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Lady Forrester the socialite. Of course it could always be that the Forrester children did their school work here. She felt a twinge of envy; she would have loved to spend her school days among so much history.
    She stepped over to the last table and noticed the painting for the first time. A wide canvas mounted in a gap between the shelves made by a twenty-eighth century secretaire. A portrait in soluble polymers. Two teenage girls against an impossible sweep of Ionian landscape.
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    If the background was fanciful, Genevieve judged that the figures were painted from life. One, on the left, was unmistakably the Baroness, dressed in the same costume of red blankets and jewellery as she wore that evening. Only younger, thirty, maybe thirty-five years younger. A teenage girl then. In her right hand she held the Forrester standard. The second figure, another young woman, clearly related to the Baroness, a sister – but no sister was listed among the Forrester titles.
    Her features not exactly plain but somehow severe. Whereas the young Lady Forrester stared upward and out of the painting in the prescribed romantic manner, the other seemed preoccupied, not so much resentful of the whole process, more uncaring. She thinks she has better things she could be doing, thought Genevieve.
    ‘Hello,’ said a voice behind her. ‘What are you doing here?’
    Genevieve started guiltily and turned. She found herself looking down at a young girl, six or seven years old, with black eyes and an unmistakably flat aristocratic nose. An echo of the girls in the portrait. She was flanked by two kinderbots, one shaped like a rabbit, the other a matt black spider.
    ‘I was looking at this painting,’ said Genevieve. ‘My name is Genevieve. What’s yours?’
    The girl squinted suspiciously at Genevieve. A red blanket was wound around her waist as a skirt and knotted at the hip; bracelets hung on her ankles and wrists. There was a wiry strength about her. Not an easy kid to handle, thought Genevieve.
    ‘I’m Thandiwe,’ said the girl. The Baroness’s youngest daughter then. She indicated the kinderbots. ‘And this is Mr Fact and Mr Fiction.’
    Personalized education bots, expensive, more expensive still because they were probably augmented to act as bodyguards. Mr Fiction, the rabbit, would be the more dangerous because it was cuddly.
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Genevieve. She reached out to shake Thandiwe’s hand. Mr Fiction’s glossy brown eyes swivelled to track the movement. The girl shook hands solemnly.
    ‘You belong to Duke Walid,’ said Thandiwe.
    ‘I’m his concubine. Do you know what that means?’
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    Mr Fiction did a sudden back flip and yelled, ‘Look at me, look at me!’
    Thandiwe giggled. ‘They think I shouldn’t know but I do,’ she said. ‘They get very excited about some things. Watch.’ She turned to face Mr Fiction, who was bouncing up and down.
    ‘Shampoo!’
    Mr Fiction looked stem. ‘Bad word. I’m going to tell Mama.
    You said a rude word.’
    ‘Won’t you get into trouble?’ asked Genevieve.
    Thandiwe shook her head. ‘This is the best bit. Mr Fact, what is the definition of the word shampoo ?’
    The spider scuttled to attention. ‘Shampoo,’ it said. Mr Fiction squealed with outrage and brushed his whiskers. ‘Noun, ancient American, a personal hygiene product designed for human hair.
    To shampoo, verb, ancient American –’ This was too much for Mr Fiction, who turned on Mr Fact and started yelling, ‘Bad word rude word,’ over and over again.
    Thandiwe stepped away and left the two robots to argue it out.
    ‘How long will they do that for?’
    ‘Until I ask them another question. Silly, isn’t it?’
    ‘Bad word, rude word, naughty word, I’m going to tell Mama.’
    ‘Very silly,’ said Genevieve. She indicated the painting. ‘Do you know who the other girl is?’
    ‘That’s my Aunty Roz,’ said Thandiwe. ‘She was an Adjudicator.’
    Which explained why she wasn’t