‘Not mine,’ she said.

Later, as the air cooled and the sky filled up from the east, local children  processed  through  the  town  square,  dressed  as lions, tigers, bears, fairies with wings, the mythical inhabitants  of Old Earth.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘They’re enacting one of the folk-tales of the local river. It’s tidal for several miles past here. At each tide, the water leaves a few black lumps of wood on the shore. These, sodden as much with age as water, are the river’s gift to the land.’ None of the children were older than  four, but they bore their wands and tinsel garlands – along with a banner  reading  something  like Los Ninos de Camapasitas –  with  considerable  gravity, watched  by Halo tourists of a certain age, mainly women dressed in a puffy shorts-and-blouse combination  which made them resemble, by contrast, someone’s baby. ‘“I brought you these,” the river says to the land. The land declines without having to say anything at all. The river shrugs and tries again later.’

‘A complex story.’

‘It loses in translation,’ Alyssia admitted.

The dark came down soft and warm. They ate in one of the cafés on the edge of the square. Alyssia felt he looked too thin. He should slow down. Rig, she felt, had always seen himself caught between planets,  between  wars, between  conflicting  modes  of being:  a sardonic  eye on a world he didn’t quite  get. ‘But other  people see you differently,’ she said. ‘We see how hurt you become. We see so clearly how your personality trapped  you in EMC, in the concept of constant  war this Aleph of yours is supposed to end. Ask yourself why you called it that, Rig. The Aleph! Honestly, just ask!’

‘Other people?’ he said, smiling broadly.

She looked down at her plate. ‘Me,’ she was forced to admit. ‘I see you like that.’

In his turn, Rig talked about what he called the wanton mystery of things. He couldn’t get enough of it, he told her. But Alyssia hated phrases like that, and said:

‘In the end, maybe it will get enough of you.’