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‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ he asked the darkness.

‘Don’t spoil this by talking,’ said Genevieve.

In the morning they walked up the hill together, towards Genevieve’s flitter. She glanced at Simon for a moment and said,

‘Asparagus balloon Constantinople.’ The car obligingly powered down its security systems and they got in.

153

Simon stared through the windscreen. At the ancient, ruined house, totally overgrown, the wood of its walls being converted to soil even as they watched. At the garden that was nothing more than an open space in the forest, covered in long grass and humus and weeds. Even the collapsed tool shed would soon be the beginnings of a shrub or an anthill.

‘Where to?’ said Genevieve.

‘A transit terminal, please,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a meeting to get to. What about you?’

‘I have to get back to Callisto,’ she said. ‘The paperwork will have reached my office ceiling by now.’

When they’d woken up, the house was empty. They’d taken a long shower, and the hot water had lasted the whole time, and there was a fresh bar of soap.

When they’d walked out of the house, and then turned around and tried to go back inside, the front door had fallen off its hinges and plunged through the rotting wooden floor of the empty hallway.

‘Did any of that actually happen?’ said Simon.

‘I hope so,’ said Genevieve.

‘I mean, did we actually meet Doctor Smith, and see a Venusian in the lounge?’

‘Must have been something in the tea,’ said Genevieve, starting the flitter.

Simon nodded. ‘Must have been.’

Joseph Conrad – 18 April 2982

They decided to disembark in two parties, separated by at least twenty minutes. ‘I’m finding it hard enough to cope with two Doctors,’ Roz said, as they packed the few things they were carrying. ‘Imagine what customs will think.’

The passenger liner docked with the metaship Joseph Conrad at 19.04 IST. The liner had been gradually changing its shipboard day to match time on the Conrad, so that its passengers would adjust as easily as possible.

Roz felt jet-lagged anyway. A combination of claustrophobia, dehydration from a month’s worth of pressurized environments 154

and the hot neon light of the Conrad. She squinted as she walked down the long ramp with one of the Doctors, carryall slung over her shoulder.

A bagbot whizzed up to them the minute they reached the grey carpet of the spaceport. It was a chunky box like a toaster on wheels, topped with a wide rack. The edges were padded, which was good, because the thing smacked into Roz’s legs twice trying to get her attention.

‘Take your bag, ma’am?’ it said. ‘Show you around? It’s a big metaship, easy to get lost. Take your bag?’

The Doctor crouched down and tickled the thing’s rim, as though it were a stray dog. ‘We don’t need a porter,’ he told it,

‘but we do need a guide.’

‘Sure thing,’ piped the bagbot. ‘Just follow me, no problems.’

Roz looked at the Doctor as the thing started nudging its way through the crowd, moving through the long, grey corridor that led to customs. ‘It followed me home. Can I keep it?’

He smiled. ‘Might as well make use of the facilities, now we’re here,’ he said. ‘We might be here for a while.’

‘I thought you said this was going to be simple.’

‘It ought to be simple,’ said the Doctor. ‘That doesn’t mean it will be quick, though.’

The bagbot waited patiently while they cleared customs. It kept up a constant babble of tourist information as it led them through the crowds to their hotel. ‘The Joseph Conrad was originally a colony ship constructed by the Listeners. Are you sure I can’t take that bag? No problem. Its route takes it from the Listeners’

original home, Viam, forty-eight light years from Earth, all the way out to the rim of the Empire and back again, in a continual two-year journey. It is ten kilometres in diameter, with a population varying between three and five thousand people. Two thousand are permanent residents, primarily merchants and their families.