‘I’m aware of that possibility. She funds a few of Castellan’s perks. Not as much as Jazc, I guess, but enough.’

‘Oh. Bastards.’

‘Yes. Macro-level bastards.’

After they had eaten, they shoved their bowls in the auto-cleaner, wiped the table, and went and sat in front of the bulletin-projector in the hab’s tiny recreation area. Milija had it set to audex-only, and it was playing a rotation of songs they both liked, the kind of thing Naxi would have scowled and rolled her eyes at. The couch was tiny too, and they curled up against one another, Zidarov half-hanging off one couch arm, Milija lying against his chest. They refilled their glasses, and Milija toyed with the buttons on his shirt.

‘You know,’ he said, as the strains of an old lutya-ballad hissed from the emitter-banks, ‘that woman’s house was the most expensive place I’d ever been in. You could have put a hundred families in it. She barely saw it. She barely saw that it was expensive at all.’

‘Another world.’

‘Didn’t seem to make her happy.’

‘They’re not. They’re never happy.’

‘I’d be happy, with a place like that.’

She lifted her head from his shoulder. ‘Would you? Or would it keep you awake at night, the things you’d done, to get it?’

He looked at her for a while. ‘I do like to sleep.’

‘So do I. Long and easy. No bad dreams. That’s the price they pay.’

She let her head fall back onto him. The music played. The hab was warm. He felt his body sink further into the couch, as if it would just keep on going.

‘You remembered I won’t be back tomorrow?’ he said. ‘Not till late.’

‘Mm,’ she said, nuzzling close to his neck. ‘Another woman?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You don’t deserve two women.’

He thought of Naxi, then. She’d been away too long. It would have been nice to have her burst in at that moment, look disgusted at them both, storm off to her room and slam a door. The hab-unit had always felt too small, with her there. Now it felt too big, too quiet. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was where all the restlessness came from.

‘Just work,’ he said.

‘You do too much of that.’

‘So do you.’

‘It’s all so I can give you a house like Udmil Terashova’s.’

‘And how long will that take you?’

‘Until the stars burn out.’

He laughed. ‘I’ll wait for you, Lija,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five