‘And the map? My uncle Pilgrim Saltmire’s map?’ Goodwill said. He had stepped up boldly beside Ysbel. Zaquil had accustomed him to talking machines and other miracles of human techne.

‘That is safe too,’ the bot said. ‘I’d love to show you around the balloon works and the automatic crèche and so on, but there is only a little time and you have questions. Who am I? What is this place? Who lived here and where have they gone? Ask me anything and I will do my best to answer.’

‘The bears,’ Ysbel said, when no one else spoke up. ‘The articulate bears. Were they brought here from the camp in bear country?’

‘From several camps.’

‘There was more than one?’

‘As I said.’

‘And where are they now? It looks like they left some time ago.’

‘After they learned how to make a living in their new home, they scattered into the unpopulated wilderness. Even I don’t know where they are.’

‘And the people who cured them and raised them,’ Goodwill said. ‘Where are they?’

‘I gave them a place where they can shelter until what I like to call the revelation is over.’

‘The revelation of what?’ Ysbel said.

‘The truth, of course.’

‘The truth about the bears.’

‘That’s part of it.’

‘And we are part of it too.’

‘That’s why you are here.’

‘And Kirder Halmasdaughter,’ Ysbel said. ‘Are you sheltering her, too?’

‘She is no longer active.’

‘What do you mean? Is she dead?’

‘If that’s what happens to a machine intelligence when its code is deleted.’

‘She was a bot, like you. Or like Mother’s little helpers.’

‘Somewhat more than a simple conversational algorithm, somewhat less than me. I’m glad, now, that you did not listen to her advice. Things have worked out better this way.’

‘Who made her? And who made you?’

‘No one made me, Ysbel Moonsdaughter. I am a fully autonomous fragment.’

Juniper stepped forward, followed by the two aides with pistols. ‘You said that you would do your best to answer questions. Yet your answers only lead to other questions.’

‘If it helps, everything I tell you is true.’

‘It would help,’ Juniper said, ‘if you would tell us plainly who invited us here, and why.’

‘If the conversational ability of this fragment is unsatisfactory, I apologise,’ the bot said. ‘Most of my attention is elsewhere at present.’

Ysbel said, ‘Who are you a fragment of?’

‘Call me the Other Mother.’

‘The mother who returned to Earth before our Mother? The mother of another seedship?’

‘There never was any seedship, Ysbel Moonsdaughter. Your Mother was once part of a consensus. A council of three. I am a fragment of another member of that consensus.’

‘But what about the map and the carvings? Are they real or fake?’

‘They were made by bears who met our children.’

‘Six or seven hundred years ago.’