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‘And what d’you intend to offer them?’

‘Accept the Kingdom – in practice – as the national authority, and you can have autonomy in the areas your supporters control.’

‘I have no authority to negotiate –’

‘Oh, but you have. You have influence. We know that without it some younger and hotter heads would be calling the shots. And we know you’re up to more than your public statements indicate –’

‘What makes you say that?’

He smiled. ‘The volume of encrypted traffic from your safe houses.’

Damn. I tried to remain poker-faced.

‘What you see is what you get. I’ve done nothing secretly that goes against what I’ve said openly.’

‘Of course. Then you can have no objection. Take a look at these…’

Agreements, ready to sign. Maps. London, for a start, was to be carved up. The part conceded to the space movement encompassed the Greenbelt and an arc of suburbs in which we had free trade zones. They’d even given it a name: North London Town, which on the map some military hand had clipped to NORLONTO.

It was a lot. Frankly, I’d have settled for less.

‘And in return?’

‘No armed actions to be launched from the territory. And one other thing…’

‘Yes?’

‘Ah…the nuclear deterrence contract, Mr Wilde.’

‘You want me to end it?’

‘Good God, no!’ He looked shocked. ‘We want you to transfer the policy to us.’

‘To the government? But you’ve got –’ I stopped, and looked at their ever-so-slightly-embarrassed faces.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ I turned again to the map, and picked up a pen. By the end of the night we had something I could take back to my committee.

Two days later I sat in a room at the back of a Greenbelt shebeen with a group of men and women who, thanks to my negotiations, had emerged blinking from hideouts and camps and cells. I explained to them that they had the chance to try out their ideas on a couple of million more or less enthusiastic people, with minimal interference from a state only too glad to have this explosive and impoverished mass off its hands. I told them the only price for this was a de facto acknowledgement of that state’s authority, and the renunciation of an untested nuclear deterrent about which most of them had mixed feelings and which was now obsolete.

I didn’t expect gratitude or agreement, and I didn’t get them. What I got was comrades falling over each other to denounce me. I’d expected that. Being expelled from the organisation came as a surprise. The vote was unanimous. Et tu, Julie.

‘Good day to you, comrades,’ I said. ‘And good luck.’

I stood up and pushed back my chair and ducked out of the door and walked away. Two days after my expulsion, US/UN crack troops took over and disarmed every surface-based deterrence exporter. The renegade subs took longer, but they were rounded up too. Among other consequences, my ex-comrades didn’t have our nuclear policy to bargain with, so they had to settle for a smaller Norlonto than I’d been offered.

It served them right, but I wished they could have kept Islington. The Christian fundamentalists got it, and set about ethically cleansing the place. Eleanor and her family had to abandon Finsbury Park. They moved in with us and it was months before they found a new house.

I was getting too old for that sort of thing.

13

The Court of the Fifth Quarter

Why couldn’t we have gone in through the canals?’ Wilde grumbled, as he booted yet another inquisitive machine away from his ankle. Several hours of difficult progress through back alleys, with the expedition crunching and stomping and shooting their way over and past assorted mechanical vermin, lay behind the strain in his tone and the strength of his kick.

‘Ha!’ Tamara snorted. ‘You seen the canals around here?’

‘As it happens,’ said Wilde, ‘no, I haven’t.’

‘And you don’t want to.’ Tamara flattened herself against a wall and signalled back to the others to halt. ‘But you will.’

She poked a device like a long electric torch past the corner, and waved it back and forth, keeping an eye on the readings on a handheld meter and the view on a wrist-screen.

‘OK,’ she announced.