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Behind the fivewheel stalked a Hirrel, caped in black sunsilk. The fabric fluttered as the Hirrel breathed through the leathery slits along her skinny torso. The alien’s four huge eyes, slightly faceted, rippled in their sockets as she attempted to ignore a pair of enthusiastic Lifegivers, wearing the golden gloves of Witnesses, who followed along preaching. ‘Are you paying attention to me?’
    Vida snapped her gaze back to Aleen. The madam’s lips were white with anger. ‘Yes, Madam.’
    ‘Huh.’ She paused for a moment, then spoke more calmly. ‘You will return to The Close and stay there for the rest of the festival.’
    ‘Oh no! Not the whole festival!’
    ‘Are you arguing with me?’
    ‘No, Madam.’
    Aleen seemed to be about to add some sarcasm, but mercifully her modified left eye glowed. She swore under her breath.
    ‘I’ve got a reception to attend, and your little stunt has made me late.’
    Vida said nothing. Stuck inside The Close for the entire festival! It wasn’t fair.
    ‘Now, go back to The Close and finish your lessons. We’ll discuss this tonight.’
    ‘Yes, Madam.’
    Aleen started to speak, but her left eye stuttered a series of red flashes. When Madam paused to read, Vida bowed to her, started toward the alley leading back to The Close, then ducked behind a pair of intakes who were jacked into a portable Map terminal and downloading their reports directly onto the newsgrid. Vida waited, briefly, to see if Aleen had noticed, then melted into the crowd beyond. With luck, Aleen wouldn’t realize that she hadn’t told Vida to go back to The Close immediately.
    Weaving through the trees, glancing at her tracer bracelet to make sure it stayed dull, Vida jogged down the Boulain until she could be sure Aleen wasn’t following. At a public square, crammed with red and white booths, she paused to fish in the pocket of her cloak. She had some coins, tips from clients at The Close when she’d opened the door for them or fetched them drinks. She was supposed to be saving them, of course, but coin spending couldn’t be traced. She bought an iced klosh, a pastry filled with berries. At the first bite fruit juice dribbled down her chin. She wiped it off on the back of her hand, licked the hand clean, then nearly lost the klosh when someone joggled her elbow.
    At a narrow flight of steps she took her chance to get above the street. She hurried up to a terrace that ran in front of a fancy-looking clothing shop, where other festival goers were standing to watch the fun below. Vida squeezed between them to a trefoil flying buttress, where she could climb Out and sit, looking down. Hogging the terrace railing stood gridjockeys, Lep, Hirrel, and human. All the pix kept their camera hands busy, pointing and shooting, while the recording units in their headbands picked up background sound. The intakes walked back and forth subvocalizing, their lips moving as if they spoke, channelling data into the record implants prominent and shiny at the base of their skulls.
    Vida looked down and saw what the pix were angling to capture. Just at the edge of the square, some patrons from Centre rode an immense tenwheel cart, ornately designed with a webwork of gleaming rails and fanciful scrollwork Instead of an engine, two albino vakr with huge ruffs of ice-white skin drew it, or were, rather, attempting to move forward in the mobbed square. Garang bodyguards, dressed in grey uniforms and carrying stunsticks, marched round the tenwheel. The guards, seven feet of lithe muscle, with golden complexions and golden hair, superficially resembled humans, until you looked closely at the extra joints in their arms and legs and the bizarre angles and slopes of their skulls under their golden-furred skin. Vida noticed a slender human man with a dark-skinned face like a knife blade trotting back and forth among them, snapping orders, glancing this way and that into the crowd. From the way he moved, she could tell he was both