The Geest van Amsterdam hadn’t wanted to linger in the Gallery a moment longer than necessary, but the other passengers and I wanted to get a closer look at the Objects, and we had been most insistent. Quite apart from the fact that the Gallery lay in a disputed tract of space, the ’dam had its itinerary to consider, and strict adherence to schedule had always been a matter of much pride among such vessels. Nevertheless, when Captain Benton finally interceded on our behalf, the ship reluctantly agreed to extend our presence in the system long enough to perform a close flyby of the Brain, the Inverted City, and the Dodecahedron.

We were overjoyed. Like most of humanity, I had only seen second-hand footage of the Objects, so the chance to see three of them with my own eyes seemed like the kind of opportunity that strikes only once in a lifetime—the kind of experience one might relate to a grandchild. When the ship made its announcement, I was delighted by its concession. After seven weeks of careful flirtation, I had finally allowed myself to be seduced by the young poet Adam Leroux, who had been pursuing me with a gauche and tragic fervour for the duration of the cruise, and I looked forward to viewing the mysterious sculptures in the company of my youthful paramour. I wanted to see them through his eyes. His delight would be purer and more childlike than anything I felt capable of mustering, and I would use it in the poem I intended to write about the encounter, recycling his sense of innocent wonder as my own.

* * *

Adam was eighteen and a half years old, with the gangly awkwardness of an adolescent, yet he affected a world-weary disdain for what he termed the “mundanity of ordinary existence”. He had been born and raised on the ’dam, and had seen many worlds during his short life—but mostly through the windows and view screens of his suite. He had little experience beyond the safe environs of the ship, and even less experience of women. He was very different to the men I had known, and I guess that novelty was one of the things about him that attracted me. It certainly wasn’t his poetry, which was execrable, full of extremity and unnecessary drama and lacking the subtlety an older mind might have brought to its subjects. Had the cruise been shorter, I would never have allowed him into my bed.

Even now, wallowing in the warm water, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t made an embarrassing mistake. He was so much younger than me, for a start; and he wanted me to teach him everything I knew about poetry.

I could have done that in about half an hour.