“I… don’t know. I don’t remember her in life. I was too young when she died. I think she got cancer, but my father wouldn’t talk about it. I have, had, a hologram of images and impressions. Mainly her face, which shows up whenever I do anything good. Approval. Dung, I’m rambling.”

“No… it’s… yeah, okay. Mandela and gallows, it’s—”

“I didn’t mean what I said about your mother being cheap.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Okay… do you, er, see Salvo?”

“Quarantined because he touched Ragtime’s Pentagram. They want to decommission him. They’re scared Carmilla’s hiding in him somewhere, but I’m fighting it.”

“Good. He saved our asses up there,” says Shell. “Let me know if I can help? I’m pretty busy with the… everything, but it’s Salvo. He deserves better.” She nods then looks away. “It was nice to see you.”

“We should have coffee some time,” says Fin. She can’t tell if he’s being polite.

“You are where you want to be, Fin. I’m not.” She opens the car door. Puts one foot in. “Bringing my passengers home is my task. After it’s done, we’ll have coffee and you can tell me about your… perpetrators?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” says Fin. “You couldn’t have known, couldn’t have understood that Brisbane was running around in the ducts, or that Carmilla was pulling Ragtime’s strings.”

“Are you about to say it’s Chinatown?”

“What?”

“It’s an ancient film on Earth.” She slams the door shut. “Goodbye, Fin.”

She passes people as she drives. More than a few of them have t-shirts emblazoned with TEHANI. Shell has met people with tattoos of Brisbane’s entire speech all over their trunks. Most of it is kids who just want to register themselves as rebels of some kind. Fine for them; Shell doesn’t care. Brisbane killed her passengers and her ship. If he weren’t already dead, she’d kill him, and she gives not a fig for his cause. Fuck the Tehani and the meteor pixie dust that extinguished them.

Soon, there are no more people, and no more dwellings. She has driven the route so many times that she can get there in the dark without headlights. At first it was a kind of pilgrimage to where she first set foot on this alien planet – familiar in some ways, but even more uncanny for that reason, for the humans cut off from Earth.

Coming to see the last surviving modules from the Ragtime comforts her, gives her a religious feeling, which is strange from this thing that almost killed her. The Decisive is still attached.