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back corner. His mother got up from the bench and approached the roses, slipping a pair of secateurs out of her cardigan pocket as she knelt by the bed. "I hope young Shaznay has a similar moment of self determination when she... oh."
    "What is it?" When his mother didn't answer Calum went over to find out.
    "I don't know," she said. "I've never seen anything like this before." She leant back to let him see.
    At first Calum thought it was just a stray shoot. Some sort of weed, no more than three inches tall, dwarfed among the tall rose stems, but with spiky looking stiletto leaves to rival its neighbours' thorns. Then he saw the way it gleamed in the last of the sunlight, flaky amber on silver like rusted steel.
    His insides lurched. He had a very bad feeling about this. Much worse than the unnamed one. This one was the cast-iron cannonball of dread.
    ~
    When Calum came back into the house his mother had turned the kitchen into a research centre. A stack of discarded gardening books surrounded her at the table where she had unrolled a screen and an interface to search the web for more exotic specimens. She tapped awkwardly at the flat keyboard. The lacerated gardening glove and blunted secateurs lay beside the screen. The end of her bandaged thumb was turning pink again.
    "Nothing yet?" Calum asked, in hope rather than expectation. He wanted her to find it, but he was becoming increasingly certain that she would not. Not a viciously bladed bio-metallic organism like that. Not in all the botanical lists on this Earth. He sneaked a glance at the readout of his analyser. Please wait , it read. It would take longer to consult the vast botanical databases of the Bloc, of course, and while discovering a known extro species in his mum's back garden carried with it a number of unpleasant implications, it would still be preferable to it not finding anything at all. He hadn't turned on the Lexicon implants. That would come later, when all else had failed.
    Calum looked out the window. It was too dark to see it now, but he could feel it out there, a problem growing with every minute that passed. It hadn't been there when his mother had been out that afternoon shortly before he arrived, she had assured him—and he believed her, gardeners had an eye for these things—which meant that it had grown four inches in a few hours. Which really wasn't a good thing at all.
    Calum checked his analyser before he went to bed. Please wait . He knew he didn't have to wait. He was pretty sure what the answer would be anyway, so he could act now— should act now—but given the option, he waited.
    ~
    They started arriving not long after dawn. Calum woke to a gabble of voices, the kind of squabble that universally signified opposing vested interests. He checked his watch, his phone, the analyser: 05:12, seven missed calls, No species match . The unnamed feeling woke too. It shifted inside him like slipping sand.
    Calum got up, pulled on some clothes, then, reluctantly, sub-voxed a command that engaged the Lexicon implants.
    The scene in the kitchen was chaotic. An auditory nightmare that his translator implants would have approached melt-down to make sense of. Fortunately, he had neglected to turn them on as well. Best just to leave it that way for now. That the majority of the yabbering occupants were human was something of a relief, but Calum immediately spotted representatives of at least three other Bloc races. A Peloquin pair were haranguing a black woman with a placatory attitude and a very expensive-looking suit. Earth-Bloc liaison, Calum decided. She could handle it. A breeze of movement and a purplish blur in the air told him there were Tage here too. He unfocussed his gaze for a moment and saw it clearer, a vague indigo outline. A noise like a jar of wasps—a big jar. It was agitated about something. Calum shrugged, tapped his ear to show he didn't understand, and the Tage buzzed angrily and moved on. The third species he recognised was a