Louise touches my shoulder.

“Upjun,” she says, indicating that she’s finished.

I open my eyes, and my hand goes straight to my mouth. The young woman in the dressing-table mirror could walk down Shanghai’s busiest street and not attract a second glance.

But what’s really surprising is how gorgeous I feel.

“That’s…I mean there are no words…”

I study the fine pencil lines and delicate gradations of shadow that have given my eyes such a convincing oriental slant, not at all certain that I’ll be able to replicate that level of skill and dexterity.

“Dal oytmek, Ruth Pattison,” smiles Louise, reading my expression. “Gochurmek.”

“Let it come naturally? Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

That’s why she stepped back after each stage to let me see what she’d done. Those snapshots will remain in my short-term memory, acting as a series of targets until the procedure is stamped onto my subconscious and they’re no longer needed.

I rise from the chair, smoothing the front of my dress with hands still moist from the soaking I treated them to after helping hang the final roll of flowery wallpaper now brightening the staircase.

“Kop rahmat,” I say to thank Louise for her trouble.

“Tuzut,” she replies, gesturing me to follow her downstairs.

We walk through the kitchen and out into the sunlit garden to the right of the door. Gillian and Hilary are sitting together on the bench at the foot of the overhang. Donna is in a deckchair, rocking Philip in her arms. I can’t say they all look happy because a kuzkardesh gara doesn’t understand the concept, yet their faces exhibit a tranquillity I envy.

Hilary and Louise offer to prepare chay. Donna invites me to take her place while she uses the bathroom.

“Salam, babek,” I murmur to Philip as he wriggles about after his mouth has settled on my nipple and he’s decided it isn’t going to feed him. “Hungry, aren’t you darling?”

“Ol ach baky,” smiles his grandmother. “Ajayyp hem.”

“Mmm, he is…” I agree.

“Siz tayyar bolmak yene gowreli, Ruth Pattison.”

That makes me think. Although I have no conscious memory of carrying or giving birth to Charlotte, if I concentrate I can understand what it felt like to be pregnant with her. I’d be deceiving myself if I claimed I had no wish to experience motherhood for real.

But if I’m to bear another child, someone will have to be its father.

“We’ll need to…well, you know what I mean…”

“Elbetde.”

Her tone is flavoured with a mild rebuke, one I probably earned. A simple movement of my brow would have been sufficient to remind her that there are no men here, without implying that she’d forgotten how babies are conceived.

Louise arrives to tell us that the chay is about to be poured, removing the necessity for a mumbled apology. When she’s taken Philip from my care, Gillian motions me to join her; I do so, only partly conscious of mimicking the way she moves her beads so the sun can get at her breasts.

“Bayrak,” she says, producing from beneath the wide folds of her dress a new shiny black leather handbag. “Siz ish yowuz.”

“Oh yes, the reward I was promised.”

It contains a vanity case, a purse — empty, of course — and a document resembling a passport, except that it’s pale blue.

“What’s this?” I ask her.

“In order to explain our presence here to the local human population, we were provided with new identities. For the purposes of officialdom we are refugees from Xinjiang province in China, members of a religious sect that was persecuted and then outlawed. The organisation that arranged for you to be introduced to us have afforded you similar status.”

“Have they now?”

I open the document at the page listing the personal details of a Deng Liu-xiang, born on September 2nd 1955, daughter of Deng Fei-rong and Deng Sheng-huan. Her own child is named as Deng Shen-tiao.

“They can’t do this,” I complain. “What about my family? What are they going to think when–“

When they find out that I’ve been accused of blackmail?

Ruth’s disappearance presents us with a serious problem.

Looks like they’ve come up with the ideal solution.

“Our neighbours are not ready to accept that we were once their compatriots,” Gillian continues. “It is important that we maintain this cover, and thereby limit the antagonism we encounter to that arising from prejudices of a racial or xenophobic nature.”

“Razy,” I agree. “Better they call us names than march up the valley carrying torches and pitchforks.”

As we walk back to the house, the kuzkardesh gara’s arm through mine, I come to a decision.

Deng Liu-xiang…

I’ve taken on a new name before. I can do it again.

And at least I won’t have to change sex this time.

On the coffee table in front of the hearth, bathed in weakening evening sunshine, stands a heap of papers.

“Chrysanthemum von Witzleben,” says Hilary, pointing to them from the chair where she’s busy knitting, the needles clicking so fast she might be expecting her first grandchild in a few days rather than next February.

I pick a sheet from the top. The script upon it is poised and refined.

“These are the notes you were talking about?”

The kuzkardesh gara clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She doesn’t elaborate, so I settle on the sofa to familiarise myself with Frau von Witzleben’s life story as related by Sorina Dalascu, the former Sarah-Jane Collingwood.

“I take it the military will have kept copies?” I enquire, thinking back to the tale I was told three nights ago.

“Elbetde. Emma olar owrenmek hich.”

Although I don’t yet know enough Ugur to translate her words directly, the melange of amusement and antipathy evident from the subtle movements of her brows and lips, added to the unmistakeable derision percolating each syllable, confirms that the people who spirited Hilary, Gillian and their daughters away to Bucovina with the express purpose of having them converted will have learned nothing from these documents they didn’t already know.

Fools, all of them.

And their stupidity is compounded by a callous disregard for anyone who becomes embroiled in their intrigues.

I suppose they tell themselves they’re acting in humanity’s best interests, the greater good and all that. But what kind of future can the world look forward to when its guardians are systematically demolishing the moral framework holding society together?

What happens when the cure is more harmful than the disease?

Before I begin reading I reach for my handbag and take out my vanity case so I can adjust the patterned linen scarf covering my hair and look once again at the rows of tiny black gemstones Gillian set in my brows before we ate. They form a much more pronounced arch than I’d expected, endowing my previously undistinguished features with a mature, almost regal hauteur.

Ought I to be concerned that my transformation is progressing more quickly than I’d planned? That might have been the case yesterday; now I’m starting to see that by allowing my outward appearance to be changed, I can direct my efforts towards preserving some of the less superficial aspects of my current persona.

Is that what Chrysanthemum von Witzleben thought all those years ago in Turkestan when she found herself looking more and more like the nuns she was studying?

I’d better get on with these notes or I’ll never find out.

I scan the first two sheets, which deal with the former Miss Whitmore’s family and upbringing but shed little light on her personality. The third, which is concerned with her education and introduces Miss Price, the governess who nurtured her growing interest in ancient civilisations, demands rather more attention than my mind is ready to give. I’m coming to the end of the page when I find I’ve read the same paragraph half a dozen times and haven’t understood any of it. Skipping to the next section, the same thing happens.

“This is…oh, what’s the word I’m looking for?” I mumble to myself.

Donna comes into the room. She indicates with her brow that she’d like to sit beside me while I read. I smile my consent.

“Are you all right, love?” I ask as she slides her arm through mine.

“Donna Parker duymak agirt ongat. Babek ongat hem.”

“Ajayyp. I’m glad you’re feeling better. But I’d still rest a lot easier if you saw a doctor.”

I look to Hilary for support, and discover from her expression that although she approves of my concern for her daughter, she doesn’t share it.

Donna isn’t worried either. I only have to meet her eyes for a second to bask in the girl’s firm belief that her pregnancy will proceed normally and end with the delivery of a healthy baby.

But that faith is not blind. It’s based on the assumption that the hive will have assimilated the skills of an experienced nurse before she goes into labour.

Yvette managed to exchange bodies with Carol before the wave hit. They would both have drowned if she hadn’t. Later, in hospital, she swapped with one of the nursing staff. That’s the body she currently inhabits.

Carol Vasey.

She’s perfect for them.

And it would teach her not to be so eager to step into a dead woman’s shoes.

That may be so, but how can I condone robbing another human being of her individuality, no matter how much she deserves it, when I’m clinging so stubbornly to my own?

I make one more attempt to unravel Sorina Dalascu’s consistently long-winded prose. It lasts less than a minute. Deciding that a dose of fresh air will be just the thing to clear my head, I ease Donna’s fingers from my forearm and walk over to the vestibule.

“Basym garanky,” she calls after me as I take one of the jackets from its peg.

“Razy. I won’t be long.”

I open the front door and step onto the terrace. The air is warm and still. A bee hovers among the weeds flowering at the edge of the lawn; I feel my awareness recede as I contemplate its movements, my thought processes analogous to the instincts that govern the creature’s behaviour.

After it’s flown away I glance across the fields to the sylvan slopes on the western side of the valley, now deep in shadow.

This is a lovely place. My daughter would be happy here…

The scene in front of me fades. It’s replaced by a landscape of barbed wire and checkpoints, floodlights and machine-gun posts. A jeep pulls up outside a large tent, disgorging two soldiers wearing uniforms I don’t recognise. They point their rifles at the cloaked, hooded figure who climbs from the vehicle. The breeze lifts and blows back the heavy cowl, revealing her to be a kuzkardesh gara. She is not a particularly young woman, yet her complexion is fresh and unlined.

A man comes out of the tent, an officer by his bearing. He interrogates the kuzkardesh gara in French, though his accent suggests it’s not his first language. She answers calmly and with great dignity.

She is Yvette de Monnier, and she is okde…

She is the source of my gift.

It went with her when she took Ruth’s body, but not when she exchanged with Richard.

And the crux of their conversation?

Cet avatar est doué. Mais elle n’est pas encore l’élu.

L’élu? Expliquez, s’il vous plait.

Chaque ruche doit avoir une dame.

Every hive must have a queen.

That’s why I’m so important to these women. Inheriting de Monnier’s gift has qualified me to become their leader.

And that doesn’t just mean taking charge when one of them has an upset stomach.

The enemy have unwittingly presented us with what we are now certain will be our most powerful weapon.

The enemy.

How well they merit that epithet.

I need time to think. I have to weigh up my options.

If there are any.

Gingerly, I climb the path to the road. Gillian’s Dormobile is still parked where I found it at the start of my abortive escape attempt on Sunday. I feel my mouth curl in a languid smile as I recall the idiotic scheme I concocted aimed at evading the clutches of the MoD.

Fleetwood, for heaven’s sake! Who in their right mind would choose that as a bolt-hole?

When the sun disappears behind the bank of cloud slowly drifting in from the west I think about going back inside, but my feet have already taken me fifty yards down the slope, as if they’re trying to prove to their owner that she retains enough freedom to enjoy a quiet stroll on a balmy May evening if that’s what she really wants to do. Before long I’m in sight of the crossing, and the gate where to my surprise are perched two young women, one in jeans and one wearing a vivacious, wide-hemmed summer dress. When the former takes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lights one of them, I resist the urge to snatch it from her lips and crush it beneath my heel.

I’m resolved to walk straight past them until I remember what happened on Sunday morning outside the stone cottage a short distance along the lane.

Stop inside an’ keep thesel’ out o’ sight. Tell lasses an’ all.

Could they be the owner’s daughters? From here they appear similar enough to be related. Both have the same shade of dark brown hair, which they wear in the short, layered style fashionable before the ‘50s revival gathered momentum — though as I draw nearer I can see that the girl in the summer dress has had hers taken right off the ears and combed into a neat side parting.

Now clear off afore I set dogs on yer.

I should go back. The Skoda is nowhere to be seen, but that’s of little comfort. If these two share their father’s attitude to the occupants of Sunny Hollow, the best I can expect from them are unfriendly stares and insulting comments.

But the girl with the really short hair has already fixed me with a look that has me wanting to yank out those cropped locks by the roots.

“Hey up!” she cries, nudging her companion in the ribs. “Fetch crucifix an’ bring out garlic!”

“All right, Ellie, no need to be rude. You were a Jesus freak yourself once.”

“Mebbe, but I never went round garden wi’ me jugs ‘angin’ out.”

“No, you just turned overnight from a hippy into a schoolma’am.”

“Better than bein’ a drop-out.”

“Oh yeah? Least I got to university. Not my fault if–“

“Shut up, Tina! She’ll ‘ear yer!”

“What if she does? She seems pretty harmless to me.”

Perhaps it’s because I’ve grown accustomed to using a holistic approach during my time with the kuzkardesh gara, but I find myself not so much listening to the content of this exchange as making a thorough assessment of the character and intentions of both participants. Ellie’s brashness, together with her strong local accent, suggests that she identifies with this area to a much greater extent than Tina; it also masks a fear, born no doubt out of rumour and supposition, that the newcomers pose a threat to the future her engagement ring tells me she has great hopes for.

Tina pushes away the hand Ellie lays on her thigh, then jumps from the gate.

“Hello there!” she says brightly.

I judge that she’s in her middle, maybe even her late twenties. Of medium height and build, she’s attractive enough not to lack admirers, though I’d hesitate to describe her as pretty. Her jeans, in conjunction with her lack of make-up, imply that she doesn’t have a steady boyfriend. And there are a number of reasons to suspect that she may not enjoy the best of relationships with her parents.

“Hello,” I reply, waving away the smoke drifting from her cigarette.

“Sorry about that. Filthy habit, I know.”

“Yes, if you could…”

I force the disgust from my face. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who’d immediately turn into a committed anti-smoking fanatic once she’d given up the noxious weed, but by using the meme to cure my addiction I’ve surrendered any control I might have had over that aspect of my personality. I have a kuzkardesh gara’s attitude towards tobacco, and that’s all there is to it.

“I bet you don’t drink either,” she says.

I smile and shake my head.

“No, uh…no stimulants.”

“Pity that, I was going to ask if you’d like a coffee.”

“Tina!” shouts Ellie. “Yer know what they said!”

“Put a sock in it. Honest, you’re worse than dad.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m Christina Kyte. Faceache there’s my sister Eleanor.”

I can sense that Tina wants to be seen as more tolerant and open-minded than she actually is. She’s the person who goes out of her way to talk to the black guy in the room, and makes sure everyone notices what she’s doing.

But that doesn’t influence my decision to introduce myself as Deng Liu-xiang. Admitting I’m English would not only have invited a series of awkward questions, but create a real danger of word getting round that the hive are starting to make converts.

Tina drops her cigarette and stubs it out with her heel.

“Welcome to Salem, Deng Liu-xiang. Oops, you might not get that being from China.” She fakes a self-deprecating grin. “So what are you exactly, Buddhists or something?”

I hesitate before replying. Until now I’ve been able to disguise my southern accent; if I’m drawn into a discussion there’s a risk I might slip back into it.

How do the others cope? I can’t believe they put on squeaky Chinese voices every time they talk to an outsider.

The meme programs our minds to think in Ugur. We can still speak English, but it is no longer our native tongue.

It begins as a memory, but quickly evolves into a solution. I know it’s one I’ve accepted because every click, whirr and hissed syllable I’ve heard since I arrived at Sunny Hollow has suddenly come to the forefront of my consciousness. What I need to do now is tag each word or phrase that forms in my mind with an equivalent so I can translate it automatically into Tina’s language.

“We are not Buddhists,” I say carefully, the words lacking any intrinsic meaning even though I’m confident they’re the right ones to use. “It is hard to explain…”

“Try me. Comparative Religion was one of the ancillary subjects I studied when I was at Warwick.”

“This is not a religion. It is more a way of thinking.”

“Like a philosophy?”

“No, it is about developing a new level of consciousness.”

“You mean you’re into meditation, that kind of thing?”

“There is no training programme. We do not have to be taught how to experience it. The changes just happen.”

Her gaze moves to the black paint covering my lips and nails. Any pretence of sympathy is stripped from her face.

“The other morning there was a girl here asking for help. An English girl. She told dad you’d kidnapped her.”

For a moment I’m at a loss as to how I should answer this charge. Then the words pour from me.

“Ruth Pattison tried to deceive us. She did not know that our policy has always been to make enquiries into the background of any woman who professes a desire to join our community. When we discovered that she was facing quite a serious criminal charge, we told her that as guests of this country we felt obliged to contact the authorities. We also confiscated her belongings.”

“Funny, I don’t remember seeing a police car…”

“Broomstick alert!” cries Ellie, jumping to the ground.

I turn to see a cloaked, hooded kuzkardesh gara walking along the lane. Gillian or Hilary, it’s impossible to say which.

“Probably wants yer to clean out cauldron,” I hear Ellie laugh.

“She’s more likely concerned for your safety,” says Tina. “Seriously, don’t go anywhere near the village on your own. That girl hasn’t done you lot any favours by saying those things to dad. People round here don’t take kindly to foreigners, especially when they bring their own culture with them.”

That girl…

How quickly I’ve begun to think of her as another person. How unreal my memories of being her have already become.

But this isn’t about Ruth Pattison. It never was.

Dig beneath the illusion of selfhood and all will be made clear to you.

Susan Dwyer was right about something else as well. It still feels like being me.

Tina and Ellie are indoors by the time Hilary reaches my side. Only the waxing moon sees our ebony lips curl in identical smiles and then meet in a tender kiss.

“Biz barmak oy,” she says softly.

I click my agreement.

“Kop etmek mundan org yatmak,” I add.

A twitch of her brow sends my right hand to my forehead, where a wisp of hair has escaped my scarf. I tuck it back in, embarrassed by my slovenliness.

It won’t happen again.

The kuzkardesh gara formerly known as Gillian Dixon plugs the electric razor into the socket on the kitchen wall and turns it to its highest setting.

Tai Kim-lin is not aware of her previous name. That information is now redundant. It remains in her long-term memory, but the neural pathways to it have been redirected. They will be established again only if the hive needs to retrieve it.

Kim-lin is also unaware that the young woman sitting on a chair facing away from her was ever called anything but Deng Liu-xiang.

Strictly speaking, Kim-lin has no awareness at all.

She unzips Liu-xiang’s dress, easing the garment from her rounded shoulders. She is able to perform such acts because the replicators that have transmuted her subconscious into a more or less faithful replica of the template bequeathed to the hive by Sorina Dalascu in Bucovina are constantly using her episodic memory to construct a false persona with a sufficiently durable sense of continuity for her to function as a sentient being, allowing her to give the erroneous impression that she retains the capacity for independent thought.

Yet as Kim-lin knows — or to be more accurate, as she would explain if asked — the illusion of individuality is not the same as the real thing. Essentially a kuzkardesh gara is an organic machine, a living automaton operating to pre-set instructions designed in conjunction with the memetic impulse to reproduce and infect other brains, itself a blind imperative caused by nothing more mysterious or metaphysical than the natural laws governing chemical reactions.

The universal female mind is an emergent property of that impulse. Like life, it came into existence purely by chance.

Kim-lin switches the razor on. She tilts Liu-xiang’s head forward and feels her large, heavy breasts pressing against the girl’s broad back. Working swiftly and methodically from the nape upwards, she begins shearing Liu-xiang’s tangled tresses to stubble.

It would be a mistake to think that Kim-lin attaches any significance to the task she is performing. That Liu-xiang has agreed to undergo the final part of her transformation into a kuzkardesh gara is no cause for celebration. After all, her conversion was never in any doubt.

For the next fifteen minutes Kim-lin sticks at her chore, pausing once to sip from the bowl of chay Tai Ling-shuang hands her before going upstairs to check that her baby is sleeping soundly. The only assistance she receives is from Pan Su-ning, who supplies a goatskin sack containing the gemstones that will form Liu-xiang’s crest, and Su-ning’s mother Pan Hui-liu, who coats the felted surface of each with the insoluble resin the hive brought back from Bucovina. Both have left before the transformation is complete.

Liu-xiang herself displays as little interest in the proceedings as anyone. If there was indeed a point at which her subconscious fell fully into line with that of the hive, she neither remembers it nor does she feel the need to. Her awareness consists solely of the sensual pleasure she experiences during the removal of her pelt; the bejewelled, black-nailed finger she touches to the silken skin above her right ear after Kim-lin has used a cut-throat to shave her bald, and the muted gasp of delight she emits as the first stone of her crest is held against the centre of her forehead are mere reflex actions, as automatic to her as breathing.

Yet as her scalp is being buffed and scented, Liu-xiang is granted enough false individuality to realise that the radical modifications the meme has made to her mind are permanent, that the neural connections inside her brain have been rewritten as effectively and irreversibly as if they were audio tapes passing between the spools of a cassette player with the button pressed down.

She will never have a change of heart.

She can never be browbeaten, conditioned, drugged or surgically altered into the person she used to be.

Quite the reverse: as this hive’s saylanan — its queen — she will soon learn to transmit the meme in concentrated bursts so potent they’ll demolish the defences of any human female the hive chooses to assimilate.

As I stand from the chair and wait for Kim-lin to fasten my zip, I feel a malicious grin creep across my face. Humanity doesn’t stand a chance against that kind of power.

Without meaning to, I run my hand back from my forehead along my freshly shaved scalp.

“Duymak sowuk,” I hiss.

“Siz dal bolmak sakar kelle,” points out Kim-lin.

“Elbetde,” I smile. “Deng Liu-xiang yatdan chykarmak.”

It’s not surprising that I had to be told the reason my head feels cold is that I’ve never been bald before. I am and always will be incapable of imagining any other reflection than the one I now see in the kitchen window.

I turn to the older kuzkardesh gara. My eyes meet and hold hers. I have no idea why. How could I?

“Bir bolmak hemme,” we chant in perfect synchronicity, “song hemme bolmak agzybir.”

I watch my bejewelled, black-nailed fingers reach to caress Kim-lin’s cheek even as she extends hers towards mine. We both whirr our pleasure at the softness of the touch.

Liu-xiang’s false awareness fades. Until the group mind decides that it can return she will resemble an animated doll, reacting in accordance with her mental programming to the sensory data she receives from her surroundings. Even then, all that will concern her is the role she is to play in the coming struggle.

The struggle to subjugate and then transform the primitive species called the human race.

The struggle to make it ready for Epiphany.