But the other side of the fence things only deteriorated. Seaward in the fog, you could feel distance growing in everything. From Lizard Sex to The Metropole, the shutters were up all along the strip. The old-fashioned signs banged in the wind; rust ran down from blisters in the paintwork. Outside the joint they called 90-Proof & Boys, the air tasted of salt. Ivy Mike’s lay silent and unoccupied. The circus wasn’t in town, and it was coming on to rain.

Eventually she heard voices. The front doors of the Deleuze Motel, flanked by frosted glass windows and scoured wood panels with tinpot ads, were padlocked shut. She shook them. A wan yellow light could be seen inside. ‘Hello!’ No one answered. They didn’t even stop what they were doing. There were distinct rattling sounds and, every so often, outbreaks of a kind of subdued shouting. The yellow light came and went, as if someone was walking jerkily to and fro in front of it. Irene could hear ordinary sounds too: a chair scraped back, ice clattering in a glass. She patted the door as if it was someone’s arm. ‘So hey,’ she said, ‘you’re having a good time in there.’ She went round the side and found, under the pink and mint neon STARLIGHT ROOM, another pair of doors, loosely latched and shifting in the wind. Without a thought she put her eye to the gap, where the paint was slick with rain. Whatever she saw in there made her take one startled pace backwards then run away as fast as a b-girl can.

18 It Takes Place in a Vacuum

EIGHTEEN

It Takes Place in a Vacuum

Some days the shadow operators vanished the moment daylight fell on them. Others, they fluttered up to meet it, swimming about delightedly in the air above her desk. Their behaviour was as opaque to the assistant as hers was to them. They predated the human. They were a form of life you found everywhere: but what they did before human beings arrived in the Galaxy to make use of them, no one knew, not even the shadow operators themselves. If you asked them they grew shy and thoughtful.

‘It’s so nice you’re interested, dear.’

She asked them to list her some names from the files.

They offered Magellan, Radtke and dos Santos. Nevy Furstenberg and John K. Matsuda. They offered the notorious Ephraim Shacklette. They offered MP Renoko.

‘Him,’ the assistant said.