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eyes a girl could fall for as an old friend had once said, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary. They were even slightly bloodshot.
    She shivered, remembering yet again the artificial lenses of Morrow's consultant. If Roads had had eyes like Raoul, Barney doubted that she would have liked him half as much as she did. Which was more than enough for the time being, maybe for both of them.
    Roads broke the moment by reaching for a cigarette. The pale, short-lived flame sent shadows flickering across his eyelids and forehead. When he looked back at her, he smiled gently.
    "Want one?" he asked, offering her the pack.
    She shook her head. Anti-cancer vaccine bred into tobacco plants had effectively made smoking a safe practice, but cigarettes were prohibitively expensive due to short supply. Maybe that explained Roads' involvement with Morrow: nothing more serious than black-market smokes. The thought came as something of a relief after her earlier fears.
    "Let's get back," he said. "We've got work to do."
    "Yes, boss." She took a deep breath to gather herself. "A thief to catch, et cetera."
    "And don't you forget it."
    The short walk back to the house passed in silence.

CHAPTER THREE
    6:00 a.m.
    Dawn came suddenly, dissolving the claustrophobic thickness of the night and replacing it with a weak, orange sky. As it lightened further to yellow, then blue, Roads started to feel tired. The city was stirring at a time he was normally getting ready for bed. The thought depressed him, as it always did.
    From his position by the patrol van, he watched as old solar sheets, most of them salvaged from abandoned buildings and passed from owner to owner down the years, unfurled from windows and rooftops like silver banners. Old North Street looked as though it was about to receive a ticker-tape parade for celebrity robots.
    Roads had to remind himself that this greeting of the dawn was a photovoltaic phenomenon, not a poetic gesture — and that it was a symbol of the fight for survival, not of the love of life. For every two or three solar sheets there lived one person unable, or unwilling, to pay for power. It was, like Kennedy itself, a reminder of everything that had been lost.
    Barney emerged from 114, where she'd been helping Raoul catalogue the wreckage, looking as tired and dirty as he felt. Her clothes and hair were rumpled, and there were bags under her eyes.
    "You look like shit, Barney."
    "Ever the smooth talker." She came to join him by the van. "Top of the morning to you, too."
    "Any news?" he asked.
    "None that I'm aware of. But that's hardly surprising. Morrow's little friend is having a ball down there — too busy ordering us around to actually tell us anything."
    Roads grunted, understanding her resentment. It hadn't been an easy decision to make, to approach Morrow for aid, but he'd only made it when every obvious avenue had been closed. Just one set of new data would make the risk worthwhile — and justifiable, when the time came.
    Even if Old North Street proved another dead end, there was still the data fiche Morrow had given them. Whether that proved to be a dead end too he wouldn't know until he managed to get access to a card reader. At the rate the current investigation was going, that wasn't likely to be until late that afternoon.
    Roads wasn't by nature a fatalist, but on mornings like this, after a night of insufficient sleep, reality was sometimes hard to fight. There was no denying the past, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it; the present had its own perils, and the future promised nothing but uncertainty. He felt as though he had been trapped in amber for the last forty years — secure in the knowledge that nothing could get in, but increasingly conscious that he was unable to get out.
    He grimaced. The metaphor was one that came to mind whenever he thought about Kennedy.
    "Are you okay?" asked Barney, peering at him.
    He nodded. "Just tired." Like everything else , he added to himself.
    The War had