The digigram loops its gorgeous graphics, plays a quiet music, symphonic in its way like the soundtrack of the nature discs.

Another screen gives us a live feed of work in progress at the Dock site. Men busy at the concrete face of the bay, dust rising about them like a smoke. They look more to be attacking the structure than progressing it. Smugglers and bandits, garbed in totem clothes.

‘Your background is in oil,’ I hear Colin pointedly ask Alan. ‘Then you moved into renewables.’

‘That was some time ago,’ says Alan. Most backgrounds are, I think.

Alan suggests, ‘Let’s go up to the roof.’

We look over the city, pleasantly drinking our ice waters. The light bends on the solar glass.

Flowers tumble in the gutters.

I can see, from here, some of the homes that will be bulldozed. Beyond them, the great arena of the Dock.

The colourful patches of the shacks in the emptied canals.

The police baffles positioned on the rooftops that overlook the route of the march. The blue caps of the ‘Peepers’, as we call the marksmen.

The journalist wearing the chaffinch blouse finds herself beside me. I’m staying away from Colin.

‘We give a lot,’ I take the opportunity to tell her, as she takes in the city from this height. ‘That’s hard to see sometimes. From ground level.’

I nod out at the rooftop gardens. One nearby blatant with multi-coloured flowers. ‘It’s great how buildings’ residents have come together to make this happen.’

‘A lot’s got from alittlement.’ The journalist beams as she provides the jingle. Sips.

Just below, a rooftop lush with summer vegetable beds.

Below this, in the square outside the building, a crowd no bigger than my palm from here, protestors now have gathered. To picket the office before they head on to the Dock. It’s clever of Alan to bring us up here. The march looks dull and diminished. Below the gardens, and the space. The placards too small from this distance to read.

Colin the Skinny has buttonholed poor Ms Williams.

‘We’re doing something historic here.’

‘While making a lot of money.’

‘By doing something that will benefit this city for a very long time.’

Clearly he has no sense of wonder.

‘And Government won’t be making any money. Everyone has access to water, rationed as it may be. But there’s only going to be more of us. The icebergs are a ready form of fresh water, and have been very effective in supplying smaller cities on a more modest scale. The current supply is not enough.’

As if in defence of itself, then, far away, and muffled, we hear the Water Train. Its deep boom as it enters the outskirts of the city.