked.

"Take it now."

He raised an eyebrow. "But there are so many people here."

"Let them watch."

His eyes flashed with humour, and zest. He ran one finger along the top of his camera.

She winked at him, and moaned. Take it, Soro. Take it now."

He grinned. "Call me Song."

...

And then the sun shone through the mist on the Charles bridge, and painted the statues in golden light, if only for a moment, and at the right angle, because burnt black stone cannot glow except when the magic is there, but the magic cannot last, it comes out in shards and flashes, as long as the lightning stands still in the sky. She walked through the mist, and the dawn rays gilded her skin, and set the leaves of her black bibles glowing, and more, her turquoise eyes shimmered, iridescent, like weeping opals.

They greeted the stars by the Sphinx, counted constellations older than the stone eyes that gazed beyond them, through them, into deep time, into blinks and splinters of time wide enough to swallow the ages of flint, of bronze, and of iron.

They ran hand in hand through the fields of flowers at Grass, all reds, yellows, sultry oranges and velvet purples, and they tasted nature's sweet scents, and man's work of refined essences and aromas, the honeydew, the ambergris, the distilled scents of celestial nectar.

They stood by the docks at Hamburg, and looked out across the river, wide as the sea, wider than oceans, and watched muscular men with broad shoulders and mighty backs haul lumber and raw iron up from the decks, load them on trucks, and troop back to the waiting ships, lazy and rocking on the water.

Many nights they returned to the waiting ship, to long tables bedecked with food, to lounges and bars and the constant vibration of the New Dawn, to sail on to the next port. On other days, when the route lay across land, they rode coaches or trains, always in the most exquisite luxury, but never free to wander off-course; they were guided by the dictates of the lottery, and when the captain named their next destination, many laughed or sighed, or gritted their teeth at the thought of yet another trek, yet another night of travel, yet another chance to take a great photo, or see it shot better by a rival.

Soro cared nothing for the contest, and less for the lottery. He would go where he was sent, and if the lottery told him to go from Jakarta to Ahmedabad and back, he'd shrug wink, and hold Arima's warm, pleasing hand. Every day of travel took him further from his old life, and closer to his brother, or so he prayed.

Their days and nights were pleasant and bountiful, but they could never escape the sense of threat, if not fear, then tension that turned to anxiety that gripped the heart with sharp claws, and then to fright, painful fright, as the heart so gripped would jump and kick. They spoke no more with Typhoon, and very little with Triolet, who seemed content to hold everyone in disdain. Jack Johnson proved a kind man, but he never got over the stiffness that had marked him from the start. He and the other participants concentrated on their mission of gathering pictures, and if they noticed that Soro and Arima had paired off, they accepted it. Probably, thought Soro, they welcomed it, for as long as the two of them were caught up in each other, they were less likely to catch the beautiful images that would decide the winner of the contest.

Typhoon remained a brooding presence, a shadow on the borderlands of their joy. He did not vanish, neither did he close in. Instead he lingered at the edges, to be seen from the corner of the eye, and then to fade when looked at head-on. If he knew of Soro's plan, he did not show it.

"It's dangerous," said Arima one morning, as they lay in bed, waiting for the ship to dock at Crete. "The more time he has, the more likely he is to figure it out."

Soro laughed. "He won't figure it out. He thinks he has us beat."

"And you think you have him beat! We need to be careful."

He scratched his ear, and his nose, and then his back. "How long is it since they changed these sheets? I think I'd better call down to the laundry."

She harrumphed. "You take it too lightly," she said. "All he has to do is watch us when we go out for pictures."

"That's exactly when he won't watch us," he said. "It's when we're not nabbing snaps that he gets worried."

She shook her head. "I hope you're right."

The New Dawn traced an invisible line around the world, the line of an alcoholic snake, searching, ever searching for an equally smashed, blindly scampering mouse. It wound from the cold north to the colder south, from the Amazon delta to the congested shipping lanes of the North Sea. It went on so long it began to feel like a ride on the world serpent, a never-ending spiral. But like every journey, no matter how long or winding, it wended its way back, at last, to the beginning.

"I'm afraid," said Arima.

"I've taken care of you so far," he said.

"That's not what I mean. We're coming to the end."

"Of a cruise. Don't be afraid, it's just a cruise. And a contest."

She shook her head, and tears started in her eyes. "It's more. It's more than that. This is the only world we've known together. What if we return to land, and leave the magic at sea?"

He put an arm around her. "We first met on the land," he said. "Under the boughs of a tree, with deep, strong roots, and bright, pink, eternal blossom. If we came under a spell, it didn't begin on the New Dawn. It began in the sacred grove."

"I remember," she said, her voice falling to a whisper. "I was scared."

"But you were not alone."

She wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him with all of her strength. "We're going back," she said. "We're going all the way back."

"If we have to," he said. "All the way back."

He kissed her then, and later, he took her picture, with her camera.

Chapter 13

And at last the snake returned upon itself, the winding trail finished its circle of spirals, and the humming, floating deck turned to firm land under his feet. And again he stood in Belle Stakker's office, and breathed air laden with sugar and artificial sweeteners, and the musty smell of old paper files, mouldering in metal cabinets, and noticed the pleasing smell of pine, and the chemical tang of glue, that rose from the large model building that dominated her office.

"Panopticon," she said.

He frowned. The word seemed familiar, but he couldn't remember what it meant.

"We're pleased with your work," she said, looking up from the glossy prints that lay on her desk. She pushed aside a torn package of strawberry creams, brushed crumbs from her hands, and stood. She gave him the ghastly grimace that passed for a smile, and looked him down and up again with bulging, toad eyes.

"Still no computer, huh?"

Her awful smile became a genuine grimace, as she shuddered, and shook her head. "Oh no," she said. "I can't put up with those terrible machines. But that's immaterial. Your pictures are remarkable. The Beautification will make excellent use of them."

He blinked, and cocked his head. "Use. Use?"

She grinned. "Ah yes, we were going to come to this someday. I feel I owe you an apology, but you, like the other contestants, have been kept in the dark about certain aspects of our project."

He frowned. "I guess I have. And I guess it's time for a little light." He looked around the old-fashioned office. "Perhaps you have a candle."

She gave a fake sounding laugh. "You are such a clever fellow, just like he said."

His back prickled. He wanted to ask her about that, but she rattled on, oblivious.

"You're correct, indeed. It is time to reveal the true scale of the project." She rubbed her hands together. "I've been looking forward to this for so long, waiting for the chance to talk about it, it's been so hard to keep my mouth locked down, let me tell you! I get so excited about our project, I can feel my heart leap!"

"Yes, well, you don't have to endure that any longer," he said.

"No," she said. "I do not. It began a long time ago. When I was just a sophomore at college, I read Jeremy Bentham. At the same time, I recall I was annoyed at the amount of time my roommate spent watching asinine TV shows. I thought to myself, if I have to waste one more minute of study time because she can't miss a single episode of Fashionista Nuns, I'll go insane. Just then I noticed something; I was all about public service, from a very early age. My father raised me right! How many people shirk jury duty, ignore city council elections, how many can even name their mayor? And yet, night after night on these infernal TV shows, ordinary people from every city and town in the country, in the entire world, volunteer to be humiliated, to be ridiculed and disgraced, all for a chance to parade before the camera?"

"Panopticon," he breathed.

"You begin to see," she said. "I knew you would. The vision has its own power. Once it enters your mind, you cannot ignore, cannot forget it."

He shook his head. "It can't be."

"Imagine a world where everyone is free, everyone is peaceful, where there is no more crime. Imagine a world where people compete, not to outdo their neighbours in wealth or status, but for the attention of the cameras! Imagine a world where life becomes beautiful, and every moment of beauty is captured on camera, preserved forever-"

"For the highlight reels, or the bloopers," he said, gritting his teeth.

"We will reward them, at first, but soon that won't be necessary. They'll come to love the camera, live for the camera, when every day is a live performance for an audience of millions. Or better than millions, billions!" Her eyes blazed with the zeal of the fanatic.

"You would snatch every last shred of freedom from our hands," he said, bile rising in his throat. He stared at her, his jaw muscles bunching, appalled that he had ever come here, accepted her 'help', agreed to work for this monstrous woman. "I remember now. Panopticon. The prison with a thousand peepholes, where a spy watches your every living moment."

She wrinkled her nose, and curled her lip. She looked as if he'd handed her a stale, rat-chewed hunk of cabbage, slapped her on the back, and told her to tuck in. "Please! You've missed the point. You've missed the entire point! My vision is not to spy on people. The very essence of Beautification is to make spies redundant."

"Beautification," he said. "Panopticon. I don't care what you call it; you're still planning a world without privacy, without liberty."

"Pshah! And I thought you were intelligent. People want this. People want to be recognised, they want to be on display."

"For the surveillance cameras."

"You're so crude! Yes, of course, there will be cameras, we can't get away from them, but more importantly, we'll have you."

He felt as if he'd stumbled through a hole in the floor. "Me?"

She gave him another smug grin. "What, you thought you were finished? Of course you. And, yes, the others like you. But you're special, and I want you to be my primary agent."

"You want me to be your... Agent."

She waved her hands as if hurrying along an errant schoolboy. "Yes, yes. Everyone will perform, every day of their lives. The whole point of Bentham's Panopticon was that the... The people didn't know when they were being watched and when they didn't. My plan will only work if everyone thinks the same way. Not like the... Not like someone in that, of course," she said, waving her hand at the model that weighed on her desk. She chuckle. "That would be a little on the nose. What people want is to be recognised, feted, and celebrated. For that, grainy surveillance footage will not do. We need-"

"Me." He gasped, choked by revelation. He saw it now. The whole, vile vision.

"Yes." She beamed, a cross between a monster toad and a little girl leaping out of bed on Christmas. "People will perform. They will work hard and play fair. They will be kind to their friends, and tender to their families. And when in public, whether shuffling paper at the office, heaving crates at the docks or gluing plastic monkeys together on the factory line, they will perform. Because you will be among them, because you will be there to catch them when they shine. And the world will watch."

He reeled away from her, dizzy, senses flickering in and out, his head filled with searing pain. He understood what he'd been used for. He had an intuition he knew how he'd been used. It made him sick.

"Sam..."

She pursed her lips, and gave him a contrite look. As contrite as a giant toad. "I'm afraid your brother... He proved less adaptable than you."

"Adaptable." He laughed, but it came out as a sob. "You mean he saw through your act, and he told you where to stick your snuckrat vision."

She frowned. "He's still breathing," she said. "In fact he's been kept with the utmost care, even luxury. He will be returned to you, as soon as the Commencement is over."

She told him about the big party they would have, to celebrate the return of the 'candidates', or, as he knew them, the 'contestants'. She explained how they would be offered lucrative positions within the bureau of Beautification, and how the world would be transformed, little by little, with special 'Notice Me' contests. The public in an area would know the photographers were among them, and that they could win prizes and TV spots if they 'performed' well enough to attract the photographers' attention.

"This is just the beginning," she said. "And we need you. I must have you, Song. I need your gift, and I'll do whatever at all to keep it."

He understood the threat in her words. Perhaps not against his person, but against those he loved. Against Sam.

"I have to see him. You have to let him go."

She gave him a knowing grin. "You could have seen him any time in the past few weeks. He's been living in the cabin right below yours."

He'd thought it impossible to suffer any more shocks. He was wrong. The news that Sam had been right under his feet, from the first night aboard the New Dawn, locked up, hoping for rescue, perhaps listening to Soro's footsteps, or the sounds when he had caressed Arima and called out her name... He'd been there all this time, waiting, hoping, praying that his oblivious brother would wake up to his plight, would descend and release him.

She chuckled. "I know you two aren't biologically related, Song. Both adopted, no blood ties to your parents or to each other, but even so, I'm surprised you didn't realise he was there. I kept expecting..." She shook her head, amusement crinkling the corners of her bulbous eyes.

It didn't matter. He had passed through shock, to the calm place on the far side of the storm. "Let him go." But that wasn't all. Once, maybe, he might have accepted her offer. Once, he might have taken it on, or anyhow let it pass, because he wouldn't have cared all that much. What did it matter who had his pictures, or how they were used? But that had been before spring and sakura. That had been before Arima.

Arima. He had never known anyone like her. He still didn't understand the bond between them, but he felt it in his depths. He would pay and sacrifice to protect it. She had changed his life. She had changed him. Arima had considered ideals, and the courage to keep them, no matter the cost.

If he accepted Belle's offer, he'd be safe. She'd free Sam. Arima, too, would be safe, but would she accept him back? She'd understand the Beautification, just as he did. She'd see through the marketing lies, and she'd never accept them, never compromise.

"I can't," he whispered.

"What's that?"

"I can't."

Belle looked bewildered. Then pure fury blazed on her face. She tried to smother it, but her rage showed in her eyes, and in the folds of skin around them. "You can. You can and you will. You must."

"No," he said, and shook his head. "I mustn't."

"It's your brother's life if you don't. Yours. Your little slut's life too! Don't think I've been blind; while you've been riding the waves, you've been riding her! She won't escape. She's not outside my reach. She's the one who'll suffer if you disobey."

He fought down the words that tried to burst from him. He battled to contain his fear, his fury. When he spoke, he spoke through tight lips and gritted teeth. "Keep the prints. You can't have the files. You can't have my name. I won't be your spy."

He turned his back on her, and walked out.

"You fool!" she cried. "You've thrown everything away. And it means nothing. Nothing!"

Chapter 14

He woke in darkness, serpents coiled around his arms, digging their teeth into his flesh. He blinked and struggled, but the snakes held him fast on the ground, gouging into his skin, mocking his paltry strength. No light came to his eyes, no freedom to his arms and legs. He tasted coppery blood in his mouth, and an oily stink of smoke filled his nose and stung his eyes.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and one more, to clear his head. He felt heavy and dull, as if he'd spent all night drinking cheap whiskey and cheaper vodka. His lips felt dry, his stomach empty, gnawing hunger growing within. He twisted again, and the snakes bit deep into his skin and writhed against him with a soft clink.

Clink?

His head started to work, neurons flashed messages one to another, lighting up like a city at dusk.

Snakes don't clink. They may slither, they may coil, they may rustle through the undergrowth or swish through water, but they do not clink.

As he woke to that fact, he grasped his true situation. He was chained.

Now he knew something vital; he was a prisoner, a captive of... He couldn't say. But a captive. Perhaps this had happened to his brother. Poor Sam had gone to sleep one night, and woken the next morning chained in darkness.

He wanted to burst into tears. He wanted to collapse into a huddle of bones and skin, and wail. But he didn't cry. He couldn't afford to waste the water. He was as dry as five hundred year old vellum, and if he lost any more water, what few synapses had flickered to life might just flicker back out. He needed the water to stay conscious and semi-functional. He needed to be functional to get the gronking smunk out of this dumbass bear trap and get his brother out too. For all he knew, Sam was next door. He sucked air and tested his chains. As he did, he reflected that he must have spent too much time with Arima. Her peculiar dialect was rubbing off on him, at least in the cursing department.

He twisted and turned, trying to get up into a sitting position. It took a lot of grunting, heaving effort, and he choked down the urge to curse, for fear that his captor or captors would hear him, and come; that they would reveal the act of chaining him to be a prelude to something much, much worse. He'd worked up a chilly sweat by the time he'd finished, but in this he succeeded: he sat before that much worse could materialise. Soro had a vivid imagination. He could picture 'much worse' without any effort. It took an effort not to picture it. Rusty hooks biting into flesh, jagged saws ripping into meat, nails hammered to crack, pierce and splinter living bone...

He ground his teeth, and tried to free his hands. He couldn't do it, but he tried anyway. He wrestled with the chain until it chewed his skin, until blood wept from his wrists, then he paused, tensed himself against the agony, and shifted his efforts to an attempt to stand.

The sun burst. It ripped apart like a smashed egg, and spilled light like stellar yolk. He gasped, clenched shut his eyes, and strained his arms and shoulders in an involuntary attempt to shield his face.

"I think you've had enough exercise for today."

The man's voice had a sickly, oily quality, like the smoke that gusted on his breath. It sounded too warm, too friendly. It sounded as cloying and nauseating as the stink of rotting fruit.

"You've run me around but good," the man said. "I'll admit it, you're an agile fellow. As agile as a monkey. In fact, I would bet a modest sum that you have more than a smidgen of monkey DNA. You certainly seem closer to the monkeys than to any human family."

He blinked and strained to see through the glare. It was a real glare, and not just the first glare of light on dark-adjusted eyes. Whoever he was, the speaker had aimed a battery of lamps smack at Soro's face, and he stood against them, a stark man-shaped shadow, eye-catching as a stage dominating performer, anonymous as atmospheric nitrogen.

But the voice...

"I know you," he said. He didn't add that he couldn't place the man, but he prodded his weary, anxious brain to name him.

"Know me?" The man laughed. "You've broken bread with me. You've stood beside me as a brother in the profession. When we first met, you were pathetically eager to be my friend."

He cursed himself. "Typhoon."

The man laughed again. "You're really very slow, a very second-rate fellow. Your brother worked it out a lot faster. Of course, he would, he's much the better man."

Sam. His gut twisted, and he let out a painful sob, so consumed by a rush of anguish he couldn't speak.

"Yes," Typhoon said. "He is, or should I say was, the better one. Better photographer, better brain, better brother. Shame he wouldn't play with us. Meant we had to turn to you... A most unsatisfying buffet."

He found his voice, and he had to work hard to keep it from turning into a wordless cry. "You took him. You did this. Give him back to me. Give him back!"

Typhoon chuckled, and waited until Soro shouted his voice to a dry whisper. "It's too late for that. And it's too late for you."

His mind recoiled from the horror of this prison. He had failed. His efforts, his brilliant plan, had come to naught. He'd believed he had caught Typhoon, out-tricked the trickster. Now he sat in chains, helpless before his murderous enemy. Murderous, yes, he'd discovered that, and much more the night he'd broken into Typhoon's stateroom on the New Dawn.

Thoughts of the past weeks tumbled through his mind, and he grabbed at them with relief. He couldn't stand the present. It wasn't just the chill fear that clawed at his vitals with talons of broken glass. It was the sense of utter, abject failure. He'd believed he had won. He'd even celebrated with Arima.

Thoughts of Arima rushed on him, and choked his throat with anguish, renewed terror, all dripping with thick, dark, oily shame. To imagine her sweet face, her laughing eyes, her full, succulent lips, contorted in fear as Typhoon or some hired fiend approached her, grunting with loathsome excitement as he watched her futile struggle, and heard her useless screams.

"No," he said. "No!"

But his words could not change the present. If only he could go back to the past, and warn himself. If only...

Typhoon roared with laughter. Soro knew his every thought and feeling, his every fear marked his face, and Typhoon approved of the picture.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and wished himself back, back to the past.

...

He hurried along the street to the hotel. Arima had wanted to stay at his home, and why not? Because Belle Stakker, and her thugs - not Gell Shield, he was now certain - knew where he lived. He'd got them a room at a shady joint in north Manhattan, close enough to visit Belle at the UN building, far enough to move without being tracked.

He thought.

He hoped.

He turned the corner and saw the modest brick façade of the Hotel Flammarion, gilded revolving doors flanked by tall green Norwegian pines. He started across the road, but a black truck roared in front of him and forced him to jump back, biting down a curse. He ran over the road, and started into the revolving doors, but a hand grabbed the point of his shoulder and whirled him around.

He found himself looking up into the skeletal features of Typhoon, but the urbane mask was off. Typhoon's lips were peeled back in a grotesque snarl, his long, abnormal teeth flashing like fangs. His great eyes stared down at Soro, gleaming with victory, the victory of a hunting leopard as it lays its paws on some frozen, terrified beast of prey. His victory appeared greater because it was not complete; a row of scratches marred the left side of his face, fresh and red with blood.

Soro focused on the scratches, his legs went weak, his vision blurred, and he felt as if he might collapse right there in the turning doors. "What have you done?"

Typhoon grinned with cruel satisfaction. "You forget about that girl, my fine little fellow, and save your tears for your own sack of bones."

Soro thrust aside the hand that held him and threw a punch at Typhoon's face. He felt the man's nose crunch under his fist, and saw blood splatter from the injury. Typhoon didn't utter a sound. He glared down at Soro, and struck him a gut blow so hard and so fast it seemed to come from nowhere. Soro fell to his hands and knees, choking on his pain. He tried to stand, but couldn't. He looked up, to see Typhoon's black shoe fly at his face.

Chapter 15

A punch rocked his head, blurred his vision, and brought stinging tears to his eyes. It tore the old wound, and blood ran down his face. But it did bring him back.

"I remember," he said, and the satisfaction of recall overwhelmed pain, fear, and even the fury that grew on him. "I remember it was you, Typhoon."

The dark figure laughed. A vague movement of shadows told Soro he was rubbing his knuckles. "Then you must realise you've run out of time. Dear fellow, I didn't mean for it to end this way. Cooperate now and we may allow you to live."

"May allow me to live. Hell! You can't kill me, you sonofabitch. You need me to front your panoptic con."

Typhoon shrugged. It was getting easier to make out his shape and movements, even against the painful brilliance of the halogen lamps. "Alive or dead, you will serve. You haven't seen your brother in a month and more. You don't know if he's breathing, and he still served."

Soro groaned.

"Your pretty little girl? You don't have a shadow of a clue where she is, or even if she is."

The words struck him like a physical blow in the solar plexus. His lungs seized up, and he gasped for air that wouldn't come. It was too much. He sank to his knees, the chatter of the chains a mocking song.

Typhoon leered down at him, and laughed.

He heard a scratching, scuffling noise from off to his right.

Typhoon turned, and his profile showed black against the light. He frowned into shadow, and then his features twisted in shock. A small dark blur scurried along the floor, and flew at his face.

Typhoon shrieked as the rushing shadow made contact.

Soro strained to join the attack, to aid his brave companion, but the chains held him down. All he could do was watch, eyes narrowed against the painful glare, to watch, and hope.

Typhoon whirled around, screaming as the monkey clawed the scratches on his face. Blood splashed from his wounds. Typhoon snarled, grabbed the animal with both hands, and tore him away from his face. He paid for it with agony, for he howled, and more blood ran down his abnormal features, but he looked too furious to submit to the pain. He raised Squiz high overhead. He saw a tiny glint of light against the monkey's silhouette.

"No," said Soro. "No!"

Typhoon flung the monkey down on the floor. He hit it with a soft thud, accompanied by a tiny snapping sound.

Every muscle in Soro's body tensed, so hard he couldn't breathe, so hard felt he would burst. At the same time nausea rose in his stomach, swept up through his chest, through his pounding heart, and into his brain. The brilliant light faded into shadows, shadows with sickening, loathsome shapes, his strength drained out of him, and he slumped to the floor.

The world drained away from him and he fell into a pit of dark, creeping shadows, his body agony, his heart anguish.

As from a tremendous distance, that hateful voice came to him. "I'll do the same to the girl, Soro. And when your use is exhausted, I'll do it to you."

...

He sank through seas, an ocean of darkness. He fell through a chilling void. It soaked him in the sound of his name.

Through the darkness shone a star, faint and distant, dimmer than a candle at midday, and yet it shone. Fainter than cotton wool against a cloud, and yet it shone. Weaker than Soro himself, if anything could be, and still it glimmered.

The star called him.

And he answered.

He fought to rise from the depths of pain, sick horror and despair. He struggled to move though the air itself weighed on him like a lead blanket. The slightest shift of his body sent waves of nausea through his gut. His arms and legs trembled, and a black cloud obscured his vision.

By moving, he started pains in his arms, legs, face and body. By breathing, he started pains in his lungs. The pain roused him from stupor. He welcomed it, for it woke him. He hated it for telling him to lie down, to be still, to give up the effort; hated the whispered voice that told him anything that cost so much pain was not worth the price.

He ground his teeth together and thrust aside thoughts of failure, of surrender. By tremendous effort, he heaved his body onto his side. By curling his legs behind him, and pushing against the floor, he was able to shuffle forward.

He looked for the dim star he had seen in his semiconscious state, but it had disappeared. He looked all around, as far as he could crane his neck in that awkward position on the floor, and saw that his vision was fine; Typhoon had switched off the lights. Another obstacle, but he couldn't let it stop him. He breathed hard, and concentrated as best he could in a mind besieged by pain and fear. He knew where the star had fallen. He just had to trust his memory.

Inch by bitter inch, he crawled across the floor. Every slight gain cost a thousand flares of agony, but he refused to submit. Every scrap of ground covered brought him closer to his goal, though he feared, in his blindness, that he was not advancing, but withdrawing from the light he had seen.

It hurt to breathe; the chains constricted his chest, and his heart beat faster than usual, and with a strange rhythm. He had spells of dizzy weakness, and fire burned in his muscles. He couldn't say how long it took, he could only remember the exhausting effort, that made him burn as if with fever, and soaked him through with sweat. But at last he discovered the tiny body, not of a pet, but of his truest friend.

He found Squizzle by bumping his face against him. He started to feel warm skin, and soft fur on his cheek. "Squiz? Squiz!"

The monkey lay silent and still.

Tears came to Soro's eyes, and he wept without shame. Through every adventure, every dumb accident, every threat and danger, Squizzle had remained by his side, or perched on his shoulder. He had proven a braver and better companion than many a human.

Tears poured sideways across his face, to moisten his brow and pool under his cheek.

He felt a tiny, warm flick against his skin.

He paused, unsure if he'd imagined it.

It came again, a sensation like being stroked with a tiny paintbrush.

He blinked to clear his tear-flooded eyes, and squinted to see anything in the gloom. Somehow his eyes had adjusted, and there must have been a crack or chink in the ceiling or a wall, for he made out, all dim and foggy, the monkey's tiny face. Squizzle licked a tear away for the third time, and gave a soft chirrup.

Something caught in Soro's throat, and he froze, afraid he was hallucinating. But Squizzle didn't waver or vanish. And then, moving with the slow, cautious movements of someone very old, or in great pain, the monkey pushed his hand towards Soro's face.

He held a tiny key.

...

He thrust a handful of bills at the vet, her light grey eyes wide in surprise. "Keep it all. I'll give you more later. Just fix him up."

He paused to stroke Squiz where he lay on the soft white cushion. The monkey tried to squeeze his finger, but his grip was weak. Soro tried to smile at him, but tears blurred his eyes. Then he turned, and made himself march out.

No matter how much he wanted to stay, he couldn't afford it. If he lingered, it would be too late.

...

The hall murmured with the fizz of champagne, the clink of silver knives and forks as people ate succulent steaks, cakes of corn bread, fresh salad, and a selection of pies, apple, cherry, blueberry pie, all served with a side of delicious vanilla ice cream. The food filled the air with mouth-watering scents, which mingled with the perfumes worn by the diners. The room resounded with the laughing chatter of several hundred guests. Most were celebrities; stars of cinema and TV. Then there was a leaven of men and women from the worlds of business and politics. The remaining bulk came from the various news media, and they had brought their cameras, microphones, tablets, and some were streaming the event live. All had come to that grand, opulent hall, to sit at their tables and dine under crystal chandeliers, at the invitation of the United Nations, and one special agent of that world-spanning body.

Belle Stakker lumbered onto the stage. She wore a white dress suit with grey pinstripes. On a taller, slimmer woman, it could have looked elegant. Instead, it looked as though some joker had sloshed white paint over a hippo. Her eyes bulged out even more than usual, and sweat glimmered on her forehead and cheeks. Nevertheless, when she stood at the microphone on the stage, just to the left of the large video screen, the audience fell into respectful silence.

The champagne had been rationed.

"I welcome you all to the first, international, United Nations Beautification!"

Her voice, amplified by speakers, boomed even at the back of the grand hall, where Soro leaned against the right hand wall, watching for his moment. He hadn't had much time to spare, so he wore the scuffed blue jeans, black t-shirt and open red shirt that he wore most every other day. He'd had a little trouble with the security people, but when they'd got a good look at him, they'd waved him right in. It's hard not to be admitted to a gathering when your face is displayed at the front of the building on massive banners. Someone had got a publicity shot of him posing in some desert, one foot on a rock, an outsized camera pressed to his face. He couldn't remember having it taken, but for an event such as this, he didn't believe they could have made a better choice.

"You do not know how long and how hard I have worked to realise this event," said Belle. "It has been my dream, my hope, the object of my fervent faith, ever since my sophomore year of college."

The audience allowed her to continue, although Soro noticed that more than half of them were engaged in private conversation, or relishing the last few morsels of dinner. They paid her the courtesy of keeping quiet, even if most were listening with only one ear.

He shook his head. They didn't know. He wondered if Belle would explain her entire plan right then, or if she would reveal it in drabs and driblets, allowing people to grow accustomed to her stealthy overthrow of their freedoms. He gritted his teeth, though the muscular tension reignited the pains in his head and face. These people had no idea what Belle had planned, or that she had arranged for them to come merely to legitimise her first strike on freedom. By following the forms, she would harness the power of the cult of celebrity. Once she had done that, she would be stronger, and harder to stop. He quivered with the urge to rush on stage and confront her, but he knew he had to wait. His plan had been shaken, but he could still prevent the worst. But he would have to wait for the right moment.

Belle was still talking. "...and if we look at our government buildings, our office towers, our factories and homes, and see only the sooty, dirty facade, don't we feel something shrivel inside? If we look out through grimy windows, see our streets laden with trash, our people milling about in shapeless, colourless clothes, if we look at our parks and see them mutilated by building projects, overwhelmed with weeds, choked, poisoned and dying, don't we feel like falling down and weeping for long-lost Eden?"

Soro blinked. In spite of his loathing for her plans, and in spite of the distaste he felt when he beheld her remarkable ugliness, he couldn't disagree with her words. She hadn't gained her position by mere evil luck; she had real skill.

"...so we come here, having asked the masters of beauty, I do not say to create beauty, but to rediscover the beauty that lies around and within us. If we wish our civilisation to survive, we must nurture it, we must love it. And to love it, we must find what is lovable in it, and bring it out. We must celebrate it." She paused to wipe a tear from her eye, and Soro had to marvel. Either she was a skilled actor, or she was presenting, not her plan, but her creed. "So, without further hesitation, I give you...the Beautification."

She gave her words to the silent, now fascinated crowd, and silence gave way to applause. The sound of clapping hands rose to a roar that shook the walls.

Soro thought of Squiz, lying broken on a vet's surgical bench, his blood staining the white sheets red. He thought of Sam, locked away for a month or more. He thought of Arima, vanished, hunted, perhaps lost to him. He eyed Belle, his face white.

Belle raised her hands for silence. "We will have some minor announcements later, but for now, it's time to celebrate. Let's welcome the winners of our contest, and give them their reward. Now the person who deserves the greatest recognition, who has earned the highest reward of first prize in the Beautification, cannot be here tonight. You all know his name, and his work. I only wish he could accept your thanks and your applause in person. That could not be. On behalf of this person, one of his fellow contestants will receive first prize, the renowned 'Typhoon' Tigh Strugg. And the winner himself, as some of you may have guessed, is none other than Soro!"

The raucous applause made him jump. He'd always known, in a vague sort of way, that people had heard of him. He hadn't really thought about it, and to have a huge crowd of rich, famous 'elite' types clapping their hands and calling his name was a new and shocking experience. He felt his face grow warm. He shook his head. No time for that now.

Typhoon stalked onto the stage. He wore a green leather jacket and trousers, over a red silk shirt. His shoes were white alligator leather, and he wore a black Malibu hat at a jaunty angle over thick black sunglasses. The ensemble did a good job of hiding the scratches that Arima and Squizzle had left on his face, and Soro supposed the makeup department had finished the job.

"I'm very sorry that my good friend Soro couldn't be here tonight," said Typhoon.

Soro raced down the aisle, past a couple of surprised security guards near the stage, and leapt up beside Typhoon. When he got onto the stage, he whirled to face the audience, threw his arms out as if to hug the whole room, and flashed them a brilliant smile. "Ta-da!"

Belle choked, and Typhoon froze, paler than ever. The audience went crazy.

"Thank you, thank you," said Soro, snatching the mike from Typhoon's nerveless hands.

Typhoon found his voice. "You! I'm going to-"

"Yes?" said Soro, holding the microphone out towards him.

Typhoon froze again, his face drawn into an elegant mask of horror.

"Thought so," said Soro.

Belle began to edge away from the stage.

"And where do you think you're going, little miss?" he cried.

Belle stopped moving, except to twitch her fingers near her mouth. He guessed she could kill for a strawberry cream.

"You're the lady of the hour," he said. He turned to face the audience. "This is a special occasion. I don't normally talk about my work, but in this case, and because it's you, I'll make an exception. Who'd like to hear some trade secrets? I promise they'll be juicy."

The audience must have thought it was all part of the show. They settled into an attitude of expectant interest. Typhoon and Belle stood rooted to the spot, neither of them able to strike at him or to flee; to do either would have been to create a worse stink, but he knew how terrified they had to be, anticipating his revenge.

"First, let's take a look at some of the pictures Belle's team used to pick me as the winner." The podium on the left of the screen had a control panel. He used it to display the photos in the 'Soro' folder. The audience made appreciative noises when he showed them shots of little Australian children playing on Sydney's harbour bridge, a weather-beaten Athenian lady pouring a glass of water for her granddaughter, and a bunch of others. He liked them, in a way he was proud of them, but the audience didn't understand his smile. Neither did Belle or Typhoon. From the corner of his eye, he saw them exchange puzzled glances.

"I guess you like these pictures," he said. "I guess you might even decide they're worthy of first prize in this... Well, this incredible contest. But there's one thing you need to know. If you like these photos that much, then you've got the wrong face plastered on the front of this building."

He paused to let the audience digest that.

"You see, I didn't take these pictures."

"You're lying!" yelled Typhoon.

Soro chuckled. "Sorry folks," he said. "He's got a right to be rattled. Tell 'em why you think that, good fellow."

Typhoon swallowed, and turned his head to the audience and back. "They came from your camera."

"Bit louder for the little girl in the back," said Soro, thrusting the mike at him like a dagger.

"They came from your camera. They're your pictures, every one."

"Everyone get that? But soft, I never gave you my camera. How did you get them? Hmm?"

Typhoon swallowed again, and refused to speak.

"He's shy, ladies and gentlemen. I'll speak for him. You, fine fellow Typhoon, put a bug in my camera on my first night aboard the New Dawn. I didn't get why the battery was draining so fast, not until I saw the receiving device in your stateroom."

Typhoon stood unnaturally still. He looked a lifeless skeleton, wrapped in clothes and held up with wires.

"Can't speak, eh? That's okay, I'm here for you." He emphasised those last words, and felt gratified to see Typhoon shiver. "But why? Why would you, a famous photographer in your own right, bother to steal my pictures?" He glanced at the audience. "That was a puzzler, ladies and gentlemen. Until I found your diary."

Typhoon shuddered as if an electrical current had passed through his body. He shoved past Belle, jumped off the stage, and ran towards the exit.

"Hold him!" said Soro.

The security guards, bemused at this turn, recognised guilt when they saw it. They tackled Typhoon, and piled on him.

"Looks guilty, doesn't he?" said Soro. "He should. Justice is long overdue. Here," he plugged a memory stick into the control panel, and flashed up a digital photo he'd taken of the diary. "I'll save you the bother of squinting at all those scrawly words. Typhoon earned his name by surviving a storm at sea. He was sailing with his then lover, Countess Maria Herdenhardt of Austria, and a celebrated amateur photographer. This was before he was famous, you understand. Tigh, as he was then, couldn't take being second rate, but he could take Maria's pictures... And her life."

A ripple of shock ran through the audience.

"He strangled the girl, scuttled their yacht, and swam to shore with a store of pictures and a story to make him famous. But when Belle found him, he'd sold all of Maria's pictures, and his own attempts to succeed were abject failures. Belle persuaded him to act as her agent in this farcical contest, to steal the best photos, to help her realise her dream... By any means."

Belle emitted a strangled croak. She'd raised both hands to her face, and now clawed at the air, her cheeks now red, now mottled white. "You're ruining it," she whispered.

He had a sudden urge to grin at her in cruel triumph, but he bit it down. "Belle's plan was never to celebrate beauty. We don't need her help to recognise the beauty all around us. All we need is to look. But that wasn't enough for her. She wanted a world of obedience, of unquestioning subordination." He outlined her crazed plot, and noted the wide eyes, the drawn lips; no one now smiled. "And she would go to any lengths to foist this abysmal vision on you, even as far as the theft of my name. When my brother refused to serve, she locked him away, and conned me into believing she'd help rescue him. Rescue! The only one he needed rescuing from was you," he glared at her. "And in case I woke up to her plot, in case I disobeyed, she set her murderous creature, Typhoon, to steal my pictures. But I caught him out. Do you wonder why I said they were not my pictures? I'll show you!"

He had them entranced, but it was a trance of horror. They stared in mute fascination as he brought the photos back on the screen. He chose the picture with the children playing on Sydney's 'Coat Hanger' bridge. He liked that one; he remembered the warmth of the sun, the salt smell of the harbour, the taste of blueberry smoothies, and the feel of Arima's hand in his as they walked and watched the glittering sea.

"It has my flair, I admit," he said, laughing at himself. "But what's this figure in the background? Let's zoom in." He enlarged the picture. It revealed a young man with dark, floppy hair, and a laughing expression. He held a camera in one hand, and a stuffed kangaroo in the other.

Belle stared up at the big screen, hatred marring her face. It was apparent she was torn between the desire to run, and painful fascination about her oncoming doom. "But that's..." her words trailed off in a whisper.

"Yes," he said, satisfied by the gasps from the audience. "That's me.

"Then who...?" She gazed at him, almost pleading.

He grinned. "A true lady. One you haven't caught, and will not."

She scowled at him, a last burst of defiance showing in the curl of her lip, the narrowing of her eyes. "This isn't over. She won't escape me. And neither will you."

He laughed. "You do know this is going out live, don't you?"

Her eyes grew very wide.

...

The tree stood in a patch of brown, dead grass, in a weed-strewn park in a poor neighbourhood in north Manhattan. It stood alone, and there was something proud, if sad, in the way it rose over that dusty, ill-tended soil. Blossom, once vivid pink, now fading, littered the earth around the roots, through which, here and there, poked small green shoots of grass, out of place in that park. The blossom drifted from the tree and settled on the earth. Soon the tree would have lost its strong, bright colours. But this tree was unusual, and not just because it seemed to have come overnight from a distant place. Small buds showed green against the wood, all over that tangle of branches and twigs, and one or two had begun to unfold, to reveal their colour.

Pink. Vivid pink.

The girl sat under the tree, toying with a camera. From time to time a fading blossom drifted down and brushed her braids and ribbons. She wore a frilly white dress, with black lace stockings, and a pair of soft yellow shoes.

The man marched towards the tree, and when he saw the girl underneath, his heart skipped a beat. He wanted to run into her arms, but instead he forced himself to stroll up to her.

"You're late," she said, not looking up.

"They moved the tree."

She shrugged. "I found it quickly enough."

"You have a magical talent for landing where you leap. I had to rely on my overtaxed brain."

She pouted. "You're still late."

"I have a present."

She cocked her head, and indicated he could sit.

He held out a hazelnut with a few irregular dents. "Squiz made it for you in hospital. Sam taught him. It means 'I love you' in monkey language."

She took it, and considered it with a grave expression, although he thought he saw a flicker of laughter in those blue-green eyes.

"Well," he said. "I say he made it. Actually he..."

"Chewed it."

He looked down, and bit his lip. "I guess you could say that."

She grabbed his hand. "It's beautiful!"

He looked at her, and saw tears glimmer in her eyes. He started to speak, but she pressed her finger to his lips. They were past the time for words.

Under the branches of a strange and beautiful tree, in a secluded corner of the great city, all cares forgotten, all hurts forgiven, they embraced, and when the time came to leave, they walked an open road, and the sun lit their way, and a brighter sun lit their hearts.
