‘What is it we’re doing, exactly?’ I asked Small. The day was stifling and I was frustrated with the unpredictable nature of the breeze. When it came it was balmlike on whatever uncovered skin I could plant in its path. But it hardly ever came.

She fixed me under her best long lashes. Her exposed neck glistened as the turn of her head created some local movement within the dead air. The weak sun dribbled indirectly onto her skin, through the thin layer of cloud and back off the pristine glass, which was polished twice a day, she told me. Despite the silhouette of sun, there was rain in the air. The atmosphere was close. We breathed in shallow draughts. If my tongue had been hanging out, it would not have been out of place.

She pouted slightly. I was not something I had seen her do before.

‘You know what we’re doing,’ she scolded me gently.

‘I wish I did,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I know anything any more. There was a time when I felt I had some control over the things that happen to me, but I’ve not been convinced of that for a while. It’s like I’ve found myself inside a room full of foreign events. I’m trying to find something familiar, something I might know from earlier in my life, I’ve even tried jumping up to get a better view over their heads, but I just don’t recognise anything. Then one of them sidles up to me from behind and whispers in my ear. It’s always something about trusting it, no harm, new world of opportunity, opening up my horizons, all that sort of stuff. And it gets me every time. I never used to fall for that sort of spiel. But I’ll go with it, we disappear out of one door, into another room. It deserts me. Before long I realise I’m in exactly the same situation again. For all I know I might be in the same room as I just left. The more it happens, the deeper I sink and the more likely I am to go for it once more. I’m totally at the mercy of what’s around me. I don’t feel I have any defence against it.’

I looked at her seriously. She was still smiling, despite the stifling heat. ‘And now you’re at it, too,’ I added. ‘I thought you, of all people, might be one of the reliable elements that kept me at least partly stable. But then this. What is it that we’re doing?’

‘Relax!’ she laid a clammy hand gently on my shoulder. ‘You’re seeing things that aren’t there. We’re not doing anything, specifically. It’s perfectly natural. All above board. Major Thompson wants us to be the first people Captain McNish sees, that’s all. It’s important we know he’s on the right track. And if he doesn’t know what or where the right track is, we’ll put him upon it. He doesn’t want anybody else to do that first.’

McNish was one of Colonel Brown’s men. He had been inserted into the vacancy once Corporal Cowper had been taken away. I was unaware of the full details, but I gathered that Cowper had been sectioned. On what grounds, or for how long he might be detained, I hadn’t managed to find out. All I did know was that while he was away, Captain McNish was standing in.

‘Who is he, anyway?’ I asked Captain Small. ‘Where’s he from?’ I found it difficult to envisage anybody as effective as the effervescent Cowper in that position. Already I was furious with McNish.

‘I haven’t had time to check him out,’ she frowned. ‘I’ve not heard of him before, and haven’t managed to pin down anybody who has. I know he’s a Doctor of Perfection, though. Not too many of those around.’

‘What does that signify?’ I asked.

‘Well, it’s mostly a recognition of theoretical understanding. They’re known as experts in expertise. It sort of fits. I’ve met one or two.’

Just what we needed, I thought. From Cowper’s dynamic, if fantastical, refusal to allow reality entry into the way of everyman’s utopia, to a self-satisfied intellectual virgin.

‘How did Colonel Brown reappear on the scene?’ I changed the subject. ‘I thought Watson was running this show now.’

‘Yes, I imagine you did,’ Small said. ‘It’s complicated. I’m not sure I can explain it fully right now. Remember that Colonel Brown is a full colonel. He’s not so easy to shake off. Nobody gets to that sort of rank by being a complete idiot. Colonel Watson may be only passing through on his way to bigger and better things, and most people will tell you that he doesn’t really need a rank at all, but he can’t exercise any direct control over what happens to Brown. Anyway, he doesn’t normally need to. I suggest we wait until we’ve met Captain McNish before we make any judgements.’

We walked slowly and in silence for a while. McNish’s base was a way out to the north of the centre, almost as far as the spaceport. If it seemed a defensive sort of location, that was probably only because, in my mind, I had Brown and Watson as protagonists in some sort of enormous, languorous and brutal game of chess. Watson was quite clearly possessed of the more powerful pieces and Brown was taking an almighty hiding, hence his hunkering down at a safe distance while his most visible wounds healed. I could fathom no other reason why we were out and about on an afternoon such as that. Very few others had ventured outside their climate-controlled offices, and those who had moved very little.

While we walked, Small dragged the fingers of her left hand along the tubular aluminium fence. Her ring clinked against each upright, keeping up an unchanging tempo as we nibbled at the distance remaining to McNish’s office. I had never been in less of a hurry. A few paces behind us, Farbrace was maintaining an identical rhythm without even looking up. Every now and then he would shake his head, snap his finger into the palm of his hand and exclaim something along the lines of ‘Man! That sandwich never moved. That hungry Corporal never touched it. Ain’t seen nothing like it!’ I tuned his voice out. It was something I had been working on and had almost perfected.

I asked Small about her plans for getting married. She slowed her pace a little and pulled her hand away from the fence. Maybe she was self-conscious about the ring. Maybe that was why I had brought up the subject.

‘The plan is progressing,’ she looked at me innocently.

‘As you expected?’ I asked.

She held my gaze and gave absolutely nothing away. ‘Well, not exactly,’ she said, ‘but you have to expect the unexpected in these situations. Marriage isn’t simple. There are so many considerations, and the whole process can take some time.’

‘But I thought you already had your clearance? Haven’t I seen the permit, on your desk?’

‘I have, yes,’ she looked over my shoulder. ‘That’s all in order.’ I said nothing. I was sweating so heavily that I was trying to keep physical exertion to a minimum. If I could prompt her with just a quizzical look, that was preferable to forming a whole sentence. It worked. ‘But my partner hasn’t been fully processed yet,’ she continued. ‘It’s proving more troublesome than we had hoped.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. Probably not what you wanted, on top of everything at work.’ She shot me some kind of a glance. ‘Are you confident you can sort it all out, though? Is it just details?’

She pondered for a second or two. She often did that. It was rare to get an unconsidered answer from Captain Small. ‘Have you never considered it yourself?’ she said, finally.

I stopped. Small stopped. Farbrace stopped.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘Marriage. Is it something you’ve considered? It can be very rewarding, I’m told. Especially if you’re approved to have children.’

‘I’m not sure I’m the sort of person the authorities want,’ I shook my head.

‘Oh, you might be surprised,’ she said. ‘Things aren’t always as straightforward as they might appear. I would have thought my partner was ideal, but it’s not necessarily turning out that way.’

‘Well,’ I replied, ‘I don’t know the details of your situation, but I’d be very surprised to even make it past the first hurdle if I applied. I’m not even a national.’

She smiled. ‘Don’t write yourself off before you even start. You’ve got hidden qualities. Who would have thought you’d get so far in this job? It’s not as if you’ve any qualifications for it. But you’re still here.’

Farbrace started up again, and she went with him. I watched them for a moment, then followed. I moved through the air like it was a blancmange.

McNish’s office building was brand new, by the look of it. Maybe newer. We were given an architect’s plan by the receptionist. It was left over from one of the early phases, but she assured us it would be adequate for our needs. Captain McNish was probably on the 4^th or 5^th floors, as they were the only levels, to date, fully furnished. She wished us luck and returned to her lunch.

An hour later we took our places around McNish’s table. Captain Norris was visibly fuming: he had arrived on time and had been attempting to communicate on a meaningful level with McNish since then. Our journey had been a litany of poor luck and terrible decisions. For a start, we had used the wrong lifts. The bank we chose only stopped at or above level 14. That may or may not have been made apparent by the plan Farbrace clutched, but not one of us was qualified to interpret it. Level 14 itself resembled a vast open mara of hastily abandoned construction. Drilling, measuring, electrical apparatus lay marooned around the incomplete floor as if relics of a brutal holocaust. In contrast, orderly clouds of dust formed and dispersed and resettled with some grace and manners under the light frothing breeze, so much more active and cooling at that altitude than on the ground. There were no windows to interrupt its flow. There was no sound either, and no indication that humans had broken that silence for quite some time.

We eschewed the lift and took the emergency stairs back down, but that route came to an abrupt halt before long. Our route brought us stumbling out into the heart of the 11^th floor. It was barely more complete than the 14^th, although tarpaulin and treacherous plank paths covered much of the visible floor area and at least some of the glaziers had made it this far. Around the whole perimeter, as far as I could tell, tinted glass reached up to just above halfway to the ceiling. Whether or not the clear glass to complete the job was expected soon, I didn’t ask.

The most remarkable thing about the 11^th floor, though, was not the stunted windows or the homemade flooring or the patchwork walls or the unboxed live electrics or the makeshift kitchens at which even the early Antarctic explorers would have sniffed. The amazing thing about the vista upon which we had stumbled was that it was chock full of people. People in uniform, apparently working. They took up almost all the available real estate. Thin access paths snaked in all directions between their jetsam desks, linking the jerry-built communal areas. The mass produced a low, businesslike, hum. Somewhere amongst them all, conversations must have been taking place, although I could make out no heads lifted from the grindstone. Some of the bodies rose and moved around, and they did so in perfectly choreographed harmony with their surroundings, like fish in a school or swarming bees. I guessed it was the only way to make any progress, although that made it none the less enchanting to watch.

The stench was almost unbearable. The air moved less freely than on the empty floor above, and it was hard to imagine a time when the view might have been different. I wondered if these people ever left their posts, even for a short while. They, on the other hand, wondered nothing about us. We stood, the three of us, foreign amongst their subdued and perfectly-drilled hell, and not a single eye fell on us.

‘What on Earth is this?’ I asked nobody in particular.

‘Titans,’ Farbrace muttered.

‘Whattans?’ I said.

‘Titans,’ he repeated.

‘Titans? What do you mean?’ I wanted to grab him by the neck and squeeze information out, but I was afraid to flex my elbows too much in such an enclosed area.

‘From Tita,’ Small interrupted. She scanned the vast area. There was no visible end to the shanty. ‘It’s sort of a country,’ she continued, looking at me. ‘It’s not recognised as such: it has no official government and no political infrastructure – no currency, no education system, no military, that sort of thing. But it’s generally recognised as a coherent semi-organised state. It covers most of the Southern Desert Belt, the Capricorn Highland range and the swampland behind it.’

I had never heard the term used. I knew little of the geography of the area to which she referred. It was mostly ignored in the schools of our continent. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘So what are they all doing here?’

‘Working, it would appear,’ she shrugged, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘We use lots of them. Their population spiralled out of control some years ago, they had no idea what to do about it, a number of governments, ours included, had to step in with some sort of a rescue plan. That plan mostly revolved around using the place as a bottomless source of cheap labour.’

‘Cheap labour for what?’ I asked her.

‘All sorts. They’re not the most dynamic of people, but they’re good at sticking to well-defined, repeatable tasks or working in vast teams. They’re fairly easy to train. We use them for road resurfacing, basic maintenance of mechanical parts, even some which are used on the shuttles, heavily scripted work like testing and quality control, census processing, that sort of thing.’

‘Are there no people who can do all of that, already living here?’ I asked. It seemed like a natural question. Tita was not the only part of the world experiencing rapid population growth.

‘You remember I said they’re a bottomless source of cheap labour?’ she pursed her lips. ‘Well, I really mean it. The supply really is never-ending, and the labour really is cheap. Almost for nothing. It’s quite impossible to ignore.’

I surveyed the scene once more. A distant sense of efficient organisation remained somewhere in the heart of the hubbub, although it was inevitable that the creeping squalor would take over before long. I tried to imagine how bad it must have been for these people at home that this would be preferable.

‘How do you know all this?’ I asked her.

‘Most of the projects I work on draw heavily on the Titan workforce,’ she said. ‘It would be impossible to run those projects without them. We’d never get anything done at all.’

‘Really? Is that true?’

‘Perhaps,’ her attention was wandering. She seemed to have spotted something. ‘Look,’ she placed a hand on my shoulder and pointed into the distance. ‘This path looks like it leads to another set of lifts. Can you see?’

A vague line of unoccupied floor led from nearby toward one of the far flung reaches of the building. I lost it briefly once or twice while tracing its journey, but picked it up again fairly soon each time. Like Small said, it did appear to head ultimately to a core which probably housed lifts. There appeared to be no other likely looking paths at first glance.

‘Shall we?’ she said, grinning happily.

‘Might as well,’ I concurred. I found it difficult to drum up her enthusiasm.

‘Let’s go!’ Farbrace shrieked. His enthusiasm ran over. He led the way.

The path was relatively trouble-free. Titans thronged on all sides, tapping away at computer keyboards, organising and passing on papers, muttering into telephones, sealing envelopes. One was grooming a dog. They had almost no room to call their own, yet still they respected the walkway. We moved in single-file, but we moved unmolested. At one point we appeared to come across a makeshift dormitory, where four bodies slept on each side of the path. I watched them for some time, to confirm they were only sleeping. The two closest to the path had rolled over half a turn in their sleep and blocked the path. It was only natural, I told myself. The luxury of personal space could not be resisted by an unconscious mind. We picked our way around the peaceful bodies, making sure not to disturb their rest. Soon afterwards we reached the lifts. Fully functional, one took us down to the 4^th floor.

Another twenty minutes passed yet, before we found meeting room 4Q, where McNish was waiting for us. The floor was significantly less populated than the 11^th, yet seemed somehow more chaotic. Fully glazed, air conditioned, newly decorated, yet nothing could drown out the bitterness and confusion of those who occupied it. Of those we asked the possible whereabouts of Captain McNish, half shrugged shoulders and the other half ignored us or scowled wordlessly until we retreated.

Finally, in desperation, I pulled back some kind of canvas drape that was hanging from a hollow metal pole, supported at each end by a mobile room divider, one upholstered in pristine green baize, one in red. We had passed it several times on our travels but I hadn’t summoned up the courage to investigate. This time, the first feature that greeted me was the unmistakeable striated ridge of Corporal Blackburn’s drawn face. His eyes lit up.

‘You made it!’ he burst out. ‘Told you they would, boss. Door problems, probably.’ He turned back to look at me. ‘Was it doors? I bet it was.’

‘It wasn’t doors,’ I said, quietly. I walked around the oval table and introduced myself, with my apologies, to McNish. Small and Farbrace followed suit. McNish grunted ill-humouredly. We all sat. Everybody looked at me.

‘So, what have I missed?’ I said, eventually, to nobody in particular, although not Captain Norris. The smile on my face fared poorly in comparison with Blackburn’s. Nobody said a word, particularly Captain Norris.

I tried another tack and addressed McNish directly. ‘I understand you’ve taken over from Corporal Cowper?’

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

‘I don’t suppose you had much chance of a handover with him,’ I continued, ‘given the circumstances.’

‘No, nothing,’ he said.

‘So, forgive me, but how much do you know? I need to have an idea so that I can give you the right sort of help. What’s your background? Logistics?’

‘Not strictly,’ he shifted in his seat. ‘I’m a Doctor of Perfection. Are you aware of what one of those is?’

‘I’m not,’ I said. Apart from Small’s brief and less than magnanimous summary on the walk to the meeting, I had never heard of such an animal. I wanted him to explain.

‘We don’t tend to specialise in operational disciplines. It’s mostly a recognition of theoretical understanding. Colloquially in the organisation, we’re known as experts in expertise.’ He puffed up like a venomous snake before a kill. ‘It’s not necessarily a term I like to use, but if the cap fits…..’

Norris tutted loudly and turned to study the office behind him, but Farbrace had let the curtain back down when he entered.

‘So you know effectively nothing about the distribution systems and infrastructure we’re dealing with here?’ I summarised.

‘That’s right,’ he nodded.

‘And what’s your plan for coming up to speed?’ I asked.

‘How do you mean?’ he looked nonplussed.

‘Well, do you have a list of contacts? Any leads that can help you make sense of Cowper’s work? He’s produced a lot. I bet it’s quite intimidating, just walking into that cold.’

‘I haven’t seen any of Corporal Cowper’s output so far,’ he said, flatly. ‘I assumed it would be too technical and detailed for me, so I haven’t dipped in. Honestly, I was hoping you would be able to bring me up to date with everything.’

All the others were still staring at me. Even cancerous cells under radiotherapy get less attention. I decided not to give McNish any encouragement, and looked at him as if he should continue. It worked.

‘I’m also a registered Gangmaster,’ he suggested. ‘Do we have any requirement to use Titans? I can organise and manage that.’

I thought not. There was not a single part of the project that I could envisage successfully delegated to a robotic mass of process jockeys. Small felt the same.

‘Shame,’ he pronounced. ‘It’s one of my specialities.’

‘I see. So, is that why you’re in a place like this?’ I asked him.

‘How do you mean?’ he replied.

‘I mean, here, in this unfinished building. Is it to be close to the workforce?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. “Close to the workforce”? What workforce?’

‘The Titans,’ I said, slowly. I looked around the table for some help. In reality, I expected none, and none came.

McNish smiled a condescending smile. ‘We appear to have some crossed wires. The Titans are in Tita. I’m no closer to them in this building than you are in any building you choose to inhabit in this city. I really have no idea what you’re getting at.’

‘I’ve sat here long enough,’ Captain Norris interrupted, much to my relief. ‘I’m now worried. I don’t see how you, Captain, can add any value. You have no contacts, you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the challenges facing us, if you think you can solve this by throwing Titans at it,’

‘You have no plan,’ Captain Small added. ‘Nor even a plan to make a plan, it seems.’

‘Quite,’ Norris picked up again. ‘There’s no time to waste, and yet, here we are, wasting it. Considerable amounts of it.’

‘Exactly,’ Small agreed. Farbrace looked embarrassed and had even opened his notepad and started to make some notes. Nothing he wrote resembled intelligible characters in any language I recognised, but I put that down to the pressure he was under and the unease in the atmosphere behind that drably hanging canvas curtain. Blackburn was gazing straight at McNish and giggling.

Small continued. ‘I haven’t got this wrong, have I? You are a Captain in this country’s military. Is that right?’

‘Of course,’ McNish waved his cuffs defensively at Small and Norris. ‘Why would you ask such a thing?’

‘Well, I’m sure the lamented Corporal Cowper would be delighted to know that a full Captain finds it impossible to step into his shoes. But that doesn’t do us an awful lot of good. It doesn’t help us keep up the momentum that he created. It won’t clear away the troublesome blockages he had oiled so effectively. Quite frankly, it’s no use to us at all.’

McNish sat in some kind of silence while he attempted to prevent his mouth from letting out all the vitriol I could read on his crimson face.

‘Where’s Colonel Brown?’ asked Norris. ‘Why isn’t he at this meeting?’

‘Look,’ I spoke before anybody else decided to. ‘I can do something constructive here. I can spend some time pointing you in the right direction. I know some of the people you need to know. You’ve been left holding the baby. We might have to work together on this one.’

McNish looked more horrified than he had at any point previously. He had no friends in the room, and each development appeared to make his life even worse. He agreed, vaguely, in principle, to something or other that I had said. There was no way I could be sure what it was. Norris stood, Blackburn with him.

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Norris said to me. ‘I don’t want this to get in the way of your duties. I need you to be available full-time for the design work on the landing strip.’

I attempted to ignore Norris’ concerns as far as possible. I muttered some platitudes and he and Blackburn left, chuntering. I asked Small and Farbrace to leave, too. I would catch up with them at The Bunker or at HQ. They appeared quite happy to go, and I think they caught up with Norris and Blackburn before any of them found a lift. Even behind the curtain, I could hear Farbrace greeting them as though they were long-lost relatives.

The idea was to reassure McNish and ease him, as quickly as possible, into what was undoubtedly a daunting assignment. Cowper was one in a million, or more, and I didn’t envy anybody attempting to take on his responsibilities. I relaxed into my chair a little after they had left.

He looked at me like I had just killed his sister.

‘Do you know what happened to Corporal Cowper?’ I asked him. His face softened slightly under the unchallenging approach.

‘I’ve heard some versions,’ he nodded. ‘They vary in detail, although they share a common core, so I can only assume it’s accurate to some degree. Have you met the Corporal?’

I told him that I had, although I left it at that.

‘Then you might be in a better position than I am to decide whether or not the tale can be true. It seems a little far-fetched to me, but, like I say, I don’t know the man.’

My silence convinced him to continue into the story.

‘Seems the good Corporal went a bit bananas,’ he started. ‘It sounded messy. Took nine or ten security guards and their dogs to bring him down.’

‘Dogs?’ I squeaked. ‘What on Earth was he up to?’

‘Well, I think, although it’s difficult to be sure, but I think he was trying to steal a food shuttle.’

‘Steal a shuttle? How would he do that? Why would he do that?’

‘He was quite smart about it. He targeted one that was in having a service. It’s actually much easier to bypass security in the service yard than in the live dock. They’re looking into that now. I’ve given them a team of Titans to carry out and write up a full risk profile. As far as why, that’s a bit less clear. I gather that he wanted to prove the shuttles could be used for surface deliveries as well as the inter-planetary work. He figured that the roads and railways are beyond repair. If the reliance on land-based infrastructure could be removed, we might stand a chance of feeding the planet. It would also remove at least three complex and time-consuming steps in the logistics processing, he claimed.’

I couldn’t arrest the smile. The story was pure Cowper. To hit upon an insane solution and insist on giving it a chance, however half-baked and dangerous it might have proved in reality.

‘Lucky he was stopped in time,’ McNish carried on. ‘If he’d got the thing off the ground, which I would consider highly unlikely, but others have told me was quite possible, the flight wouldn’t have lasted long.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. I, along with those others, people who presumably had also met Cowper, had complete faith in his ability to have launched the shuttle on his own.

‘The wings weren’t reattached fully,’ he said. ‘They would have been ripped off as soon as he got off the ground.’

I pictured the smoking wreckage of the shuttle amongst an annihilated industrial or residential estate, and his optimistic bearded little face emerging from underneath a deathly muckle of masonry. ‘Shall we try it again?’ he was asking. It would take more than certain death to slow him down.

McNish roused me from my daydream. ‘He came over a bit unpredictable when they tried to stop him. Got hold of one of the guard dogs and locked himself into the cockpit with it. Threatened to rip out its throat if they didn’t back off.’

‘Good idea,’ I mused. ‘Those guards get very attached to their mutts.’

‘It didn’t work,’ he sighed. ‘The dog went for him. Bit him quite seriously on the shoulder and occupied him long enough for a few of them to climb up and neutralise him. I don’t think its throat was under threat at any point. Those mutts are well trained.’

Poor Cowper. He had spent his whole life walking on a precipitous ridge of lunacy and ridicule, I imagined. His own overriding enthusiasm and self-belief, and the indulgence of his peers and superiors, had always meant that he didn’t tip over onto either side of that ridge. Maybe he had just lost his footing under these unprecedented conditions.

‘Would it have worked?’ I asked McNish.

‘Would what?’

‘Cowper’s plan. To use the shuttles to deliver the goods.’

‘Interesting you ask that,’ he showed some animation for the first time. ‘I found it peculiar, but some of the top analysts were asked to mock it up and report back on the potential results.’

I knew it. Cowper was no madder than anybody else in the organisation.

‘It could actually work, up to a point.’

‘What point?’

‘Well, it would only work once. The shuttles would have to maintain an altitude of under 5,000 feet at all times, mostly much lower. Fuel economy would be horrendous, thanks to constant thrust and counter-thrust to keep the vessel stable at such low altitudes. And the likelihood is that anything in the way, like tall buildings, other air transport, people, would end up charred to buggeration by the thrusting rockets. Nobody is quite sure, either, how many sonic booms would be generated on a typical trip, or how nearby objects would react to them in the longer term. Whole towns might literally crack under the load.’

‘But they did consider it,’ I murmured.

‘They did,’ he nodded.

‘And it’s your job to replace the man who thought it up,’ I said. There was no way McNish had moved out from behind a desk for 10 years or more.

This time it was his turn to smile first. I joined him. In another second we were both in hysterics. We held on to each other for some physical stability in our chairs, while we laughed as if there were no more laughter left in the world. It was the only valid response to the dawning of the certain knowledge that the country had just finally condemned itself to the slowest and most painful of deaths.