Betsy turned back to the house. The grounds were so neatly laid out they looked like they’d been sketched directly onto the gray-green grass by an architect working with compass and ruler. In the twilight it looked motionless, but seen through the hoop six or seven guards stood out against it, phosphorescent.

“This must be what a Predator drone feels like,” Quentin said.

“Hold this steady.” Betsy handed him the hoop. “Plum, you ready? Like we talked about.”

“You can do it from here?”

“I can do it from here. Whenever you’re ready.”

Betsy didn’t seem the slightest bit worried; if anything her tone had become gentler and more relaxed than Quentin had ever heard it before. This must be her element. The carpet’s flight path angled lower.

“OK. Do that one first.” Plum indicated the nearest guard, farthest out from the house, who was standing alone at a gate in the wall.

Betsy made a fist, placed it over the image of the guard in the hoop, and blew through it softly. The man slumped to the ground; it was as if she’d blown his pilot light out.

“Is he asleep?” Quentin asked.

“Sleep, coma. You say potato.”

Plum was concentrating, whispering in some Arabic language.

“Faster,” Lionel snapped. “Come on.”

She picked up the pace. A few seconds later a guard, or the shadow of one, appeared to draw itself up out of the ground and take its place where the man had stood. It didn’t glow in the hoop the way the man had, but otherwise it resembled him exactly. Plum let out a deep breath.

“OK?” she said.

Lionel studied it, then pursed his lips but nodded grudgingly.

“What did you make it out of?”

“Leaves. That’s all there was. He’ll look fine from a distance.”

“OK. Do it faster next time.”

The carpet drifted silently forward in its invisible bubble, now just fifty feet up, passing over the outer wall of the estate, then an outer lawn, a clay tennis court, a swimming pool, drained and covered for the winter. It was hard to believe no one could see them—Quentin didn’t feel invisible—but there were no shouts and no alarms. They cast no shadow. When they spoke it was in whispers, even though Stoppard insisted that they could have had a rock concert inside this thing and nobody would hear it.

Betsy and Plum dropped and then re-created four, five, six guards. Plum’s doppelgängers were convincing, at least from this distance. They were made from whatever she could grab from the immediate area—grass clippings, mulch, clay from the tennis court, just nearby shadows—but they wore the same clothes as their victims, and though they didn’t walk, they could shift their weight and turn their heads alertly the way a real guard would have, like minor enemies in a video game.