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‘Actually,’ he went on with an embarrassed-sounding laugh, ‘I’m not here to see you at all. I just have some matters to clear up with Mrs Lawson. Security stuff, you know?’

Debbie frowned. ‘I don’t see—’

Jordan looked past her. ‘Hey, what’s happened to the Dow Jones?’

Debbie looked over her shoulder. ‘Oh, rats!’ She sat down and started rapid-fire keying. In the thirty seconds of distraction this afforded Jordan walked briskly to Mrs Lawson’s office.

‘Where is everybody?’ Cat asked, looking around.

‘They must be on strike.’

‘Ha, ha.’

He knocked on Mrs Lawson’s door.

‘Come in.’

Jordan looked at Cat. ‘After you, lady.’

Cat opened the door and sailed through. Jordan hung back for a moment, then stepped in and closed it. Mrs Lawson was standing behind her pine desk, her hands on top of her head. Her whole attention was on Cat’s derringer; her face showed shocked bewilderment.

Then she looked up and saw Jordan. Her expression deepened to one of utter dismay. Her mouth opened…

Cat raised one hand. Mrs Lawson’s lips clenched.

Jordan climbed over the desk to the terminal, avoiding passing between her and Cat. He tapped in the code and hit Enter.

The ghosts were gone now, and the animal mind of the gun. He was on his own, looking down at the country like a god. It was more than a map, more than a view from a fantastic unclouded height. A moment’s attention was all it took to take him close. He saw armoured columns, and he could zoom in on individual tanks. He saw the sinking silk, the rising smoke, and focused in on a city centre where ANR fighters attacked a police barracks with nerve-shattering ferocity. He heard the yelled slogans, the shouted pain.

He was there and he wanted to be there. He looked at London, saw the converging lines, the closing circles, the bright sector of Norlonto and, just to its south, a dark patch, a blindspot. It too lit up, flickering (hand over bank of switches), and he turned away.

He looked up and saw them beside him in the imagined sky. They were exactly like the tiny sparks of light he’d sometimes seen when gazing at a clear blue sky. On this scale they were shining silver ships, UFOs insolently dancing in the air over Britain, alien intelligences waiting to be noticed.

He reached out to warn them.

Jordan turned away from the terminal.

Cat chucked him a roll of heavy-duty tape from her handbag.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lawson,’ he said, peeling off a metre of it. ‘You know how it is. Nothing personal.’

Mrs Lawson nodded. ‘That’s quite all right, Jordan.’

He taped her securely to the office chair, after checking as best he could that the chair itself didn’t conceal any alarm switches. If she had one about her person, she’d probably used it already, and in any case they could hardly remove her teeth one by one. Then he taped the chair to the radiator at the window.

When he was about to tape her mouth she shook her head.

‘No need,’ she said. ‘The room’s completely soundproof. I’d appreciate it if you’d let someone know where I am once you feel safe.’

‘No problem about that, but I’ll still have to do it. Voice activation.’

Mrs Lawson looked at him as if she’d never heard of it.

‘You’re taking this very well,’ said Cat, still keeping her covered. ‘Something we should know, yeah?’

Mrs Lawson laughed. ‘Oh, no, nobody’s on the way. It’s only that I’m quite used to interpreting finger movements as keystrokes – years of watching people enter passwords. You were rather fond of Engels and Lucretius, weren’t you Jordan? I recognized the code you tapped in just now.’ She looked from him to Cat, and back. ‘Is this the Catherin Duvalier I’ve heard so much about? Did she persuade you that Kohn was wrong and Donovan was right?’

‘What’s Donovan got to do with this?’ Jordan snapped at her, baffled. He didn’t understand the reference to Kohn either.

Mrs Lawson gave him an impatient, scornful look. ‘Oh, stop playing games, Jordan. Who else would want to turn off my security software?’

‘The ANR, if you must know,’ Jordan said, stung by her insinuations.

She stared at him