It’s funny how easily I’m swept up in her rationale. I mean, it’s not funny. But it is strange. I feel unmoored. I don’t feel big or important enough to contradict her. I’m right under her thumb, even now, and then I remember: this is a dream.

It’s a dream. But O is being too sensible. She’s not acting like a typical dreamer – I’ve been with enough people in their dreams, I should know. She’s just talking to me as if we’re face to face. How do I know this is really O? If it’s her, really, that I’m talking to, then does that make the Dream City her creation, or mine? Which one of us built the sideways building, and who carved the canals, and what is the ‘little bird’, really? Who is in charge here?

‘You enjoyed killing Martin Elstree,’ she says. ‘It was gratifying. How do you feel, Charlie?’

‘Honestly?’ I reply defiantly. ‘I feel happy. Not about killing but about standing my ground.’

‘Then it hasn’t all been a dead loss for you, has it.’

A wintry smile. Even the stars are frozen. Icicle points in the darkness.

‘It’s true that some people had to die,’ she says. ‘This is inevitable when breaking in a new technology, though. It took a while to work out how to optimize the treatment – fix your narcolepsy, for example. There’s been trial and error, but we had to make these calculated decisions so as to keep control of the technology.’

‘You mean keep it away from BigSky.’

‘People were going to die no matter who did this, Charlie. One factors these things in to any new venture. One runs the projections and and tries to minimize risks, but it would be foolish to expect to have zero casualties. And now that Little Bird has the patent, all of the ethical ramifications can be considered before we even begin to think about distribution.’

She falls silent, and as I’m roiling inside, trying to figure out which of my many objections I should raise first, she adds, ‘Or you could let your Dream Police find me. I’m in no condition to be running around the French countryside trying to avoid the authorities.’

‘Aha! You are in France!’ I drum my feet against the ice floor, teeth chattering.

‘It’s a spare property I sometimes use. I know they’ll find me eventually – maybe quite soon. When they search my possessions, they’ll find my will, in which you are named to inherit my share in Little Bird. And then the police will come for you, for obvious reasons. You may well be pinned with elder abuse.’

There’s thunder in my ears. Not sure if it’s my blood pressure or the groans of the ice beneath our feet.