The Concern had first discovered the world a few years after the catastrophe and had repaired and restored the palace. It had become a place where privileged officers of the Concern could holiday. Mrs Mulverhill, who now seemed to be able to go anywhere and do anything as long as she stayed away from the Concern proper, had found a version indeed, a whole unshuffled deck of versions where this had been done but n.o.body had yet come to visit. For now at least it was her private world. She had brought him here. This time, she had only needed to hold his hand.

"What is the point," she asked him, "of trying to do any good in the many worlds when there will always be an infinite number of realities where the horrors unfold unstopped?"

"Because one ought to do what one can. Good is good. Specific people and societies benefit. That not all people and societies benefit is beside the point. That a finite number of lives and worlds are better as a result of the actions of the Concern is all the justification that is required, and refusing to do a finite amount of good because you cannot do an infinite amount of good is a morally perverse position. If you feel sorry for a beggar you still give them money even though doing so does nothing for the plight of all other beggars." He let himself slide under the steaming water and the islands of bubbles, resurfacing and wiping water from his face. "How am I doing? I'm paraphrasing here, but it's sounding pretty good to me. I should probably write a paper or something."

"Extremely well. You're a credit to your teachers."

"I thought so." He pushed his fingers through his hair like a rough comb. "So. Tell me where I'm wrong and what the Concern is really up to."

She nodded once. There were times when he thought she lacked any sense of humour, irony or sarcasm. "I think now that the Concern," she said, "exists for a much more specific purpose than simply acting as a multiversal niceness-enforcement agency. It does do some good, but it's incidental, a cover for its true purpose."

"Which is what?"

"That is what I hope you will agree to help me find out."

"So you still don't know?"

"Correct."

"But you suspect they're up to something."

"I know they are."

"How do you know?"

"I feel it."

"You feel it."

"Indeed. In fact I feel certain of it."

"You know, if you're going to convince anybody else about this, including me, you're going to have to do better than just telling them you're certain. It's a little vague."

"I know. But consider this."

Of course, she had a slyly refined sense of humour and appreciated ironies that entirely pa.s.sed him by. Sarcasm was generally beneath her, but even so.

"I am," he told her, "sitting comfortably."

She put one hand up to the side of her head, so that one rosy nipple surfaced briefly from the white bubbles. She took the little white hat and the veil off, laid them on the black granite at the side of the tub. Slitlike pupils in amber irises narrowed fractionally as they regarded him.

"We have access to an infinite number of worlds," she said, "and have visited some very strange ones. We suspect there are some so strange that we are unable to access them just because of that strangeness: they are unenvisageable, and because we cannot imagine going to them, we cannot go to them. But think how relatively limited is the type of world we do visit. For one thing, it is always and only Earth, as we understand it. Never the next planet further in towards or further out from the sun: Venus or Mars or their equivalents. This Earth is usually about four and a half billion years old in a universe just under fourteen billion years old. Usually, even if it supports no intelligent life, it supports some life. Almost without variance, it exists as part of a solar system in a galaxy composed of hundreds of millions of other solar systems, in a universe composed of hundreds of millions of other galaxies."

As she spoke, she flexed one leg and reached out with it to find his groin with her foot. Her toes brushed against his b.a.l.l.s, his c.o.c.k, stroking them, wafting like the water.

"Wait," he said, opening his legs a little to allow her more room, "this isn't the 'Where Is Everybody?' question, is it?"

"Yes."

"That's easy. There is no everybody. There is only us. There are no aliens. Not a single one of the many worlds shows any sign of alien contact, past or present. Their lack, throughout the multiverse, proves the point. We are alone in the universe." Her toes were gently brushing first one side of his p.e.n.i.s, then the other, bringing him erect.

"In all the universes?" she asked, smiling.

"In every single one."

"Then infinity seems to be failing somehow, wouldn't you agree?"

"Failing?"

"It hasn't produced any aliens. It has produced only us. A single intelligent species in all the wide universe does not smack of infinity." She supported herself by stretching her arms out to either side of the tub and reached out now with both feet, finding his erection with two sets of toes and stroking it gently up and down.

He cleared his throat. "What does does it smack of then?" it smack of then?"

"Well, it could simply be due to what the transitioneering theorists call the problem of unenvisionability, as mentioned: we cannot imagine a world that includes aliens or perhaps, deep down, we don't want to." Mrs Mulverhill raised one hand and blew some bubbles from it to inspect her fingernails before looking at him and saying, "Or it might smack of deliberate quarantine, systematic enclosure, some vast cover-up..."

"Why, Mrs Mulverhill, you're a conspiracy theorist!"

"Yes," she agreed, smiling. "But not by nature. I've been forced into it by the conspiracy I'm investigating." She hesitated, uncharacteristically. "I've found some examples. Ones you'll know about. Want to hear?"

"Fire away." He nodded down to where her glistening feet, bobbing rhythmically through the surface of the swirling, bubbling water, were caressing his c.o.c.k, parenthetical. "Feel free to not stop doing that, though."

She smiled. "The examples are from the more extreme end of the exoticism spectrum," she told him, "but still."

"I've always liked extremities."

"I'm sure. Max Fitching, the singer?"

"I remember."

"The green terrorist explanation was a lie. He was going to give his money to SETI research."

"Uh-huh."

"Marit Shauoon?"

"I still wince."

"He was going to use his network of communication satellites to do a SETI in reverse, deliberately broadcasting signals to the stars. In his will he'd have funded a trio of orbiting telescopes dedicated to finding Earth-like planets and looking for signs of intelligent life on them. You killed him days before he was going to alter his will with just that provision in mind. Glimpsing how it's all heading?"

"You missed out Serge Anstruther."

"Yerge Aushauser. No, he really was a s.h.i.t. He wasn't really a genocidal racist as such but whenever he's not stopped he ends up causing such havoc he might as well have been. Wanted to buy up a state in the US midwest and build an impregnable Nirvana for the super-rich; Xanadu, Shangri-La. Fantasy made real. A Libertarian." From his expression she must have thought he wasn't entirely familiar with the term. She sighed. "Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard."

"You've obviously thought about it."

"And dismissed it. But expect to hear a lot more about it as Madame d'O consolidates her power-base it's a natural fit for people just like you, Tem."

"I'm already intrigued."

"Well, you would be."

"How do you know all this?"

She waggled her toes over his p.e.n.i.s as though it was a flute and her feet were intent on playing it. "I seduce forecasters. I've even turned a few. I have my own now."

"Uh-huh."

"The Concern use you, and others, to do this sort of thing more and more these days, Tem. You still get to kill the genuine bad guys now and again, but that's become little more than cover now, not the main focus of their activities. They've even started going after people who're just thinking about what humanity's true place in the cosmos might be. There's a guy called variously Miguel Esteban/Mike Esteros/Michel Sanrois/Mickey Sants who keeps cropping up across one batch of worlds. All the poor f.u.c.ker wants to do is make a film about finding aliens but they've started kidnapping him too now. That's one of the few examples we know about. I'm betting there are hundreds of others."

"This is all back to Madame d'O, isn't it?" he said, gripping the rim of the tub and flexing his shoulders to ease his hips forward, closer to her, so that her legs spread a little more, glistening knees appearing out of the surface of the gently bubbling water on either side while her soles and toes still grasped his c.o.c.k.

"Madame d'Ortolan continues to believe in her imbecilic theories and pursue her s.a.d.i.s.tic research," Mrs Mulverhill agreed graciously.

"It just always seems more personal," he said, "this thing between her and you."

"I've no particular desire to personalise any of this, Tem, it's just that when you follow the relevant trails she's always what's waiting at the end."

"No doubt." He reached forward, took her ankles in his hands. "And now I think you should come over here."

She nodded. "I think I should, too."

The dawn began to break across the teeth of the eastward mountains, a yellow-pink stain slowly spreading. They stood, bundled in pillowed layers of high-alt.i.tude, four-season clothing, on a high circular balcony situated on the summit of the highest dome of the great empty palace. They were in the open air, beyond a small airlock, sucking oxygen from transparent masks over their noses, leaving their mouths free.

Small oxygen tanks in their outer jackets kept them supplied with the life-giving gas and a back-up system of valves dotted round the balcony stood ready to replace those if something went wrong. Even so, one could not simply step from the scented sea-level warmth of the palace into the open air of nine and a half kilometres above the ocean; the pressure difference was so great that a period of adjustment was required in the airlock to prevent discomfort. Before dawn, when the air was most likely to be still, was the best time to be here. Nevertheless, a strong, thin wind was blowing from the north. A movable gla.s.s screen linked to a man-high tail of a blade like a giant weathervane had positioned itself to deflect the worst of the blast over the balcony. Glowing figures on a small screen set into the parapet indicated that the temperature was forty below. The air, felt on the lips and the few square centimetres of exposed skin around the eyes, seemed powder-dry, sucking up moisture as much as warmth.

She said, "People will generally make whatever compromises with the world they think necessary still to convince themselves that they are the most important thing in it. The trouble with what we're able to do specifically the trouble with unfettered access to septus and through it to the many worlds is that it abets and encourages this delusion to the point of naked solipsism." Her voice, carried over the steady roar of wind, sounded calm and strong, unaffected by the thin air.

"All the same," he said, "it's still an illusion. The world exists without us, whether we like it or not."

She smiled. "A hard-line solipsist would dismiss your words as mere wind," she said. "The point is that to a true solipsist there is no distinction between objective and subjective truth. Subjectivity is all that matters because it is effectively all that exists. And to be a member of the Central Council of the Transitionary Office is to exist in a state that positively encourages such a state of mind. It is not healthy, not for the Office, l'Expedience, or for anything or anybody."

"I'd have thought it was very healthy indeed for those on the Council itself."

"Only in the trivial sense that now they need never die."

"I bet it doesn't seem trivial to them."

"Well, quite." Mrs Mulverhill sat back against the bal.u.s.trade, its curved top fitting into the small of her back within the puffy layers of insulation. Her outer wear was white. The slowly increasing light to the east washed it with a chilly pinkness. "But one has to ask what this has done to their outlook."

"I cannot wait for you to tell me," he told her.

She smiled. "Unless we have been lied to even more comprehensively than even I suspect, the Concern has existed for a thousand years. In that time, certainly for the first eight centuries, it spent its time investigating the many worlds, researching the properties of septus and the abilities it confers upon people trained to take it, and theorising regarding the metaphysical laws governing the many worlds and the composition of whatever context they might be said to exist within. Until about two hundred years ago, interventions were rare, much argued and agonised over, heavily monitored and subject to extensive subsequent a.n.a.lysis."

"So what happened two hundred years ago?"

"Madame d'Ortolan happened," Mrs Mulverhill said, with a sour smile. "She discovered how a transitioner could take somebody else with them between the realities and that opened up a whole new set of opportunities for l'Expedience; the numbers of worlds investigated soared. Then when she was on the Central Council she pushed for a far more aggressive policy of interference and a still wider spread of influence. She also proposed that the practice of allowing Central Council members to shift down to a younger body when their own body approached advanced old age become the default for all rather than the extraordinary privilege for the most-honoured few, and that the limit of this being allowed to happen only once be lifted."

"I thought that was still just a proposal." It was a rumour throughout the Concern, indeed across Calbefraques, that this might be the case, but there had been no official p.r.o.nouncement.

"In theory it is," Mrs Mulverhill conceded. She turned and looked out at the nearby peaks starting to shine like vast pink teeth all around them. "But it's being done piecemeal. As each of the other Council members approaches the age when they might start to think that such a proposal does make sense after all when they have often spent their careers until then decrying and opposing it the good Madame suggests they might like to reconsider. To my knowledge only two of the Council have resisted her so far, and they might still be persuaded." She looked at him and smiled. "The steps to the grave grow steeper the closer you approach. A degree of urgency can grip people. She might have those two Council members too, in time. And besides, with them gone and with effective control over the Central Council, she can make sure the replacements are more amenable. She has all the time she wants, after all. She can play the longest of games."

"So now the Central Council just goes on for ever?"

"As an ent.i.ty, it always expected to." She shrugged. "Well, bureaucracies always do, but this one really might, of course. The difference is that in theory the individuals of the Council can now go on for ever. The point is not that the Central Council will never cease to be, the point is that the Central Council will never cease to be exactly the same. It will never change."

"They'll still get older. Their minds will."

"Yes, and it will be an interesting rolling experiment in how much information a healthy and relatively young mind can contain without having to overwrite some of it when it's inhabited by a relatively ancient one, and of course the Council members are quite convinced that they will only get wiser and wiser the older they get in lived years, and that this can only be a good thing. But I think any rational outsider would and should be appalled at the prospect. The old and powerful never want to let go. They always think they're both profoundly indispensable and uniquely right. They are always wrong. Part of the function of ageing and dying is to let the next generation have its say, its time in the sun, to sweep away the mistakes of the previous age while, if they're lucky, retaining the advances made and the benefits accrued." The sunlight was stronger now, picking out her strange dark eyes with their slit pupils. They narrowed, glittering as though frosted.

"It is an insane conceit. Power always drives to perpetuate itself, but this is a phenomenal extra distillation of idiocy. Only people already riddled with the internalised special pleading and self-importance that too much power brings could even start to imagine that this might be in any way sustainable."

He rested one forearm on the parapet, side on, gazing at her. Even bundled so, made comically rotund by the warm clothes, she somehow contrived to appear slim, slight and full of a specifically sensual energy. He had a sudden flashback to the sight and feel and smell of the body contained within all those insulating layers. They had been here for most of a day and had spent a lot of that time f.u.c.king. His muscles felt tired and heavy and his legs still felt shaky from their latest bout half an hour earlier, standing, her wrapped around him in the airlock while they waited for the pressures to equalise.

Thinking about her, he half expected some sort of stirring from his c.o.c.k, but nothing happened. It certainly wasn't the cold so he guessed that this time he really was all done. He had wondered when she had first suggested they come out here onto the balcony if it was some sort of final spectacular site for s.e.x. A risky one, he thought. A chap could risk frostbite. But they had f.u.c.ked in the airlock instead. He hoped she wasn't expecting more, not for a while he felt a little sore and absolutely drained.

"You do know so much about it all," he said.

"Thank you. In particular I think I know Madame d'Ortolan," she told him. "I think I know how her mind works."

"I can certainly vouch for how some of her other organs function."

"She has self-belief raised almost to solipsistic levels. It's her weakness. That and a kind of fanaticism for neatness."

"Neatness? Neatness will bring her down?"

"It could be part of it. Having effective control of the Central Council will not be quite enough for her, I think. Even though as a whole it will entirely do her bidding it will annoy her that there are still people on it who disagree with her, just on principle. She will want everybody everybody on it to agree with her. It's just neater. And that self-belief, it makes her think that she can do no wrong just because she is who she is. For all her clear-headed cunning and guile and utterly ruthless rationality, there is a kernel of something like superst.i.tion in her that tells her any given stratagem, no matter how risky, will work in the end simply because she is destined to triumph; that's just the way the world works, the way all worlds work. And that's how we bring her down, Tem." on it to agree with her. It's just neater. And that self-belief, it makes her think that she can do no wrong just because she is who she is. For all her clear-headed cunning and guile and utterly ruthless rationality, there is a kernel of something like superst.i.tion in her that tells her any given stratagem, no matter how risky, will work in the end simply because she is destined to triumph; that's just the way the world works, the way all worlds work. And that's how we bring her down, Tem."

"Do we?"

"We keep annoying her, keep opposing her, keep nudging her to riskier and riskier tactics, until she overreaches herself and falls."

"Or keeps winning."

She shook her head. "The longer you keep gambling everything the more certain you are to lose it."

"So don't gamble everything."

"Rational. But if you're absolutely convinced that it is your destiny to triumph, that your victory is inevitable, and gambling everything gets you there quicker than taking it in small steps, why shuffle to glory when you can get there in a few boldly heroic leaps?"

"What if you're wrong?"

She smiled ruefully. "Then we're f.u.c.ked." She took a deep breath and stared out across the pillowed skyscape of clouds towards the dawn. "But I'm not wrong."

"Something deep inside tells you that, does it?"

She glanced sharply at him, then gave a small laugh. "Yes, quite. Point taken. But we all need to have the courage of our convictions, Tem, if we're not to be just the playthings of the powerful; hordes of falling, clicking b.a.l.l.s batted this way and that at their whim in some vast game. And you have yet to say whether you'll help or not. You need to choose which side you're on."

"Mrs M, I'm still not entirely sure what the sides are."