Nilis said, “You’re talking about jasofts,” he said.

Torec said, “Jasofts?”

“Or pharaohs,” Faya said with a black-toothed smile.

It was an ancient, tangled, difficult story.

Nilis said, “Before the Qax Occupation, aging was defeated. The Qax withdrew the anti-agathic treatments and death returned to Earth. But some humans, called jasofts or pharaohs, were rewarded for their work for the Qax with immortality treatments—the Qax’s own this time. Made innately conservative by age, selfish and self-centered, utterly dependent on the Qax—well. Those new immortals were ideal collaborators.”

Faya Parz said unemotionally, “That’s judgmental. Some would say the jasofts ameliorated the cruelty of the Qax. Without them, the Occupation would have been much more severe. Nothing of human culture might have survived the Qax Extirpation. The species itself might have become extinct.”

Gramm waved his hand. “Or the jasofts were war criminals. Whatever. It’s a debate twenty thousand years old, and will never be resolved. When the Occupation collapsed, the new Coalition hunted down the last jasofts.”

Nilis nodded. “And so ships like the Mayflower were built, and crews of jasofts fled Sol system. Or tried to. We don’t know the meaning of the name, by the way: Mayflower. Perhaps some archaic pre-Occupation reference. . . . In the end, Port Sol itself became one of the last refuges of jasofts in Sol system.”

With an almost soundless footstep, Luru Parz approached them. She said, “And of course it all had to be cleaned out, by the fresh-faced soldiers of the Coalition.”

Gramm snapped, “Did you bring us here to shock us with this revolting bit of history, Luru Parz?”

“You know why you’re here, Minister,” Luru Parz said, and she laughed in his face.

Gramm said nothing. But as he glared at Luru Parz, his eyes burned bright with hatred.

The ostensible purpose of this long trip was a discussion of the future of Nilis’s Project Prime Radiant. So Luru Parz led Nilis, Gramm, and Pila to a conference room, leaving Pirius and Torec in the charge of Faya Parz.

Faya asked if the ensigns wanted to rest, but they had spent days cooped up on a corvette, and were anxious to see the rest of Port Sol. Faya complied with good grace.

They began a slow circuit of the Pit of the Mayflower.

The great domed quarry was surrounded by a ring of satellite domes, each much smaller, with further facilities beyond that. In the unpressurized areas beyond the domes Pirius recognized power plants, landing pads, clusters of sensors, telescopes peering up at the star-ridden sky. No weapons, though; evidently this ancient, enigmatic place was not expected to be a target, for the Xeelee or anybody else.

These were obviously modern facilities. The more ancient landscape of Port Sol—the old starship quarries, the fallen towns, the imploded domes—was tantalizingly hidden beyond a tight horizon.