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back in the twentieth century, and the newer, twenty-first-century terminal buildings and workshops sprawling across the crown of the hill under the high pylons. The only evidence of modern technology I could see was the escalator down which we rode and its continuation in the walkway which carried us to the exit. Their seamless flow of plastic—not nanotech, just clever—would have baffled the complex’s early engineers.
    We walked over to the People’s Palace, now a guesthouse as well as a home for the people working in the port. I looked at the sun, and at my watch.
    ‘Shall we stay here for the night?’ I suggested. ‘Go on our travels in the morning?’
    Suze nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s too late to go travelling,’ she said. ‘I do know some places to sleep in London, but they’re strictly something you do for the experience.’ We checked at the board in the foyer and found there were plenty of vacancies; most of our fellow tourists apparently preferred the dubious glamour and adventure of finding accommodation in one of London’s native inns or shooting lodges. We selected a double room in the west wing, and took our stuff up. There was a small stove, coffee, and other supplies in the room, and an invitation to the evening meal and/or later social activities. While Suze was showering, I asked the suit to make an unobtrusive sweep of the room. It found nothing, apart from the expected wildlife and the standard cleany-crawlies. There were definitely none of the other kind of bugs—not that I seriously expected any, but it was routine, like the airship inspection.
    Suze stepped out of the shower just as the suit’s agent was reporting back.
    ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘A pet mouse. How sweet!’

    ‘Grrr,’ said the suit, but I’m sure all Suze heard was a squeak. I took a shower myself, and emerged to find that Suze had brewed some coffee and dressed for dinner.
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the coffee. ‘Nice dress.’
    Suze looked down at it smugly. ‘Fortuny pleats, they’re called,’ she said. ‘You can just ball it up in a rucksack, and when you shake it out it still looks great.’
    ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I have something to show you.’
    I climbed back into my clothes, which were still sweaty and crumpled from travelling. They all added up to only part of the suit—the rest being the mouse, and the rucksack with its contents—but there was still enough for it to do the Cinderella trick, and mimic net and lace from an archived memory of debutante froth. I twirled, and grinned at Suze’s open mouth.
    ‘Smart-matter spacesuit,’ I explained, sitting down and patting its bouffant skirts. Suze was still goggle-eyed.
    ‘You’re from space?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The Cassini Division, in fact.’
    ‘Wow!’ Suze’s amazed look turned to an awed, and slightly guilty, excitement which I’d encountered before. In a world of abundance, of peace and security, the Division was the biggest focus for the dangerous appeal of danger, the sexy thrill of violence. There were those who despised and feared it for that very reason, and those who—sometimes secretly, even from themselves—loved it. Suze, it seemed, was among the latter.
    ‘That’s why I want to talk to Malley,’ I said.
    ‘About the wormhole?’ Sharp girl.
    ‘Yes. We want him to show us how to get through it. To New Mars.’
    ‘Start our own settlement?’
    I shook my head firmly. ‘We don’t need another lot of deserts!’
    Something—some sudden light in her eyes—told me her secret answer: we do, we do! Not everybody would feel that way, but I knew that enough did for Wilde to have seen that look all the many times he told his tales. No wonder he had the crazy notion that if we could go through, we’d colonize the place.
    ‘So why do we need to go through?’ Suze asked. ‘Why now?’
    ‘We need to go through,’ I said carefully, ‘because there’s a chance that the people on the other side of the wormhole are tinkering about