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Spacemen did not often come to the bar of Casa Mañana; it was not their sort of hotel and it’s miles from the port. When one shows up in ground clothes, seeks a dark corner of the bar, and objects to being called a spaceman, that’s his business. I had picked that spot myself so that I could see without being seen � I owed a little money here and there at the time, nothing important but embarrassing. I should have assumed that he had his reasons, too, and respected them.

But my vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. ‘Don’t give me that, shipmate,� I replied. ‘If you’re a ground hog, I’m Mayor of Tycho City. I’ll wager you’ve done more drinking on Mars,� I added, noticing the cautious way he lifted his glass, a dead giveaway of low-gravity habits, ‘than you’ve ever done on Earth.�

Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath, the heavy sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.

‘Are you always this rude to everyone?�

‘I find it saves time. Do you object?�

Jem didn’t precisely object, as such. He had been brought up to say please and thank you, never to speak out of turn or show disrespect, to know his place and hold it with decency and pride. Nicky’s casually appalling manners were, he assumed, part of the aesthetic pose. It was disturbing, and unsettling, and fascinating in a way he couldn’t quite define.

Not for the first time, Seamus imagined Oliver’s face going grotesque with pain. Imagined the slant of his mouth in suffering, beautiful in the way of those early, crude carvings of Christ, the suffering and the beauty one and the same. Seamus turned away from Oliver, took in the industrial park and its long tusks of steam. The cars on the bridge near the library ambling along.

His eyes caressed my face like the flutter of a butterfly wing. ‘You care so much. You feel so much. So, if you’re a robot, you’re one of them robots

His eyes caressed my face like the flutter of a butterfly wing. ‘You care so much. You feel so much. So, if you’re a robot, you’re one of them robots that everyone is scared will overthrow humans one day because they’re so emotionally sophisticated. If you’re a robot you’re a really sexy, despotic one.�

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use onl

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you. There are some men who have never been kissed like that.