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want to meet. For a second or two he felt like a butterfly hunter, greedy and guilty… But the three were saying they’d do one last song and goodnight. It was ‘Heart On My Sleeve,’ the Aoxomoxoa and the Heads dance track, a major European hit at the time of the Floods Conference, album release on Hedonastick. This was an a capella version, the three voices blended in mesmerising harmony. The clue-free campers went utterly silent and chills crept up Harry’s spine, at the purity of that homage.
    He probably didn’t draw breath himself until the music ended.
    The Angel dug him in the ribs again. ‘Couldn’t help but notice you have a concealed weapon, sir. Don’t you know an alien carrying a firearm is illegal in Mexico?’
    ‘Yeah, but I have a… Hey, I’m just doing the same as everyone else.’
    Outlaws are all alike. He was morally certain there’d be enough illicit weaponry in this seaside dug-out to mount an assault on Camp Bellevue.
    ‘But no one else is wearing a hat like yours. You’ve been acting kind of suspicious, young man, and those are neighbours of mine.’ Suddenly, the old guy fixed a hefty grip on Harry’s shoulder. ‘Tell me straight. Are you the law?’
    They were leaving. They were walking away, laughing and shaking their heads at the applause, Ax and Fiorinda shouldering their guitars. Shit!
    ‘I am not the law! I’m their biggest fan! Lemme go!’
    He dashed around the fire, in time to cut them off.
    ‘Hi! My name’s Harry Lopez and—’
    ‘Hi,’ said Ax, in a cool, negative, English tone of voice.
    ‘I wanted to say, uh… Was that your own arrangement on “Heart”?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Sage, in the same tone but frostier.
    ‘It was, uh, excellent. Very, um, original idea.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    Fiorinda, between her bodyguards, was almost invisible in shadow. If I tried to touch her, he thought—reeling before a blast of inexplicable, over the top hostility. If I even look at her hard, they’ll rip me to shreds. He was terrified. If he let them go, he might never dare to get near them again.
    ‘Have you ever been offered a recording contract? I mean, in the US?’
    ‘Can’t say as I have,’ said Mr Preston. ‘Excuse us. It’s late.’
    Sage was officially allowed to work for an hour in the afternoons. It was still the immix tracks for Unmasked , which he’d been tinkering with for so long, sometimes convinced he was achieving something new and brilliant; sometimes just bored by the relentless difficulty of the task . After forty minutes weaving the loom of firings and partial firings, edge and hue and limbic routed emotion, he knew he was flogging dead meat. He kept going, obstinately, until the hour: zipped down the code to be fired off to his collaborator when the satellite window opened, and dressed for a cold swim. Peter (Cack) Stannen didn’t like b-loc: which was fine. They’d never worked in the same office. Poor Peter, some things you just can’t explain to him, like why did the boss go away, and if we beat the bad guys, why isn’t everything like before—
    He missed his band. He missed England, and the Atlantic. But here is an ocean that makes the Atlantic look parochial . Out in the California Current he dived: into the blue, into the immense smooth masses of movement. I have to get them down here, he thought. It is NOT too cold. A decent dry suit is all you need, and the rental ones here are good. A pod of dolphins barrelled up and he broke the surface with them, in a rush of bubbles, feeling gloriously, momentarily, completely himself. But he’d swum too far. He plodded back, stroke by stroke, stumbled out and fell crushed on the slope of a dune.
    Ax, who had been running, came up and sat down, shaking his head.
    ‘I saw that, you lunatic. Are you trying to set yourself back?’
    ‘Fuck off,’ mumbled Sage. ‘I’m okay.’ He forced himself to sit up, ‘I get tired , that’s all. I’m not sick, nothing hurts, I’m just fucking exhausted ,