That last line had been different before. Winter frowned, trying to recall it. In
Winter joined in the next chorus, and Lucinda smiled warmly and connivingly at him, but it was to Ree she turned when she sang the rest, eyes bright and wet.
‘I didn’t know she could sing,’ Calder said.
Winter glared at him for a moment, but Calder was looking past him.
‘Behind you,’ said Calder. ‘Guy dressed like Elvis, from the rhinestones and amphetamines period. Play it cool and turn slowly. He seems to be squaring up for a fight with Amelia.’
Winter slid down from the rail and looked around. A few metres away Amelia stood with her back to him, and was indeed almost head to head with a man in a white suit. Winter expected to witness a Glasgow kiss at any moment. Beside that man stood a much taller figure in a tight, tattered space suit and with shaggy hair and beard, a man whom Winter recognised from the television as Lamont. He was leaning into the quarrel and clinging, as if for support, to the hand of a woman got up as some kind of robot sex-toy.
Winter edged closer, Calder just behind him.
‘We thought
‘—fucking moron, dae ye think we hae—’
At that moment Lucinda flashed past him in a flurry of pale skirts and flung herself on the robot-like woman, hugging her and spinning her around. The quarrel abruptly halted in distraction and Lamont stepped forward and grasped both participants gently by the shoulder. Winter strode up to stand beside Amelia, who shot him a furious,
‘What’s the problem?’ Winter asked.
‘These fucking maroons,’ said Amelia. ‘They think
‘What the hell can he do?’ said the man. Winter looked in his face and in a moment of disorientation recognised him as Lawrence Hammond, the Returner militant he’d last seen back on Polarity, a few subjective months and objective centuries earlier.
‘Hey, you’re—’ Hammond said.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Winter. ‘Glad to see you back too. You were saying?’
‘Armand’s stuck with the Runner Joint Chiefs and the Knights,’ Hammond was saying. ‘And you should see the skyport, it’s ringed with armour. No doubt the city too, and space defence. There’s not a thing that can move in the sky without being shot down. The only chance is to bring in a Carlyle ship hard and fast, we thought that was the plan—’
‘Aye, and have it shot down?’ snarled Amelia. ‘I don’t fucking think so, jimmie.’
Calder poked his head in and looked around the small but growing circle of tense faces.
‘You mean this whole thing is all about who was supposed to bring what to the party? He said, she said? Koresh on a fucking stick, kids. This is pathetic.’
Everybody bristled, turning on this new common enemy.
‘Thank you for that,’ said Winter. ‘But, yeah, this isn’t getting us anywhere. We—’
‘Excuse me,’ said the silver-skinned woman. ‘But, you know, we
Everyone looked at her, puzzled, and then Lamont grinned all over his face and said:
F
irst there was a blue light everywhere for a moment, and then from the sky came a great rushing wind that made trees bend and chairs and tables bowl along the street. Winter clung to the rail with one hand and to Lucinda’s arm with the other. She was holding her daft hat crammed down over her head and face like some utterly inadequate armour. The wind stopped as suddenly as it had started, and every face looked up and saw what was coming down. Screams and yells rose above the loudest music that still played. People ran from the park in all directions. Winter heard Calder say, in an amused, satisfied tone: ‘Thousands flee screaming …’
But he, like everyone else, was looking up with his mouth open. The sight above them was like nothing anyone had ever looked on before. A kilometre-long narrow inverted cone of a mountain hung in the air, descending slowly until its relatively tiny, bristly metallic tip touched the grass a few hundred metres away, as gently as a well-balanced needle going into a vinyl groove.
