‘He left. Now it’s Glavi. They’re coming down in swarms, he said. Nothing for them to do up there now, and they’re all starving.’

‘Why not let them stay in the conveyer, then? Give them a chance to get somewhere they can make a living?’

Alessinaxa glared at him. ‘Rules, papi.’

Papi. She hadn’t used that term for a long time. It was childish, but he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t nice to hear it again. He remembered her running up to him, back when he was a sanctioner and they lived in the cramped hab-unit up dockwards, her hair in the tight buns that Milija always tied up, her cheeks as chubby as her stocky legs.

Now she was as tall as him. Stronger, probably. Faster, certainly. She’d had the kind of ballistics and combat training that put his firmly in the shade. She could have driven the Luxer better than him, pushing it closer to the limit-envelope. He probably looked fat to her, his black hair thinner, his skin beginning to wrinkle.

Papi. It was still nice to hear it.

It took a long time to get home. On the way, she told him everything about the training facility. Some of it he’d heard before – she was like her mother, in that way – some of it was new. She skated over the harder bits, and that was fine. He didn’t want to hear how often they were disciplined, or sent on a forced march in the baking heat, or given penance for some minor infraction of the Ministorum conduct-codes.

She looked happy enough. She looked healthy, with no obvious injuries.

They arrived, and he told her to go on ahead as he pulled her luggage from the hold. He followed her up in the elevator, sweating from the weight of it, marvelling that she’d carried it all off the conveyer. By the time he got up to the hab-unit, it was full of the laughter he’d missed – two feminine voices, talking over one another, the words spilling out like clothes thrown across a floor. He went into the kitchen, and saw them already hard at the rezi, Alessinaxa with her feet up, Milija ­bustling at the hotplates.

That caught him off guard. He felt a sudden lump at his throat, a sudden memory of how it had been when the hab-unit was always this full of noise, full of life, full of irritations and smells and humour. He saw Milija laughing, her plump face flushed from the cooking, her hands deft as ever, honed by what she did all day long.

‘Here he is!’ Alessinaxa said, reaching for a third glass. ‘But I don’t think he wants to know about this.’