I had intended the message that Chrístõ got after he and Julia left Lyria to be one telling him that Li Tuo was dying. Part of the sequence where he IS dying, much later on, was written to be at this point in the narrative. But then I decided Li Tuo should hang in there a bit longer and teach Chrístõ some more lessons, as well as tell his story to the others. So the message becomes one about new life, instead, and the scene switches from Liverpool’s Chinatown to Waterloo Dock, which at the time I wrote this was just beginning to be fully developed as a residential area, the former warehouses becoming luxury apartments. I gave Terry and Cassie one of the apartments, which were likely to become very much sought after once the Leeds/Liverpool Canal Link was completed as well as the rest of the residential development.

Cassie’s baby is due, so Chrístõ comes at once, bringing Julia. The new girlfriend meeting the old would be an awkward situation for anyone else, but Julia and Bo recognise just how lucky they both are to know Chrístõ.

And so begins a long night for everyone. As Chrístõ and Bo tend to Cassie, Li Tuo talks with his friends and something of the story of how he became a Renegade is told. This story is told in fuller detail in the Marion and Kristoph series, of course. But at the time I hadn’t decided to write those stories, and this was going to be it. A story of comrades in arms who become enemies but remain friends, and the love of a good woman who brings them together.

And just before dawn, a new baby born, Chrístõ DeJohn Terrence Michael Phillips. DeJohn is a traditional Jamaican name, and perfectly reasonable as Cassie’s father’s name. Terrence Michael for Terry.

This is the first time I used the dawn naming ceremony. It appears again in Theta Sigma when Bo has a baby, and is referred to in New Lords of Time, at New Year 2007, when Jackie has he baby. I have given the impression that there is a more formal ceremony with posh frocks and champagne that Time Lords also have, but I have not had cause to describe one of those.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/nof/docks/access/dock_history5.html

http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/images/lcl_West_Waterloo_Dock.jpg