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‘You want to know who I am?

‘I think it’d be better to ask where I am. And where you are, come to think of it. Listen to my voice. Anything strike you about it? Anything funny? No? Well, that should tell you something, for a start.

‘You’re on the threshold. Floating on the skin of the Cold. Stuck in the membrane between one world and another. Let’s just say it’s nowhere special.

‘Me? The Cold? Is that what you think?

‘I’m not the Cold. I’m not one of the Faction’s people, either. Mind you, I talk through their shadows sometimes. No, don’t ask. It’s not important. I get everywhere, that’s what I’m saying.

‘Anyway, they’re going to be pulling you out soon. Guest, and Kode, and Compassion, and all the others. You could try asking them about me. ‘Maybe you could even ask them what it is they want from Earth. I’m sure that’d surprise you, as well.’

* * *

Guest and his friends had moved one of the chairs into the middle of the floor, and strongly hinted that they’d appreciate it if Llewis would sit there and stay still. So Llewis had done. Now he was staring at the door of the hotel room, wondering if he had any hope on Earth of making it out before Guest could shoot him.

Clearly, the answer was no.

‘You’re not human,’ Llewis said, feeling the sweat forming on his vocal cords again.

‘Our ancestors were human,’ Guest told him. Guest was standing behind Llewis now, not making any kind of body contact, but threatening to put a restraining hand on his shoulder at any moment.

‘But you’re aliens,’ Llewis protested.

‘Is that a problem?’

Llewis had no idea how to answer that.

He heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the room, and turned his head. Kode was kneeling down in front of the TV set, staring into its workings. Or absence thereof. ‘Look at this,’ the boy said. ‘It’s been taken apart from the inside.’

The other alien, the woman with the red hair and the freckles, joined Kode at the end of the bed. ‘It’s the signals. They’ve started working over the local systems.’

Kode looked dubious. ‘Whose signals? Our signals?’

‘Obviously.’

‘The transmissions from Anathema,’ said Guest. ‘Our transmitters use block‐transfer formulae. All part of the Faction’s system. Some of the codes must have been sent through to Earth.’

Kode bit his lip. ‘Messing up the local receivers? Is that possible?’ The woman opened her mouth, so Kode kept talking to shut her up. ‘I know, I know. Obviously. You think this is going to happen to all the sets around here?’

‘It’s possible,’ said the woman. Then she put her hand to her ear. ‘The longer we stay on this planet, the worse it’s going to get.’

‘Not important,’ Guest told her.

‘It’ll attract attention.’

‘Good.’

Llewis remembered the images he’d seen on the screen, the zombie people swarming through the streets of their city. They’d all had wireless parts through their earlobes, the same as these three had. Receivers, the woman had said. What that had to do with mutant television sets, Llewis didn’t know, and he didn’t precisely care.

‘We are, in a sense, aliens,’ Guest announced, turning his attention back to Llewis. ‘However, interracial transactions are an inevitable consequence of a workable free‐trade network, and therefore should not be shied away from.’

Llewis heard a faint buzzing when Guest said that, and he guessed it was coming from the man’s receiver. The words hadn’t sounded like Guest’s own, so Llewis wondered if the sentence had been transmitted to him from outer space. Or maybe even from somewhere on Earth. It sounded like the kind of thing someone on Question Time might have said.

Maybe that was it. Maybe this was the media’s revenge. Maybe the aliens were being used as mouthpieces for all the political gibberish the human race had pumped out across the airwaves over the years. Taking the double‐talk and half‐truths, and spewing them all back at their hapless victims.

Maybe he should just ask them what they wanted.

So he did.

‘We want to supply you,’ said Guest. ‘We want to give you the Cold. Whoever has the Cold can govern the security of the free