Laurus squats down next to the children as the squad clumps out. His creaky joints protest the posture.

«What's your name?» he asks the girl. Now he's face to face with her, he sees how pretty she is; ragged shoulder-length ginger hair which looks like it needs a good wash, and her skin is milk-white and gently freckled. He's curious, to retain that pallor under Tropicana's sun would require dermal tailoring, which isn't cheap.

She flinches at his closeness, but doesn't relinquish her hold on the boy. «Torreya,» she says.

«Sorry if we scared you, Torreya, we didn't mean to. Are your parents around?»

She shakes her head slowly. «No. There's just me and Jante left now.»

Laurus inclines his head at the boy. «Your brother?»

«Yes.»

«What's the matter with him?»

«His daddy said he was ill. More ill than his daddy could cure, but he was going to learn how. Then after he cured Jante and himself we could all leave here.»

Laurus looks at the blind crippled boy again. There's no telling what has ruined his legs. Longthorpe is riddled with toxicants, a whole stratum of eternity drums lying below the crumbling topsoil to provide a stable foundation for the large industrial buildings which were supposed to rejuvenate the area's economy. Laurus remembers the Council-backed development project from nearly eighty years ago. But eternity has turned out to be less than fifty years. The factories were never built. So Longthorpe remains too poor to have any clout in the Council chamber and thus insist on clean-up programmes.

Jante points upwards. «Is that your bird?» he asks in a high, curious voice.

Ryker is perched on the edge of the grubby skylight, his huge menacing head peering down.

«Yes,» Laurus says. His eyes narrow with suspicion. «How did you know he was there?»

«His daddy gave us an affinity bond,» Torreya says. «I see for him. I don't mind. Jante was so lonely inside his head. And it was only supposed to be until his daddy understood how to cure him.»

«So where is your father now?» Laurus asks.

Her eyes drop. «I think he's dead. He was very sick. Sort of inside, you know? He used to cough up blood a lot. Then it started to get worse, and one morning he was gone. So we didn't see, I suppose.»

«How was your father going to learn how to cure Jante?»

«With the candy buds, of course.» She turns and gestures into the darker half of the room.

The machine is a customized life-support module. A graft of hardware and bitek; metal, plastic, and organic components fused in such an uncompromising fashion that Laurus can't help but feel its perversity is somehow intended to dismay. The globose-ribbed plant growing out of the centre has the appearance of a glochidless cactus, over a metre high, as hard and dark as teak.

At the centre, its meristem areola is a gooey gelatin patch from which the tiny candy buds emerge, growing along the rib vertices. They look like glaucous pebble cacti, a couple of centimetres in diameter, dappled by mauve rings.