De Groot came in with news of the flight; everything was on schedule, and it was time to leave. Two medics joined us. I stood back, filming with the shoulder camera as Mosala was moved to a trolley, monitor and drug pumps still attached.

In the garage, on the way to the ambulance, I saw half a dozen balloon-tired vehicles being loaded with medical equipment, bandages, and drugs. Maybe they were moving supplies to other sites around the city, in case the hospital was captured. It was heartening to see that not everyone was taking the invasion lightly.

We rode through the city slowly, without the siren wailing. More people were on the streets than I’d ever seen by daylight. Mosala asked De Groot for a notepad, then put it on the mattress beside her, and turned onto her side so she could type. Whatever she was doing seemed to demand intense concentration – but she spoke to me, without looking away from the screen.

“You suggested that I appoint a successor, Andrew. Someone to make sure that the work was finished. Well, I’m arranging that now.”

I couldn’t see the point anymore, but I didn’t argue. A high-resolution scan in Cape Town would yield structures for all the viral proteins almost immediately – and precision drugs to block their actions could be designed and synthesized in a matter of hours. Proving the moderates wrong and then begging them for the cure was no longer any kind of shortcut.

Mosala glanced up at me, and spoke for the camera. “The software is working on ten canonical experiments. A full analysis of all of them, combined, will yield what used to be thought of as the ten parameters of total space – the details of the ten-dimensional geometry which underlies all the particles and forces. In modern terms … those ten experiments reveal, between them, exactly how the symmetry of pre-space is broken, for us. Exactly what it is that everything in this universe has in common.”

“I understand.”