And now my life has changed in oh so many ways My independence seems to vanish in the haze But every now and then I feel so insecure I know I need you like I've never done before The Beatles - "Help!"

"Hey, Sal, how about some coffee?"

Manny's voice broke into Salvatore's reverie and the boy looked up. He was supposed to be checking the script of the next broadcast for errors, but he couldn't concentrate on the task and was still only on the third screen. He couldn't concentrate on anything these days; making coffee was just about all he was good for. Fortunately, as the most junior communications apprentice, that was just about all he was asked to do.

Salvatore got up and walked over to the coffee machine, mechanically going through the motions of checking the powder and water levels before switching the machine on. He burned his fingers when he took the first cup, but he hardly noticed. The sensation felt dull; barely a reminder that he was alive.

Ever since his suicide attempt two months earlier, Salvatore felt as though he was going through life in a large cocoon. There seemed to be a dampening field between him and the outside world. Nothing could penetrate it; nothing could hurt him, but equally, nothing gave him any pleasure. It was as if he had entered a state of shock when he woke up in a pool of his own blood on his bathroom floor. He had all the gusto and enthusiasm for life of an automaton.

And yet, he had also lost all desire to put an end to his life. It didn't even seem worth ending. His mere existence was punishment enough for his sins; Salvatore thought the zombie-like state he was in was probably very similar to death anyway.

He arranged four mugs of coffee on the tray and cautiously made his way back to the communications console where Manny and his colleagues were waiting.

"Cheers," said Manny, taking a mug without looking up.

Nioka Dixon and G Doherty did the same, though Nioka gave Salvatore a smile. She was an old black woman with a peaceful wrinkled face; she had been one of Alpha's broadcasters for as long as anyone could remember, and continued to do the job even though she was wheelchair-bound and found it increasingly difficult to get around.

These days, the Alphan broadcasting centre's main job was to transmit audio music punctuated by the occasional news bulletin -- a simple task which was largely handled by the computer. They also produced one video news bulletin every day, which was what they were doing right now. Other tasks included handling wakeup calls and any heavy-duty data transfers which the computer network couldn't handle. Manny Chakraborty, the de facto head of the Communications Centre, was also in charge of overseeing the broadcast service, and took special pleasure in observing Nioka and G when they were filming the evening news. He usually brought Salvatore along, because his apprentice had once expressed an interest in the idea of a proper Alphan television station. This was one of Manny's dreams, though it was unlikely to come to fruition any time soon.

"Right, well, now we know what we're going to say, we might as well do the recording," said G, sitting down at his video console.

G's real name was Zhizhong. He was named after his Chinese grandfather, but from an early age, this piece of his heritage was abbreviated to 'Zhi', which most people, especially his small classmates, found easier to say than 'djee-djong'. Eventually, Zhizhong took to writing his nickname as 'G' rather than 'Zhi', as if his real name were something like George or Gustav. Only his mother and his wife ever called him Zhizhong these days.

G's wife was, conveniently enough, his boss's sister Purnima. Salvatore had often wondered in the past, back in the days when he cared about anything, whether G had married Purnima because she was his boss's sister, or whether he had become Manny's subordinate because Manny was his wife's brother. Maybe the two were unrelated factors. Purnima also worked in the communications sector, but as the main comm operative in Main Mission, so she was rarely seen in the Communications Centre next door.

Manny pushed Nioka into place in front of the neutral beige wall that was the background for all the broadcasts. The old woman automatically checked her makeup, making sure her face didn't shine. Then G turned on the camera; from where Salvatore was now sitting, he could see the teleprompter reflecting off the glass on the camera. He noticed that no one had asked him if he had finished proof-reading the script, but wasn't particularly surprised. They had probably given up on him just as he had given up on himself.

Nioka was halfway through the broadcast when the beep of a slate rang out.

"Oh, Jesus!" swore G. "What a time to call me. Excuse me."

G left the room to answer his call while Nioka resumed her broadcast. The unmoving camera continued to record and Manny took over the job of keeping an eye on the speed of the teleprompter; the interruption would be edited out later.

It was a couple of minutes before G came back, and when he did, instead of returning to his post, he stayed in the doorway. Vaguely curious, Salvatore looked up at him; G's face was ashen, his small pleated eyes so narrowed that they were nearly invisible. Manny immediately walked over to him, and Nioka was also observing him from the studio area.

"What's up?" asked Manny.

"Oh God," said G, running a distressed hand over his face. "It's my brother. He's just been killed. My sister just called. I have to... I have to tell Delores. Oh my God. I have to tell my Mam."

Manny placed a comforting hand on his arm. "Okay, you take the afternoon off. I'll talk to Purnima. I... Oh, that's terrible, G," he added, as the news evidently sank in. "Really terrible. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, G, I'm sorry too," said Nioka. "What a terrible thing to have happen to you."

Salvatore didn't say anything. He thought about all the people whose deaths he had heard of. Hushed voices and Mike's tear-stained face when Michelle and Patrick Osgood died in such close succession. A distraught Davey Kano saying goodbye to Tony and his family when David Kano died. Salvatore's parents hurrying him off the beach at Bedrock to tell him that Kate Andrews had finally succumbed to her cancer. His father sitting ashen-faced in the waiting room of the Medical Centre when Ben Vincent died. The terror in his heart when his father joined them all.

That image was always in Salvatore's mind. The look on his father's face when he realised he was dying, a blank, helpless look like nothing Salvatore had ever seen before. His father, the great Tony Verdeschi, Chief Administrator of Dover, lying prone on the kitchen floor, paralysed by the blood clot in his brain, staring at his wife and fifteen-year-old son with the full realisation that he was dying before their very eyes. It was a face Salvatore knew he would never forget.

"You don't look too good, either," he suddenly heard Manny saying.

Salvatore shook himself out of his morbid considerations and looked up. G had left and they seemed to have given up on the recording. Manny's friendly brown face was only a couple dozen centimetres away from Salvatore's. The boy didn't answer; he wasn't sure what Manny wanted him to say.

"Is there something wrong?" insisted Manny, placing a hand on Salvatore's shoulder.

He wasn't the first person to ask that question. His roommate Mike had tried to get some information out of Salvatore too, but the boy still didn't know what to say to either of them. He didn't want people to know that he had tried to commit suicide. They would either feel sorry for him -- which he didn't deserve -- or they would think he had only done it as an attention-seeking device -- which wasn't true. In any case, he didn't think there was anything anyone could do for him. If he was going to recover from this, it would have to be on his own. And if he didn't recover, then he was no great loss to Alpha anyway.

"I suppose you're shocked about Kevin's death too," said Manny finally. "I certainly am. I didn't know Kevin very well, but he had a wife and two children. It makes you realise what a precarious life we all lead out here... Look, you're obviously rattled, so maybe you could take the rest of the day off, too. Nioka and I will do the recordings for today."

Salvatore stared at him blankly. He didn't want to have the rest of the day off, because he had nothing to do with the rest of the day. He didn't have any hobbies or friends. Mike was at work and the prospect of moping around at home as he did on his rest days didn't appeal.

"Go on, shoo," said Manny authoritatively, patting Salvatore's cheek. "Get some rest."

Compelled to obey by the tone of his boss's voice, Salvatore automatically stood up and made for the door. "Thanks," he remembered to say before leaving.

Salvatore knew that Manny knew there was something wrong, and that his boss was trying to help. But Salvatore could sense that Manny wasn't really interested in his problems; he wanted an apprentice who could perform tasks with a bit more liveliness, and was no doubt hoping to restore Salvatore to his previous alertness by solving whatever problems he had.

This wasn't the way Salvatore had envisioned things before moving to Alpha. Of course, he had never imagined he would have a nervous breakdown and try to top himself, but other things hadn't worked out right either. He had initially responded to Sandra's invitation to be her own personal apprentice; this had worked for a few months, until the old woman's arthritis flared up so painfully that she could no longer work. It was at this point that Salvatore found himself transferred from Sandra's general-purpose tutelage into a more classical form of apprenticeship to Manny, the de facto head of the Communications Centre in Sandra's absence.

Still, Salvatore wouldn't have liked to work with Sandra right now. He knew that unlike Manny, she would have made more than a half-hearted attempt to find out what was wrong. And Sandra had plenty of other things to worry about rather than Salvatore's mental health.

Lost in thought, Salvatore returned to the quarters he shared with Mike. The flat was minuscule, just forty square meters split into three rooms: two narrow bedroom with en-suite shower rooms, and in the middle, one living room with a kitchen area built into the back. Just enough room for two people to live in, provided they didn't mind spending most of their time with each other in the living room, or alone in their respective little bedrooms.

Salvatore lay on the sofa; for no particular reason, he suddenly began to cry. He gave full rein to his misery for a few minutes and then lay still, hiccuping and wiping his eyes like a little boy. He closed his eyes and remembered his father's dying stare again, and then thought about himself in his pool of blood. Those thoughts made him cry again, listlessly, helplessly, even though the tears were the only manifestation of his unhappiness; his heart still felt dead to emotion.

I'm going crazy, he suddenly thought. He was surprised by the realisation. For the last two months, he had been too apathetic to formulate any coherent thoughts about his condition. But the news of G's loss seemed to have somehow jolted into a slightly more advanced state of awareness. Salvatore couldn't think why; he didn't know G's brother, and indeed, he barely knew G himself. And yet, that news had somehow brought to mind a more vivid memory of his father's death, which in turn made him think about why he was so depressed.

Salvatore wasn't in a mood for self-analysis, but at least he could see that all this had nothing to do with Hilly Kano, or even with Alan Carter's unthinking condemnation of his behaviour. His mind lingered on the memory of himself lying on the bathroom floor, the deep red blood around him. Like his father's terrified face, the blood haunted his dreams and waking thoughts, ever ready to come to the forefront of his mind when he least needed the gory image. As he lay on the sofa, Salvatore suddenly wondered if he could get the images out of his mind by drawing them. If he could somehow come to terms with his father's death and his own failed suicide, he was pretty sure he could get back in contact with reality.

That was the most pro-active thought he had had in weeks, and he actually sprang into action immediately. He had always liked drawing before his father died, but although he had completed a few sketches and watercolours before his depression began, he hadn't touched a pencil since. He did still have all the paper and utensils he had accumulated at Dover, so he picked a few of each from his room and got to work on the low table beside the sofa.

"That's incredible," said Mike, though his expression verged on the horrified. He was obviously completely mystified by Salvatore's bloodthirsty drawing.

"It's crap," said Salvatore, tearing up the piece of paper. "But you wanted to see what I paint. That's what I paint."

The painting he had shown Mike was actually a coloured-in drawing of a photograph he had found in the computer databanks. Salvatore had found that trying to draw himself or his father in a pool of blood didn't help; his mind refused to visualise the images precisely enough for his hands to reproduce them. So Salvatore had resorted to a subterfuge. By depicting violent scenes from Earth's history, he was hoping to trick his mind into relieving itself of its depressing images -- not that Salvatore had the faintest idea what method would truly help. In the meantime, though, he was deriving some mild amusement from the idea that he was waging a battle against his own mind. The fact that he was deriving any kind of emotion from anything was already a good sign. His three weeks of painting were evidently doing some good.

Mike scratched his chin, thoughtfully observing the now shredded watercolour. "Sal, are you having problems? I mean, something I should know about? You've behaving very strangely these last few months."

Michael Osgood. Ever quick on the uptake, thought Salvatore unkindly. "I always behave strangely. I just thought I'd remind humankind that it hasn't always been sweetness and light to its brothers and sisters."

"Oh." Mike seemed to accept that as a valid explanation for Salvatore's painting. "So who's the little girl on this painting?"

"A nine-year-old Vietnamese girl called Kim Phuk, immortalised as she ran away after an American napalm attack on her village," explained Salvatore. "It's apparently a very famous photograph."

He didn't tell Mike, but Salvatore could see why the picture had become so famous. He had been instantly captivated by the distress of the little girl, her face contorted with pain and fear as she stood naked on the road, arms outstretched away from her burned body. To some extent, reproducing the picture had made him feel guilty, as if he had no right to be unhappy when there was nothing wrong with him. He had looked up all the available information on the girl and discovered that she had moved to Canada, where she had married and had a child. If she could go on to live a normal, happy life in spite of her traumatic experiences and devastating injuries, Salvatore felt it was his duty to do the same.

"It's from the Vietnam war, is it?" said Mike, who was obviously determined to understand what this was all about. "The one they keep talking about in movies and TV series from America. Maybe you could talk to Mrs Worcester at Dover. She was from Vietnam, wasn't she?"

"Well, no, as far as I remember, she lived in France. That's how she got into the space programme. Anyway, this has nothing to do with Vietnam or that war. What I was trying to show was man's inhumanity to man."

"So that's why it's all on a pink background?"

"It's on a pink background because the paints we have are rubbish," growled Salvatore. He crumpled up the torn drawing and tossed it in the general direction of the kitchen, so that it would be nearer to the bin. "I've tried to mix my own, but that's just worse. I tried crushing some of the plastic pencils or the watercolour pads to make some pigment --"

Mike grinned. "Oh, so that's why the garlic crusher was full of blue bits the other day."

"Yes... Since when do you use the garlic crusher?" Salvatore was the only one who cooked meals that required crushed garlic.

"I don't. I noticed when I was doing the washing up."

"Oh." The conversation had gone right off track so Salvatore said, "Anyway, the point is that I can't paint properly with this crap. There's no such thing as blood red when you're using watercolours."

"Why don't you post a message on the bulletin boards and see if anyone has anything better?" suggested Michael. "After all, people do paint things, so they must have paints to do it. How do you think Eddie Collins did those icons in the Temple?"

Salvatore frowned to remember the pictures in question. "Hmm. I suppose you're right."

"You know it makes sense, Toto," said Mike jovially, patting him on the back.

"Don't call me Toto," snapped Salvatore. He had always hated that nickname, and it now had a special significance which made him even more determined not to let people use it. 'Toto' was what his father had called him.

"Sorry, Sal. I'm just used to thinking of you as Toto," explained Mike, slipping one arm around Salvatore's shoulders. "I'll tell you one thing, though. You're a lot more lively now than you've been for weeks. I sometimes felt as if I was living with a zombie."

"You were," agreed Salvatore. "But I think I'm coming back to life again."

From: Verdeschi, Salvatore Mentor - DM0312-0001
To: Tools Forum, Crafts Forum, Arts Forum
Date: 02:07 13-Aug-Y28
Subject: Oil or acrilic paints

I am looking for a way of painting on canvas with thick paints that don't dry or go thorough to the other side. On Earth, that would be oil or acrilic paints but I have no way of making those without the right chemicals. If anyone knows, please let me know.

S.V.

From: Edelson, Nora Jane - AF0502-0012
To: Verdeschi, Salvatore Mentor - DM0312-0001
Date: 16:21 16-Aug-Y28
Subject: Re: Oil or acrilic paints

Hi Salvatore

I work in the ChemLab and we have some paints that we're working on here to paint the walls. Their for painting on plastic though so maybe you need something else. Im at work now, so give me a call this evening.

Nora

Salvatore stared at the message in disbelief. It had been three days since he posted his message about the paints, and he had assumed that no one would answer him. He couldn't think of any reason why anyone would want to answer him, in fact. But he had evidently been wrong.

The public profile of Nora Edelson didn't reveal much. She was divorced, which was unusual, and the file had an uninspiring mug shot which revealed her to be red-haired, with ginger eyebrows and eyelashes. On the other hand, the file also mentioned that she was the chief chemist at the Chem Lab, which sounded very promising for paint making.

He called Nora and met up with her at the Chem Lab the next evening. The green paint she showed him was impressive, exactly what Salvatore was looking for. The colour was bright and the paint formula stuck satisfyingly to a sample piece of canvas. The ingredients had to be mixed individually, and Nora explained how to dose and mix the pigments and chemicals to produce the desired colour.

"I'll have to be very careful not to mix too much or too little of each colour, I guess," said Salvatore, sitting at one of the workbenches and critically observing his first attempt at mixing the green pigment with the binder.

"Once they're mixed, they'll last indefinitely in the right kind of jar," explained Nora. "I could give you a jar of the binding solution and some of the pigment powders, and then you can experiment with whatever pigment dosage you want to create your own colours. I figure you won't be using that much of the pigments, so it'll be okay if I give you some."

She opened a cupboard and brought over a tray of little plastic jars full of powders. "Here, you see, I've been working on making as many different colours as I can. We only have green and red in large quantities, but I've been having fun making all these other colours. I'm hoping someone will be allowed to paint some of these dreary walls. All this white gets me down."

"You should go to Dover; everything is brown or blue down there," said Salvatore. He held up the tiny dish of paint he had mixed. "I don't think I put enough pigment in this."

"You can still add some."

Salvatore did and then mixed it in. "This looks better. It's a nice green."

He glanced at the other colours on the tray. The vividness of the pigments made his mouth water; after years of working with the bland tones of the pencils and watercolours, the idea of working with these bright emulsion paints made Salvatore's mind bustle with ideas. He could imagine all sort of paintings he could execute with such wonderful colours.

"Oh wow, I can't wait to use these," he exclaimed. "Are you sure it's okay for you to give me this stuff?"

Nora smiled, her little green eyes disappearing behind her pale eyelashes. "We're not using this lot at all. I'd be glad to know someone was making good use of them. You'll have to let me know if the binder is suitable; it's designed to cover walls, not canvas. I can probably make a new type of solution if necessary. It's a pity we can't mix the paints for you as well, but we really don't have the time to spend on that."

"That's okay," said Salvatore enthusiastically. "I don't mind getting my hands dirty. It'll be more fun this way."

"Well, I'm glad I answered your message," she said. "Sounds as if I've made your day."

"I think you've made my year!" laughed Salvatore.

Salvatore felt as thought there was no end to the pictures he could paint now that he had the right tools. He manufactured paintbrushes from plastic sticks, using his own hair or shredded shermeen as bristles. He also taught himself how to use discarded metal rods from Alpha's construction sites to make frames. Once the frame was screwed together to the right size, Salvatore spread a piece of canvas over the structure and covered it with several layers of white emulsion. Before this was completely dry, he would score it with sandpaper to make it easier for the paint to adhere to the surface. By the time all this was done, Salvatore had a white canvas ready to paint on. What happened next depended only on his imagination.

He had been working with Nora for a couple of weeks when he decided to put onto canvas two ideas which had been trotting around in his head. One was a picture of a mule stuck in a mud flat at Dover, the other an illustration for Rilke's poem The Panther. He had made preliminary sketches for both paintings and found that the panther was the more difficult one to compose. He didn't want the painting to simply take place on Earth, so he decided that the panther should be in an Alphan setting. The only animal cages in the Lokian system were the ones used for the Dover doves, and although the idea of painting a panther in a birdcage was intriguing, Salvatore felt that the idea was too strange to be used.

The concept of the mule painting was more straightforward. The painting was to be a realistic depiction of a mule sinking in the mud while its owner aimed a shotgun at it. Salvatore had already built a medium sized canvas, about 20 by 40, and prepared it with an off-white emulsion this time. He was now in the process of dividing the picture into sections; one for the mule, one for its owner, some freehand perspective lines for the backdrop. The next stage would be drawing in the details of the mule, which Salvatore would paint first.

He was annoyed when he heard the doorbell. He hoped Mike would answer it and tell whoever it was to go away. The bell only rang once, and then there was a moment's silence, followed by a knock on Salvatore's bedroom door. Whoever had come to visit evidently wanted to see him, and not Mike.

Salvatore went to open the door and was surprised to find Nora there. Behind her, Salvatore could see Mike walking back to his room.

"Hiya. I made that pure brown you were looking for," announced Nora, handing him a flask of powder. "I thought I'd bring it over."

"Oh, okay."

Salvatore thought about inviting her into his room to see a couple of his paintings, but then realised that wouldn't be wise. Some of the finished drawings strewn around his room were pornographic or gory, and Salvatore didn't want anyone to know those topics interested him. He could have closed the door and tidied up very quickly, but it occurred to him that he shouldn't be inviting women into his room anyway.

"Um, have you had dinner?" he suddenly asked. Taking her to the cafeteria would be an ideal way of getting her away from his room.

"Yes... I mean no. No, I haven't," she said more determinedly. "I'd love some dinner."

Salvatore wondered if she thought he was asking her out on a date. He hoped not; Nora wasn't an unpleasant person to be with, but he wasn't the least bit attracted to her. She was taller than him, thin and flat-chested, and Salvatore found her colouring unappealing. He didn't want to give her the false impression that he was interested in her.

On the other hand, it looked as if he couldn't back out of this dinner now, so Salvatore went back into the room. He tossed the flask onto his bed and got dressed for going out, which meant changing his shirt. As he went to join Nora, he glanced regretfully at the painting he had barely started.

He and Nora were walking down the corridor towards the lift when she suddenly said, "Sal... I have to be honest with you. I've already had dinner at home. Would you like to come to my place instead?"

Salvatore stared at her, his worst fears confirmed. He wondered if he should tell her he didn't fancy her, and that this was all a mistake.

"I want to discuss some new pigments with you," she said with an encouraging smile. "Nothing terrible, I promise."

"Well aren't you a little surprise!" exclaimed Nora, towelling her hair as she came out of the bathroom.

Salvatore smiled automatically, though he felt completely numb again, as if he was in a state of shock. This wasn't at all how he had planned his evening. A couple of hours earlier, his only desire was to paint. In fact, right now, his only desire was to paint. But instead, here he was sitting on Nora's sofabed in her little studio apartment, smiling inanely and kicking himself for being so stupid.

Nora's plans for the evening had evidently involved gratuitous sex with her sixteen-year-old acquaintance. Having invited him to her flat, she had served him a glass of wine. Then she had changed into something more comfortable -- a shermeen bathrobe -- and come back to talk to him about his painting. She had put some kind of perfume on which made Salvatore want to sneeze.

They had been having a desultory conversation for an hour, and Salvatore was thinking about taking his leave, when Nora decided to make her move.

"You know, you're really good looking, Sal," she said suddenly.

Startled, Salvatore had given her a worried look, though he was touched by her flattery. He didn't think he was handsome; all he saw when he looked in the mirror were his father's long pinched nose and his mother's Psychon stripes.

"You're very young, though, aren't you," Nora had continued. "About sixteen and a half, right? You're nearly ten years younger than me." Nora lowered her eyes. "I guess I shouldn't really have lured you here, huh?" She paused and then fixed her little green eyes on him again. "Have you ever been with an older woman?"

"Oh, I'm an older woman specialist," Salvatore had declared glibly.

He was now wishing he had kept his mouth shut and stuck to his original plan to leave as soon as possible. Nora had predictably taken his declaration as encouragement, and leaned forward to kiss him. Salvatore had found in the past that he always liked being kissed, and this moment was no exception.

"Oh, you are lovely," she had said. "What a sweet boy you are."

So he made love to her.

Watching Nora combing her hair after her shower, Salvatore tried to think what had possessed him. He didn't particularly like Nora, and he certainly didn't fancy her. It wasn't the same as with Becky and Hilly; he had wanted both of them before anything happened. But Nora's flattery had made him willing to give her anything she wanted. Since for some obscure reason what she wanted was Salvatore, that was what he'd given her.

Having combed her hair, Nora came to sit beside him on the bed and put her arm around him.

"That was pretty amazing," she said, kissing his cheek. "You're a walking aphrodisiac, honey."

Salvatore was suddenly happy. It felt good to think that Nora liked him and that his love-making had endeared him to her. If earning someone's affection was as simple as sleeping with them, then it was something Salvatore felt he could do more often. From a physical point of view, he had enjoyed the experience, even if he found Nora's angular, freckled body less appealing than Hilly's ample forms.

"Thanks," he said finally, though he was aware he had let a long pause go by since Nora last spoke.

"I think you have natural talent," said Nora affectionately.

Becky and Hilly had also said things to that effect. Salvatore wondered if that was true. On the other hand, he was aware that the main reason they were so impressed with him was that he appeared to radiate waves of pleasure when he was sexually aroused. Presumably, by combining this strange effect of his Psychon nature with a certain level of technical expertise, he would be able to further endear himself to any future lovers.

"All my other lovers were useless," she continued. "No idea where anything is, no notion what a woman might like to have done to her. You know, the usual stuff. I think they should teach boys a bit more about female anatomy in school, rather than concentrating on not getting their girlfriends pregnant."

"Could you teach me?" asked Salvatore suddenly. "I mean, if you wanted to... You don't have to..."

Nora laughed and kissed Salvatore with delight. "Hey, if it means sleeping with you some more, I'm game!"

Salvatore's affair with Nora didn't last long. When he was with her, her affectionate behaviour and passion for his body made him feel happy, powerful, invincible. But when he wasn't with her, that is most of the time, he felt guilty about their relationship. There was no indication that Nora had any real emotional attachment to him, but Salvatore still felt bad about letting her think that he thought she was attractive. His father had always told him that casual flings were 'good for the soul' when you weren't in a real relationship, but the ambient Alphan climate was not in favour of affairs. Salvatore felt guilty indulging in sexual activity with a woman he didn't even like.

Nora was probably having similar feelings. After a couple of weeks, she stopped inviting Salvatore back to her place, and he never asked about or commented on her change of behaviour. She did continue to provide him with pigments and binding solutions for his paintings, so Salvatore had no reason to feel bitter about the end of their affair. Once it was over, he no longer felt guilty, and he had learned a couple of things along the way. He even got the added bonus of a lifetime's supply of paints, so retrospectively the whole business had been a great success. Far better than his ill-fated relationship with Hilly.

With so much going on, Salvatore was beginning to feel better, but there were still some days when his guilt and long-standing depression got him down. He felt as if there was something missing in his life, some purpose or meaning that would make it all worthwhile. Those were the days when he did the most painting, working on both the panther painting and the one with the mule in parallel. They were both dark, enigmatic works reflecting those aspects of himself which Salvatore fought so hard to hide from other people.

The mule painting was slow going because it required a lot of careful preliminary work to get the mule and the Alphan right in their setting. Salvatore wanted the perspective to be perfect, as if the painting was a photograph immortalising the moment of mule's demise. Frustrated by all the careful work he had to do, Salvatore put that painting on the back burner for a while and started to think about the composition of the panther painting.

Still unsure what kind of setting to put the panther in, Salvatore decided to seek inspiration in the works of past Earth painters. There had been thousands of artists on Earth; Salvatore was curious to see how they had used paintings to symbolically represent their thoughts and emotions. The computer contained a lot of artistic representations, but the screen on his slate was far too small for him to make out any details, so Salvatore went to the Alphan Library. They would hopefully have larger reproductions of famous paintings, either in books or as posters.

It was Salvatore's rest-day, a Wednesday -- as the most junior apprentice in the Communications Centre, he had the weekly rest-day no one else wanted. Predictably, the Library was virtually abandoned, but Salvatore was surprised to hear music as he entered.

Intrigued by the incongruity of the loud music echoing around the Library, Salvatore set out to find the source of the music. As he neared his goal, he could just make out a female voice singing along with the amplified singers. Salvatore peered cautiously around a bookcase and found that the music was coming from the office section. A slim black girl was working on one of the computer terminals; she had her back to Salvatore, but she was swaying to the music. He approached and knocked on one of the tables to make his presence known.

The girl turned around and, upon seeing Salvatore, she quite literally squeaked.

"Ee!" she exclaimed, before grinning widely. "A customer on a Wednesday. I'll have to bookmark this day on my calendar."

"Um, I can come back later," suggested Salvatore, puzzled by the girl's reaction.

"No, no, no! Please, tell me what you want," she said. She turned the music off and sprang to her feet. "I know this place like the back of my hand, you know. I only get the boring days because I'm the junior apprentice. Although actually, my job is categorising new acquisitions. But I do know the Library very well."

"New acquisitions?" Salvatore had assumed that the Library had a finite number of resources. It wasn't as if anyone on Alpha was writing new books.

"Oh you know, things that original Alphans had which they didn't share with us before," said the girl with a shrug. She picked up the magazines she was working on and held them out to Salvatore. "Dirty magazines, in this case. The others were all too prissy to process them, but the Big Boss didn't want to just throw them out, because they're still bits of Earth history. So I volunteered. I'm not offended by a bit of naked flesh."

Neither was Salvatore, though he was surprised at the pictures as he flicked through the first magazine. He evidently wasn't as original and imaginative as he thought; most of his fantasies were portrayed in graphic detail in this forty-year old magazine.

"Interesting stuff, huh?" said the girl.

She was watching him expectantly. Suddenly embarrassed, Salvatore handed back the magazines. "No, not really."

"Tsk. Liar. Men love this kind of stuff. They're very visual in their desires, so they enjoy looking at naked women, or men, or whatever turns them on. Women tend to be more cerebral. Anyway, what are you looking for?"

The girl carefully stacked the magazines again. Salvatore noticed she was wearing black gloves so as not to damage the publications. Even 'dirty magazines' got respect from the librarians.

"Well, I'm looking for reproductions of paintings," said Salvatore.

"Ah, more naked ladies," said the girl cheerfully. She peeled off her gloves and lead him out of the computer area and towards one of the bookcases. "If you'll follow me."

"I'm just interested in seeing different types of paintings," said Salvatore, frowning even though she couldn't see him. "I'm a painter. If I wanted naked ladies, I'd borrow some of those magazines you just showed me."

"A painter? Oh wow!" The librarian turned to grin at him again as he followed her down an aisle. "You don't look old enough. Mind you, you don't look old enough to be looking at dirty magazines, either."

"I'm sixteen," said Salvatore. They seemed to have reached their destination; he could see the large display rack where all the posters were stacked.

"And I'm Fatuma," said the girl. She seemed to be in a permanently good mood; even Salvatore's sour attitude didn't appear to be affecting her. "And you're definitely too young for pictures of naked ladies."

"That's OK, I can get the real thing," he said shortly. Without waiting for her invitation, Salvatore started to flick through the lowest rack of posters. The first rack had nothing but movie posters, so he switched to another one.

"So young and yet so worldly." Salvatore could feel Fatuma's curious eyes boring into him. "Mind you, I only waited another year. And what a prick I got myself, too. Still, that's what makes the human race go around."

"I wouldn't know about that," said Salvatore sourly. He was trying to concentrate on the pictures in front of him.

"Well, being just half Psychon doesn't disqualify you from membership of the human race, Salvatore," she said, patting him on the back. "You are Salvatore, aren't you? My sister is CMO at Dover, so of course I heard about you. Actually, I saw you at Halima's wedding all that time ago, the one where she decided to become Mrs Second-Wife Vincent. I remember your Dad, too."

"Let me guess, you had a crush on him," said Salvatore coldly. Of the three women he had slept with so far, Nora was the only one who had professed no prior interest in Tony Verdeschi.

"Who do you think I am, Emma Carter?" exclaimed Fatuma with a laugh. "No thanks, I don't do 'old and decrepit'. I like my men young and strong. You're a bit too young, but you'll be cute when you grow up." She chucked him under the chin.

Still affected by his experiences with Hillary and Nora, Salvatore took a step back and frowned at her. He wasn't in a mood to be seduced.

"Sorry," said Fatuma, her thick brown lips parting into a toothy grin. "I promise I'll keep my hands off you. I'm not into sexual harassment, either. What kind of paintings are you looking for, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Salvatore warily. He paused and then added, "Surrealist?"

"Dalí, Magritte, Picasso... I have just what you need. There's a book up here..."

Fatuma pulled a stool over and clambered up on it to get one of the large books on the top shelf. Salvatore was fascinated by the stool; it looked like a miniature black Dalek and although it was on wheels, its body collapsed to the floor when Fatuma stepped on it, so that it couldn't roll away. Salvatore had never seen anything like it.

"Does this look like what you're looking for?"

Salvatore looked up. His eyes were now level with the belt on Fatuma's blue-sleeved tunic. As he raised his gaze, he noticed that Fatuma's chest was almost entirely flat, and then he looked at the picture in the book she was holding open.

It looked as though it had been painted on Loki at dusk on a summer's day. A dark, flat surface ran to cliffs in the distance, topped with a sky blanched by the day's dying heat. To the left, closer to the observer, there was a brown table, with a dead tree growing out of it. Draped over the table and the tree were clocks, flat clocks that looked like plastic plates melted in the sun. In the centre of the picture, a wide gash in the flat surface opened onto a light pink ledge which seemed to morph into a closed eye, as if a sleeping human was part of the landscape. Salvatore felt that there was more to this pink structure than met his eyes, but he knew it would require longer observation before all the mysteries of the painting were revealed.

Amazed at the beauty of the picture, and intrigued by the challenge understanding it would represent, Salvatore eagerly seized the book. The caption on this page read 'Salvador Dalí - The Persistence Of Memory'.

"Yes," said Salvatore with a dazed nod. "This is exactly what I'm looking for."