Jon wouldn't meet her gaze. 'I really think you should check your apartment.'

Someone was waiting outside Macy's door. It was the village's peace officer, Junpei Smith. He also had trouble meeting her gaze, telling her that he was very sorry, but the village caucus had discussed her probationary residential period during its last meeting, and the vote had gone against her.

It took Macy a little while to realise that she had been evicted. Junpei, apologetic and blushing, allowed her inside her apartment and she packed a few keepsakes and asked Junpei to put the rest of her possessions in storage and walked away, feeling a hot and tender sting of humiliation. At a lakeside cafe in the next village she nursed a beaker of green tea and decided against asking Ivo Teagarden for help because he'd probably give her a long lecture on how things were done and what she should do to get along. She didn't want to get along. She wanted her life back. Her independence. She called the administration office of the farms, because she knew that there was always a room or two free, set aside for visitors. That was when she found out that she had lost her job. The same story: a discussion in her absence, the vote gone against her. She would have to make a formal public apology to Jibril before she could be reinstated.

Her punishment hadn't ended after all - it had overflowed the confines of the rectification facility and spread like a stain into every corner of her life.

She finished her green tea, poured a finger of cherry brandy into the white china cup and allowed herself a few minutes of melodramatic self-pity while she sipped it, then called Ivo Teagarden and arranged to meet him. Not to ask for advice but to make a formal request.

He arrived a few minutes later, and as soon as he sat down on the other side of the table she told him that she wanted to leave.

'This is unexpected.'

'I don't think so. I've lost my apartment and I've lost my job. There's nothing for me here.'

Ivo Teagarden pursed his lips as he considered this. A second-generation Outer, ninety-two years old, he looked half his age, a vain and somewhat prissy man with a thick mane of black hair and a black spade-shaped beard, dressed as usual in a homespun knee-length tunic with strings of hand-carved stone and wood beads around his neck.

'I was hoping that your attitude would have improved while you were away,' he said. 'I hoped that you would have learned something about yourself, and how to live here.'

'Is that what this was all about? To teach me a lesson?'

'To help you understand yourself and your part in our community.'

'I think I have a very clear picture of my part in your community.'

'It's something you can easily improve,' Ivo said.

'By apologising to Jibril? I don't think so. I'd rather go back to jail.'

'This isn't about Jibril, Macy. An old friend of yours will soon be visiting our city. Loc Ifrahim.' Ivo waited for Macy to say something. When she didn't, he said, 'Mr Ifrahim claims that he is visiting us because he wants to try to explain the virtues of doing business with Greater Brazil. We suspect that he has other motives, and we would like to find out what they are.'

Macy understood with a clean shock why her sentence had been commuted.

'You want me to do your dirty work. If I do, I get my job and apartment back.'

'I can make no guarantees about your job or your apartment, Macy. That's up to your co-workers and the residents of your village. But if you help us, I will make sure that they know about it.'

'You already know he's a spy. You don't need me to confirm it.'

'We want to find out what he hopes to find out about us. If we know what he is interested in, it will help us build a picture not just of his intentions but also those of his masters. And that knowledge would be of great utility to the whole of the Outer System.'

'I find out what he is planning, and you sell it on. Sorry, give it freely, for kudos.'

'That's putting it very crudely.'

'But you don't deny it's true. Suppose I don't cooperate?'

'This is a small community which can only survive as long as there is harmony. Sometimes, to avoid inharmonious conflict, it's necessary for an individual to make a sacrifice for the greater good. In this case, really it isn't much of a sacrifice, is it? In fact, you could look on it as a kind of redemption. A chance to make amends for your prideful stubbornness,' Ivo said, and pushed back his chair and stood. 'I don't expect you to come to a decision at once. Think about it, Macy. Think hard and well, but make your decision quickly. Mr Ifrahim arrives here in just two days.'

Macy took a long walk along East of Eden's long and narrow parkland floor, through a grove of olive trees, across flower-spangled meadows where sheep and llamas grazed, around a string of ponds, past enshelled groups of apartment blocks, the library, the theatre. She didn't believe that the whole business with Jibril, the silly confrontation, the trial, jail, had been engineered to force her to cooperate. Most likely, she thought, Ivo Teagarden and his cronies had learned about Loc Ifrahim's impending visit after she'd been sent to the rectification facility, and they'd engineered her release and the loss of her apartment and her job in a clumsy attempt to force her to do the right thing. On Earth, in Greater Brazil, the authorities would have presented her with a direct choice: follow orders or suffer the consequences. Ivo Teagarden and his cronies believed that they were morally superior. It was against their nature to order anyone to do anything against their will, or to make direct threats. But they didn't trust Macy, either. They couldn't be sure that she'd agree to help them. So they'd constructed a trap with only one way out, and probably convinced themselves that they were doing it for her own good. That they were giving her a way of saving herself from the consequences of her own foolishness.

It didn't make the whole business any less distasteful - on the whole, she preferred honest brutality to devious and manipulative benevolence and the more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Not with Ivo Teagarden, nor even with Jibril, but with herself. For being so naive. For failing to see that she would never be accepted or trusted by East of Eden and its citizens. For failing to understand that the city had been all this time a prison, her apartment a nicer version of the cell in the rectification facility.

She could stay here and do what they wanted, or stay here and refuse to do what they wanted and take whatever they threw at her. Either way, she'd be buried alive for the rest of her life. Or she could figure out a way of breaking free.

Getting away from Ganymede shouldn't be a problem. She was certain that Newt Jones would help her after he'd been released at the end of his short sentence, if only for the pleasure of thumbing his nose at the good citizens of East of Eden. But escaping from the city would be much more difficult. Newt couldn't get into East of Eden, and she couldn't get out. And besides, if she tried to contact him directly some AI would no doubt be listening in, and it would pass the information to Ivo Teagarden. As things stood, she didn't even dare look up the details of his ship on the net.

There was the delicate matter of timing, too. Loc Ifrahim was scheduled to arrive in East of Eden before Newt was released; Macy was going to have to tell Ivo Teagarden whether or not she was going to cooperate before she had any chance of working up a plan of escape. And she had a strong feeling that if she refused to help, her ass would be slung back in jail . . .

She ended up at the northern end of the city, in the cemetery park where, as in all Outer cities and settlements, the stores of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and other useful elements in East of Eden's dead were returned to the eternal loop of its ecosystem; bodies were dissolved by resomation and the fluid evaporated to a powder that was ceremoniously scattered around the roots of newly planted trees. The park was a peaceful narrow valley with wooded slopes rising either side of the lake that flooded its floor and, as in Rainbow Bridge's free zone, every kind of surveillance was forbidden within its boundaries. This was where Newt Jones had snuck into the city when he'd tried to smuggle in his illicit cargo, but Macy didn't know which of the six airlocks he'd used, or how he'd fooled the AI that controlled them; she should have asked him when she'd had the chance, back in jail. But the fact that he'd done it gave her hope. If he could get in, she could get out.

She climbed through stands of pines and wandered along the strip of rough heath that separated the trees from the footings of the curved roof, which was painted the fresh blue of a spring day on Earth. The air was warm. Butterflies tumbled around a flowering bush. White rabbits hippity-hopped through rough grass. Macy walked past the airlocks, each set in a fake rock face at the end of a sandy gully, studying the lie of the land around them, noting where padis ran, hollows and ridges, possible places of concealment. She went back down through the steep woods, crossed the lake on the slender span of a footbridge, and wandered past the airlocks at the top of the other side of the valley, then descended to a small grassy bowl circled by silver birches, her favourite spot in the park, and sat there for a long time, considering her options.

At last, she walked back into the central section of East of Eden, and put on her spex and called Ivo Teagarden, and told him that she would do what she had to do.

'As long as it is of your own free will, I'm delighted.'

'It's my choice, all right.'

'Good. You understand that until actual contact is made, your present position must remain unchanged.'

'Loc Ifrahim has to see that I have been brought low. He'll think I want to help him because I'm desperate.'

'You have a thorough understanding of the situation, Macy. Let's meet and talk. We have much to discuss.'

Later that evening, Macy met with three of the refuseniks in a pumping station under the cemetery park's lake. A forgotten place where no one else ever went. A clandestine venue suitably dank and cold: puddles of water on the concrete floor, water dripping fat and slow from pipework slung overhead, the only light from graffiti that writhed across the walls like swarms of luminous serpents and spiders. After Macy had framed her request, Sada Selene, the leader of the refuseniks, shrugged and said, 'Is that all?'

'It means a lot to me,' Macy said.

The refuseniks went off to a corner and talked amongst themselves for a minute. Then Sada came back and told Macy, 'We get the video rights.'

'Why not?' It hadn't even occurred to Macy that her escape would be of any interest to anyone.

'We can definitely extract a little juice out of this,' Sada said gleefully.

'It's going to be a lot of fun.'

Although she overtopped Macy by a half a metre Sada was only fifteen, and possessed by the artless enthusiasm and unquenchable confidence of someone who hadn't yet experienced any of life's hard knocks. Macy already had misgivings - the refuseniks' choice of meeting place suggested that they were confusing her very real problem with a trite situation in a cheap melodrama - and was worried that Sada and her friends would get carried away and attempt some grand gesture that would get her into even more trouble.

'Let's talk about practicalities,' she said. 'Convince me that you can help me.'

Afterwards, all she had to do was wait for Loc Ifrahim to arrive. She found a room in East of Eden's transients' dormitory and spent most of her waking hours in cafes in different villages, ignoring the sidelong stares of the other patrons. She supposed that by now everyone knew that she had been evicted and had lost her job, and tried not to care. Once, she was followed by a drone, but saw no sign of Jibril and yo's acolytes. On the evening of the second day of what she had come to think of as her internal exile, she opened the door of her mean little room and found Loc Ifrahim sitting cross-legged on the fold-down bed. He looked Macy up and down and told her she looked healthy and happy. 'Much better than in those so-called performance pieces in which you have been such an unwilling participant. Prison must agree with you.'

'It isn't called prison here.'

'But that's what it is, isn't it? I believe you were beaten up,' Loc Ifrahim said.

'I gave as good as I got,' Macy said, wondering how he knew. She was surprised at how calm she felt. She closed the door and stood with her back to it because with the bed folded down there wasn't really anywhere else to go in the tiny room.

'Did they release you before the end of your sentence because it was unsafe for you to be there any longer? Or perhaps it was because they took pity on you.'

Loc Ifrahim was dressed in canary-yellow leggings and a black tunic. He still wore his hair in beaded braids, and his false smile was as bright and engaging as ever.

Macy said, 'They let me out because they knew you would want to talk to me. Because they want me to find out why you came here.'

'Then you can tell them that it's exactly what it seems to be. A simple fact-finding mission. Testing the waters. Believe it or not, we are still supposed to be establishing trading links with the Outers. As for visiting you, I have a little free time and thought I'd reach out to a citizen of Greater Brazil down on her luck in a strange place. Someone who has suffered a serious and very public humiliation. If you think it could help, I'll be happy to have a word with your tormentor.'

'You could definitely compare notes about getting me into trouble,'

Macy said. 'Why are you really here, Mr Ifrahim? It isn't anything to do with fact-finding or trading links, is it?'

Loc Ifrahim studied her for a few moments, then told her to put her spex outside.

'They aren't switched on. Here, you can check,' Macy said, and held them out.

Loc Ifrahim snatched them from her, stood up and cracked open the door, tossed the spex onto the floor of the corridor outside, shut the door and sat down again. 'I was given a pair just like them,' he said. 'They contained a hidden transmitter and a tracking device.'

'You're kidding.'

'No, I'm not. They aren't very subtle here. Now you can explain to me how you think the good people of East of Eden have set you up, and what they want to find out. Don't worry. They bugged you, but they didn't bother to leave any bugs in this little cell.'

Macy told the story as concisely as possible. It seemed to please the diplomat.

'They expect me to ask you for help, and expect you to betray me. An entirely understandable although rather transparent and simple-minded ploy. But why have you betrayed them to me?'

'I don't like being used. As you well know.'

'I know that if you don't choose to help one side or the other, you'll rot here, Macy. They'll find some excuse to send you back to that "rectification facility" of theirs. You'll grow old there. You'll the there, and no one will care. Or you can choose to help me, and I will help you in turn.'

'You want me to pretend to work for East of Eden, but really I'd be working for you.'

'Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I will see you again very soon, Macy. And when I do, I hope that you will have taken the time to answer a few questions. Here,' Loc Ifrahim said, and stood up and handed Macy a data needle.

'What is this? A test?'

'Exactly,' Loc Ifrahim said, and pushed past her and was gone.

The needle contained a list of anodyne questions about East of Eden, and twenty pages culled from one of the discussion groups about the Brazilian presence in the Jupiter System, with a curt note appended. When we meet again, you can tell me if any of these comments seem important to you.

After Macy had told Ivo Teagarden about the meeting and what Loc Ifrahim wanted from her, the old man took the data needle from her and told that he would have it checked. 'I'll bring it back tonight, and then you can call Mr Ifrahim and arrange to meet him again. This time, I expect that he will tell you what he really wants you to do.'

She called Loc Ifrahim and set up a meeting for the next day. And after Ivo Teagarden returned the data needle and told her that nothing Loc Ifrahim wanted to know was especially secret, she could deal with his questions as best she could, she met Sada Selene in the cemetery park, and straight away told the girl about Loc Ifrahim's claim that her spex were bugged. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It looks like I'll have to make other arrangements. Or give it up completely.'

'This diplomat is really a spy. Yes?'

'More or less.'

'So he could have been lying about this listening device,' Sada said.

'And even if he wasn't, we don't know that anyone was listening in. Or even if they could listen in, come to that. Where we met, there isn't a phone signal. That's why we met there.'

'The listening device isn't a phone. And even if its transmissions were blocked, it could have recorded everything, and transmitted the recording later. We have to assume that they know, Sada.'

'Well, it isn't a problem,' the girl said. 'There are plenty of other ways out of the city.'

'If I'm going to do anything, I should do it on my own.'

'Because you don't want to get us into trouble? I think it's a little too late for that,' Sada said.

'I don't want to get you into more trouble.'

'You really don't understand anything, do you?' Sada said, with a vehemence that surprised Macy. They were sitting in the little grassy bowl in the copse of silver birches. Now the refusenik girl bounced to her feet and paced around its edge. In her white suit-liner, with her pale skin and cropped, bleached hair, she looked like a skinny ghost. 'I suppose you think that I'm a kid. Well, I'm not. I'm fifteen. So are my friends, everyone who wants to help you. And everywhere else but here, the age of majority is fourteen. Everywhere else, we'd be treated like adults, not like children. So don't worry about exploiting us, Macy, or getting us into trouble. We can't get into trouble, not really. Because the city thinks we're kids. And we know exactly what we're doing, we all have our reasons for wanting to help you, and there's no way you can get out of here without our help,' Sada said, and threw herself down in front of Macy and fixed her with a fierce dark gaze.

'You don't know much, but at least you know that's true. Right?'

Macy laughed and shook her head.

'I'm deadly serious,' Sada said.

'I don't doubt it. I ran away from home when I was only a little older than you. And that was very definitely a deadly serious thing to do. But it didn't put anyone at risk except my own self.'

'No one will be in any danger if we do this properly,' Sada said. 'So let's talk about what we have to do.'

They spent some time discussing alternative routes. Sada took it very seriously, assured Macy that she and her friends could make the necessary adjustments before tomorrow, and said that she would make sure that Newton Jones knew about the change of plan as soon as he was released.

'By the way, are you two in love? It would make a better story if you were.'

'I think he's in love with the idea of having an adventure.'

'Well it's still a great story,' Sada said.

'Only if everything works.'

'It will work. Trust me. Imagine I know everything and you know nothing.'

'There's one more thing,' Macy said, and explained what she wanted to do about the spex.

'It won't fool them for long,' Sada said.

'Maybe it'll be long enough,' Macy said. 'And besides, I want to make a point.'