His name was Sedge. He was a hydroponics technician from one of the Rim Stars. Before the war, we spent three months living together in a quayside villa on the Greek island of Naxos. He had long, sand-coloured hair and cobalt eyes as fresh and vivid as the wind-ruffled ocean. During the day, we had the beach and the harbour, and long walks among the olive groves above the whitewashed buildings of the town. At night, there was music from the tavernas, and strings of cheerful lights in the trees. I thought that if I held him tightly enough, we could stay like that forever. But we lost touch during the long years of conflict that followed. With turmoil raging across human space, communications between systems were patchy at best. The last I heard, having been mistakenly informed that I had died in the final confrontation at Pelapatarn, he had joined an expedition to the Andromeda galaxy, having been chosen as one of a hundred human representatives to be carried aboard a ship owned and outfitted by the Hoppers, a race of metre-tall locust-like explorers from the other side of the Multiplicity. It was a one-way trip of two and a half million light years. Even burning through the higher dimensions, manufacturing its own fuel as it went, it would take the Hopper’s ship millennia to reach its destination. Thinking I was dead, Sedge lay, along with the other humans, in suspended animation. Barring accidents, he would persist in his ageless, dreamless hibernation until thousands of years after my actual death.

The thought was almost intolerably sad.

I drained the mouldy-tasting liquor and sucked frigid air through my nostrils. Goats nosed the plateau’s dry grass, bells clanking. I heard the squeak of hinges, and a thickset man stepped onto the veranda beside me. He wore a shabby business suit over a grey shirt and dirty yellow cravat. The timbers creaked beneath his weight.

“Don’t trouble yourself to get up, Captain.” He gripped the rail, stared out at the grassland and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Ah,” he sighed.

I stared into the bottom of my glass. I didn’t want to be impolite, but neither was I in the mood for companionship.

“Can I help you?”

Without relaxing his hold on the rail, he turned his sepia-coloured eyes to mine. “Forgive the intrusion.” He gave a slight nod. “I merely wanted to welcome you to our town. My name is Armand Mulch.” He wiped a fleshy hand against his trouser leg, and then held it out for me to shake. “I’m the CEO of this little settlement.”

“What can I do for you, Mr Mulch?”

“I see you’re enjoying our view.”

“It makes a change from the inside of a ship’s cabin.”

“I’m sure it does.” He leant an elbow on the rail. “Can I freshen your drink?”

“No, thank you.”

“How about some food?”