Many countries have sent smart little spy-flyers through hoops, though here in London we know of none that ever returned or transmitted any data back. SETI specialists-Searchers for Extraterrestrial Intelligence-try in vain to a.n.a.lyze the Varroa noise and communicate. Everything's guesswork. Now here's a different tack-the Kore people are going to carry out an innovative and maybe confrontational musical experiment. If they strike gold, wow. Let's not spoil the spontaneity of the experiment. Sometimes there can be too much consultation. We'll simply observe it, me and my Serbian who intrigues me-and of course we'll need someone to video un.o.btrusively so we have audiovisual for the record. This'll be on my own initiative. h.e.l.l, it's only a music group. Nothing might come of this, then I'd be wasting resources, right?

Before the hoops came and my left knee was caged, I was mainly liaising with the French security service about the Islamic terrorist threat. That's how I met Miriam Claudel, six years ago now. That ended, and for the past two years there's been no one else. I much prefer relationships to arise in the natural course of events rather than to go hunting.

"THE STUDIO" IS the name for a nineteenth-century vicarage in Lambeth, converted and extended into a nursing home, which subsequently went bankrupt. With mucho money from American and Euro tours and a zillion sales, Benny Wallace and Trev Tate bought the place before the aliens arrived.

It's going to be club night there tonight-anything to keep our spirits up.

A mild sunny evening, this fifth anniversary (in days) of my first meeting Svelte. I drive with the window down. My long denim skirt, its big pockets embroidered with swirls of daisies, laps pixie boots. White blouse, sleeveless denim bolero jacket. A bit Country Dance, but it takes all sorts. Alongside me, Svelte is in scarlet and black. In the back, Tony Cullen from Surveillance sports a box on his left hand-that's his digicam disguised as an imped. His real imped is some sort of complicated groin truss. Consequently he doesn't much like sitting, even on a commode chair at home, he told me. Usually, quote unquote, he sprawls on a sofa like a feasting Roman. Looks rather like a Roman, Tony does, with those crimped blond curls and eagle nose. He mustn't see much gay action these days, what with his truss. He wears loose baggy fawn pants and an oversize cream sweater.

There's so much less traffic on the roads these days that the air almost smells sweet. Easy-peasy to park my disabled-adapted Volvo turbo-diesel on a street of shops; try finding a parking s.p.a.ce in this part of London before the impeds. Walking half a mile with a knee-cage won't be much fun but we're being discreet.

Out clamber Tony and I awkwardly. Svelte slides out and is instantly, gracefully upright. I admire her.

The theory that we might all be atoning for something in our past by the type of impeds we wear is probably ridiculous. Must my leg be immobilized because I was captain of the hockey team at Oxford? Because Svelte was a singer, does she need an imped up near her vocal chords?

Our pace along the street is determined by my need to swing my stiffened left leg in an arc. A hoop drifts overhead, ignored by most people. It's easy to tell who's heading for the party. Girl in a one-piece Spiderman bathing costume and short frilly skirt, her friend in black bra and panties, boots and cowboy hat. Girl wearing hot-shorts and an off-the-shoulder top, her knee-imped just like mine except it's bright red. She must have painted or enameled the cage herself, which shows spirit. Various others.

Svelte told me that Benny and Trev aimed to centralize studios for a half-dozen tekky groups, the idea being a synergistic commune all rubbing off each other while doing their own unique things. Wisdom was that you oughtn't to live where your studio is because that way you'd become entrapped and not have a life, but as it turned out in the wake of hoops and impeds, The Studio provided a sort of sanctuary, an oasis. Some of the music made there is really demented, Svelte said with approval-such as the stuff by Psalms of Madness.

We're only interested in the original Quantum Entanglement band, which consists of Daniel and Sean and Alanjune-as those last two members call themselves, as though they don't have separate ident.i.ties. Maybe an imped locks Alan and June together nowadays-we'll see.

Pa.s.sing a fish and chip shop, funky jazz drifts out along with the smells. A beautiful Chinese girl with long black hair is scooping chips out of a fryer. Personally I would put the hair up in a net in those circ.u.mstances. But oh, the hair partly hides her imped. A small red box-like a radio-is bonded to the side of her head. And that's the source of the jazz! Does that box play all the time? How does she ever get to sleep? How isn't she half insane? Yet she looks serene. Maybe she went deaf.

"Sally, cop a look," says Svelte. I'd told her to call me Sally-Miss Adamson would sound absurd at a gig.

Generally one avoids gawping at abnormally impeded individuals, since basically we're all in the same boat. However, the middle-aged woman crossing the street toward us is something else. Living impeds are rather rare, and that woman's right forearm is a tortoisesh.e.l.l cat.

To be accurate, it's most of a cat. Fused to the elbow-stump of the woman's right arm, the animal lacks hind legs. She's cradling the moggy against her chest, its front paws clinging to her shoulder, its tail flicking to and fro.

"Imagine feeding it!" Tony is holding his boxed hand very steady-I think he's filming the woman. At home, does he have a private video library of weird impeds? Heigh-ho, anything to keep s.e.xuality alive and kicking.

Imagine that poor woman kneeling patiently by Kitty's food bowl, purring encouragingly. Imagine when the cat wants a c.r.a.p.

"What did she do to deserve that, eh?" says Tony. "Love her pet excessively?"

"What did the cat do?" counters Svelte.

We hush as the woman pa.s.ses by.

A lot of impeds seem arbitrary, while some do seem poignantly appropriate. So there's the "snapshot" theory that the imped reflects what a person was thinking about at the exact moment of caging. People thinking ba.n.a.l thoughts received any old imped from stock; but obsessives tended to be thinking about their obsessions.

"They're practical jokers," says Tony. "Somewhere in Varroa land, audiences are laughing their heads off and rolling in the aisles."

As if on cue, the noise intrudes: varrr-oh-aah, varrr-oh-aah-oh-aah, a wild wind rushing through trees, the sound of a giant bee flying. One of the Varroa comes cruising overhead, dangling scaly jointed legs, its gla.s.sy-looking wings beating fast. Yellow fur streaked with orange, black bulbous eyes, antennae like miniature antlers.

"Sod off sod off!" a bloke shouts at it. He shakes his imped vengefully-a right-hand box. Most people look the other way.

Rather higher in the sky, a pa.s.senger jet is descending across London toward distant Heathrow. That isn't such a frequent sight as formerly. Tourism's almost dead.

A skinny black chap equipped with a full head-cage emerges from a newsagent. Cradling a toddler in his arms, he looks like a parody of an American football player. Of a sudden the black man legs it at quite a pace. Cottoned onto a Varroa in the neighborhood, did he? Whatever a daddy does, his child will receive an imped when it's nearing a meter tall. Head-Cage is probably a bit nuts and is trying to stop his offspring from learning to walk, so that the child never appears tall. Well, that won't work, is the long and the tall of it. Long equals tall.

A HIGH STONE WALL tipped by rusty spikes surrounds the grounds of the ex-rectory, ex-nursing home. Cedars, cypresses, and Scots pines rear up. At the gateway a couple of blokes stuff entrance money into the pockets of long, open leather coats. On account of his waist-cage, one of these collectors looks pregnant with some robot child, its curving spine and ribs and other metal bones wrapped around his bare midriff. The other fellow has a solid box on one foot-after a year, how the inside must stink.

So NOW WE'RE heading up a long driveway through shrubbery-in company with teens and twenties mainly, a ba.s.s beat somewhere ahead of us. I'm wondering what homeowners in the area think about the noise, whenever there's club night. Prior to the hoops, when people could get to gigs further afield, I guess no club nights happened here. Priorities have changed as to what annoys us. Tony covertly films a gorgeous black girl ahead of us wearing pinstripe pants cut into thin thongs exposing her a.s.s and legs. Hand-cage resembling a medieval weapon. Maybe Tony isn't gay. I don't care a toss. I'd rather it was just Svelte and me here this evening, but there are proper ways to do things, as Tony's presence reminds me.

The black girl's blonde friend sports a frilly skirt and a bulging grille of a metal bra, to the back of which is fixed b.u.t.terfly wings of yellow muslin. I tell a lie-that bra is a breast-cage, which she has dolled up. Quite a crowd is heading for club night.

A big marquee comes into view.

"They're brave, these kids," says Svelte. "I admire them."

"Whistling while Rome burns," says Tony.

"You're excited. Enjoy the view."

Grinning, Svelte says something that sounds like, "S'avem che bea shi fute!"

"What's that?"

"A Romanian toast. It means: here's to a drink and a f.u.c.k."

"Look," says Tony, "it's inconvenient for me to get excited-not to mention unprofessional."

Svelte doesn't know about Tony's groin truss. She's so exotic, Svelte is, though doubtless not to herself. Probably she's hetero. Not necessarily, though. Time will tell. Or will it? I really must keep my head clear.

Let's take a look in the vast marquee first, where things are warming up-as in hot bodies and hot lights fanning through aroma-mists. However, the music playing from big speakers right now is like cool liquid, kind of distanced rather than intimate. What's playing at the moment are recordings. On stage a quartet of machines wait, for later on. Digi-keyboard, drum machine, hypersynth, and a whatnot-I've no idea which is which, or what, though Svelte does.

"Nice backward reverb setting off the vocal line," she comments loudly, and I think I understand. "Just don't overdo it! Aw s.h.i.t, there we go. That'll excite the bats," sneers Svelte.

Now a different remix rivets me. Sighs and cries over a pulsing ba.s.s line-kosher kore, the piece I heard in the office: Ev-ery-thing you Ev-ery-thing you do You do, you do, you do, you do...

Youngsters waggle their arms overhead and shuffle and shimmy, frantic to enjoy. Lip-rings, nose-studs, belly-b.u.t.ton trinkets make the impeds seem like huge exotic piercings. The white girl in black bra and panties, boots, and cowboy hat smooches with a black girl in white bra, et cetera. I approve. A huge Hawaiian garland of bright plastic flowers hangs upon another girl's brief blue c.o.c.ktail dress. A bloke's T-shirt reads KISS MY a.r.s.e, s.e.xY, although the b.u.m-cage bulking under his oversize jeans makes this unlikely. Why doesn't he wear a kilt? Similarly impeded chaps favor kilts. Older people are in the crowd too, so I don't feel far out of place. We have two or three hours before QE perform live, plenty of time to nose around independently.

I spy a midget, a very little man indeed with a large head, a bit more than knee-high to me. He's wearing a string vest and very brief yellow shorts, showing off his bandy, hairy, muscular legs-no, showing off the absolute absence of any imped! He's immune because of his extreme shortness. In the land of the impeded the diminutive midget is king, and he does show off, struttingly. He must think he's s.e.xy these days; maybe he knows it for a fact.

A FRECKLY GINGER-HAIRED man of forty-odd, brown leather bomber jacket hung on his shoulders-a cage enclosing his right hand-is nattering fairly urgently to a thin tall guy in baggy shorts and a T-shirt showing a c.u.n.t, a cage upon his right foot. c.u.n.t T-shirt's cadaverous face and wild shoulder-length hair fit the website picture I saw of Sean of QE.

I scoop the snoop from my pocket to my ear. Looks like a tiny flesh-tone hearing-aid, if anyone even notices. The directional mic in my pocket is radio-linked.

"... could easily be a real word, exprisonment."

"Like Bjork thinking 'h.o.m.ogenic' was a real word? Until someone told her it was bulls.h.i.t. But she stuck with it."

The thin fellow intones, "The way you stick with me, though I'll never be free... Needs pulling apart. The way you, the way you, stick with me, stick with me..."

"Don't take the p.i.s.s, Sean! Is Caz going to show?"

"Dancing's the candle, she's the moth." Just at this moment, a gorgeous blonde teeny-girl wearing green hot-shorts and a gauzy off-the-shoulder top comes by, her left foot caged, the other in a green fetish boot. Sean pivots toward her and jiggles his imped. "Hi jewel, we're a pair, you and I. I live in The Studio-want to see inside?"

She eyes him then says, "Foosh off."

Ginger says appeasingly, "Kids can be Puritans. They just don't look or act it."

"So why come to a f.u.c.king Kore gig? Are you a Puritan yourself these days, Pete, if you can't s.h.a.g Benny's treasure?"

"I don't like the word 's.h.a.g'."

"I need some Heineken Ice. Want to come in The Studio?"

"I'll hang around here for a bit."

"h.e.l.l, Benny can't go anywhere." Benny, the co-owner. "And he's getting fatter every day. No exercise, and overeating."

Let me get this straight-Pete has screwed Caz, who is co-owner Benny's girlfriend or wife or whatever. Pete is hoping to see Caz tonight, so Pete isn't resident in The Studio-or not anymore? Benny may have found out about Caz and Pete and had him expelled from the community. Presumably Pete can't be entirely non grata with the other co-owner, Trev, otherwise those guys on the gate wouldn't have let Pete in at all. I already noticed a couple of bouncers in jeans and bright orange T-shirts-security, first aid, whatever. Both have head-cages as impeds. Like visored helmets convenient for head-b.u.t.ting if the need arises. If Pete's blacklisted, doubtless they'd know about it. I keep Pete in sight as he wanders alone through the huge, ever more crowded marquee.

Benny can't go anywhere; Benny gets no exercise. Does that mean he's severely impeded, more so than most people? That might explain opportunity and motive for infidelity by Caz.

AHA. A TALL, slim dark-haired woman dressed in a long green skirt and lace blouse has arrived-and Pete is heading her way. Maybe she's forty or more, and she has a black patch over her left eye. a.s.suming that she's Caz, has Benny got angry and punched her in the eye? Presumably not if he's immobilized.

PETE AND CAZ talk for a good five minutes, while I eavesdrop on them. Pete wants her to come away with him, but she can't. Not won't-how she yearns for that-but she can't. Not yet.

-Caz, can't you abscond with Contessa? And anyway, it's all just bullying bl.u.s.ter. And how could he manage to torture...

I expected Pete to say-a child. But he says: -a cat?

Contessa must be the name of a cat, Caz's cat. Like a child to her. Benny has threatened Caz's cat, if she misbehaves.

-I don't have a cat basket.

-h.e.l.l, I'll buy you one!

-How would I explain it?

-He's all hot air.

-Can I risk that?

ON THE ONE hand, Benny's threat seems real to Caz, and horrible. Yet from the way Caz talks about Benny, she seems to care for the man and feel sorry for him. She's unwilling to abandon him.

-Pete, I need to show him soon...

Show him what?

AT LAST I cotton on. As if in compensation for immobilizing Benny, the hoops swapped one of Benny's eyes for one of Caz's. If and when Caz raises her eye-patch, Benny can see what she's seeing. And vice versa? I've no idea. Caz must need to close her own eye whenever she raises the patch, otherwise there would be a hopeless jumble of double vision, two different scenes eyed simultaneously.

Benny's eye is Caz's impediment. Yet Benny can't hear or feel or smell, only see-otherwise how could Pete and Caz have succeeded in making love? I imagine Caz's patch coming loose one time as she tossed her head to and fro upon a pillow, her noise of pleasure suddenly changing to a cry of fright.

-You still jerking him off, Caz?

-It seems only fair-how can I refuse?

Does this wound Pete?

-I do love you, Pete. I think about you every night- is the last thing I hear her say to him.

Reluctantly Pete moves away from her, disappearing into the crowd. Caz dances on her own, not straying from the same spot-for now she shuts her right eye and raises the patch to her brow. Her right eye was green, but her left eye is brown. Hoops can join part of a living cat to a person's arm in direct proximity. Hoops can also connect an eye remotely to a brain. This needs reporting. Investigators will descend upon Benny and Caz.

I WATCH CAZ as she dances, keeping Benny's eye masked, or stands still with it exposed. She's relaxed, yet wary. Periodically she and Pete coincide again for two or three minutes at a time. It's noisy and several times Pete has to ask Caz to repeat herself. Quite often she's looking away as she talks to him.

Most of their chat is about trivialities, or acquaintances. After that first encounter Pete doesn't implore or beg. No matter how frustrated he is, he mustn't want to spend their precious stolen time whining or cajoling, but companion-ably. Caz seems well able to hide her feelings, but she must love Pete otherwise she wouldn't take risks at all.

I'm fascinated with what seems to be the situation between them, and with the idea of the Eye of Another in one's head.

By itself that threat to torture the cat seems absurd and histrionic-yet at the same time ingenious, I suppose. Benny knows how to press Caz's b.u.t.tons and scare her. Maybe there are other threats too. Personally I don't think she'll ever run off with Pete, no matter how much she may wish to, at least in her dreams. Pete almost realizes this. Before the coming of the Varroa I read a statistic that only about twenty percent-or was it less?- of wives actually leave their husbands as the result of an affair. I wonder if Pete and Caz manage to meet away from The Studio, and for how long? That spying eye, it's worse than a photophone.

AFTER A GOOD hour and a half Svelte returns to me. In the interval I've hobn.o.bbed with Tony Cullen a few times. The first thing I ask Svelte is, "Have you been inside The Studio?" I'm remembering Sean's invitation to that blonde girl-my G.o.d, I'm having a jealous thought about Svelte.

"Sure," she says.

"How?"

"Got chatted up."

"Did anything happen?"

She grins. "Just led her on a bit. Can't do much surveillance if you're in bed."

Did Svelte go with a her by coincidence, or by design?

I tell Svelte about Benny and Pete and Caz.

"Wow, that's heavy surveillance, jealous guy's eye looking out of your own face. Needs a lot of composure to take that in your stride! I got a glimpse of Alan and June. They aren't fused or chained together, though I guess you couldn't perform too well like that. Fancy dancing a bit?"

Me, with my knee cage? Svelte's invitation excites me. Is she playing with me, being innocently friendly, thinking protective coloration, or what? Her eyes sparkle. I wonder if she did a line of c.o.ke in The Studio with her, on duty too. I mustn't seem nothing-venture, especially not here, so I give dancing a go.

All the while, other bodies are dancing in a slow demented euphoric way to the thump and pulse of tekky. A girl in long boots with a crimson crop-top and golden bangle piercing her belly b.u.t.ton has what I can only call a c.u.n.t-cage. How on earth does she get her panties on? The penny drops-she painted them onto already de-haired flesh, unattainable now except by the touch of a brush. Two young fellows clash hand-cages together, triumphing over affliction.

AT LONG LAST the head-caged bouncers and some helpers lower one wall of the marquee, exposing the event to the night, and the night to the event. And now the four members of QE come to their music machines, facing across the crowd toward the canvas wall-that-was, now a big darkness plus silhouettes of trees.

Sean, I've already seen. Daniel is a big black man with a shaved head, his imped a huge shoulder-cage adorned with an equally huge red epaulet. The cage cramps his upper arm but he can use his lower arm well enough. June dresses Goth-like, white face, lurid red lips, purple hairpieces entwined with her own jet hair. A dark gown swells at her belly-that'll be her cage. Beak-nosed, coal-eyed Alan has long white hair, presumably bleached, spilling from a head cage, and he wears a white robe with a scarlet pentacle on his chest. He's like a Wicca priest with his head in a birdcage.

Most of the lights go out, apart from spots illuminating the music machines.

It's Alan who addresses the crowd. He gestures beyond them at the night.

"Oh ye aliens who exprison us! We've deconstructed your humming and now we'll hum a new tune for you big bees! We're gonna pipe you back to oblivion like the Piper of Hamelin did, only he never had a hypersynth. You feeling caged, people? Hum along, come along! Welcome to Exprisonment."

June lifts a mic, and to begin with starts to hum.