She nodded. ‘No way of knowing. Anyway, they interviewed him, since he was a witness to the extinction event that did for his world. Once he understood they were trying to find something of value to them, he became a kind of native guide. I think he was worried that, if he didn’t, they might leave him there. Anyway, that worked out so well that they took him along on a couple of expeditions to other post-extinction alternates, and he was so damn good at it they figured that if they were exploring those places, they might as well take a look and see if they could find anyone else who might be as useful as him.’

‘And that’s how they found you and Rozalia and all the rest?’

She nodded. ‘Bingo. Same for all of us. I guess the kind of people who have the stamina and determination to survive, when everyone else around them is dead, also have some quality that makes them good at pathfinding.’ She drank more of her beer and let out a loud burp. ‘Not to mention,’ she added, ‘that we were all so fucking delirious at being saved, we’d have done just about literally anything in return for not having to stay where they found us one second longer.’

‘It still doesn’t explain . . .’

‘Stop right there.’ She gave me a slightly unfocused look, and I wondered how many beers she’d had before I arrived.

‘You don’t even know what I was going to say!’

‘Yes, I do. You still want to know the ultimate purpose of all this, what we’re looking for, why we’re looking for it, what the Authority get out of it, and why these particular worlds.’

I shrugged. ‘Well?’

‘Focus on the reward,’ she said, leaning towards me slightly. ‘Stop asking questions none of us can answer and just do what you have to, so they let you retire. Nothing else matters.’ She fixed me with a steady gaze. ‘Understand? Nothing else matters.’

What I was slowly coming to understand was that I hadn’t been far off the mark when I’d wondered if I was surrounded by functional alcoholics. The amount of booze the Pathfinders collectively went through was prodigious, as if by drinking themselves into oblivion they could avoid asking themselves the very same questions that still plagued me. When I found Oskar and Haden standing on one of the stages, along with Oskar’s monstrous hound, Lucky, and a vehicle that looked like a cross between an SUV and a tank, I didn’t fail to notice that Oskar’s eyes were bloodshot. Haden seemed to be the exception to the rule in that I had never seen him drink alcohol.