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the seam of a serpentine swamp stretching from the fringe of the Fens basin right back to Barrowden.
    The chauffeur turned off the A1 at Wansford, heading west, inland, away from the bleak salt marshes which festered across the floor of the Nene valley below the bridge.
    Greg hated the waste, President Armstrong’s legacy. It was all so unnecessary, levees were amongst the oldest types of civil engineering.
    The Rolls turned off on to a dirt track. It looked like an ordinary farm path across the fields of baby sugar cane, leading to a small wood of Spanish oaks about three-quarters of a kilometre away. There wasn’t even a gate, simply a wide cattle grid and a weather-beaten sign warning would-be trespassers of dire consequences.
    The chauffeur stopped before the grid, and flicked a switch on the dash before driving on. There was nothing between the metal strips, no weeds, puddles, only a drowning blackness.
    They drove through an opening in the trees, under a big stone arch with wrought-iron gates, kept in excellent condition. Stone griffins looked down at the Rolls with lichen-pocked eyes.
    There was a long gravel drive beyond the gates, leading up to a magnificent early eighteenth-century manor house. Silver windows flashed fractured sunbeams. A tangle of pink and yellow roses boiled over the stonework, tendrils lapping the second-storey windowsills.
    Five dove-grey geodesic globes lurked amongst the forest of tall chimneystacks. Very heavy-duty satellite antennas.
    The Rolls pulled to a smooth halt level with the grey stone portico. “Wilholm Manor,” the chauffeur announced gravel-voiced as he opened the door.
    A couple of gardeners were tending the regimented flower-beds along the edge of the gravel, stopping to watch as Greg stepped out.
    Something was moving in the thick shrubbery at the foot of the lawn, dark, indistinct, bigger than a dog, slipping through the flower-laden plumbago clumps with serpentine grace. Spooky. Greg reached out with his espersense, detecting a single thread of thought, diamond hard. He placed it straight away, an identification loaded with associated memories he’d prefer to forgo. He was focused on a gene-tailored sentinel panther. It padded along its patrol pattern with robotic precision, bioware archsenses alert for any transgressors.
    He sucked in his breath, stomach muscles clenched. The Jihad legions had used similar animals in Turkey, a quantum leap upwards from modified Rottweilers. He’d seen a sentinel take out a fully armoured squaddie after the animal had been blown half to bits, jaws cutting clean through the boy’s combat suit. They were flicking lethal. The manor’s elegant façade suddenly seemed dimmer; fogbound.
    He was shown through the double doors into the hall by an old man in a butler’s tailcoat. The interior was as immaculate as he’d expected. Large dark oil landscapes hung on the walls; the antique furniture was delicate to the point of effete, chandeliers like miniature galaxies illuminated a vaulting ceiling: a decor which blended perfectly with the building. But it was all new, superimposed on the ancient shell by a stage dresser with an unlimited budget. The paint was glossy bright, the green and gold wallpaper fresh, the carpets unworn.
    Greg hadn’t known this kind of opulence existed in England any more. Yes, his usual clients were well off. But at most that meant a detached house with maybe three or four bedrooms; or some overseas-financed condominium apartment loaded with pieces of family heritage saved from the magpie acquisition fever of tax-office apparatchiks.
    Given normal circumstances the local PSP committee would’ve turned the manor into accommodation modules for about forty families who’d then work the surrounding land in some sort of communal farm arrangement, either a co-op or a fully fledged kibbutz. Wilholm’s renovation was recent, post-Second Restoration.
    The butler led Greg up a broad, curving stair to the landing, and he