Over time she found herself replacing this and that, cleaning out one compartment, making a list of components to buy or appropriate in the city. All by herself, she gets some of the systems working, creates a seal and, even without micrograv, sometimes sleeps in the module in her vertical sleeping bag. Bloodroot grows around it, of course, with grass, roots and that weird flying fungus that plagues the place.

It runs without a brain, but it’s just heating, a CO2 scrubber, some warning lights. It’s a habitat, not a ship.

She slips into her sleeping quarters and hangs in the bag, marvelling at how heavy she feels each time.

Soon, she is asleep.

She dreams of Lawrence.

She dreams she is Lawrence.

He still has his space suit on and he is still in the Decisive.

His helmet is off and he feels no injury. “Everything is pretty, and I have no pain,” he says. “Wait, that’s wrong.”

He remembers strident alarms and the screeching of metal. Broken plastics and glass. Blackness.

The walls of the Decisive fan out, and the space becomes impossibly large and without boundary.

Joké is there, smiling, waiting for him. Beside her, Jenna – who is not the real Jenna Lawrence used to know, but Joké’s mother.

Behind them, all of the ancestors.

Lawrence goes home.

Shell wakes, crying. For herself, for lost friends, for dead and injured passengers. There is nobody to see her, so she allows herself to feel all the pain and disappointment and fury.

She cannot get back to sleep and instead watches balls of tangled fungus rolling around the landscape like tumbleweed.

She showers, gets dressed, grits her teeth and heads to the hearing.

Chapter Forty-six

Bloodroot: Fin

Fin seals the casing on the unit.

Frances stands watch at the door, yawning.

“Let’s hope it works this time,” says Fin. He turns the power on and joins the wolf at the door. The Artificial wanders off, uninterested.

The Wireframe comes to life. A miasma forms like the start of a hologram, but it fizzes out with a muted pop from the unit.

“Ahh, Heresies! This is a waste of my time,” says Fin. He drops his tools.

“Maybe, um, it’s time to let go.” That voice.

He rises and turns.

She’s changed. Her hair is wilder now, not braided, not even combed. Her eyes seem larger to him, more hypnotic than usual. But it’s her.

“Joké.”

“Greetings.”

“Are you staying?”

“Hmm. Let’s see.”

“No. I don’t… I can’t stand to have you disappear again. Like you did.”

“I had to see that my father was okay, Rasheed. I had to escort him home. We have to honour our ancestors.”

She is in his arms, warm and solid.

“Are you staying?” he asks.

She leans on his chest. “The real question is, are you?”

Chapter Forty-seven

Bloodroot: Shell

Shell steels herself.

They will ask, so she must know the answers.