She said coldly, “I have enough trouble deciding when my own techniques are valid; I don’t have time to be an expert on everyone else’s work, as well.” She glanced at her notepad. “I believe that’s all the filming we agreed on for today. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting someone for lunch.”

#

I saw Mosala heading for one of the hotel restaurants, so I turned the other way and walked out of the building. The midday sky was dazzling; in the shadows of awnings the buildings retained their subtle hues, but in the glare of full sunlight they took on an appearance reminiscent of the oldest quarters of some North African cities, all white stone against blue sky. There was an ocean-scented breeze from the east, warm but not unpleasant.

I walked down side streets at random, until I came to an open square. In the middle there was a small circular park, some twenty meters wide, covered with luxuriant grass – wild and unmown – and dotted with small palms. It was the first vegetation I’d seen on Stateless, except for potted plants in the hotel. Soil was a luxury here; all the necessary minerals could be found in the ocean, in trace amounts, but trying to provide the island with enough topsoil for agriculture would have meant trawling several thousand times the area of water required for the algae-and-plankton-based food chain which met all the same needs.

I gazed at this modest patch of greenery – and the longer I stared, the more the sight of it unnerved me. It took me a while longer to understand why.

The whole island was an artifact , as much as any building of metal and glass. It was maintained by engineered lifeforms – but their wild ancestors were as remote to them as ancient buried ore bodies were to gleaming titanium alloy. This tiny park, which was really just an overgrown potted plant, should have driven that home mercilessly, puncturing the illusion that I was standing on anything but the deck of a vast machine.

It didn’t.

I’d seen Stateless from the air, spreading its tendrils out into the Pacific, as organically beautiful as any living creature on the planet. I knew that every brick and tile in this city had been grown from the sea, not fired in any kiln. The whole island appeared so “natural”, on its own terms, that it was the grass and the trees which looked artificial. This patch of wild – “authentic” – nature seemed alien and contrived.

I sat on a bench – reef-rock, but softer than the paving beneath it; more polymer, less mineral? – half shaded by one of the (ironic?) palm-tree-shaped sculptures which ringed the edge of the square. None of the locals were walking on the grass, so I stayed back. I hadn’t regained my appetite, so I just sat and let the warm air and the sight of the people wash over me.