Julianne did her best to try to pick out Shah’s men from the crowded footpath, and thought maybe she caught a glimpse of somebody who looked like a Gurkha, across the road. But then, in Darwin, you could quickly amass examples of people from all over the world. Her best estimate was that maybe a third of those teeming through this part of town had grown up here. The rest were new arrivals and, specifically, members of the city’s new, arriviste class. Wealthy, displaced and not a little anxious to embed themselves as deeply as possible in their new home. For all the fuck-off money and ostentatious display of significance here, as a child of one of the oldest surviving aristocratic lines in the world (even if, or perhaps because, her own family’s position in that line had come a cropper), Jules was aware of a low-grade, sub-aural hum vibrating just under the surface of things in this place. Status anxiety. The gnawing fear that having survived one cataclysmic break-up of the established order, one might find oneself at the pointy end of any subsequent reordering, no matter how much smaller in scale.

She began to understand why Shah and his neighbours felt their positions were so tenuous. Nothing was settled here, in spite of the clean streets and the gleaming newness of everything. It was all still in furious motion. Convulsed. Deranged. And dangerous with it. As if to emphasise the point, she saw an armoured vehicle roll through an intersection further up the street.

Jules hurried into the store, out of the heat, and sighed with relief after pushing through another super-chilled air curtain. She’d noticed the same effect at the Sirocco Café. It felt something like walking through a gentle waterfall, but it was a piece of technology she’d not encountered before then. Perhaps the design had been stolen from some Wave-washed laboratory in the US, where researchers were still puddled wherever they happened to have been standing. The market for Disappeared intellectual property had run white-hot for a while in ’04–05, until Seattle regained some semblance of control over its borders. She’d even considered getting into the game herself, except that the Rhino had been such a complete bloody Boy Scout over the issue.

He still thought of himself as one of the good guys at heart, even with all the people smuggling, the stealing, and the murder on the high seas. Thoughts of her friend and former business partner brought with them a confusion of emotions. Fond recall. Concern for his wellbeing. And a rekindled anxiety about whoever might be trying to fuck with her own wellbeing. Jules reached around and lightly touched the SIG Sauer holstered in the small of her back. She could always feel the pistol was there, digging into her spine, but the gesture gave her some comfort anyway.