And not now. We're still not free and single, and Sophie and I are both happy with that.

I arrive at the office about twenty past ten on my late mornings, bringing with me coffee and tea in cardboard cups from the machine. Baxter may or may not be in his office, but his secretary Safiyya is always in the office we share at the front. She takes the tea, thanks me; we exchange a few pleasantries and get on with our work. If Baxter is in he calls out for a coffee for himself, and I go and get one for him, and take it in.

'Morning, Ryan,' he says. 'Found any flying saucers yet?'

'Nope.'

'Keep looking,' he says.

It's a ritual, a running gag that's got old and tired but that we both keep flogging along. We talk for a bit about whatever the real science or technology issue of the day is, and I go back to the front office and crack on. Contrary to what the now-stale joke implies, UFOs aren't a big part of my research for Baxter. No more than one per cent. A watching brief.

There are far more interesting things going on, in space, in Africa, in China, in the labs and factories of Scotland itself. For some of them we have to come up with a response a a comment, a reaction, a policy. There are constituents to help and surgeries to hold and caucuses to plot and votes to carry, or to lose. That's the day-to-day stuff, the routine; and then there's the longer term, the strategic picture.

What I watch for most intently, and report to Baxter at once, are any signs of strain and stress: advance tremors of the crisis we both for different reasons expect. Nothing much so far: the Big Deal holds, the New Improvement continues. We've had a few false alarms. I usually manage to talk Baxter out of talking them up. Not always, but I can't protect him from himself all the time. He's quite the Cassandra, the economic and political drama queen. Maybe that's not such a bad reputation to have when the crunch comes, as we know it must. All our generation know. Baxter's ten years older than me, a little too old to be part of my generation, and Safiyya a in her early twenties, just out of university a is too young. I recognise my kind.

We're a strange generation, a peculiar cohort: those of us who were just young enough and just old enough to have lived the moment of the Big Deal as part of our conscious youth. We all have a sense of insecurity, of possibility, arising from certainty; from the sure knowledge we share, that the world can turn on a penny. Any stability is apparent, and can flip from one day to the next. All that is solid can melt into air. We all know that in our bones.

I sometimes find myself thinking about what that spook who called himself McCormick said. The revolutionaries dissolved their organisation and went into business, and now there's no way of telling who is a revolutionary and who is not. Because everyone knows everyone is watched, and everyone watches, no one knows, really, deep down, what any other thinks. All understandings are unspoken.

In that long Saturday of long conversations that changed my life, Sophie never did tell me she wasn't a revolutionary. Nor did Calum. Nor Gabrielle. I've never asked. All I know is that I'm not, and that I know what Baxter knows. That's enough.

Baxter's wryly liberal about office hours; a certain employment law he noisily objected to and voted against is kind to parents; and with glasses and phones everyone's always on call anyway. So most days, even days I haven't watched Gabrielle go to work, I can watch her go home. She picks up her little girl from the nursery where Calum left her in the morning on his way to work, at around the same time as I pick up our little girl from the nursery where Sophie left her in the morning, on her way to work. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Gabrielle holding Tanya's hand as she skips along University Avenue, at the same time as I hold Angela's hand as she skips or trudges or otherwise drags her cheery or weary way up Dalry Road beside me. I try not to look too much.

Sophie has a longer day than I do, but much the same commute: five minutes to Haymarket, twenty minutes on the new-improved train to Queen Street, ten minutes' walk to Hope Street, and the same in reverse coming back. For me going home it's fifteen minutes from Holyrood to the Mound, five minutes by tram or fifteen minutes by foot to Haymarket, then five minutes' walk to the flat. Vary each of our journeys by the time it takes to leave or to pick up Angela.

Angela and I get in before Sophie most days, and most days I get the dinner going before Sophie comes in. Sophie's work is too much like cooking for that to be recreation for her, and it's the other way round for me. Sometimes, while I'm in the kitchen and Angela's parked in front of children's telly and Sophie's verifiably on the train home, I send a message to Gabrielle. It's always the same message: nothing to report. Gabrielle sends me a :-) and a X back.

It's all innocent. Sophie knows I watch Gabrielle. She doesn't know I text her. Calum does. It makes me feel a bit guilty sometimes, but it doesn't keep me awake at night. Not even the dreams keep me awake at night. What sometimes does, as Sophie snores beside me a she denies this, but she does snore a and I slip my glasses on and gaze up through the ceiling and the floors above and the roof and the clouds at the real stars, is remembering what the spooks told me about what Baxter knows.

It was why, they told me, he'd accept the story about the manufacturing flaw, even though he'd probably suspect it was false, and why he'd insist that the radar reading was nothing very important.

'What Baxter knows,' McCormick said, 'is that whatever it was that fell from the sky and knocked down you and your pal, it wasn't one of ours. And whatever it was that made the false echo on the radar at Machrihanish wasn't one of ours either.'

0.02222 Recurring

Sometimes I find myself, as it seems, lying awake at night and looking at the stars, and I realise I don't have my glasses on, and I know I'm in the dream. Usually I wake up before it completes its course. Now and then I'm in it to the end.

This is how it ends.

I peer out of the tiny round-cornered thick-paned window beside me, the left temple of my forehead pressed to the glass, and see the blue curve of the Earth below, and ahead of us, approaching a the space station. It's far bigger than any of the space stations that are really up there in low Earth orbit, a huge spinning torus straight out of Kubrick and von Braun, and quite impossible to miss with the naked eye from the ground. It's like nothing we have yet. But I don't feel as if I'm in the future. I feel as if I'm in the present. In fact, in the dream I know I'm in the present. This space station has spaceships docked round its hub. Some of them are drop-jet spaceplanes like the one I'm in, and others are like nothing I've ever seen: gnarly old vessels pockmarked with micrometeor impacts and ablated by solar wind, bristling with vanes and blades and spikes, like mailed fists in the face of the night.

Of course I know what they are.

They're starships, they're ours, and this is now.

There are sharp kicks of deceleration as course and speed corrections are applied in brief burns of the main and secondary motors. The delicate ballet of ship and station concludes with the shuddering embrace of docking. The view from the window is of steel plate and rivets. One by one, the passengers' seat-belts are unlocked and retract, and one by one, hand over hand, we float down the cabin to the exit through an airtight concertina connection and out to the station. There's no processing to go through here, no security checks; all that has been done at embarkation far below and hours ago. Every passenger knows where they're going, or is meeting someone who does.

Following the rest, I swing into a long tube with a continuously rolling ladder. Foot on a step, hand on a grip. My weight increases as I'm carried down toward the rim of the spinning station. At the bottom I'm in one gravity. I stride confidently away, along a long wide corridor that curves up in front of me and behind. It's a busy place; people are hurrying, this way and that. I know there is somewhere I have to go, someone I have to talk to, someone who must know everything, and who will decide my fate. I know that I'm in some kind of trouble, but I'm not afraid. I've reviewed my life so far on the way up, I have all the evidence I need stored in my glasses, and I'm confident that everything can be explained and justified.

My pace quickens. I'm keen to get this over with. I'm already looking forward to getting back. And then- Always this happens. Always it surprises me. In the quick-flowing crowd of strangers from all over the world going the other way, I see two faces that give me a jolting shock of recognition. A man and a woman, both tall and good-looking, both in a uniform that looks out of place here but that no one looks twice at, except me.

It's the Space Brother and the Space Sister. Between them and with them walks a shorter figure, a lad in his mid-teens. His skin is a little paler than theirs. He's a fine young man, not full grown yet. I can see the family resemblance: there are elements of his features that resemble the Space Sister. There are others that remind me of my own face.

The Space Brother and the Space Sister recognise me at the same moment as I recognise them. Their faces light up. Their heads turn to the lad between them, and nod towards me. He gives me a searching look, and a warm but watchful smile as they approach. All three nod and smile as they come level with me, and then express with a subtle twitch of eyebrows and lips some chagrin or mild regret: they have to keep going, they have somewhere to go. The crowd carries them past, and me on.

I push against the flow, stumbling and apologising, and join the stream in the opposite direction. The three I'm following are already about five metres ahead of me, heads bobbing above the crowd. I weave and dodge through, trying to catch up, but they stay ahead of me. I know I'm going the wrong way.

We pass the chute I came down, and several others. The look and feel of the corridor has changed. The surroundings have a naval cast. The steel walls are bare; the air has a tang of rust; there's a metal grille rather than pliant plastic floor tiles underfoot. There are fewer people around, and they're stranger than the strangers I saw earlier. These are no aliens, no Greys, just people, but they look as if they come from countries and continents that aren't on any map. Some of them give me curious glances. The exits and entrances of the chutes with their rolling ladders have notices in languages I don't know, in letters I can't read, that remind me of some strange alphabet I've seen before.

I know what the inscriptions mean. They are the names of destinations, of worlds and stars.

Behind me, I hear shouts. I hear my name called. I don't look back. I quicken my pace. I've almost caught up.

The Space Sister looks over her shoulder, sees me and frowns and shakes her head. I shake mine, negating her negation. She looks forward again, then back; smiles and shrugs. On your own head be it, she seems to say.

The three reach the hatchway that leads to a chute. One by one they step inside, grab on and get carried up. The Sister is the last. She looks over her shoulder again, and nods, and rises away.

I follow. I step into the chute and look up. On one side a rolling ladder ascends, on the other it descends, in endless belts. I know where this one goes. It goes where I must and cannot follow, to the starship dock.

I grab on, and rise, and fall.

Acknowledgements.

Thanks, as always, to Carol for love and support.

I wrote most of this book while in the post of Writer in Residence on the MA Creative Writing course at Edinburgh Napier University. Many thanks to the course and the university for providing a congenial and stimulating place to work, and especially to Sam Kelly for all her help, advice and encouragement.

Thanks to Sharon MacLeod, Sam Kelly and Farah Mendlesohn for reading and commenting on the draft.

About the Author.

Ken MacLeod graduated with a BSc from Glasgow University in 1976. Following research at Brunel University, he worked in a variety of manual and clerical jobs whilst completing an MPhil thesis. He previously worked as a computer analyst/programmer in Edinburgh, but is now a full-time writer. He is the author of thirteen previous novels, six of which have been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and two which have won the BSFA Award. Ken MacLeod is married with two grown-up children and lives in West Lothian.

Find out more about Ken MacLeod and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at www.orbitbooks.net.

BY KEN MACLEOD.

The Fall Revolution.

The Star Fraction The Stone Canal The Cassini Division.

The Sky Road Engines of Light.

Cosmonaut Keep Dark Light Engine City.

Newton's Wake Learning the World.

The Execution Channel The Night Sessions.

The Restoration Game Intrusion.

Descent.

end.