of its fingers and the fluke of its tail. The cracks in the shattered glass radiate away in all directions, making the Denizen look as if it is caught in a frozen star, or pinned to a snowflake.
Goodglass removes her glove and touches a hand to the smooth and unbroken glass on the outer surface of the tank, exactly where the Denizen has its own webbed hand. That’s when Grafenwalder notices the pale webs of skin between Ursula Goodglass’s fingers, visible now that she has taken off the glove. Their milky translucence is exactly the same as the webs between the Denizen’s. She presses her hand harder, squeezing until her palm is flat against the glass, and the Denizen echoes the movement.
The air feels as if it has frozen. The moment of contact seems to last minutes, hours, eternities. Grafenwalder stares in numb incomprehension, unable to process what he is seeing. When she moves her hand, skating it across the glass, the Denizen follows her like an expert mime.
She takes another step closer, bringing her face against the glass, laying her cheek flat against the cold surface. The Denizen presses itself against the shattered inner layer and mirrors her posture, bringing its own head against hers. The flesh of their faces appears to merge.
Goodglass pulls her face back from the glass, then smiles at the Denizen. It tries to emulate her expression, forcing its mouth wide. It’s not much of a smile — it’s more horrific than reassuring — but the deliberateness of the gesture is beyond doubt.
Finally Grafenwalder manages to say something. His own voice sounds wrong, as if it’s coming from another room.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m greeting it,’ Ursula Goodglass says, snapping her attention away from the tank. ‘What on Earth did you think I was doing?’
‘It’s a Denizen. It doesn’t know you. You can’t know it.’
‘Oh, Carl,’ she says, pityingly now. ‘Haven’t you got it yet? Really, I thought you’d have figured things out by now. Look at my hand again.’
‘I don’t need to. I saw it.’
She pulls back her hand until she’s only touching the glass with a fingertip. ‘Then tell me what it reminds you of — or can’t you bring yourself to say it?’
‘I’ve had enough,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it isn’t true to the spirit of the Circle. I insist that you leave immediately.’
‘But we’re not done yet,’ Goodglass says.
‘Fine. If you won’t go easily, I’ll have you escorted to your shuttle.’
‘I’m afraid not, Carl. We’ve still business to attend to. You didn’t think it was going to be quite that easy, did you?’
‘Leave now.’
‘Or what? You’ll turn your household systems on us?’ She looks apologetic. ‘They won’t work, I’m afraid. They’ve been disabled. From the moment our shuttle docked, it’s been working to introduce security countermeasures into your habitat.’ Before he can get a word in, she says, ‘It was a mistake to invite us to view the adult-phase hamadryad. It gave us the perfect opportunity to snoop your arrangements, design a package of neutralising agents. Don’t go calling for your keepers, either. They’re all unconscious. The last time we visited, the palanquin deployed microscopic stun-capsules into every room it passed through. Upon our return, they were programmed to activate, releasing a fast-acting nerve toxin. Your keepers will be fine once they wake up, but that isn’t going to happen for a few hours yet.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You don’t have to,’ Goodglass says. ‘Call for help, see how far it gets you.’
He lifts the cuff of his sleeve and talks into his bracelet. ‘This is Grafenwalder. Get down to the bestiary now — the Denizen tank.’
But no one answers.
‘I’m sorry, but no one’s coming. You’re on your own now, Carl. It’s just you, the Denizen and the two of us.’
After a minute goes by, he knows she isn’t bluffing. Goodglass has taken his habitat.
‘What do you want from me?’
‘It’s not so much a question of what I want from you, Carl, as what you want from me.’
‘You’re not making much sense.’
‘Ask yourself this: why did you want the Denizen so much? Was it because you just had to add another unique specimen to your collection? Or did the drive go deeper than that? Is it just possible that you created this entire bestiary as a decoy, to divert everyone — including yourself — from the true focus of your obsession?’
‘You tell me, Ursula. You seem to know a lot about the collecting game.’
‘I’m no collector,’ she says curtly. ‘I detest you and your kind. That was just a cover, to get me close to you. I went to a lot of trouble, of course: the hamadryad, Trintignant… I know you had Shallice kill the hamadryad, by the way. That was what I expected you to do. Why else do you think I had Shallice mention my existence, if not to goad you? I needed you to take an interest in me, Carl. It worked spectacularly well.’
‘You never interested me, Ursula. You irritated me, like a tick.’
‘It had the same effect. It brought us together. It brought me here.’
‘And the Denizen?’ he asks, half-fearing her answer.
‘The Denizen is a fake. I’m sure you’ve figured that out for yourself by now. A pretty good fake, I’ll admit — but it isn’t two hundred years old, and it’s never been anywhere near Europa.’
‘What about the samples Rifugio gave me? Where did they come from?’
‘From me,’ Goodglass says.
‘You’re insane.’
‘No, Carl. Not insane. Just a Denizen.’ And she shows him her webbed hand once more, extending it out towards him as if inviting him to kiss it. ‘I’m what you’ve been searching for all these years, the end of your quest. But this isn’t quite the way you imagined things playing out, is it? That you’d have had me under your nose all this time, and not known how close you were?’
‘You can’t be a Denizen.’
‘There is such a thing as surgery,’ she says witheringly. ‘I had to wait until after the plague before having myself changed, which meant subjecting myself to cruder procedures than I might have wished. Fortunately, I had the services of a very good surgeon. He rewired my cardiovascular system for air-breathing. He gave me legs and a human face, and a voice box that works out of water.’
‘And the hands?’
‘I kept the hands. You’ve got to hold on to part of the past, no matter how much you might wish to bury it. I needed to remember where I’d come from, what I still had to do.’
‘Which is?’
‘To find you, and then punish you. You were there, Carl, back when we were made in Europa. A high- influence Demarchist in the Special Projects section of Cadmus-Asterius, the hanging city where we were spliced together and given life.’
‘Nonsense. I’ve never been near Europa.’
‘You were born there,’ she assures him, ‘not long after Sandra Voi founded the place. You’ve scrubbed those memories, though. They’re too dangerous now. The Demarchists don’t want anyone finding out about their history of past mistakes, not when they’re trying to show how fine and upstanding they are compared to the beastly Conjoiners. Almost everyone connected with those dark days in Europa has been hunted down and silenced by now. Not you, though. You were ahead of the curve, already running by the time the cities fell. You hopped a ramliner to Yellowstone and started reinventing your past. Eidetic overlays to give you a false history, one so convincing that you believed it yourself. Except at night, in your loneliest hours. Then part of you knew that they were still out there, still looking for you.’
‘They?’
‘Not just the Demarchist silencers: they were the least of your worries. Money and power could keep them at bay. What really worried you was us, the Denizens.’
‘If I made you, why would I fear you?’
‘You didn’t make us, Carl. I said you were part of the project, but you weren’t working to bring us to life. You
