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bearings. Same entrance code?"
        "Sure. You're OK with the mentoring aspect? You're not primary teach until week three. Next week, the big thing will be getting them fired up for the old board breaking."
        Bankers wanting SpecOps mystique to give them confidence, deal with the deadly stress of meetings, bureaucracy, and back-stabbing. It was the security-and-crypto modules for the IT guys that Josh was looking forward to.
        "No change with Sophie?" added Tony.
        "No miracles, no."
        Giggles sounded in the background.
        "Listen, Am could look after the kids, and I'll meet you in the basha tonight."
        "No, enjoy your weekend," – he looked up as the waitress appeared, beans on toast in hand – "and give Amber my love. Hi to the kids. Cheers."
        "Cheers, mate. Take it easy."
        He flicked the phone to GPS, ready to slot into the car's dash, and placed it face up on the table as the waitress put down his food.
        "Enjoy, love."
        "I will, thanks."
        The map displayed his long and lat, his position a glowing yellow dot, while in subterranean data centres beneath the Cotswolds, massively parallel networked clusters tracked the movements of every phone and car in Britain, DNA-tagged and ID-registered, everyone known to the system, even as the most important parts of their lives, the millions of thoughts and feelings, everyday and profound, remained unknowable, untrackable, beyond governance.
        Josh could drop off the grid if he had to. If only he could pull his daughter into health and freedom with the same kind of ease.
        He stared at his food, feeling dreadful.

[ FIVE ]
     

    Nine minutes before the Broomhall boy's appointment, Suzanne's phone beeped. She turned her chair away from the window, and picked the phone up from her desktop, checking the caller's picture. It was a client, Rosa, so she pressed the Accept symbol, pointing the phone at the wallscreen, transferring the image.
        Rosa's face sharpened, larger than life-sized.
        "Hey. Just wanted to call and say thank you."
        "Rosa, does that mean you've good news?"
        "The hospital confirms what you thought. The consultant's nice."
        "And there's a treatment?"
        "Uh-huh. They can't believe I'm breathing so easily, what with the micro-scarring they found. Both lungs. I told them you work miracles."
        "A very scientific kind of miracle, and I'm glad you're so much better."
        "The medium that I go to see, she's impressed with all I've told her about you. She'd love to meet you sometime."
        "Uh-huh. Well, right now, I've someone to see. You go well, Rosa."
        "And you. See ya!"
        The wallscreen blanked out.
        Miracles. Right.
        When Rosa had seen her own brain activity pulsing in sheets of colour on that same screen, she had been in awe, sitting beneath the silver tree that was Suzanne's fMRI scanner, set on castors so you could roll it across the floor, like a hairdryer from a salon. "It's kind of a sacred moment, Doc," she had said, for to her science was magic.
        Therapists focusing on the mind too often treated every illness as psychosomatic – Rosa had seen hypnotherapists before – but in her case Suzanne had been right to suggest another medical opinion, despite the two medics who had given the all-clear, suggesting that the tightness in Rosa's breathing was her own fault, caused by stress.
        If only it were ethical for Suzanne to change New Age irrationality as easily as she removed the other limiting beliefs of Rosa's mental world.
        "Dr Duchesne?" The image went straight up on the wallscreen. "Your appointment is here. With his, um, driver."
        "Thanks, Colin. Send them up, would you?"
        She disengaged her phone from the wallscreen, muted it and blocked incoming calls, then walked out into the lobby and waited in front of the lift. Soft sounds carried from