“No, the tooth fairy. Maxwell’s IFC is rigged to send signals back to us. We’ve not received anything that reassures us that he is okay. What have you done to him? Is he hurt?”

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” says Beko.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of operation you’re pulling over there, maybe some kind of Black-on-Black nigger violence—”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, you better get your shithole space station right. I am authorised to reduce you to shards. I don’t care that you have sovereign status in your little floating African utopia. I will fuck you up with particle beams and MaxGalactix has a whole army of lawyers to make it legal. Find Yan Maxwell before I get there, or Space Station Lagos will be no more. I guarantee you. You think Lagos is a country? Big deal. Mr Maxwell is a fucking planet. Harm cannot come to him. Find him, or your little Afrofuturist outpost will have a very short history. Sinistral out.”

“Nothing more from the relay, Ma’am,” says Lagos.

Beko sighs and massages her temples. The anger needs to exist but be controlled, channelled. She breathes. “I regret all the life choices that brought me to this moment.”

“Cabinet meeting?”

“You know it. In one hour. No exceptions.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Earth

The First and Final Galactic Journey of Jeremiah Brisbane

The Tehani camp is surrounded by mountains, pine trees and a perimeter of private security operatives in airtight armour with respirators. The land, the rivers, the infrastructure, the people, their corpses, all belong to MaxGalactix. This is where Jeremiah Brisbane started the journey that led him to the Ragtime.

Brisbane is not originally Tehani, and he came here trying to be good. He signed his life and dead body away when he entered camp. He does not know if he succeeded, but it is likely he will die with them in the next few years. He used to go to church, part of a dwindling few in a world overrun by hyperadvanced technology, back when he was younger, when his parents were building a template of morality. Esse quam videri; to be, rather than to seem.

How to be good.

Be tall, lean, with sandy hair and a good complexion. People ascribed goodness to him as soon as he smiled at them. He obeyed his parents and he obeyed the church, and this was good. But this only satisfied him until his adolescent thoughts became more complex. Being good cannot be about obedience. In fact, after reading Arendt, Brisbane concluded that being good can be about disobedience. Blind obedience is not a virtue.

So he observes his parents, and sees their works, their good deeds, their love, their sacrifice for others. He contrasts this with his wayward older brother, with whom he shares a room for a time. Kenny would sneak out and return just before dawn, time spent, according to him, having sex.