Free Empress of the Sun by Ian McDonald Page B

Charlotte Villiers took a sip. It was exquisite, as she had expected.
How do they make it taste the way it smells?
she wondered.
    Charles Villiers’s phone chimed. He tapped up the screen, then got up and went and opened the office door and looked up and down the corridor. He locked the door behind him.
    ‘I’ve got a trace from the tracking device,’ he said.
    ‘It works!’
    ‘
Everness
has made a jump. We know where they are.’
    ‘Good. We’ll have the Infundibulum by morning.’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Charles Villiers said. ‘It seems your jumpgun may not have been as random as you think.’
    ‘Explain.’
    ‘The plane he’s gone to, it’s been visited before,’ Charles Villiers said. ‘It was tagged by the E1 random survey.’ Before the Nahn assimilated ninety per cent of Earth 1’s humanity into an oozing nanotech group mind, that world had pioneered the Heisenberg Gate and sent drones on random jumps to parallel Earths, mapping the tiniest hairsbreadth of the immense variety of the Panoply of All Worlds.
    ‘Which plane?’
    Charles Villiers showed his alter the screen of his phone.
    The coffee cup fell from Charlotte Villiers’s fingers. Black coffee splashed the pale carpet.
    ‘God help us each and every one,’ Charlotte Villiers breathed.

10
    The strike was beautiful. From the edge of the penalty area, it lifted and curved in defiance of wind, weather, physics. Team Red defenders stood gaping as it went past them; Team Sky Blue strikers, Mr Armstrong the referee, even Mr Myszkowski the groundsman, all stopped to stare. Even Mia Sarpong, who had kicked it, stood astounded. She had never struck ball like that before and knew she never would again. It was the strike of a lifetime. Beckham would have killed to have bent a ball like that. It was inswinging, unplayable. It arced down towards the top-left corner of the Team Red goal. Everett M hadn’t seen it.
    Mia, Team Sky Blue, Mr Armstrong, Mr Myszkowski, all had
Gooooaallll!
on their lips.
    At the last instant it came into the edge of Everett M’s peripheral vision. It would have beaten any human goalkeeper.Everett M fed a surge of power into his enhancements. Thryn cybernetics kicked in. He leapt. At full stretch, he caught the ball with the tips of his gloves, knocked it behind for a corner.
    The roar died. No one moved as the ball rolled across the goal-line. Mia’s mouth was open in disbelief. She looked about to burst into tears. Her girlfriends rushed to fold her in hugs. Something utterly unbelievable had summoned up something even more unbelievable.
    Everett M felt a little twinge of guilt as he went to retrieve the ball and roll it out to the Team Sky Blue player for the corner kick. He could as easily have punched it clear. That would have been too super. He gave a shy half-nod to Noomi and Gothy Emma. Noomi took a photo.
    ‘We’re making a Facebook page!’ she called.
    Since the Coke-can-crushing incident, Noomi and Gothy Emma had been spectators at all Everett’s Bourne Green Year Ten League games. They had been the only spectators. The two of them haunted the dead-ball line, directly behind Everett M in his net. They weren’t in his sight line, but Everett M was always conscious of them. He didn’t like them being there. They made him feel watched. He suspected they were photographing his arse.
    Jake Hughes took the corner for Team Sky Blue. The ball went out to a soft header on the edge of the six-yard box. Everett M need no Thryn assistance to scoop the ball up inboth hands and roll it out to Aysha Haddad making a long run up the right wing.
    Team Sky Blue’s spirit was cracked. Team Red overran them for the final ten minutes of the game. It was a rout. Everett M had broken them. With every goal that went in, Everett M felt worse about his cheat. And it had been a cheat. He couldn’t help himself. Every time he used the Thryn power, he wanted to use it again, use it more. By the time the final whistle blew he felt