You never told me; do you support Boston?

No, Harvey. Like my spirit father, I regard it as totally irrelevant. In that at least I am true to him.she leant forwards in the chair, and put both arms around me. Oh, Harvey; I miss him so.

Yes, I know I shouldn't have. I never intended to. I went out to the pagoda purely because I knew how much she would be hurting, and how few people she could turn to for comfort.

So I told myself.

Her bedroom was spartan in its simplicity, with plain wooden floorboards, a few amateur watercolours hanging on the walls. The bed itself only just large enough to hold the two of us.

Our lovemaking was different from the wild exuberance we had shown out in the meadow. It was more intense, slower, clutching. I think we both knew it would be the last time.

We lay together for a long time afterwards, content just to touch, drowsy thoughts merging and mingling to create a mild euphoria.

There is something I have to say to you, hoi yin said eventually. It is difficult for me, because although you have a right to know, I do not know if you will be angry.

I won't be angry, not with you.

I will understand if you are.

I won't be. What is it?

I am pregnant. The child is ours.

«What!» I sat up in reflex, and stared down at her. «How the hell can you possibly know?»

I went for a scan at the hospital yesterday. They confirmed the zygote is viable.

«Fuck.» I flopped back down and stared at the thick ceiling beams. I have a gift, the ability to totally screw up my life beyond either belief or salvation. It's just so natural, I do it without any effort at all.

After twelve years of celibacy, contraception was not something I concerned myself over any more,hoi yin said. It was remiss of me. But what happened that morning was so sudden, and so right . . .

Yes, OK, fine. We were consenting adults, we're equally responsible.she was watching me closely, those big liquid gold eyes full up with apprehension. my lips were curving up into a grin, like they were being pulled by a tidal force or something. You're really pregnant?

Yes. I wanted to be sure as soon as possible, because the earlier the affinity gene is spliced into the embryo, the easier it is.

«Ah.» Yes, of course.

I feel there is a rightness to this, Harvey. A new life born as one dies. And a new life raised in a wholly new culture, one where my spirit-father's ideals will hold true for all eternity. I could never have borne a child into the kind of world I was born into. This child, our child, will be completely free from the pain of the past and the frailty of the flesh; one of the first ever to be so.

Hoi Yin, I'm not sure I can tell Jocelyn today. There's a lot we have to sort out first.