Ruth Bonnemère was a bald, slender woman, with a golden skin and matching eyes, who never failed to revive the exhausted hearts of the men she met on the interminable stairs of the hive, especially since the elevators were out of order and nobody wanted to pay for the exorbitant price demanded for the repairs. Ruth was not complaining. Her flat was on the 79th floor, just halfway from the top. And she was young. The conflict was already six-month old, and the daily exercise had strengthen her muscles. The most pitiful people were those who lived in the upper floors, the old ones, the bedridden and the crippled, who now depended on charity when they had not already died of hunger. Ruth Bonnemère had helped some of them at the beginning, and then she had had to care for herself.

She had got pregnant, and she had given birth to her son as quickly as the law required it. Little Kevin had since been given top priority in her life. Nobody would say that the Bonnemère woman was not a good mother, no pun intended. Not anymore she would buy leeks for the frail Mrs Coombes, or empty Mr Genovese's dustbin, since he could not use his wheelchair in the stairs. Ruth felt awful, though there was nothing she could do about it. And then came the dreaded Power Failure of December. The hive was plunged into