The warren took up an entire block, bounded by the docks on two sides, the waste lot of some old industrial accident on a third, and on the fourth Straint Street, the western boundary of the garment district.

Inside, it was always lighted, but only by the hologram channels, or with lamps designed for New Men eyes: so that what actually reigned was a kind of grey-blue twilight, like the light of some antique monitor. Inside, it was crowded and hot, a chaos of plywood cubicles with no doors. These cubicles weren’t joined by corridors. You never knew where you were. To get from one to the next, you went through a third. You could go through thirty small rooms to get to an outside door. Sometimes they had been partitioned further.

“Well, this is home,” said Tig Vesicle.

Ed Chianese, shaking with tank withdrawal, looked around.

“Nice,” he said. “It’s nice.”

Inside the rooms, there would always be eight or nine people doing something, you couldn’t quite tell whether it was cooking or laundry. Sometimes there would be more. They had a smell about them that was hard to describe: it was like cinnamon mixed with lard. They slept on mattresses right there on the floor. The men kicked their legs out in that awkward way they had, so it was impossible not to trip over their feet as you picked your way through: they looked up for a second from masturbating, eyes as empty and reflective as the eyes of animals in the odd grey light. The women did their hair in a kind of soft short fluff over their rather beautiful oval skulls. They wore sleeveless cotton frocks in ochre colours, which fell from the shoulders with no style whatsoever. They had a body language which said that if they didn’t keep busy it would be too easy to remember where they were. Kids ran about everywhere, pretending to be K-ships. Popular posters of the Kefahuchi Tract were taped up on every wall. The New Men had some kind of cult, centred round the idea that this was where they had originated. It was as sad as everything else about them. Every child knew where they came from, and it wasn’t there.

Eventually Tig Vesicle stopped uncertainly, in a cubicle that looked like all the others.

“Yes. This is home,” he said.

Staring vaguely into a hologram up in one corner of the cubicle was a woman who looked just like him.

“This is Neena,” Tig Vesicle said. “She’s my wife.”

Ed looked down at her. A big grin came over his face.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m pleased to see you, Neena. You got anything to eat?”