Even when she doesn’t, she makes something plausible up, especially when it’ll make someone sleep better. Sleep is important, but Shell no longer knows what it’s like.

So here she is again, a sucker for ritual evisceration.

Oh, dung beetle. One of them has been given leave to read a poem.

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

and rest can never dwell, hope never comes

That comes to all but torture without end

Still urges and a fiery deluge fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

Such place Eternal Justice had prepared

For those rebellious, here their pris’n ordained

In utter darkness and their portion set

As far removed from God and light of Heav’n.

A few scattered claps, mostly from Earthfolk. Exclusively from Earthfolk. The reader climbs down from the rostrum, embarrassed, clutching sheets of paper. Shell thinks he has more to read but changes his mind. Paradise Lost? A bit more drama, please. Milton doesn’t quite cut it.

They call it a hearing, but that’s not what it is – at least, that’s not the way it’s understood on Earth. In the debrief and the serious incident review, Shell has already been exonerated. This is a public thing that Bloodrooters seem to favour after an adverse event. They come out and talk about it. Plus, there’s no return trip to Earth. Lagos fucked up the bridge for some reason, and everybody’s stranded. The Earthfolk need to distract themselves from that reality. And the trauma. Shell has no distraction. She has to live knowing there’s no escape back to Earth, and that her brothers won’t be coming.

The auditorium is constructed in the Bloodroot way, in a concentric circle that grows away from a central pit. It’s weird, but it grows on you. As you work outwards from the pit, the elevation of the seats gets higher. It’s akin to an amphitheatre, like you get on Earth. It’s the tiers that make anybody from Earth feel uncomfortable. The original builders of the colony vowed to live in harmony with whatever life already existed. That’s why there are curves and concentrics everywhere. Even when people meet up casually, Shell has seen them gently arranging themselves into spirals. You get used to it.

They call Shell up and she takes her customary seat. She has her beads now, real ones that she had made early on. Worrying them soothes her.

The situation is freeform, one day bearing little relation to the next. There are cameras of some kind, which she assumes means there is a broadcast or archival records being created. She has no representation, neither does she ask for it.