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moment, and then at his feet. ‘Steve,’ he said.
    ‘Okay,’ said Louisa. ‘Steve it is.’
    Maggie laughed, and Christopher scowled at her until she stopped. ‘So what do you think of them?’ Maggie said.
    ‘Erm. They seem daemonic,’ he said.
    ‘Christopher!’ Maggie said. ‘Sorry, Louisa. He says that about everything at the moment.’
    ‘That’s okay. I’ve called them worse.’
    Christopher impersonated his stepmother: ‘It’s daemonic this, erm, daemonic that.’
    Louisa took Diamond on her fist, removed his hood and began her standard lecture. She saw no reason to personalise the display. ‘This is Diamond, a peregrine falcon,’ she said. ‘He’s male. Males are known as tiercels, because they are a third of the size of females.’
    Maggie nudged Christopher, who tutted.
    Louisa continued. ‘The world comes to Diamond differently. He sees polarised light. He sees ultraviolet. Most people know that a falcon’s vision is long-range and acute, but what they don’t know is that a peregrine sees the world slowed down. ’
    Maggie raised her eyebrows and nodded. Louisa put her face close to Diamond, who looked away. ‘The rate of signals from his eye to his brain is many times higher than that of a human. If Diamond watched TV, he’d just see a collection of static images constantly turning from dark to light.’
    An insect buzzed around Christopher’s drink.
    ‘The wasp that just flew past your face in a blur,’ Louisa said to Christopher, ‘would not be a blur to Diamond. He would see it slowly passing by in perfect detail. He’d be able to see each beat of its little wings.’
    Christopher batted at the persistent wasp, and then looked up at Louisa. ‘So how fast is the wasp really , erm, going?’ he said.
    ‘What?’ Louisa said.
    ‘Well, if the wasp is going fast for me, and it’s going slow for the bird, how fast is it really going?’
    Louisa frowned. This is what happens when you ad-lib, she thought. She turned to Maggie, who was trying to suppress a smile. ‘Maggie, do you know anything about the nature of time as an entity independent of human perception?’
    Maggie laughed. ‘Afraid not.’
    ‘Life must be, erm, boring for them,’ Christopher said. ‘Even F1 would seem slow.’
    Louisa had forgotten about his obsession with motor racing. Perhaps she could use it. ‘Do you know anything about G-force, Christopher?’
    His eyes widened and he began to stammer. ‘Yes. Erm. Nigel Mansell sometimes underwent the force of up to two G during, erm, Grand Prix racing,’ he said. He put down his drink and pulled his skin taut across his face.
    ‘Pretty impressive,’ Louisa said. ‘How much G-force can a human stand, do you know?’
    Christopher was delighted. ‘Erm. That’s easy. Six G.’
    ‘God, well done you,’ said Maggie, slapping Christopher’s back.
    ‘That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?’ Louisa said.
    ‘Six G is called, erm, G-LOC. The blood starts to drain from the eyes and consciousness is lost. It’s not at all promising.’
    Louisa nodded. ‘You want to know how many Gs Diamond can take?’
    Christopher stared at Diamond, who adjusted his feet on the glove. ‘How many?’ Christopher said.
    ‘About twenty-eight G,’ Louisa said.
    ‘Horseshit!’
    ‘Absolutely true.’
    ‘That thing?’
    ‘This very thing.’
    Louisa looked at Diamond. ‘He’s pretty mean in character, but there’s no way that Diamond could kill a grouse, which is almost three times his size, in a straight fight . So he pitches himself way up high – about a thousand feet – and then folds into this vertical dive, called a stoop. It’s just about the finest, most ingenious thing you can witness. You can actually hear it. In the stoop, Diamond has a peak speed of two hundred miles an hour, increasing his killing weight from two pounds to sixty.’
    ‘Jumping Jehosaphat,’ said Christopher. He did some calculations and turned to Maggie. ‘That’s like thirty of me landing on