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much as you can. Textbooks are one thing, people in the wild are another, and it’s the people you have to work with if you want to get on.’ His accent was broad Australian, his
enunciation crisp, precise, easy to follow. ‘Look at me. I started out from a poor background. Well, everybody was poor in Oz in those days because of the Desiccation. I made my first living
as a coastal scavenger, I was no older than you, we’d go down into the wrecks of oil tankers and seawater-processing factories that had been deliberately beached on the shore, retrieving what
materials we could haul out, all for a few UN dollars a day.
    ‘But then age twenty I joined UEI as an apprentice programmer, and after ten years I was on the board. A lot of our early work was deconstruction, taking apart filthy old nuclear reactors.
Of course by then we’d relocated to Canada, I mean the northern USNA region as it is nowadays, because Australia, along with Japan, the Far East countries, chunks of Siberia, had become part
of the Framework, the Chinese economic empire . . . Well, the details don’t matter. Now here I am about to launch a new breed of spaceship. How much more success could you want? And you know
how I got this far?’
    ‘People,’ she said brightly.
    He grinned at her father. ‘George, you got yourself a smart one here. That’s it – people. I had contacts. I knew who to approach in the finance and governance community at
national, zonal and UN levels, as well as the technical people, to get it done. Because I’d cultivated those contacts at events like this over years and years. Now it’s your chance, and
it’s never too early to start.’
    Her father snorted. ‘Don’t give me all that, Michael. Your most important contact isn’t human at all.’
    ‘Earthshine, you mean.’
    ‘Or one of his Core-AI rivals. Everybody knows they’re your ultimate paymasters.’ Her father looked around the crowd, almost playfully. ‘Got an avatar or two here, has
he? Should we be watching what we say?’
    ‘Funny, George, very funny. But I don’t think – oh, excuse me. Sanjai! Over here!’
    And that was it, as he hurried away to another encounter.
    Stef liked Michael King, she decided, whether or not he really was backed by the sinister old Core AIs, entities she found hard even to imagine. Her father sneered about King’s lack of
academic or technical qualifications, but Stef was drawn by his energy, his focus, his vigour, and she stored away his advice.
    But she forgot all about Michael King a couple of dome-days later, when the astronauts showed up.
    They were the human crew of King’s new ship the
International-One
.
    When they walked through a room all the faces turned to the astronauts, like iron filings in a magnetic field. It was like royalty, like King Harold of North Britain, or some media star, or
maybe like the Heroic Generation engineers back in their heyday, her father said. They were authentic space pioneers, and all of them were dressed in the uniform of the UN’s International
Space Fleet, an eye-popping jet black spangled with glittering stars.
    And what drew her attention most was the only member of the
I-One
crew who wasn’t in his fifth decade. Lex McGregor was from Angleterre, the south of Britain – the
independent north had not contributed to the ISF – Lex was blond, as tall as the rest, and he was just seventeen. He wasn’t quite part of the crew, it seemed; he was a Space Fleet
cadet, still in the early stages of his training. But he’d shown enough promise to win some kind of internal competition to serve as the one cadet on board the
I-One
for its maiden
flight.
    ‘And the fact that he is as photogenic as hell,’ Stef said to her father, ‘probably didn’t harm his chances.’
    He laughed. ‘Much too cynical for your age. Probably right, though. Don’t say “hell”.’
    ‘Sorry, Dad.’
    Just as Lex was the closest person here to Stef’s age, so she was the closest to