But he didn’t know any of that with certainty. All he could do now was gamble on the chance that the plan could still be salvaged. If he could get outside and fix the occulter himself, everything might yet come together.

Ramiro checked the records on the console and committed the occulter’s trajectory to memory. Heading straight for the nearest airlock would be futile; he might as well turn himself in. But anyone who could get more than a dozen caches of explosives onto the slopes would have to know a safe way out. His allies had been wise to limit their contact with him, and they’d managed to convince themselves that having set the plan in motion there’d be nothing more they’d need to do. But if they hadn’t yet realised how wrong they’d been, it would be up to him to disillusion them.

‘I don’t know anyone called Giacomo,’ the man protested irritably.

‘I met him here a few stints ago,’ Ramiro explained. ‘I think he borrowed your apartment, because it wasn’t convenient to use his own.’

‘You must be confused about the address.’ The man closed the door.

Ramiro supposed it was possible that the apartment’s tenant had had no knowledge of the meeting, but he couldn’t think of any other way to attract the group’s attention. Perhaps they’d been monitoring the whole project independently and already knew what had happened to the occulter, but he couldn’t take that for granted and rely on them to intervene.

Back in his apartment, he sat and waited for contact. Greta’s people might be watching him, but that had always been true; either Giacomo’s group had ways around that, or everything they’d done would have been spotted long ago.

After six bells, Ramiro lost patience. He knew he’d have no hope of sleeping, so he went out hoping to be found.

By most people’s schedules it was night-time, and the corridors were lit with nothing but red moss-light, but the precinct was as busy as he’d seen it. Ramiro passed dozens of restless neighbours, crowding the guide ropes, moving as briskly and aimlessly as he was. When he met their eyes they turned away, confused. In two days the mountain might be gone, and any sane person would want to play a part in protecting it. But after three years of complying with the flawless predictions of their own private messages – or their friends’ messages, or whatever impinged on their lives in the public news – what could they do when they’d been told that they’d do nothing?