Dakota realized that the corners of her eyes were damp, and blinked the incipient tears away. ‘I told you things were different after the Magi brought me back from the dead.’

‘Different in what way?’

‘In that now I only ever go where the Magi ships want me to go. I don’t get to have a say any more, not since I was resurrected. They made me, rebuilt me, and that makes me part of them. But I’m still useful to them, whether I like it or not.’

‘So you decided to do something about it.’

‘The thing you have to understand,’ she said, ‘is that the Magi ships are hardwired to track down and destroy caches, and to find the entity that made those caches – the entity we know as the Maker. Right?’

Corso nodded.

‘Hardwired, Lucas. That means finding the Maker has a higher priority than anything else where the Magi ships are concerned, even higher than obeying their navigators.’

‘So their original navigators weren’t really in charge of their ships either?’

‘It’s more complicated than that. The original navigators were bred to their purpose, and because of that they shared the same obsessive goal as their ships did – there could never be a conflict of interest. But they were all wiped out, and when we came along, instead of making everything better again, it presented the Magi ships with a conflict. On the one hand they’re programmed to obey our orders, but on the other they’re overwhelmingly programmed to track down and destroy any caches and ultimately find the Maker.’

‘So what can they do?’

‘They can try to change their human navigators: remould them into something more compatible with their own mission. Except, instead, it’s turning them into vegetables or – if they’re lucky – just leaving them with permanent brain damage.’

‘Jesus and Buddha,’ Corso exclaimed. ‘You’re talking about the bends?’

There was a soft electronic chime and then the whirring diagnostic equipment slid back up towards the ceiling and fell silent. Dakota pulled herself upright and clasped her hands over her knees.

Corso glanced towards Lamoureaux’s medbox, then back again, with an appalled expression on his face. ‘You’re seriously telling me the Magi ships are trying to turn our navigators into something that isn’t human?’

‘Trader once told me he didn’t regard me as human anymore. I didn’t really believe him at the time, but I understand what he meant a lot better now.’

She could see Corso was still struggling with this revelation. ‘But it’s not working, is it?’ He nodded at Lamoureaux.

‘No, it’s not,’ she admitted. ‘At least not for most of us. But I can’t say for certain they haven’t already succeeded in turning other machine-heads into the image of their original navigators. Maybe we won’t find out until something happens.’

‘Like?’