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‘Don’t put all your progs on one diskette.’

‘Oiling the cormorant, that was.’

‘So he looked at the judge and said, “These things are sent to try us.”’

That one killed them. The two mercenaries rolled off the couch and attacked the floor. After a minute of kicking and hammering it was clear that the floor had won. They lay on their backs, wiping away tears.

‘What was all that about?’

Stone recovered first.

‘It was something us ’n’ Moh did once, ended up in court, and AAH HA HA AH HAAA,’ he explained.

Jordan looked at them and shook his head. He walked over to the terminal and jammed his card in it. His speech seemed to have been taken up, and was spreading as people replayed it and passed it on. Not many, but there was a thin trickle coming in of royalties and his own cut of the usual donations. He felt he should donate some of it to a worthy cause himself.

‘Come on guys, sober up,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’m going to stand you some drinks.’

They were up like a shot.

At the Lord Carrington, The Many Worlds Interpretation was playing to a quiet midweek crowd. The band evidently believed in using the potential of the medium to go beyond the illusion of presence, and had a trick of swapping around unpredictably. Somebody would sing one and a half lines, then another member of the band would be standing there delivering the next phrase, while the original singer would be dripping sweat on to the guitar. The first five times this happened it was amusing.

Jordan had never been out with Dafyd and Stone before, and was surprised and relieved to find they drank more moderately than they smoked. They’d take about half an hour over a litre, speaking in low voices, chain-smoking tobacco cigarettes. They talked shop, about factions and alliances, and Jordan was privately pleased with himself that he was able to make a perceptive comment now and again. It had been part of his job, after all. One reason for their relative sobriety soon became apparent, although only to a close observer: they were unobtrusively checking out the women.

It was Jordan who saw her first, though, walking in as if the place were one small franchise in her chain. She moved like a dancer, glanced around like a fighter. She had a shining halo of blonde hair, bright blue eyes, skin the colour of pale honey, high cheekbones and the kind of jawline that the rest of humanity would take about half a million years to evolve. She wasn’t tall, but she had long legs, covered to just below the knee by a dress that had quite plainly been made out of cobwebs beaded with morning dew. Over it she wore a faded denim jacket several sizes too big. As she went to the bar to order a drink, Jordan saw that it had an intricate embroidered patch on the back: Earth from space, almost floating behind her shoulders, with the words EARTH’S ANGELS around it.

She was served a drink in seconds. She turned around, and saw him looking at her across ten metres of smoky half-light. He stared, still unable to believe it was really her. Far away, just beside his ear, he heard Dafyd call out delightedly, ‘Cat!’ The woman gave a heart-stopping smile and walked over.

Jordan moved faster than the others to make a space for her. She gave him a nod and a quick, tentative smile, and sat down beside him. She reached over the table-top to Dafyd and Stone and grabbed their hands.

‘Hi, guys. It’s great to see you again.’

‘You too, Cat.’

‘Been a long time,’ Stone said. He grinned at her. ‘We missed you.’

‘No you fucking didn’t!’ Cat stretched out her left arm, showing a plastic cast. ‘You hit me!’

Stone looked back, untroubled. ‘Business is business,’ he said.

Cat smiled. Even from the side, Jordan could feel the warmth.

‘Yeah, that’s OK, come on.’ She shrugged, retracting her arm, and took a sip of her drink.

‘You get the tangle with Moh sorted out?’ Dafyd asked.

‘Oh,’ said Catherin. ‘Yeah, I have. How d’you know about it?’

Stone guffawed. ‘Moh told us. Eventually. Even if he hadn’t, we’d have heard.