‘They need a lot of power to be able to grow the way they are. What they can’t get from the sun, they get by tapping into geothermal energy in the very deep crust.’

Jeff had frowned at that. ‘Are they really capable of digging that deep? They look just like big flowers. Terrifying, alien, monstrously huge flowers, but still . . .’

Mitchell had smiled thinly. ‘You really don’t want to know how much they’re capable of.’

After that, they had left the motel and headed for an autocafé, where Mitchell told him more of what had happened to him following his return from Site 17.

‘No,’ Mitchell had concurred, shaking his head. ‘I can barely remember anything from those first couple of hours after you pulled me out of the pit chamber. The first thing I can remember clearly is being taken off heavy sedation, days later.’

‘You said they kept you under sedation at Arcorex, too?’

Mitchell had nodded. ‘After that, they kept me deliberately unconscious a lot of the time. I have vague recollections of being prodded by lots of people in biohazard suits.’

‘They were worried you might be carrying something, right?’

‘I suppose. Some kind of future-tech plague, or whatever they thought I might be carrying inside me.’

‘And you say you woke up with all this . . . this alien information in your head?’

Mitchell nodded. ‘What you have to understand is, those pits were helping me and Vogel, and not killing us. They actually remade us: no more diseases or ill-health. I might even live for ever. And I learned so much from them . . .’ His voice grew distant for a moment. ‘It’s hard to even know where to start.’

Jeff’s coffee had rested untouched and forgotten in his hands as he listened.

‘The Founders weren’t a single race,’ Mitchell had explained. ‘There were many of them, machine as well as biological intelligences, and a kind of hybrid of the two that’s difficult to explain.’ He paused and cracked a smile. ‘Jesus, I could tell you about things that haven’t happened yet, that won’t happen until our own sun’s cold and dark and black.’

Jeff had licked his lips. ‘Try me.’

‘There’s a war being fought, right now. It’s been going on for countless aeons and it’ll continue for countless more.’ He took a sip at his own coffee. ‘Really, it’s more like thousands of individual conflicts, all through this galaxy and a myriad others. But they’re all being fought otedme thing.’

‘The Founder Network?’

Mitchell nodded and grinned, almost shyly. ‘It sounds like bullshit, right? Like I made this all up. But you’ve been there too, under that night with no stars, a hundred trillion years in the future. You’ve been to Site 17, so you know I’m telling the truth.’