Her fingers scratched his skin. Her eyebrows were knitted. He remembered this well. His heart began to beat harder. He’d relished that feeling in the past, but she was wrong. He had changed. It wasn’t as it felt when he was a boy.

‘Here you’re prized and kept in luxury,’ he told her, soft in case he caused offence. ‘Here you’re something you wouldn’t be on the home world. Royalty, or something close.’

She hissed, removing her hand. Although there was nothing to replace it, he felt the weight of something cold where warmth had once been. Almost a physical force.

‘I hate the ancestors.’

Ula pulled his covers closer.

‘They came for a better life,’ he said. ‘To discover. They came to make things better.’

She peered at him, threw an arm out behind herself, indicating the room.

‘And you find this better? This nest is like their planet. Big, empty, nothing for us.’

‘I have a life. I have family.’

Her arm fell. She turned to the huge bay windows. Ula couldn’t see her face. When he looked in that direction there was nothing, pure darkness. He thought of outer space, that vast expanse, the cold. He tried to imagine the journey and could not.

Fellucia slid naked from the bed. She walked to the opposite end of the room, and bent in front of the red wood chest, threw it open. For a long time there was nothing other than the shuffle of movement. Ula closed his eyes. He must have fallen asleep, for when he opened them she was standing over him, close enough for him to see raised bumps on her skin. She was holding something small, a metal piece, about the size of an index finger. A slim silver object, hooked at the end. Ula looked from the object to Fellucia. Sat up.

‘Where did you get that?’

‘It was given.’

‘By who?’

‘My breeder.’

He waited a moment, digesting that.

‘They told me I was your first.’

‘You were.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Fellucia blushed, deeper.

‘We never lay together. He had two. He gave me this and used the other. He escaped and was caught.’

Ula couldn’t look at her.

‘That was the city,’ she said, like it was a bedtime story. ‘It was easy. The wilderness is vast.’

‘And what about my family?’

‘You can go back. They’re too valuable to kill. There are many of us in the jungles of the far west. You can find help, bring them to safety.’