‘Something  happened,’  the  assistant  told  him.  Skull Radio, reaching out along the airwaves, running  on all the base inconsistencies of the universe, warmed to flesh heat in her hands. The baby seemed to be looking at her now. More of it was in view at the back of the box. It was less bony than she liked, a fat little baby’s body hanging into the box with its legs open. ‘Do you know about this thing called Pearlant?’

There was a long silence. ‘Jesus,’ Gaines said.

She told him about the Toni Reno case, and how the Nova crew had lied to her; the things that occurred in the lanthanide badlands of Funene. Gaines looked around  and, as if quietly appealing to some other people, said, ‘You are shitting me.’ At that point, the field collapsed in on itself, so that Skull Radio became a cheap tin souvenir again: about which the assistant felt relieved. Moments later, in a billow of cold air, Gaines himself entered through  the wall of her  room.  He  was wearing Hampton  chinos,  a classic Guernsey, and over them a high fill-pressure down jacket an oily yellow colour.

‘Christ Jesus,’ he accused the assistant, ‘is there more to you than meets the eye? Let me ask you: what are you up to here?’

The assistant said she wasn’t up to anything.

Gaines sighed. He opened a pipe to the Aleph project. ‘Get me someone in Containment.’  There was a pause, during  which he considered  the assistant as if deciding not to purchase her. ‘Do you like cake?’ he asked her. ‘I feel like eating cake.’ Before she could think of an answer, the dial-up caught his attention again.

‘I know,’ he said. He listened intently  for thirty-five seconds before interrupting,  ‘Something’s got loose and you fuckers don’t even know what it is!’ To someone else he said, ‘I think it might have been in touch with her.’ This brought a prolonged response that failed to calm his evident anxieties. The assistant went to the window so she could watch people in the street below. ‘Don’t go away,’ Gaines warned her. GlobeTown’s small evening rain was already finished. All along the other side of the street, dub joints and crêpe stalls were opening for early business. Later, the port environs would flush themselves into Saudade proper  and these streets would be empty. Until then the girls and boys laughed and kissed in the smell of food and perfume. Neon glowed through the soft renewed air; while, up in the room, Gaines presented his back to the assistant. She stared idly at the pictographs marching along her inside forearm. Sometimes they itched. Sometimes they felt like real things moving under her skin. ‘I don’t know,’ she heard Gaines say. ‘No one knows anything at this time.’ He closed the pipe.

When he turned back to her the first thing he said was: