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the effect was of opulence, not overcrowding. A window looked out over Rosinante Street.
    Arrahaquen washed her hands, knocking the hot tap to ensure its inner valve did not stick, then dressed for the city in plastic protectives, thigh boots with top-elastics to ensure nothing fell inside, a heated hat and, of course, her kit. As she walked towards the door she looked inside a cardboard box – one empty flowerpot and a bag of earth sealed with a crimson twist. So… now for her own plans. She departed, left the block, and hurried down the steep steps of Rosinante Street to the northern gate.
    At the gate she was stopped. It was a sturdy construction, all steel, flickering screens and automated laser rifles, occupied by five of the Citadel Guard; and even though she was Arrahaquen, known throughout the Citadel – and beyond for that matter – she felt a thrill of fear as she gazed at the jet-black visors, metallic one-pieces and huge cowhide boots shod with titanium. Who were they? It was not permitted even for her to know their identities, so that bribery and blackmail be impossible. Only her mother, Defender-in-Chief, knew.
    ‘Pass?’ came the pyuter-synthesised voice. She heard a whirr of electronic breathing above the din of rain.
    Arrahaquen handed over a scarlet card. The woman flashed it under a laser beam. Another pyuter voice: ‘Clear. Hurry along.’
    It was handed back and Arrahaquen was let through the Citadel Wall. She paused, glancing back. The Wall, the great black ring surrounding the Citadel, pierced only at the four cardinal points, was slick with rain. Lidded eyes and grasping arms transplanted from the bodies of wrecked pyutons studded its matte exterior. Two or three bodies held in a vice grip lay slumped against it, one gnawed by dogs. Arrahaquen hurried on up Malmsey Street then turned into Onion Street, passing the Dead Spirits temple then crossing the river and making north towards the Gardens. She tied on a mouth mask to conceal her face.
    Up Culverkeys Street she walked, past the Infirmary with its thousand photobacteria tubes and its incinerators smoking, through the maze of alleys between the Gardens and the Mercantile Quarter, until she spied the street that was her goal. A collapsed wall blocked her way, but she climbed over and splashed into the foot-deep flood waters behind. Leeches swarmed over the area. She counted down the Blank Street houses to number eleven, and knocked on its door’s chromium plates.
    ‘Who is it?’ came a phlegmy voice.
    ‘I’ve come to buy something off you. Is that Oquayan?’ The door opened and a rifle emerged. ‘I’m a defender,’ Arrahaquen said, showing the pale face behind the door her Citadel pass.
    ‘Hmmph. Come in. What do you want?’
    ‘Something from your remarkable garden,’ Arrahaquen replied, soothingly.
    Oquayan led Arrahaquen through her musty house into a conservatory hot as a furnace, and then out into the garden.
    ‘So, what do you want?’ Oquayan asked.
    ‘A seed off a fig tree.’
    Oquayan gestured her to follow. ‘Which species exactly?’
    ‘Ficus veritas illuminatus.’
    ‘Hmmph. That tree there, with the sprays of bean-shaped pods. Pick one off the lowest branch. One only, mind.’
    Arrahaquen did as she was bid, then showed Oquayan a roll of units to choose from as payment. A processor was chosen.
    ‘Rush of interest in ficus, then,’ Oquayan remarked.
    Arrahaquen frowned. ‘Pardon?’
    ‘Some other gal after a ficus – the xenos illuminatus. Know her?’
    Arrahaquen felt her throat tighten with apprehension. ‘Um, who was this?’ she asked.
    ‘Gal who visited me not two days back.’
    ‘And her name?’
    ‘Didn’t get it, unfortunately,’ Oquayan replied; and her face assumed a dark expression. ‘Not a defender though, ’cos she was starving, with the look of some green marketeer.’
    ‘She wasn’t a defender? Surely only a citadel woman could have–’
    ‘She caused me lots of trouble,’ Oquayan