“Oh, that is cold!” one exclaimed.

“Good classification,” another agreed through chattering teeth. “I’ll go with it.”

They looked at one another in the gray light. Two were crying from the emotional impact of arrival, one was smiling in wonder, while the fourth appeared singularly unimpressed by the bleak landscape. Each carried a small pack of outdoor clothing copied from a winter wear ad broadcast eighteen months earlier. They hurried to put it on.

When they were fully dressed, they set off along an ancient track up through the trees until they came to the remnants of National Route Three, which led to Ushuaia.

The Assessment Team

THE ASSESSMENT TEAM

FERITON KAYNE, NEW YORK, JUNE 23, 2204

I was never really that impressed with New York. The natives always banged on about how it was the city that never sleeps, how it had elevated itself to the center of the human universe. Self-justifying their choice of living in cramped, overpriced apartments—even today, when they could live anywhere on the planet and commute in through a dozen different Connexion hubs. They claimed it still had the buzz, the vibe, the kick. Bohemians came to dose up on the experience, maaan that helped them create their art, while corporate drones sweated through their junior management years to prove commitment. But for service staff proximity was simply convenient, while the truly poor couldn’t afford to leave. And yes: Guilty, I lived in SoHo. Not that I’m junior management. Right there on my desk the nameplate says: Feriton Kayne, Deputy Director, Connexion Exosolar Security Division. And if you can work out what I actually do from that, you’re smarter than most.

My office was on the seventy-seventh floor of the Connexion Corp tower. Ainsley Zangari wanted his global headquarters in Manhattan, and did he ever want everyone to know about it. There are few other people alive who could get a site on West 59th Street just along from Columbus Circle. He had to keep the façade of the old hotel as the base of his 120-story glass-and-carbon monstrosity—why I don’t know; it had no architectural value as far as I can make out, but City Hall listed it as a landmark structure. So there you have it. Not even Ainsley Zangari, the richest man there’s ever been, can argue City Hall out of heritage.

I’m not complaining. My office gives me the greatest conceivable view out over the city and Central Park—one that the mere super-rich along Park Avenue can’t afford. I’ve actually had to position my desk so I work with my back to the floor-to-ceiling window. I’d be too distracted otherwise. Mind, it is a swivel chair.

That cloudless June afternoon I was standing looking out at the view, mesmerized as always; the vista resembled one of those seventeenth-century oil paintings where everything glows with heavenly radiance.