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that Eddie would pass through unharmed. She should have realised, though, that the expense of opening the 'face would far exceed the worth of one crazed Engineman.
    The flier hit the interface and vanished in a blinding white explosion. The detonation travelled across the 'port, reaching her a second later, followed by the patter of shrapnelled debris raining down across the tarmac. Ella closed her eyes, and the explosion bloomed again in the darkness.
    When she opened her eyes, the guard was running towards the terminal building, and before he could summon medical assistance for her, or whatever he intended, Ella stumbled across to where her bike lay on the grass embankment next to the fence. Dry-sobbing, she hauled it upright, kick-started it and raced off at high speed away from the 'port. As the blue light of the interface sent her shadow sprawling ahead, Ella tried to convince herself that Eddie had not heard her telling him to fly into the screen...
    She raced around Paris at breakneck speed, as if tempting fate to take her where it had taken Eddie. The wind in her face, she circled the Eiffel tower, phantasmagorically adorned, tore across the traffic island and through the Arc De Triomph, then accelerated down the Champs-Elysées. Beside the majestic silver dome which covered the tourist quarter of central Paris, she came to a halt. She sat astraddle the stilled engine of her Suzuki, aware of the bike ticking beneath her in the quiet morning air, aware of the pain in her chest, and the fact that she was still alive.
    By the time she arrived back at her apartment, dawn was touching the eastern horizon, and she knew what she was going to do.
    From beneath the mattress in her bedroom she took the photograph of her father, and the disc he had sent. She dropped the photo on the bed without looking at it, and played the disc.
    "I have seen the light, Ella. I need to see-"
    The rest was music. Three weeks ago, on receiving and playing the disc, the sound of his voice had caused her so much pain that she had stopped the disc instantly and recorded over the rest of the message.
    He had seen the light...? By which, did he mean that he realised and acknowledged all the mistakes of his past?
    Surely not...
    She dropped the disc on top of the picture, obscuring his face. She changed, found one of Eddie's silversuits. As she pulled it on, the material shrank, nestled around her thin body. She considered the irony of wearing an E-man's silversuit where she was going. She packed a bag and pocketed her savings. She looked around the bedroom, at her work bearing silent testimony to her lack of success. As she stood on the threshold, she was tempted to leave the bedroom door unlocked, let fate take away her past. But something, some deep and abiding belief in her ability, made her turn the key in the lock.
    She turned at a sound from the hall window. Sabine was crouching on the sill, watching her. "You leaving, Ella?"
    "Going out to the Rim, Sabby," she told the urchin. "Going to look up my father."
    The kid glanced around. "Where's Eddie?"
    Ella smiled through her tears. "Eddie's gone. He won't be coming back."
    "So you want me to look after the place, make sure the bastards don't trash your work?"
    Ella dug in her pocket for loose creds. "Sure, Sabby. You do that."
    Then she made her way to an Agency and arranged passage to the Reach.

Chapter Three
     
    Dawn was a uniform grey pallor above the eastern horizon as Mirren garaged the grab-flier and walked across the tarmac to the circular bar annexe of the terminal building. It was Thursday morning, the start of his three day break, and he always made a habit of calling into the bar for a couple of beers to celebrate. He was feeling dead on his feet and even more depressed than usual. He could not shake from his mind the death of Macready yesterday, or the suicide of the Engineman who'd flown his flier straight into the interface a couple of hours ago.
    He pushed through the swing doors