It shambled back a couple of steps and looked quizzically at the ships displayed on the dome overhead. But you claim some humans are less warlike than you?

I shrugged. “Yes.”

Doubtful.

I felt myself bristle. I had made a life in the military, and played a key role in a number of police actions and border disputes before the war. Everything I’d done, every shot I’d fired and every life I’d taken, had been in defence of the men, women and children of the Conglomeration. I had patrolled and threatened and fought so they could enjoy lives of peaceful security, so they could meet and fall in love, get jobs and raise offspring without having to worry about the dangers of the wider universe.

“What about the others?” I demanded.

Which others?

“You said there were other groups here, in the structure.”

One of those groups is armed.

“So, forget them. What about the other group? Are they survivors like me?”

I do not know.

“Can you scan them?”

I will try.

“And how about the ships in orbit?”

They are warships.

“Not all of them. Look.” I pointed to one of the Carnivores. “Look at that symbol on its hull. It isn’t a warship any more. It’s something different now.”

Different?

“Can you scan it?”

I can only make contact with organic minds.

“The ships have minds grown from cultured stem cells.”

The creature let out a snort that may have been surprise, amusement or disgust, I couldn’t tell which.

In that case, it may be possible. I…

It paused for a moment, seemingly distracted. It tipped its head to one side, and then rose on its hind legs, stretching its face towards the projection for a better look.

That symbol.

“The yellow star?”

I know it.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s a ship from the House of Reclamation.”

No, the symbol is older. It belongs to the Communal Grouping of Individual Hearths into One, Dedicated to the Preservation and Recovery of Stricken Itinerants.

The name sparked a memory dredged up from a summer’s afternoon at high school, thirty years previously. It came bundled with the smell of sun-bleached concrete, the feel of a hot and uncomfortable blazer, and the frustration of time spent hunched over a screen when I would rather have been outside, running and playing in the dust and hot grass.

“The Hearthers?” I struggled to recall the content of that long-ago lesson. “They all disappeared a few thousand years ago, didn’t they?”

The bear looked down at me in a manner I imagined to be almost sorrowful.

No, it said. They are not vanished. They are not gone.

It dropped onto all fours and dipped its muzzle.

They are us.

Sixty-Four: Nod

SIXTY-FOUR

NOD

Pulled out broken air filter and replaced.

Pulled myself through duct with four faces, dragging tools with fifth and sixth.