Ryker spirals lower. Torreya is standing frozen in the middle of a shaggy meadow, her hands pressed to her cheeks. A cloud of rainbow-hued butterflies is swirling around her, disturbed by her frantic passage.

«Hundreds,» she breathes tremulously. «Hundreds and hundreds.»

The expression on the face of both siblings is one of absolute enchantment. Laurus recalls his trip through Longthorpe, its soiled air, the stagnant puddles with their scum of dead, half-melted insects. She has probably never seen a butterfly in her life before.

His cargo agents are instructed to scan the inventory of every visiting starship in search of exotic caterpillars. The estate is going to be turned into a lepidopterist's heaven.

• • •

Today Torreya is all rakish smiles as she brings in Laurus's breakfast tray. He grins back at her as he takes the candy bud she holds out to him. This is going to become a ritual, he guesses.

«Another one?» Camassia asks.

«Yes!» Torreya shouts gleefully. «It's a fairy tale one. We've been thinking about it for a while, so it wasn't difficult. We just needed yesterday to make it right. The butterflies you've got here in the estate are beautiful, Laurus.»

Laurus pops the candy bud in his mouth. «Glad you like them.»

«I would have loved to see the forest Laurus talks about,» Camassia says wistfully.

Laurus notes a more than idle interest in the girl's tone.

«Why didn't you say?» Torreya asks.

«You mean you've still got one?»

«Course. The machine keeps growing them till Jante tells it to stop.»

«You mean you don't have to fill in each one separately?» Laurus asks.

«No.»

He sips his tea thoughtfully. The strange machine is even more complex than he originally expected. «Do you know if Jante's father transcribed a candy bud about how the machine was built?»

Torreya screws her face up, listening to some silent voice. «No, he didn't. Sorry.»

Laurus accepts that it isn't going to be easy, he never thought it would be. He will have to assemble a team of high-grade biotechnology experts, the most loyal ones he can find. They will analyse the machine's components and genetics to discover its secrets. Such research will have to be done circumspectly. If any hint of this breakthrough escapes, then every laboratory on Tropicana will launch a crash project to acquire candy-bud technology.

«What are we going to do today?» Torreya asks.

«Well, I've got a lot of work to do,» Laurus says. «But Camassia and Abelia are free, why don't you all go out for a picnic.»

• • •

In his youth, Laurus had been a prince of the Eldrath Kingdom, back in Earth's dawn times when the world was flat and the oceans ended in infinite waterfalls. He lived in a city of crystal spires that was built around one of the tallest mountains in the land. The royal palace sat atop the pinnacle, from where it was said you could see halfway across the world.

When the warning of marauders reached the citadel, he led his knight warriors in defence of his father's realm. There were thirty of them, in mirror-bright armour, flying to war on the back of their giant butterflies.