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with the same entities that the Outwarders became—the Jovians—on this side. We’re going to go through, and stop them, with whatever it takes.’ (This was true, as far as it went, which was not very far.) Suze sat back in one of the armchairs and looked at me, shaking her head.
    ‘Why don’t people know about this? Why haven’t we been told?’
    ‘We’re not keeping it exactly secret,’ I said. ‘It’s just that we’ve released
the information in scientific reports and so on, rather than making a big splash of it. So far, everybody who’s managed to figure out what’s going on must have agreed with us that there’s no need to panic.’
    ‘That may be right,’ she said indignantly, ‘but there is a need to discuss it! You can’t just go and do something like that, without any, any—’
    ‘Authorization? Actually, we can , in the sense that nobody could stop us. We wouldn’t want to do that, because we—that is, the Division—would fall apart if we ever went against the Union, because we’d have a strong and well-armed minority who didn’t want to go against the Union. But as a matter of fact, we do have authorization. We’re mandated to protect the Inner System from outside threats, and if a possible post-human invasion coming out of the wormhole isn’t one, I don’t know what is.’
    Suze still looked troubled. ‘What about the New Martians?’ she asked. ‘I don’t see them going along with it.’
    I laughed. ‘If they’re still people … they’re just a bunch of non-cos. And we know how to deal with them .’
    Suze shot me an odd glance, and seemed about to speak, but whatever was on her mind, she thought better of it.
    ‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘enough of this. Let’s go and grab ourselves some aircraftmen.’
    Dinner was in the great hall, with one of the daily planning-meetings before it (we sat it out in the bar) and a dance afterwards. The hall, a former exhibition centre, was decorated with murals depicting episodes from London’s history: the Plague, the Fire, the Blitz, the Death; the battles of Cable Street, Lewisham, Trafalgar Square, Norlonto; the horrors of life under the Greens (one particularly imaginative panel showed some persecuted rationalist tied to a tree and left to die of starvation and dehydration, gloating Green savages dancing around and a woman loyally lurking in nearby bushes, recording the words of the black gospel he croaked from his parched mouth); the joy and vengeance of liberation, cheering crowds welcoming the Sino-Soviet troops (the Sheenisov, as everybody still calls them) and stringing up Green chiefs and witchdoctors from their own sacred trees; the tense balloting of the social revolution. Uplifting stuff.
    The other decoration in the hall, that of its occupants, was more attractive. Costume on Earth tends to follow local traditions and techniques; here, it was a native style, picked up (as we later noticed) from the non-cos: cotton, with lots of dyes and embroidery. Some of the clothes worn after work were far more beautiful than ours, but at least our party frocks marked us out as visitors. We had no lack of attention, and we did, indeed, pull an aircraftman each.

    Early the next morning we made our separate ways back to the room in which neither of us had spent the night, gathered up our gear, and had breakfast in the main hall. In the daylight the murals looked lurid and naive rather than heroic. The sunlight through the roof panels was bright and warm. Suze spread out a map.
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘where are we going today?’
    ‘Our friend currently lives in Ealing Forest,’ I said. ‘I have a kind of address for him. He hangs out in some non-co technical college, and he’s known to scour the markets for old books and gear.’
    ‘Easy,’ said Suze. ‘We drive down the main path to Camden Market, stash the car at the Union depot, then take a boat up the canal to the North Circular—’ her finger jabbed at a trail marked on