moved as smoothly as the automated traffic without ever once glancing in her direction. Some of the pedestrians quite literally glided past. People their own age wearing calf-high boots with soles that seemed to flow over the pavement slabs without any resistance. Genevieve watched their effortless progress with admiration and longing. “I want some boots like that,” she said.
A subwalk got them under Piccadilly and into New Bond Street. It turned out to be a dainty little pedestrian lane, lined with enchanting boutiques whose marble frontage was embossed with brass lettering saying when they’d been established. None of them were under three centuries old, while some claimed to be over seven. The labels on show meant nothing to either of them, but judging by the prices they must have been admiring the most exclusive designer garments on the planet.
“It’s gorgeous,” Louise sighed longingly at a shimmering scarlet and turquoise evening gown, sort of like an all-over mermaid’s tail—except it wasn’t all-over, nowhere near. It was the kind of thing she would love to wear at a summer ball on Norfolk. The planet had never seen its like before.
“Then buy it.”
“No. We’ve got to be sensible. Just everyday clothes that we need to get about in the arcology. Remember, one day I’ll have to explain the entire bill to Daddy.”
The evening gown was just the start of New Bond Street’s provocative temptations. They trailed past window displays she could have bought en masse.
“We’ll have to have supper in the hotel dining room,” Genevieve suggested artfully. “I bet they won’t let us in unless we dress up.”
It was an insidious suggestion. “Okay. One dress. That’s all.”
They dashed across the threshold of the boutique in front of them. Privacy didn’t apply inside the shop; three assistants swooped eagerly. Louise explained what they wanted, and then spent the next forty-five minutes ricocheting in and out of a changing room. She and Gen would look at each other, comment, and go back for the next trial.
She learned a lot in the process. The assistants were very complimentary about the sisters’ hair. Except . . . on Earth, it was fashionable to have actives woven among the strands. Their one-piece suits with big pockets, were current, but not that
Out on the street again, they laughed at each other. Gen had wound up with a scarlet dress and deep- purple jacket. While Louise had bought herself a full length gown of deepest blue, that was made from a material crossed between velvet and suede. There was also a short ginger-coloured waistcoat to go with it, which complemented its square cut neck.
“It’s true,” Louise said happily. “Retail therapy actually works.”
They didn’t get directly to Oxford Street. There was a stop at a salon at the top of New Bond Street first. The beauticians made an incredible fuss over them, delighted with so much raw material to work on. The owner himself came over to direct the operation (once their credit rating had been verified).
After two hours, several cups of tea, and enthralling the staff with an edited version of their travels, Louise had the wrap taken off. She stared in the mirror, not believing she’d spent her life tolerating unmanaged hair. Norfolk’s simplistic regime of washing, conditioners, and sturdy brushing was barbaric ineptitude. Under the salon’s professional auspices her hair had become lustrous, individual strands conducting a little starlight shimmer of light along their length. And it flowed. Every day of her life she’d held that thick mane in place with clips and ribbons, sometimes getting the maid to braid fanciful bands. Flexitives made all that irrelevant. Of its own accord, her hair fell back over her shoulders, always keeping itself tidy and together in one large tress. It also rippled subtly, as if she was engulfed in her own permanent private breeze.
“You look beautiful, Louise,” Genevieve said, suddenly shy.
“Thank you.” Gen’s hair had been straightened, darkened, and glossed, its hem curling inwards slightly. Again, it held its shape no matter what.
Stalls were lined up against the road barriers, filled with brassy, cheaper items than those in the shops. Genevieve saw one with pairs of the magical boots hanging from the awning. Slipstream boots, the cheerful owner told her as he found some her size. Popular with the under fifteens because you didn’t need neural nanonics to switch the directed frictionless soles on or off.
Louise bought them on the condition Gen waited until they got back to the hotel before she tried them out. She also got a duster bracelet. When Gen clamped the trinket round her wrist and waved it round, it sprayed out a fine powder which emitted a fiery sparkle as it fell to earth. Holding her arm up and pirouetting, a spiral of twinkling starlight spun around her.
Quinn sat on one of the benches along the banks of the Seine, opening his mind to the demented screeching rever-berating through the beyond. It had taken him two and a half hours to reach the Paris arcology since being struck by that inexplicable wave of emotional torment that had swept through the beyond.
The first thing—obviously!—was to get the fuck out of New York. It wouldn’t take the cops long to review the memories of sensors covering the concourse and identify him. He’d gone straight down to a platform and taken a vac-train to Washington. A short ride, not quite fifteen minutes. He’d kept within the ghost realm for the whole trip, apprehensive that the vac-train would be halted and returned to New York. But it arrived at Washington on time, and he switched to the first inter-continental ride available: Paris.
Even then, he’d remained invisible as it streaked along the bottom of the North Atlantic. Still anxious that another of those waves would surge up and expose him. If it had done during the journey under the ocean, he knew he’d be finished. He couldn’t believe God’s Brother would allow that to happen. But the first time was causing all sorts of doubts.
It wasn’t until he was out of the Paris terminus and walking through one of the old city’s parks that he had allowed himself to fully emerge. He clothed himself in an ordinary shirt and trousers, hating the way his white skin tingled in the bright sun shining through the colossal crystal dome. But it meant he was safe, there were no processors in the middle of the park to glitch at his appearance, nobody near enough to see that he’d appeared from nowhere rather than walked round the ancient tree. He stood there for a minute, scanning the nearby minds for any sign of alarm. Only then did he relax and make his way down to the river.
Parisians strolled along behind him as they had for centuries—lovers, artists, business executives, bureaucrats; none of them paying attention to the solitary downcast youth. Nor did any of them avail themselves to the space left on his bench. Some subliminal warning steered them along past, frowning slightly at the unaccountable chill.
Slowly, Quinn started to gather the strands together, faint images and hoarse wailing voices filling in the story. He saw clouds which surprised even him, an arcology-born. Rain cascaded down on huddled bodies, so thick it was almost solid. Terrifying blasts of lightning ripping through the darkness. The encircling forces, radiating their stern nonhuman determination, closing in.
Mortonridge was not a place where a possessed should be caught outside today; and two million of them had been. Something had struck at them, tearing away their protective covering of cloud. Some technological devilry. The signal for the Liberation to commence. A one-off; a unique act in response to a unique situation. Not some miracle wrought by the Light Bringer’s great rival.
Quinn lifted his head, and smiled a contemptuous smile. Such a shock was extremely unlikely to occur again. There was no unknown threat. He was perfectly safe. Night could still dawn.
He stood up, and turned slowly, examining his surroundings properly for the first time. The celebrated Napoleonic heart of the city was encompassed by a range of splendid white, silver, and gold towers. Their burnished surfaces hurt his eyes, as their grandeur hurt his sensibility. But somewhere among all this cleanliness and vitality, the waster kids would be grubbing through dank refuse, hurting each other and unwary civilians for no reason they understood. Finding them would be as easy here as it had been in New York. Just walk in the direction everyone else was coming from. His heartland, where his words would bring its denizens purpose.
He completed his turn. Right ahead of him the Eiffel Tower stood guard at the end of a broad immaculate park, with sightseers wandering round its base. Even in Edmonton, Quinn had heard of this structure. A proud symbol of Gallic forbearance through all the centuries of Govcentral’s pallid uniformity. Its very endurance
