Candy Buds

Laurus is ensconced in the Regency elegance of his study, comfortable in his favourite leather chair, looking out at the world through another set of eyes. The image is coming from an affinity bond with his eagle, Ryker. A silent union produced by the neuron symbionts rooted in his medulla, which are attuned to their clone analogues in Ryker, feeding him the bird’s sensorium clear and bright.

He enjoys the sensations of freedom and power he obtains from flying the big bird, they’re becoming an anodyne to his own ageing body with its white hair and weakening muscles. A decay which is defeating even Tropicana’s biomedical skills. Ryker, however, possesses a nonchalant virility, a peerless lord of the sky.

With wings outstretched to its full three-metre span, the duality is riding the thermals high above Kariwak. Midday heat has shrouded the coastal city in a pocket of doldrum-calm air, magnifying the teeming convoluted streets below. This is the eastern quarter, the oldest human settlement on Tropicana, where the palm-thatched bungalows cluster scant metres above the white sands of Almond Beach. Laurus is looking down on the familiar pattern of whitewashed walls crusted with a tideline of ebony solar panels. Each has a petite garden of magical colour enclosed by fences long since buried under flowering creepers, all of them locked together like the tiles on some abstract rainbow mosaic. Behind the bungalows, the streets become more ordered, the buildings sturdier. Tall trees cluster at the centre of brick-paved squares, while the pavements are lined with market barrows, channelling the dense flow of bicycles, pedestrians, horses, and carriages. No cars or taxis are permitted here, they lack the necessary grace to gain membership of such a rustic environment.

The snow-white bitek coral walls of the two-kilometre-wide harbour basin glare with a near painful intensity under the scalding sun. From Ryker’s viewpoint the harbour looks like a perfectly circular crater. Its western half has bitten a chunk out of the city, allowing a dense stratum of warehouses, commercial plazas, and boatyards to spring up along its boundary. The eastern half extends out into the flawless turquoise sea, deflecting the gentle ripples which roll in from the massive shallow ocean that occupies ninety-five per cent of Tropicana’s surface. Wooden quays sprout from the harbour’s inner rim, home to hundreds of fishing ketches and private yachts. Trading sloops that cruise the archipelago for exotic cargo are gliding over the clean water as they visit the commercial section.

This day, Laurus has brought Ryker to the balmy air above the harbour so he may use the bird to hunt. His prey is a little girl who walks along the harbour wall, slipping easily through the press of sailors, tourists, and townsfolk thronging the white coral. She looks no more than ten or eleven to Laurus; wearing a simple mauve cotton dress, black sandals, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. There is a small leather bag with blue and scarlet tassels slung over her shoulder.

As far as Laurus can tell she is completely unaware of the enforcer squad he has tailing her. Using the squad as well as Ryker is perhaps excessive, but Laurus is determined the girl will not give him the slip.

Ryker’s predatory instinct alerts him to the gull. It’s twenty metres below the eagle, floating in the air, simply marking time. Laurus recognizes it, a modified bird with tiny monkey paws grafted on to replace its feet. Affinity-bonded to Silene. Laurus hurriedly searches the harbour wall around the girl for the old mock-beggar.

Silene is easy to spot, sitting cross-legged on his reed mat, silver band across his empty eye sockets. He is playing a small flute, a bowl beside him with some silver coinage inside, and a Jovian Bank credit disk available for more generous benefactors. Resting at his feet is a black cat, yawning the day away.

The girl walks past him, and his black cat turns its head to follow her, its affinity bond no doubt revealing the ripe target of her bag to the old rogue.

Laurus feels a touch of cool melancholia; Silene has been working the harbour for over twenty years. Laurus himself authorized the franchise. But nothing can be allowed to interrupt the girl, to frighten her, and maybe heighten her senses. Nothing. Not even sentiment.

Back in his study, Laurus uses his cortical chip to open a scrambled datalink to Erigeron, the enforcer squad’s lieutenant. “Take out Silene,” he orders curtly.

The gull has already started its descent, angling down to snatch the bag. Hundreds of tourists and starship crew have lost trinkets and credit disks to the fast greedy bird over the years.

Laurus lets Ryker’s natural instincts take over. Wingtips flick casually, rolling the big bird with idle grace. Then the wings fold, and the exhilarating plummet begins.

Ryker slams into the gull, his steel talons closing, snapping the gull’s neck cleanly.

Silene’s head jerks up in reflex.

Two of the enforcers are already in position behind him. Erigeron bends over as if to exchange a confidential word, mouth already parted to murmur secrets to the ear of a trusted old friend. Long vampire fangs pierce the wrinkled skin of Silene’s neck. Every muscle in the old man’s body locks solid as the hollow teeth inject their venom into his bloodstream.

Ten metres away, the girl stops at a fruit barrow and buys some oranges. Erigeron and his squad-mate leave Silene bowed over his silent flute, the cat miaowing anxiously at his feet. Ryker pumps his wings, flying out high over the harbour wall, and drops the broken gull into the sparkling water below.

Laurus relaxes. He has devoted most of his life to establishing order in the thriving coastal city. Because only where there is order and obedience can there be control.

Kariwak’s council might pass the laws, but it is Laurus’s city. He runs the harbour, over fifty per cent of the maritime trade is channelled through his warehouses. His holding companies own the spaceport and license the service companies which maintain the visiting spaceplanes. It was upon his insistence fifty years ago that the founding constitution’s genetic research laws were relaxed, making Tropicana the one Adamist planet in the Confederation where bitek industry prospers. This trade attracts thousands of starships, each arrival and transaction contributing further to his wealth and power. The police answer to him, as do petty malefactors such as Silene, ensuring Kariwak remains perfectly safe for the terribly mortal billionaires who visit the city’s clinics that specialize in anti-ageing treatments. Nothing goes on without him knowing and approving and taking his cut. Every single citizen knows that, learning it before they can walk.

But the girl has defied him. Normally that would bring swift retribution; youth and innocence do not comprise an acceptable excuse to Laurus. She has been selling bitek devices without clearing it with his harbour master; strange devices which have never been licensed for research in Tropicana. And these sales have been made with suspicious ingenuity. The only people she has sold them to are starship crew-members.

Laurus might never have known about them if it wasn’t for the captain of the blackhawk Thaneri who had requested a personal interview. He asked for the agency to export the candy buds across the Confederation, willing to agree to whatever percentage Laurus nominated without argument. His fusion systems officer had bought one, he explained, and the woman was driving her crew mates crazy with her lyrical accounts of mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers contained in the bud memory.

The interview worried Laurus badly, for he had no idea what the captain was talking about. Bitek is the foundation of his wealth and power, Tropicana’s sole export. The research programmes which commercial laboratories pursue may be liberal, but production and distribution remains firmly under his control, especially in Kariwak. To sell on the street is to circumvent payment to Laurus. The last person in Kariwak to sell unauthorized bitek died swiftly and painfully …

A man called Rubus, who had grown an improved form of memory supplement nodes in a private vat. A harmless enough item. These wart-like cell clusters can store sensorium input in an ordered fashion and retrieve it on demand, allowing the recipient to relive any event. In some wealthy circles it is chic to graft on such nodes in the fashion of a necklace.

Rubus sincerely believed Laurus would overlook a couple of sales. None of them understand. It is not the inoffensive nature of memory supplement nodes; Laurus cannot countenance the thin edge of the wedge, the notion that a couple of sales isn’t going to matter. Because two then becomes three, and then five. And then someone else starts.

Laurus has already fought that battle. There will be no repetition. The price of enforcing his authority over the city was his own son, killed by a rival’s enforcers. So he will not tolerate any dissension, a return to factions and gang fights. There are other powerful people on Tropicana, in other cities, princelings to the Emperor, none capable of serious challenge. So Rubus was used as bait by sports fishing captains taking clients out to the archipelago in search of the planet’s famed razorsquids.

Laurus calmly and politely asked the Thaneri’s captain if by chance he had any more of these wondrous new candy buds. And on being told that there was indeed a second, sent Erigeron and a full enforcer squad back to the hotel with the by now terrified captain to buy it from the luckless officer, who was also persuaded to tell them about the girl she’d bought it from.

Laurus has tried the candy bud, and it has given him a glimpse into the same kind of illusory world that the Thaneri officer experienced. The implications are as bad as he thought. It is nothing like a cortical chip’s virtual reality induction; this is an actual memory of a far-gone time and place. He genuinely recalls being there. Someone has discovered how to transcribe a fantasy sensorium onto chemical memory tracers that will implant it in the brain.

If Laurus were to own the process, he would become as wealthy as the Saldana family. Visualizing the imagination, the kind of direct canvas which artists have dreamt about for centuries. Permanent memory will also have tremendous educational applications, circumventing cortical chip Technique induction. The knowledge equivalent of Norfolk Tears. That is why dear old Silene is now a huddled bundle of rags with his cat crying at his feet. That is why every day for the last week twenty-five of his best enforcers have milled with the harbour crowds, posing as visiting starship crew as they look for the girl.

And today the time and effort has paid off; she has sold another candy bud to an enforcer. The girl herself is of no real value, it is her ability to lead him to the source of this revolutionary bitek product which makes safeguarding her so essential.

Ryker is following her through the boulevards of the city centre as she heads away from the harbour. But all the time, Laurus is haunted by the candy bud’s fantasyscape.

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At some non-time in his past, Laurus walked through a terrestrial forest. It had a European feel, pre-industrialization, the trees deciduous, bigger than life, dark, ancient, their bark gnarled and flaking. He wandered along narrow animal paths between their trunks, exploring gentle banks and winding valleys, listening to the birdsong and smelling the blossom perfume. The air was refreshingly cool, shaded by the vast boughs arching overhead. A rain of gold-sparkle sunbeams pierced the light green leaves, dappling the ground.

This was home in the way no terracompatible world could be, however bucolic. An environment he had evolved in tandem with, his natural milieu.

He could remember his feelings of the time, preserved and treasured, undimmed. He was new to his ancient world, and each of his discoveries was accompanied by a joyful accomplishment.

There were sunny glades of tall grass sprinkled with wild flowers. Long dark lakes filled from waterfalls which burbled down bright sandstone rocks. He had dived in, whooping at the icy water which drove the breath from his lungs.

And he walked on, through a sleepy afternoon under a tumid rose-gold sun that was always halfway towards evening. He picked fruit from the trees, biting into soft flesh, thick juice dribbling down his chin. Even the taste had a vitality absent from Tropicana’s adapted citrus groves. His laughter had rung around the trees, startling the squirrels and rabbits.

If Laurus went into that forest in real life he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to leave. The memory segment was the most perfect part of his existence. Childhood’s essence of wonder and discovery composed into a single day. He kept reliving it, dipping into the recollections with alarming frequency. In reward, they remained as fresh as if he’d walked out of the forest only minutes before.

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The Longthorpe district sprawls along the eastern edge of Kariwak, curving across the wave contours of the hills which rise up behind the city. It comprises impoverished factories, abandoned heavy-plant machinery, and dilapidated habitation capsule stacks, poverty housing thrown up over a century ago. This is a slum zone where even Laurus’s influence falters.

Those who have made a success of their new lives on this world clawed their way out to live closer to the ocean or out on the archipelago. Those that stay are the ones without spirit, who need the most help and receive the least.

Yet even here the vigorous vegetation human colonists brought to this planet has spread and conquered. Tenacious vines bubble over the ground between the dilapidated twenty-storey stacks, lush grass carpets the parks where barefoot children kick their footballs. It is only after the girl crosses a withered old service road and walks into a derelict industrial precinct that the greenery gives way to yellow soil smudged by occasional weeds. Faded skull-and-crossbones signs hanging on the rusty fence warn people of the dangers inside the site, but the girl carries on regardless. She threads her way between bulldozed mounds of vitrified waste blocks; treading on a rough path of stones laid down on clay stained red and blue from the chemicals which leak up from buried deposits.

Her eventual destination is an old office building whose adjacent factory was torn down over two decades earlier. The shell is a virtual wreck, brickwork crumbling, weeds and creepers growing from gutters and window ledges.

The girl slips through a gap in the corrugated sheeting nailed over a window, vanishing from Ryker’s sight.

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Two hours later, Laurus stands in front of the same corrugated sheet while his enforcers move into position. His presence kindles an air of nervousness among the squad, in turn producing an almost preternatural attention to detail. For Laurus to attend an operation in person is almost unheard of. He does not often venture out of his mansion these days.

Erigeron has sent his affinity-bonded ferret into the office building, scouting out the interior. The jet-black creature puts Laurus in mind of a snake with paws, but it does possess an astonishing ability to wriggle through the smallest of gaps as if its bones were flexible.

According to Erigeron, the only humans inside are the girl and a young boy who seems to be injured. He also says there is some kind of machine in the room, powered by a photosynthetic membrane hanging under the skylight. Laurus is regretting that each affinity bond is unique and impregnable. He would like to have seen for himself; all Ryker can offer him is blurred outlines through algae-crusted skylights.

The conclusion he has grudgingly arrived at is that the inventor of these candy buds is elsewhere. He could wait, mount a surveillance operation to see if the inventor shows up. But he is too near now to adopt a circumspect approach, every delay could mean someone else learning about candy buds. If this knowledge were to go elsewhere his own power would be lost. This is a matter of survival now.

Very well, the girl will simply have to provide him with the inventor’s location. There are methods available for guaranteeing truth.

“Go,” he tells Erigeron.

The enforcer squad penetrates the office building with deceptive efficiency; their sleek hounds racing ahead of them, sensors alert for booby traps. Laurus feels an excitement that has been missing for decades as he watches the armour-clad figures disappear into the gloomy interior.

Erigeron emerges two minutes later and pushes up his helmet visor to reveal a bleak angular face. “All secure, Mr Laurus. We’ve got ‘em cornered for you.”

Laurus strides forwards, eagerness firing his blood.

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The room’s light comes from a single soot-stained skylight high above. A pile of cushions and dirty blankets makes up a sleeping nest in one corner. There’s an oven built out of loose bricks, small broken branches crackling inside, casting a dull ruby glow. The feral squalor of the den is more or less what Laurus expected, except for the books. There are hundreds of them, tall stacks of mouldering paperbacks leaning at precarious angles. Those at the bottom of the pile have already decayed beyond rescue, their pages agglutinating into a single pulp brickette.

Laurus has a collection of books at his mansion, leather-bound classics imported from Kulu. He knows of no one else on Tropicana who has books. Everyone else uses space chips.

The girl is crouched beside an ancient hospital commode, her arms thrown protectively around a small boy with greasy red hair, no more than seven or eight. A yellowing bandage is wrapped round his head, covering his eyes. Cheesy tears are leaking from the linen, crusting on his cheeks. His legs have wasted away, now little more than a layer of pale skin stretched over the bones, the waxy surface rucked by tightly knotted blue veins.

Laurus glances round at the enforcer squad. Their plasma carbines are trained on the two frightened children, hounds quiver at the ready. The girl’s wide green eyes are moist from barely contained tears. Shame tweaks him. “That’s enough,” he says. “Erigeron, you stay. The rest of you, leave us now.”

Laurus squats down next to the children as the squad clumps out. His creaky joints protest the posture.

“What’s your name?” he asks the girl. Now he’s face to face with her, he sees how pretty she is; ragged shoulder-length ginger hair which looks like it needs a good wash, and her skin is milk-white and gently freckled. He’s curious, to retain that pallor under Tropicana’s sun would require dermal tailoring, which isn’t cheap.

She flinches at his closeness, but doesn’t relinquish her hold on the boy. “Torreya,” she says.

“Sorry if we scared you, Torreya, we didn’t mean to. Are your parents around?”

She shakes her head slowly. “No. There’s just me and Jante left now.”

Laurus inclines his head at the boy. “Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“His daddy said he was ill. More ill than his daddy could cure, but he was going to learn how. Then after he cured Jante and himself we could all leave here.”

Laurus looks at the blind crippled boy again. There’s no telling what has ruined his legs. Longthorpe is riddled with toxicants, a whole stratum of eternity drums lying below the crumbling topsoil to provide a stable foundation for the large industrial buildings which were supposed to rejuvenate the area’s economy. Laurus remembers the Council-backed development project from nearly eighty years ago. But eternity has turned out to be less than fifty years. The factories were never built. So Longthorpe remains too poor to have any clout in the Council chamber and thus insist on clean-up programmes.

Jante points upwards. “Is that your bird?” he asks in a high, curious voice.

Ryker is perched on the edge of the grubby skylight, his huge menacing head peering down.

“Yes,” Laurus says. His eyes narrow with suspicion. “How did you know he was there?”

“His daddy gave us an affinity bond,” Torreya says. “I see for him. I don’t mind. Jante was so lonely inside his head. And it was only supposed to be until his daddy understood how to cure him.”

“So where is your father now?” Laurus asks.

Her eyes drop. “I think he’s dead. He was very sick. Sort of inside, you know? He used to cough up blood a lot. Then it started to get worse, and one morning he was gone. So we didn’t see, I suppose.”

“How was your father going to learn how to cure Jante?”

“With the candy buds, of course.” She turns and gestures into the darker half of the room.

The machine is a customized life-support module. A graft of hardware and bitek; metal, plastic, and organic components fused in such an uncompromising fashion that Laurus can’t help but feel its perversity is somehow intended to dismay. The globose-ribbed plant growing out of the centre has the appearance of a glochidless cactus, over a metre high, as hard and dark as teak.

At the centre, its meristem areola is a gooey gelatin patch from which the tiny candy buds emerge, growing along the rib vertices. They look like glaucous pebble cacti, a couple of centimetres in diameter, dappled by mauve rings.

One of Laurus’s biotechnicians examined the candy bud obtained from the Thaneri officer before he ate it. The man said its cells were saturated with neurophysin proteins, intracellular carriers, but of an unknown type. Whatever they were, they would interact directly with a brain’s synaptic clefts. That, he surmised, was how the memory was imparted. As to how the neurophysins were produced and formatted to provide a coherent sensorium sequence, he had no idea.

Laurus can only stare at the bizarre living machine as the forest journey memory returns to him with a vengeance.

“Are these the candy buds you’ve been selling?” he asks. “The ones with the forest in them?”

Torreya sniffs uncertainly, then nods.

Something like frost is creeping along Laurus’s spine. There is only the one machine. “And the candy buds with the prehistoric animals as well?”

“Yes.”

“Where did this device come from?” Although he’s sure he knows.

“Jante’s father grew it,” Torreya replies. “He was a plant geneticist, he said he used to develop algae that could eat rocks to refine chemicals out of it. But the company shut down the lab after an accident; and he didn’t have the money to get Jante and himself fixed in hospital. So he said he was going to put medical information into the candy buds and become his own doctor.”

“And the fantasy lands?” Laurus asks. “Where did they come from?”

Torreya flicks a guilty glance at Jante. And Laurus begins to understand.

“Jante, tell me where the fantasy lands come from, there’s a good boy,” he says. He’s smiling at Torreya, a smile that is polite and humourless.

“I do them,” Jante blurts, and there’s a trace of panic in his high voice. “I’ve got an affinity bond with the machine’s bioware processors. Daddy gave it me. He said someone ought to fill up the candy buds with something, they shouldn’t be wasted. So Torry reads books for us, and I think about the places in them.”

Laurus is getting way out of his depth. His own biotechnology degree is ninety years out of date. And an affinity bond with a plant is outside anything he’s ever heard of before. “You can put anything you want into these candy buds?” he asks hoarsely.

“Yes.”

“And all you do is sell them down at the harbour?”

“Yes. If I sell enough I want to buy Jante new eyes and legs. I don’t know how many that will take, though. Lots, I suppose.”

Laurus is virtually trembling, thinking what would have happened if he hadn’t found the children and their machine first. It must incorporate some kind of neurophysin synthesis mechanism, one that was programmable. Again, like nothing he’s heard of.

The market potential is utterly staggering.

He meets Torreya’s large green eyes again. She’s curiously passive, almost subdued, waiting for him to say what is going to happen next. Children, he realizes, can intuitively cut to the heart of any situation.

He rests his hand on her shoulder, hoping he’s doing it in a reassuringly paternal fashion. “This is very unpleasant, this room. Do you enjoy living here?”

Torreya’s lips are pursed as she considers the question. “No. But nobody bothers us here.”

“How would you like to come and live with me? No one will bother you there, either. I promise that.”

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Laurus’s mansion sits astride a headland in the mountains behind Kariwak, its broad stone façade looking down on the city and the ocean beyond. He bought it for the view, all of his domain a living picture.

Torreya presses her face to the Rolls-Royce’s window as they ride up the hill. She is captivated by the formal splendour of the grounds. Jante is sitting beside her, clapping his hands delightedly as she gives him a visual tour of the lawns and statues and winding gravel paths and ponds and fountains.

The gates of the estate’s inner defence zone close behind the bronze car, and it trundles into the courtyard. Peacocks spread their majestic tails in welcome. Servants hurry down the wide stone steps from the front door. Jante is eased gently from the car and carried inside. Torreya stands on the granite cobblestones, turning around and around, her mouth open in astonishment.

“Did you really mean it?” she gasps. “Can we really live here?”

“Yes.” Laurus grins broadly. “I meant it. This is your home now.”

Camassia and Abelia emerge from the mansion to welcome him back. Camassia is twenty years old, a tall Oriental beauty with long black hair and an air of aristocratic refinement. She used to be with Kochia, a merchant in Palmetto, who has the lucrative franchise from Laurus to sell affinity bonded dogs to offworlders who want them for police-style work on stage one colony planets. Then Laurus decided he would like to see her stretched naked across his bed, her cool poise broken by the animal heat of rutting. Kochia immediately made a gift of her, sweating and smiling as she was presented.

Such whims help to keep Laurus’s reputation intact. By acquiescing, Kochia sets an example of obedience to others. Had he refused, Laurus would have made an example of him.

Abelia is younger, sixteen or seventeen, shoulder-length blonde hair arranged in tiny curls, her body trim and compact, excitingly dainty. Laurus took her from her parents a couple of years ago as payment for protection and gambling debts.

The two girls exchange an uncertain glance as they see Torreya, obviously wondering which of them she is going to replace. They more than anyone are aware of Laurus’s tastes.

“This is Torreya,” Laurus says. “She will be staying with us from now on. Make her welcome.”

Torreya tilts her head up, looking from Camassia to Abelia, seemingly awestruck. Then Abelia smiles, breaking the ice, and Torreya is led into the mansion, her bag dragging along the cobbles behind her. Camassia and Abelia begin to twitter over her like a pair of elder sisters, arguing how to style her hair once it’s been washed.

Laurus issues a stream of instructions to his major-domo concerning new clothes and books and toys and softer furniture, a nurse for Jante. He feels almost virtuous. Few prisoners have ever had it so good.

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Torreya bounds into Laurus’s bedroom the next morning, her little frame filled with such boisterous energy that she instantly makes him feel lethargic. She has intercepted the maid, bringing his breakfast tray in herself.

“I’ve been up for hours,” she exclaims joyfully. “I watched the sunrise over the sea. I’ve never seen it before. Did you know you can see the first islands in the archipelago from the balcony?”

She seems oblivious to the naked bodies of Camassia and Abelia lying beside him on the bed. Such easy acceptance gives him pause for thought; in a year or two she’ll have breasts of her own.

Laurus considers he has worn well in his hundred and twenty years, treating entropy’s frosty encroachment with all the disdain only his kind of money can afford. But the biochemical treatments that keep his skin thick and his hair growing, the gene therapy to sustain his organs, cannot work miracles. The accumulating years have seen his sex life dwindle to practically nothing. Now he simply contents himself with watching the girls. To see Torreya’s innocence lost to the skilful hands of Camassia and Abelia will be a magnificent spectacle to anticipate. It won’t take that long for his technicians to solve the mystery of the candy buds machine.

“I know about the islands,” he tells her expansively as Camassia takes the tray from her. “My company supplies the coral kernels for most of them.”

“Really?” Torreya flashes him a solar-bright smile.

Laurus is struck by how lovely she looks now she’s been tidied up; she’s wearing a lace-trimmed white dress, and her hair’s been given a French pleat. Her delicate face is aglow with enthusiasm. He marvels at that, a spirit which can find happiness in something as elementary as sunrise. How many dawns have there been in his life?

Camassia carefully measures out the milk in Laurus’s cup, and pours his tea from a silver pot. If his morning tea isn’t exactly right everyone suffers from his tetchiness until well after lunch.

Torreya rescues a porcelain side plate as Abelia starts to butter the toast. There’s a candy bud resting on the plate. “Jante and I made this one up specially for you,” she says, sucking her lower lip apprehensively as she proffers it to Laurus. “It’s a thank you for taking us away from Longthorpe. Jante’s daddy said you should always say thank you to people who’re nice to you.”

“You keep calling him Jante’s father,” Laurus says. “Wasn’t he yours?”

She shakes her head slowly. “No, I don’t know who my daddy was. Mummy would never say.”

“You have the same mother, then?”

“That’s right. But Jante’s daddy was nice, though. I liked him lots.”

Laurus holds the candy bud up, her words suddenly registering. “You composed this last night?”

“Uh huh.” She nods brightly. “We know how much you like them, and it’s the only gift we have.”

Under Torreya’s eager gaze, Laurus puts the candy bud in his mouth and starts to chew. It tastes of blackcurrant.

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Laurus used to be a small boy on a tropical island, left alone to wander the coast and jungle to his heart’s content. His bare feet pounded along powdery white sand. The palm-shaded beach stretched on for eternity, its waves perfect for surfing. He ran and did cartwheels for the sheer joy of it, his lithe limbs responding effortlessly. Whenever he got too warm he would dive into the cool clear water of the bay, swimming through the fantastic coral reef to sport with the dolphin shoal who greeted him like one of their own.

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“You were dreaming,” Camassia says. She is stroking his head as he sits in the study’s leather chair.

“I was young again,” he replies, and there’s the feel of the lean powerful dolphin pressed between his skinny legs as he rides across the lagoon, a tang of salt in his mouth. “We should introduce dolphins here, you know. Can’t think why we never did. They are to the water what Ryker is to the air.”

“Sounds wonderful. When do I get to try one?”

“Ask Torreya.” He shakes some life into himself, focusing on the daily reports and accounts his cortical chip has assembled. But the candy bud memory is still resonating through his mind, twisting the blue neuroiconic graphs into waves crashing over coral. And all Torreya and Jante have to go on is what she reads.

“Laurus?” Camassia asks cautiously, sensitive to his mood.

“I want you and Abelia to be very nice to Torreya, become her friends.”

“We will. She’s sweet.”

“I mean it.”

The dead tone brings a flash of fear into the girl’s eyes. “Yes, Laurus.”

After she leaves he still cannot bring himself to do any work. Every time he considers the candy buds another possibility is opened.

What would it feel like if Torreya was to inscribe her sexual encounters into the candy buds? His breathing is unsteady as he imagines the three girls disrobing in some softly lit bedroom, their bodies entwining on the bed.

Yes. That would be the ultimate candy bud. Not just the physical sensation, the rip of orgasm, any cortical induction can deliver that; but the mind’s longing and adoration, its wonder of discovery.

Nothing, but nothing is now more important than making Torreya and Jante happy; so that in a couple of years she will slide eagerly into the arms of her lovers.

He closes his eyes, calling silently for Ryker.

The eagle finds Torreya on the south side of the estate, busy exploring her vast new playground. He orbits overhead as she gambols about. She’s a fey little creature, this untamed child. She doesn’t walk, she dances.

Jante is sitting in a wicker chair on the patio outside the study, and Laurus can hear him whooping encouragement to his sister. Occasionally the boy lets out a squeal of excitement at some new discovery she makes for him.

“Stop! Stop!” Jante cries suddenly.

Laurus looks up sharply, wondering what the boy is seeing through the affinity bond, but he’s smiling below his neat white bandage.

Ryker spirals lower. Torreya is standing frozen in the middle of a shaggy meadow, her hands pressed to her cheeks. A cloud of rainbow-hued butterflies is swirling around her, disturbed by her frantic passage.

“Hundreds,” she breathes tremulously. “Hundreds and hundreds.”

The expression on the face of both siblings is one of absolute enchantment. Laurus recalls his trip through Longthorpe, its soiled air, the stagnant puddles with their scum of dead, half-melted insects. She has probably never seen a butterfly in her life before.

His cargo agents are instructed to scan the inventory of every visiting starship in search of exotic caterpillars. The estate is going to be turned into a lepidopterist’s heaven.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Today Torreya is all rakish smiles as she brings in Laurus’s breakfast tray. He grins back at her as he takes the candy bud she holds out to him. This is going to become a ritual, he guesses.

“Another one?” Camassia asks.

“Yes!” Torreya shouts gleefully. “It’s a fairy tale one. We’ve been thinking about it for a while, so it wasn’t difficult. We just needed yesterday to make it right. The butterflies you’ve got here in the estate are beautiful, Laurus.”

Laurus pops the candy bud in his mouth. “Glad you like them.”

“I would have loved to see the forest Laurus talks about,” Camassia says wistfully.

Laurus notes a more than idle interest in the girl’s tone.

“Why didn’t you say?” Torreya asks.

“You mean you’ve still got one?”

“Course. The machine keeps growing them till Jante tells it to stop.”

“You mean you don’t have to fill in each one separately?” Laurus asks.

“No.”

He sips his tea thoughtfully. The strange machine is even more complex than he originally expected. “Do you know if Jante’s father transcribed a candy bud about how the machine was built?”

Torreya screws her face up, listening to some silent voice. “No, he didn’t. Sorry.”

Laurus accepts that it isn’t going to be easy, he never thought it would be. He will have to assemble a team of high-grade biotechnology experts, the most loyal ones he can find. They will analyse the machine’s components and genetics to discover its secrets. Such research will have to be done circumspectly. If any hint of this breakthrough escapes, then every laboratory on Tropicana will launch a crash project to acquire candy-bud technology.

“What are we going to do today?” Torreya asks.

“Well, I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Laurus says. “But Camassia and Abelia are free, why don’t you all go out for a picnic.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

In his youth, Laurus had been a prince of the Eldrath Kingdom, back in Earth’s dawn times when the world was flat and the oceans ended in infinite waterfalls. He lived in a city of crystal spires that was built around one of the tallest mountains in the land. The royal palace sat atop the pinnacle, from where it was said you could see halfway across the world.

When the warning of marauders reached the citadel, he led his knight warriors in defence of his father’s realm. There were thirty of them, in mirror-bright armour, flying to war on the back of their giant butterflies.

The village on the edge of the Desolation was besieged by trolls and goblins, with fires raging through the wattle-and-daub cottages, and the harsh cries of battle echoing through the air.

Laurus drew his silver longsword, holding it high. “In the name of the King and our Mother Goddess, I swear none of this fellowship shall rest until the Rok lord’s spawn are driven from this land,” he shouted.

The other knight warriors drew their swords in unison, and shouted their accord. Together they urged their steeds down on the village.

The trolls and goblins they faced were huge scarred brutes with blue-green skin and yellow poisonous fangs. But their anger and viciousness made them cumbersome, and they had no true sword skill, just an urge to maim and kill. Their wild sword swings were always slow and inaccurate. Laurus weaved amongst them, using his longsword with terrible accuracy. A quick powerful thrust would send his enemy crashing to the ground, a dark yellow stain bubbling out of the wound.

The battle raged all day amid the black oily smoke, and flames, and muddy cobbles. Laurus eluded all injury, although the enemy directed their fiercest assaults against him; enraged by the sight of his slim golden crown denoting him a prince of the house of Eldrath.

Night was falling when the last goblin was dispatched. The village cheered their prince and his knight warriors. And a beautiful maiden with red hair falling to her waist came forward to offer him wine from a golden chalice.

Laurus could not forget the sensation of flying that incredible steed, with his long black hair flowing free, cheeks tingling in the wind, and mighty rainbow wings rippling effortlessly on either side of him.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

And he’s still flying. The three girls are below, resting in the long grass under the shade of a big magnolia tree. There’s a little lake twenty metres away, tangerine-coloured fish sliding through the dark water.

Ryker glides to a silent halt in the branches above the girls. None of them have seen him.

“I was frightened at first,” Torreya is saying, “especially at night. But after a while you get used to it, and nobody ever came into the factory site.” She’s reciting her life, listening to Camassia and Abelia recounting tall tales. All part of making friends.

Laurus listens to the giggles and outraged groans of disbelief, longing to be a part of the group.

“You’re lucky Laurus found you,” Camassia says. “He’ll look after you all right, and he knows how to make the most from your candy buds.”

Torreya is lying on her belly, chin resting on her hands. She smiles dreamily, watching a ladybird climb up a stalk of grass in front of her face. “Yes, I know.”

Abelia jumps to her feet. “Oh, come on, it’s so hot!” She slips the navy-blue dress from her shoulders, and wriggles out of the skirt. Laurus hasn’t seen her naked in daylight before. He marvels at the brown skin, hair like ripe wheat, perfectly shaped breasts, strong legs. “Come on!” she taunts devilishly, and makes a dash for the lake.

Camassia follows suit; and then Torreya, completely unabashed.

For the ability to transcribe this scene into a candy bud, Laurus would sell his soul. He wants it to stretch for ever and ever. Three golden bodies racing across the ragged grass, laughing, vibrant. The shrieks and splashing as they dive into the water, sending the fish fleeing into the deeps.

This is where it will happen, Laurus decides. In the shade of the magnolia blooms, her body spread open like a star, amid the moisture and the heat.

He’s not sure he can wait two years.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus has instructed his staff to set up the machine in the mansion’s coldhouse conservatory, where it is sheltered from the sun’s abrasive power by darkened glass and large overhanging fern fronds. Conditioners are whining softly as they maintain a temperate climate. Spring is coming to an end for the terrestrial plants growing out of the troughs and borders. The daffodils are starting to fade, and the fuchsia flowers are popping.

Two flaccid olive-green elephant ear membranes have been draped over a metal framework above the seed beds, photosynthesizing the machine’s nutrient fluids. A tube patched in to the overhead irrigation pipes supplies water to the internal systems when they run dry.

“Does it snow in here?” Torreya asks.

“No,” Laurus says. “There are frosts, though. We switch them on for the winter months.”

Torreya wanders on ahead, her head swivelling from side to side as she examines the new-old shrubs and trees in the brick-lined border.

“I’d like to have some people take a look at your machine,” Laurus tells her. “Will you mind that?”

“No,” she says. “What is this tree?”

“An oak. They’ll duplicate it for me, and I’ll sell the candy buds the new machines produce. But I’d like you and Jante to stay on here. You can earn a lot of money with those fantasies of yours.”

She turns off into a passage lined by dense braids of cyclamen. “I don’t want to leave. They’re not going to dissect the main corm, are they?”

“No, certainly not. They’ll just sample a few cells to obtain the DNA, so we can understand how it works. They’ll start in a week or so.”

And then will come the task of setting up production lines. Selecting the information to transcribe. Finding fantasyscape artists as skilful as Torreya and Jante. The establishment of multi-stellar markets. Decades of work. And to what end, exactly? Laurus suddenly feels depressingly old.

“It’s valuable, isn’t it, Laurus? Our machine, I mean. Camassia says it is.”

“She’s quite right.”

“Will there be enough money to buy Jante new eyes and legs?” Torreya asks, her voice echoing round the trellis walls of climbing plants.

Laurus has lost track of her; she’s not in the cyclamen passage, nor the forsythia avenue. “One day,” he calls out. The thought of giving Jante eyes is an anathema, the boy might lose his imagination.

That is something else he is going to have to research carefully. Torreya and Jante can hardly provide an endless number of different fantasies to fill the candy buds once he starts mass-producing them. Although in the three days they have been at the estate they have dreamt up three new fantasies.

Will it only be children, with their joy and uninhibited imagination, who’ll be the universe’s fantasyscape artists?

“Some day soon, Laurus,” Torreya’s disembodied voice urges. “Jante just loves the estate. With eyes and legs he can run through all of it himself. That’s the very best present anyone can have. It’s so gorgeous here, better than any silly candy bud land. The whole world must envy you.”

Laurus is following her voice down a corridor of laburnum trees that are in full bloom. Sunlight shimmers off their flower clusters, transforming the air to a lemon haze. He turns the corner by a clump of white angels trumpets. Torreya is standing beside the machine, and even that seems to have thrived in its new home. Laurus doesn’t remember its organic components as being so large.

“As soon as we can,” he says.

Torreya smiles her irrepressible smile, and holds out a newly plucked candy bud. Refusing the warmth and trust in her sparkling eyes is an impossibility.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

The starling is already eighty metres off the ground. Laurus thinks it must have owl-eye transplants in order to fly so unerringly in the dead of night like this.

Ryker hurtles down, and Laurus feels feathers, malleable flesh, and delicate bones captured within his talons. In his rage he wrenches the starling’s head clean off. The candy bud which the little bird was carrying tumbles away, and not even Ryker can see where it falls.

Laurus contents himself with the knowledge that they are still well inside the estate’s defensive perimeter. Should any animal try and recover the candy bud, the estate’s hounds and kestrels will deal with them.

He drops the starling’s body so he will have a rough marker when the search begins tomorrow.

Now the big eagle banks sharply and heads back towards the mansion in a fast silent swoop. The ground is a montage of misty grey shadows, trees are puffy jet-black outlines, easily dodged. He can discern no individual landmarks, speed has reduced features to a slipstream blur.

He curses his own foolishness, the satellite of vanity. He should have known, should have anticipated. The Laurus of old would have. Three days Torreya and Jante have been at the estate, and already news of the candy buds has leaked. Programmable neurophysin synthesis is too big, the stakes are now high enough to tempt mid-range players into the field. There will be no allies in this war.

Ryker soars over the last row of trees and the mansion is dead ahead, its lighted windows glaringly bright to the eagle’s gloaming-acclimatized eyes. Camassia is still fifty metres from the side door. There’s no urgency to her stride, no hint of furtiveness. One of his girls taking an evening stroll, nobody would question her right.

She’s a cool one, he admits. Kochia’s eyes and ears for eighteen months, and Laurus never knew. Only the importance of the candy buds made her break cover and risk a handover to the starling.

Laurus thinks he still has a chance to salvage his dominant position. Kochia and his Palmetto operation are small, weak. If Laurus acts swiftly the damage might yet be contained.

He activates his cortical chip’s datalink. “Mine,” he tells the enforcers. But first he wants the bitch to know.

Ryker’s wings slap the air with a loud fop. Camassia jerks around at the sound. He can see the shock on her face as Ryker plunges towards her. Hand-sized steel talons stretch wide. She starts to run.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus is visiting Torreya in her room to see how she is settling in. Over four days the guest bedroom has metamorphosed beyond recognition. Holographic posters cover the walls, windows looking out across Tropicana’s northern polar continent. Dazzling temples of ice drift past in the sky-blue water. Shorelines are crinkled by deep fjords. Timeless and exquisite. But Laurus is the first to admit that the images are feeble parodies compared to the candy bud fantasies. The new pastel-coloured furniture is soft and puffy. Shiny hardback books of fictional mythology from his library are strewn all over the floor. It’s nice to see them actually being used and appreciated for once. Every flat surface is now home to a cuddly Animate Animal. He thinks there must be over thirty of them. There is a scuffed hologram cube on the bedside dresser, containing a smiling woman. It seems out of kilter with the deliberate cosiness organic to the room. He vaguely recalls seeing it at the old office building.

Torreya clutches a fluffy AA koala to her chest, giggling as the toy rubs its head against her, purring affectionately.

“Aren’t they wonderful?” Torreya says. “All the people in the house have given me one. They gave some to Jante, too. You’re all so kind to us.”

Laurus can only smile weakly as he hands her the huge AA panda he’s brought. It’s almost as tall as she is. Torreya stands on the bed and kisses him, then bounces on the mattress as the panda hugs her, crooning with delight.

“I’m going to name him St Peter,” she declares. “Because he’s your present. And he’ll sleep with me at night, I’ll be safe from anything then.”

The damp tingle on his cheek where she kissed him sets off a warm contentment.

“Shame Camassia had to go,” Torreya says. “I like her a lot.”

“Yes. But her family need her to help with their island plantation now her cousin’s married.”

“Can I go and visit her?”

“Maybe. Some time.”

“And Erigeron’s away as well,” she says with a vexed expression. “He’s nice. He helps Jante move around, and he tells funny stories, too.”

The thought of his near-psychopathic enforcer reciting fairy stories to please the children is one that amuses Laurus immensely. “He’ll be back in a couple of days. He’s driven over to Palmetto to sort out some business contracts for me.”

“I didn’t know he was one of your company managers.”

“Erigeron is very versatile. Who’s the woman?” he asks to deflect further questions.

Torreya’s face is momentarily still. She glances guiltily at the old hologram cube. The woman is young, mid-twenties, very beautiful, smiling wistfully. Her hair is a light ginger, tumbling over her shoulders.

“My mother. She died when Jante was born.”

“I’m sorry.” But the woman is definitely Torreya’s mother; he can pick out the shared features, identical green eyes, the hair colour.

“Everyone back in Longthorpe who knew her said she was special,” Torreya says. “A real lady, that’s what. Her name was Nemesia.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

After lunch, Laurus took Torreya down the hill to the city zoo. He thought it would make a grand treat, bolstering her spirits after Camassia’s abrupt departure.

In all his hundred and twenty years Laurus had never found the time to visit the zoo before. But it was a lovely afternoon, and they held hands as they walked down the leafy lanes between the compounds.

Torreya pressed herself to the railings, smiling and pointing at the exhibits, asking a stream of questions. She would often narrow her eyes and concentrate intensely on what she was seeing, which he came to recognize as using her affinity bond with Jante, letting her brother enjoy the afternoon as much as she did. It would be interesting to see if the visit resulted in a new fantasyscape.

Laurus found himself enjoying the trip. Tropicana had no aboriginal land animals, its one mountain range above water was too small to support that kind of complex evolution. Instead its citizens had to import all their creatures, which were chosen to be benign. Here in the zoo, terrestrial and xenoc predators and carnivores roared and hissed and hooted at each other.

Torreya hauled him over to one of the ice cream stalls, and he had to borrow some coins from one of the enforcer squad to pay for the cornets. He never carried money, never had the need before.

Ice cream and an endless sunny afternoon with Torreya, it was heaven.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus wakes in the middle of the night, his body as cold as ice. The name has connected; one of his girls was called Nemesia. How long ago? His recollection is unclear. He peers at Abelia, a child with a woman’s body, curled up on her side, wisps of hair lying across her face. In sleep, her small sharp features are angelic.

He closes his eyes, and finds he cannot even sketch her face in the blackness. In the forty years since his wife died there have been hundreds just like her to enliven his bed. Used then discarded for younger, fresher flesh. Placing one out of the multitude is an impossibility. But still, Nemesia must have been a favourite for even this tenuous yet resilient memory to have survived so long. The Nemesia he is thinking of stood under thin beams of slowly shifting sunlight as she undressed for him, letting the gold rain lick her skin. How long?

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

While Laurus was an entity of pure energy, he’d roamed at will across the cosmos, satisfying his curiosity about nature’s astronomical spectacles. He had witnessed binary sunrises on desert worlds. Watched the detonation of quasars. Floated within the ring systems of gas giant planets. Explored the supergiant stars of the galactic core.

He had been there at the beginning when spiralling dust clouds had imploded into a new sun, seen the family of planets accrete out of the debris. He had been there at the end, when the sun cooled and began to expand, its radiance corroding first into amber then crimson.

A white pinpoint ember flared at its centre, signalling the final contraction. The neutronium core, gathering matter with insatiable greed; its coalescence generating monstrous pulses of gamma radiation.

The end came swiftly, an hour-long implosion devouring every superheated ion. Afterwards, an event horizon rose to shield the ultimate cataclysm.

He hovered above the null-boundary for a long time, wondering what lay below. Gateway to another universe. The truth.

He drifted away.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Torreya has confessed that she’s never been out on a boat before; so Laurus is taking her out onto the glassy water of the harbour basin in his magnificent twin-masted yacht. They are sailing round the crashed cargo lander in the centre of the basin, a huge conical atmospheric entry body designed to ferry heavy equipment down to the very first pioneers before the spaceport runway was built nearly two centuries ago. The vehicle’s guidance failed, allowing it to drift away from the land. Its cargo was salvaged, but no one was interested in the fuselage. Now its dark titanium structure towers fifty metres above the water, open upper hatches providing a refuge for the gulls and other birds that humans have brought to this world. At night a bright light flashes from its nose cone, guiding ships back to the harbour.

Torreya leans over the gunwale, trailing her hand in the warm water, her face dreamy and utterly content. “This is lovely,” she sighs. “And so was the zoo yesterday. Thank you, Laurus.”

“My pleasure.” But he is distracted, haunted by a sorrowful fading smile and long red hair.

Torreya frowns at the lack of response, then turns back to the sloops and their crews bustling about on their decks. Her eyes narrow.

Laurus orders the captain to go around again. At least Torreya will enjoy the trip.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

As far as Torreya knew, the geneticist was a doctor who wanted to run some tests. She gave him a small sample of blood, and prowled around the study, bored within minutes at the lack of anything interesting in that most adult of rooms. Ryker clawed at his perch, caught up in the overspill of trepidation from Laurus’s turbulent mind.

His suspicions had been confirmed as soon as he’d accessed the major-domo’s house files. Nemesia had been in residence eleven years ago.

He sat in his high-backed leather chair behind the rosewood desk, unable to move from the agony of waiting. The geneticist seemed to be taking an age, running analysis programs on his sequencer module, peering owlishly at the multicoloured graphics dancing in the compact unit’s holoscreen.

Eventually the man looked up, surprise twisting his placid features. “You’re related,” he said. “Primary correlation. You’re her father.”

Torreya turned from the window, her face numb with incomprehension. Then she ran into his arms, and Laurus had to cope with the totally unfamiliar sensation of a small bewildered girl hugging him desperately, her slight frame trembling. It was one upheaval too many. She cried for the very first time.

After all she had been through. Losing her mother, living in an animal slum, the never-ending task of looking after Jante. She had coped magnificently, never giving in.

He waited until her sobs had finished, then dried her eyes and kissed her brow. They studied each other for a long poignant moment. Then she finally offered a timid smile.

Her looks had come from her mother, but by God she had his spirit.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Torreya sits cross-legged on the bed and pours out Laurus’s breakfast tea herself. She glances up at him, anxious for approval.

So he sips the tea, and says: “Just right.” And it really is.

Her pixie face lights with a smile, and she slurps some tea out of her own mug.

His son, Iberis, was never so open, so trusting. Always trying to impress. As a good son does, Laurus supposes. These are strange uncharted thoughts for him; he is actually free to recall Iberis without the usual icy snap of pain and shame. Forty-five years is a long time to mourn.

Now the only shame comes from his plan for Torreya’s seduction, an ignominious bundle of thoughts already being suppressed by his subconscious.

The one admirable aspect to emerge from his earlier manoeuvrings is her genuine affection for Abelia. He means for Abelia to stay on, a cross between a companion and a nanny.

And now he is going to have to see about curing Jante, though how that will affect the fantasyscapes still troubles him. The idea of losing such a supreme source of creativity is most unwelcome. Perhaps he can persuade them to compose a whole series before the doctors begin their work.

So many new things to do. How unusual that such fundamental changes should come at his time of life. But what a future Torreya will have. And that’s what really matters now.

She finishes her tea and crawls over the bed, cuddling up beside him. “What are we going to do today?” she asks.

He strokes her glossy hair, marvelling at its fine texture. Everything about her comes as a revelation. She is the most perfect thing in the universe. “Anything,” he says. “Anything you want.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus had tracked the lion for four days through the bush. At night he would lie awake in his tent, listening to its roar. In the morning he would pick up its spoor and begin the long trek again.

There was no more beautiful land in the galaxy than the African savanna, its brittle yellow grass, lonely alien trees. Dawn and dusk would see the sun hanging low above the horizon, streaked with thin gold clouds, casting a cold radiance. Tall mountains were visible in the distance, their peaks capped with snow.

The land he crossed teemed with life. He spent hours sitting on barren outcrops of rock, watching the animals go past. Timid gazelles, bad-tempered rhinos, graceful giraffes, nibbling at the lush leaves only they could reach. Monkeys screamed and chattered at him from their high perches, zebras clustered cautiously around muddy water holes, twitching nervously as he hiked past. There were pandas, too, a group of ten dozing on sun-baked rocks, chewing contentedly on the bamboo that grew nearby. Thinking back, their presence was very odd, but at the time he squatted down on his heels grinning at the affable creatures and their lazy antics.

Still the lion led him on; there were deep valleys, crumpled cliffs of rusty rock. Occasionally he would catch sight of his dusky prey in the distance, the silhouette spurring him on.

On the fifth day he entered a copse of spindly trees whose branches forked in perfect symmetry. The lion stood waiting for him. A fully grown adult male, powerful and majestic. It roared once as he walked right up to it, and shook its thick mane.

Laurus stared at it in total admiration for some indefinable length of time, long enough for every aspect of the jungle lord to be sketched irrevocably in his mind.

The lion shook his head again, and sauntered off into the copse. Laurus watched it go, feeling an acute sense of loss.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus is throwing a party this evening, the ultimate rare event. All his senior managers and agents are in attendance, along with Kariwak’s grandees. He is hugely amused that every one of them has turned up despite the shortfive hournotice. His reputation is the one faculty which does not diminish with the passing years.

Torreya is dressed like a Victorian princess, a gown of flowering lace and chains of small flowers woven into her hair. He stands beside her under the white marble portico, immaculate in his white dinner jacket, scarlet rosebud in his buttonhole, receiving the guests as they alight from their limousines. Ryker has been watching the cars cluster at Belsize Square at the bottom of the hill, some of them were there for half an hour before beginning the journey up to the mansion, determined not to be late.

They sit around the oak table in the mansion’s long-disused formal dining room. Vast chandeliers hang on gold chains above them, classical oil paintings of hunts and harvests alternate with huge garlands of flowers to decorate the walls. A string quartet plays quietly from a podium in one corner. Laurus has gone all-out. He wants to do this with style.

Torreya sits next to Jante, who is wearing a dinner jacket with an oversize velvet bow tie, a neat chrome sunshade band covering his eyes. She pauses from her own meal every so often to stare at her brother’s plate, and he uses his knife and fork with quick precision.

Conversations end instantly as Laurus taps his crystal goblet with a silver dessert spoon. He rises to speak. “This is a double celebration for me. For all of us. I have found my daughter.” His hand rests proudly on Torreya’s shoulder.

She blushes furiously, smiling wide, staring at the tablecloth. Shocked glances fly around the table as agents and managers try to work out how they will be affected by the new order. Tentative smiles of congratulation are offered to Torreya. Laurus feels like laughing.

“Torreya will be taking over from me when she’s older. And she is the best person qualified to do so, for she has brought me something which will secure all your futures. Tropicana is finally going to take its place among the Confederation’s economic superpowers.” He nods permission at her.

Torreya rises to her feet, and takes a big silver serving tray from the sideboard. Candy buds are piled high upon it. She starts to walk around the table, offering them to the guests.

“This is your future,” Laurus tells them. “Quite literally the fruit of knowledge. And I have a monopoly on them. You will venture out into the Confederation and establish yourselves as suppliers. I have chosen you to become this era’s merchant princes; your personal wealth will increase a thousandfold. And you, like I, have Torreya to thank for bringing us this marvel.”

She finishes the circle, and hands the last candy bud to Erigeron with a chirpy smile. He grimaces and rolls his eyes for her alone; observing the niceties of the formal meal has stretched his patience to breaking.

The grand guests are holding their candy buds, various expressions of unease and concern registering on their faces. Laurus chuckles, and pops his own candy bud into his mouth. “Behold, your dreams made real.”

One by one, the guests follow suit.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

Laurus holds Torreya’s hand as they ascend the mansion’s staircase some time after midnight. The guests have departed, some of them stumbling down the portico’s stairs, dazed by the chimerical past unfolding behind their eyes.

Torreya is tired and very sleepy, but still smiling. “So many people, and they all wanted to be friends with me. Thank you, Daddy,” she says as she climbs into bed.

St Peter folds his arms round the girl, and Laurus tucks the duvet up to her chin. “You don’t have to thank me.” The words kindle a secret delight; she has been calling him Daddy all day now, a subconscious acceptance. He has been terribly worried in case she rejected the whole notion.

“But I do,” she yawns. “For finding me. For bringing me here. For making me happy.”

“All part of being a father,” he says softly. But she is already asleep. Laurus gazes down at her for a long time before he goes to his own bed.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––—

After lunch Laurus took Torreya down the hill to the zoo. It was a lovely afternoon as they all were on Tropicana, and they held hands as they walked down the leafy lanes between the compounds.

Torreya pressed herself to the railings, smiling and pointing at the exhibits. “I always love it when I come to the zoo,” she said. “We’ve been so many times I think I must know most of the animals by name now.”

Together they looked down at the lions, who were lazing on flat shelves of rocks.

“Aren’t they fearsome?” she said. “Legend says they’re the king of all Earth’s beasts. That’s why the zoo has them. But they never show them when they’re old and toothless and lame, do they? You only ever see kings when they’re in their prime. That way the legend stays alive. But it’s only ever a legend.”

Laurus blinks awake, finding himself alone on his bed, gazing up at a mirror on the ceiling, seeing himself: a sickly white stick insect figure with a bloated belly. The bed’s imperial-purple silk sheets have been soiled with urine and faeces. A half-eaten candy bud is wedged between his teeth, its mushy tissue smeared over his face, acidic brown juice dripping down his chin. He is starting to gag on this obscene violation.

A black ferret is poised on his chest, tiny eyes staring at him. Its wet nose twitches, and suddenly it scurries away with a sinuous wriggle.

Laurus hears a soft click from the door.

“Erigeron?”

Erigeron’s boots make no sound on the thick navy-blue carpet. From Laurus’s prone position the enforcer’s lanky frame appears preternaturally tall as he walks towards the bed. He smiles, fangs parting wide. Laurus has never seen a smile on that face before. It frightens him. Fear, real fear for the first time in decades.

“Why?” Laurus cries. “Why? You have everything here. Girls, money, prestige. Why?”

“Kochia promised me more, Mr Laurus. I’m going to be his partner when he starts selling candy buds.”

“He can’t have promised you that. You killed him for me!”

“I … Iremember what he said.”

“He said nothing! He couldn’t have!”

A flicker of confusion creases Erigeron’s face. It fades into determination. “He did. I remember it all very clearly. I agreed. I did, Mr Laurus. I really did.”

“No!”

Erigeron lowers his head with its open mouth towards Laurus’s neck. “Yes,” and his voice is full of confidence now. “I remember.”

Laurus whimpers as the fang tips break his skin. Poison shoots into his bloodstream, and blackness falls.

A tightly whorled flower opens in greeting. Each petal is a different colour, expanding, rising up towards him. Their tips begin to rotate, creating a rainbow swirl. Slowly but surely the blurred streaks begin to resolve.

Laurus and Torreya stand in the middle of the deserted zoo. The sky is grey, and the leaves on the trees are turning brown, falling to the ground in an autumn that can never be. Laurus shivers in the cold air.

“You said you’d been here before,” he says.

“Yes. My daddy used to bring me all the time.”

“Your daddy?”

“Rubus.”

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Ryker coasts above the estate in the cool early morning air. Far below, the eagle can see someone moving slowly along one of the meandering gravel paths. A young girl pushing a wheelchair.

He banks abruptly, dropping five metres before he can regain his stability. He lets out a squawk of outrage. His new mistress has yet to learn how to exploit his natural instincts to fly with grace; her commands are too jerky, mechanical.

A quieter wish flows through him, the need to spiral down for a closer examination of the people below. Ryker dips a wing lazily, and begins his fluid descent.

He alights in a substantial magnolia tree, watching intently as she stops beside a small lake. There are water lilies mottling its black-mirror surface, swans drift amongst the fluffy purple blooms, idle and arrogant.

Torreya is indulgent with Jante, halting every few minutes so he can look around with his new eyes. His legs have been wrapped in folds of translucent membrane, their integral plasma veins pulsing slowly. The medical team she has assembled have told her the muscle implants are going to take another week to stabilize; a month should see him walking.

“It’s ever so pretty here,” he says, and smiles up worshipfully at her.

Torreya walks over to the shore of the lake, a gentle breeze ruffing her hair. She turns to gaze down on the city. Its rooftops are lost in a nebulous heat shimmer. Behind it she can make out the first islands of the archipelago, green dots which skip along the wavering horizon.

“Yes,” she decides solemnly. “You get a marvellous view from the estate. Laurus was always one for views.”

They leave the lake behind, and make their way down to the dew-splashed meadow to watch the butterflies emerge from their chrysalises.

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