Every afternoon  was the same: rickshaws and  sedans arrived from all over the city to take part in this drive-in of the Saudade soul. By 3pm the Lots were rammed. A fluttering, soft-focus carnival of mothy adverts filled the air above each car. In the darkened rear seats, someone always had their floral print  up round  their waist, laughing and grunting at the same time as their friend drove them  into  a corner  in the luxury smell of leather. No one was afraid of the site any more. They came openly, just to enjoy a fuck in its aureole of weirdness. It was quantum  sex, the news media said, and could even be good for you. Some of them were going as far as to leave their vehicles and wander the empty streets and piles of rubble in the mist beyond the wire, picking up objects they thought might make souvenirs.

These were not precisely crimes. What was she to do?

Still later, R.I. Gaines banged on the door of her room.

When she opened the door, he was laughing and running  his hands over his scalp. The shoulders of his coat were wet – this time it looked real. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I hate the rain, and I bet you do too.’ Behind him, the port was full of activity. The shadows and lights of alien, fiercely contradictory  theories-of-everything  poured across the field: three ships landing at once, one of them  the General Systems ‘New World’ starliner  Pantopon Rose, in from a four-week tour of Boudeuse, O’Dowd and Feduccia XV. Gaines, too, gave the impression of having just arrived back from somewhere. His skin was a little more tan. He wore a bit of bright red cotton as a neckscarf and carried, in a loose bunch, some dusty-looking flowers the same colour. A small cheap suitcase rested on the floor by his leg, as if he had just set it down. The assistant, who felt nothing at all about the rain, stood in the doorway and stared at him.

‘First you open the door,’ Gaines coaxed her, ‘then you let me in.’

‘Why?’

He held out the flowers.

‘Because I brought something for you.’

Eventually she took the flowers and turned  them over in her hands. She had never seen a red quite like it; but the stems were flimsy and brittle, already dry. One or two fell on the floor.

‘I’ll sit on the bed,’ she said. ‘You can sit in the chair.’