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By Root 1350 0

add to the chaos at Alexandra Port’s passenger terminals, then condensed as they funnelled in towards the BC frontier. Out of sheer devilment Cat told someone the greens were moving in on Birmingham, something she knew was flatly out of the question – she had a radio clipped in her hair, the phone curled behind her ear, and could flick channels unobtrusively by twitching it; nothing of any interest was being reported. Yet, before a hundred metres and ten minutes had gone past they’d heard from their fellow pedestrians that the greens had taken Birmingham, that the greens were evacuating Birmingham at gunpoint, and that the greens had evacuated Birmingham and destroyed the city centre with a tactical nuclear device.

Yes, she confirmed knowledgeably. They’d planted it where the Bull Ring used to be.

At the border the Warriors had given up trying to hold back the crowd. In most cases they just waved people through and acted as if it had been their idea all along; Christian charity, sanctuary. But not all: there was a Green Channel and a Red Channel, sheep and goats.

Jordan tried not to catch any visored eyes, to no avail. He and Cat were firmly directed into the Red Channel – the one that passed through the metal detector.

Moh came out of his trance with a jump. He turned to Van and Janis.

‘Yee-hah!’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Watch Manchester.’

Janis flipped to the station just as the newsreader responded to a polite tap on the shoulder. The camera pulled back to show armed civilians wandering into the newsroom. A young woman sat down self-consciously in the newsreader’s place and began reading a declaration. Others held up blue-white-and-green flags or Union Jacks with a hole cut out of the middle, waving them from side to side and chanting some slogan of which the only word that came over clearly was ‘united’.

The station went off the air just as the girl was reading the paragraph, traditional in such proclamations, calling on those who had been deceived into taking up arms for the enemy to come over to the side of the people.

‘Oh, my God,’ Janis said.

‘Not to worry,’ said Van. ‘Somebody always pulls the plug. We’ve still got the station, and the city.’

CNN confirmed that Manchester was held by the insurgents. Heavy fighting was reported from the Bristol area. Tanks assembled by unknowing robots in Japanese-owned car factories were rolling down the M6. The Security Council had gone into emergency session, not over Britain but over the border clashes between Russia and the Turkish Confederacy and the Sino-Soviet capture of Vladivostok.

‘Told you they’re overstretched,’ Moh said.

‘Have you made any…contact yet?’

‘No, I’ve only encountered your systems,’ Moh said. ‘Everything seems to be going fine. I’m going back in.’ He smiled at them and turned to the screen.

Cat leaned back and whispered to Jordan. He straightened up, smiling at her protectively.

‘No X-rays, please,’ he said. Cat blushed and flicked her eyelashes down and patted her belly. The Warrior keyed a switch and nodded. Cat stepped through the arched gate.

Beep.

She frowned and backed out, then laid her fingers across her mouth and opened her eyes wide. She groped in her handbag and gingerly lifted out a derringer and handed it to the guard, who sighed and slid it along the counter past the outside of the detector. Jordan watched this performance, tapping his foot while other people jostled behind him. Cat went under the arch again.

Beep beep beeeeep.

Cat stepped back, turned scarlet-faced to the guard and leaned over and murmured to him. She caught the side of her skirt between hip and knee latitudes and pushed it towards his hands. He felt it for a moment, as if flexing something. He let go of it. One hand went to the back of his neck. He looked around, took in the length of the queue and almost surreptitiously switched off the device and gestured to Cat. She sailed through, picked up her lady’s handgun and waited for Jordan. To make up for this the guard inspected Jordan’s carpet-bag with two minutes of awe-inspiring thoroughness, listening with