Transition

Adrian turns to me and his expression and body language changes instantly. “Tem, my darling man,” he says.

I stare at him, then look beyond him to where the others are, the small group intermittently visible through the swirl of people coming and going and chattering and laughing on the bridge. This group includes Madame d’Ortolan, Professore Loscelles and the frightening weirdness of the presence that has been blocking my new-found abilities for the last half-hour. Except she isn’t blocking them any more. Not since the instant that somebody different stepped into Adrian ’s shoes.

The approaching group is six or seven metres away, hurrying raggedly towards us.

“Tem, my love,” Adrian says. “I believe you’re free to do something now. I think you’d better do it. Leave Madame d’O. I need to talk to her.”

I can’t approach the girl’s mind. The rest – the people who attend her, the Prof, the muscle boys and the specialist adepts, including a guy called Kleist who’s hurrying towards the group from the street behind – them I can work with. They all become convinced they really are tourists and just wander off to look at the lovely views. I work the same trick with the rest of the intervention teams, all of whom had been ordered to about-turn and are in the process of converging on the Rialto. The group in the launch – currently exceeding the speed limit back up the Grand Canal to a wavelike chorus of shouts and horns, and almost at the Rialto – unanimously decide to visit Burano for ice creams, though they’ll be pulled over by a police launch near the railway station a few minutes later anyway.

Meanwhile, all l’Expédience people who were carrying weapons have picked them out of their pockets with looks of puzzled distaste and, holding them by thumb and finger, disposed of them. Four Tasers and six handguns have splashed into canals, to join all the other secrets the waves have hidden over the centuries. The whole fragre of the locality relaxes distinctly.

For a few moments, Madame d’Ortolan is left bewildered. Then she starts shouting furiously at her people as they saunter away wide-eyed, smiling, ignoring her. “Mr Kleist! Loscelles! Mr Kleist!”

Only Bisquitine remains unaffected, looking bemused as the people around her disperse. “Rum to-do,” she muses, and picks her nose. “Business elsewhere, Mr Rumblebunk, I’ll be bound.”

So I have time to ask Adrian, “Mrs M?”

She makes Adrian bow. “Indeed. Hello, Tem. Glad you jumped the way you did. Welcome aboard.”

“You can do this? Flit to somebody who’s already been transitioned?”

She spreads Adrian ’s arms, “Patently. Well, when it was me who popped their transitioning cherry, anyway. Good trick, eh? I’ve been developing my talents. So have you, obviously. Congratulations.”

“The people on the list?”

“Safe. I got to all of them first.” She winks at me. “It’ll cost ya.”

“And what now?”

“I’m afraid you have to go, my love.” She feels inside the jacket, pulls out the box that Adrian brought from London and gives it to me. “Take this and get well away, Tem. I mean, well away, untraceably distant.” She glances round to see Madame d’Ortolan looking undecided, then, with a word and a nod to the girl in the white robe, start towards us again. She turns back. “No matter what happens here, you need to disappear. Whoever controls the Concern, even if it’s the good guys, chances are they’ll want to find you and take your mind to bits to find out how you can flit without septus. Or they’ll just kill you.” She smiles, nods at the box. “Soon you won’t need that.” Again, she glances briefly towards Madame d’Ortolan, who is having to push a party of laughing Chinese girls out of the way to get to us. “Now go,” she says, closing my fingers round the box. “You’ve done all you can. This is my show now. I hope I see you again. Go.” She places a finger briefly on my lips, then turns away to face Madame d’Ortolan.

The angry-looking woman in the orange velour jumpsuit walks up to the man in the tan jacket, ignoring the jostling crowds and the wash of humanity pressing in from all sides. The girl in the white towelling robe trails vaguely after her, still digging into her nose with the one remaining fingernail she hasn’t broken or cracked in the hours since she found herself in this body. She sighs. “Still hungry,” she mutters. She finds something up her nose and eats it. Success! Chewy and salty.

Madame d’Ortolan stands in front of Mrs Mulverhill, close enough for the veloured breasts and belly of her current incarnation to touch Adrian ’s shirt, open jacket, jeans. She stares into the grey-green eyes.

“Hello, Theodora,” Mrs Mulverhill says, in Adrian ’s pleasantly deep voice. “How’s tricks?” Madame d’Ortolan tries to take Adrian ’s wrists in her hands but finds her own wrists grasped. “I don’t think so, Theodora. Let’s stay here and discuss this like civilised people, shall we?”

“What in the holy fuck are you, Mulverhill?”

“Just a concerned citizen of the Concern, Theodora.” Mrs Mulverhill uses Adrian ’s face to smile over Madame d’Ortolan at the girl in the white robe.

Bisquitine waves back with one finger. “Sui amazaro. Climb ev’ry woman. Ah belong to you, Underground.”

“You hypocritical bitch.”

“Oh, now, Theodora, I’m not the one trying to murder my way to absolute power within the Central Council. You might have noticed your loyalists have gone unharmed.”

“Really? What about Harmyle?”

“Oh, he was a traitor so many times over that I’m not sure even he knew who he was betraying at the end. He was a disloyalist. I think offing him was just to get your attention.”

“You think. Let’s ask Oh himself, shall we?” Madame d’Ortolan struggles to free her hands, in vain.

“The point is I could have murdered them all in their sleep if I’d wanted to. But then I’m not you. I’m going to stay an outsider.”

“You’ll stay dead when we kill you.”

“You’d have to catch me first, which you have signally failed to do so far.”

“Try flitting now, then.”

“Oh, I know, so close to your little friend here, we’re all stuck with what we’ve got.”

“And with their vulnerabilities,” Madame d’Ortolan hisses, and tries to knee Adrian ’s body in the balls. Mrs Mulverhill turns Adrian to one side, still gripping Madame d’Ortolan’s wrists. The velour-padded knee thuds into the side of Adrian ’s thigh.

“Ow! Now, Theodora: civilised, remember?”

“Eye bee eye bee for eye for-oh,” Bisquitine sings. “It’s all idiotic nonsense. Mama’s little baby loves shortbus, shortbus.” She is standing quite close behind Madame d’Ortolan. She sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth, extends one index finger and pokes Madame d’Ortolan in the small of her orange-clad back. “Me belly finks me froat’s cut. Wot’s a gel to do then, sing for me suppa? I should cocoa, coco. Let me tell you.”

Madame d’Ortolan whirls round as best she can with her wrists still held and spits, “Do not touch me!”

Bisquitine takes a step back and folds her arms, looking grumpy. “Leiplig!” she growls. “My war chariot! At once, d’you hear!”

Madame d’Ortolan turns and presses further into Adrian, who tenses as Mrs Mulverhill holds her ground. Madame d’Ortolan goes on tiptoe to put her mouth as close as she can to Adrian ’s ear. “If I had a gun I’d blow your brains out the top of your fucking head.”

“Jings. We’ll take that rifle now, Chuck.”

Mrs Mulverhill makes Adrian sigh. “You’re not entirely comfortable with this whole ‘civilised’ concept, are you, Theodora?”

“Why are you doing this, Mulverhill? You could have been on the Council years ago. There’d have been peace, a pardon. No grudges. We’re pragmatists and you’re gifted. You made your point. What more can you want?”