Before Bella arrived, the little boy’s mid-afternoon recreation had been to take his clothes off and look at himself in the mirror until he got hard. He rubbed but nothing came out yet. He could feel something coming up but it never arrived. All he got was a sort of shock, a painful little jolt. Bella changed all that. After mathematics she would take him upstairs to her room and style his hair for him. A passive calm came over him at such moments. He loved her smell. With each stroke of the brush, his little cock stuck out harder in his pants. When Bella touched it accidentally with the back of her hand, they looked at one another in wonder. One winter afternoon, Martha found them on the sofa. It was bitterly obvious what had been happening before she came in the room. Bella’s tits were bare. The little boy’s pants were open. Her hand was on his penis. She leaned over him, he stared up at her, growling and whimpering in his little boy voice as he struggled to come.

It was horrible enough that Martha walked in on her eight-year-old son about to ejaculate in the hand of the hired help. But worse was to be revealed. When she tried to pull them apart, they were stuck together. And when Andy came home he found his wife stuck to them too.

One of Martha’s forearms had penetrated Bella’s head. Martha was staring angrily at her hand emerging on the other side. Everything was soft. All three of them were covered in a thin, slippery emulsion; they were pulling away from one another, but that only seemed to make things worse. Andy threw up. He called the Quarantine Bureau. By 10 pm the same day, Bobby, Bella and Martha were a fully-fledged escape – translucent, infectious, a jelly part human, part virus, part daughter code straight from the local Event site. With Andy’s permission, Quarantine sealed this substance into a heavily welded, tapering iron container about seven feet long by three in depth, which they left on the floor of Bella’s room. Since Basel Dove was too quiet to have a quarantine orbit of its own, they explained, the sarcophagus would have to be delivered – within a week and by a licensed operator – to the one at New Venusport. They said they were sorry for Andy’s loss, and left. Andy, numb with grief and puzzlement and unable to find a local firm willing to handle such a tiny cargo, called Saudade Bulk Haulage.

‘He doesn’t want to make the trip himself,’ Antoyne explained. ‘He’s a damaged man. It’s very sad.’

Liv Hula pursed her lips. ‘So we’re undertakers now?’

‘I’m glad to get any kind of work,’ answered Fat Antoyne. ‘Besides, we’re going there anyway.’