“Officially it’s disused. Stops people from coming down here. But they still send crews to get metal from time to time.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Oh, the supply department.”

“And nobody ever asks where it comes from?”

Victor stopped and turned to Iona. “You’ll find there’s a lot of things nobody ever asks here. And you won’t be able to understand how you never asked either.”

“And they did all this . . . just to stop us from finding out there was a spaceship down here?”

Victor smiled. “No, there’s more to it than that. But well done for remembering it’s a spaceship. Took me a while to remember that.”

“We both traveled on this, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Why was it called the—”

“Mull of Kintyre? I don’t remember. Also I don’t really remember you. Sorry.”

“I don’t either. I only remember tiny bits and pieces. Why did we forget?”

Victor looked somber suddenly. “Because we’ve lived too long. Ran out of space in our memories. Past a certain point it all gets vague.”

“What do you mean, too long?”

Alyssa had gotten a long way ahead of them, but now she shouted through: “We can talk in the cargo hold. It’s more comfortable there.”

* * *

The cargo hold was mostly emptied out but it seemed to have some limited power—Alyssa turned on the lights and Iona could see three rows of citizens standing in the middle. They all faced the same way, arms by their sides, like troops waiting to be inspected. And Iona knew the reason for this before she saw it: the hatches on their backs had been left open. The only one whose hatch was not open—the nearest to her as she walked toward them—was Carter.

Iona turned and addressed Alyssa. “What are they?”

“You mean the citizens?”

“Yes.”

“Highly advanced automata,” said Victor.

“Made of . . . wood.”

“Yep.”

“By any sensible criteria they’re intelligent—” started Alyssa, but Victor cut her off.

“Alyssa and I have had this debate several times.”

“They have independent thought,” Alyssa continued, “they have personalities. Iona—you teach them every day, you know they can learn.”

“But they were made,” said Iona.

“Yeah,” said Victor. “Manufactured.”

“Who made them?”

“Well, these days they make each other. At the Points of Origin.”

Iona realized she’d never been assigned to design a Point of Origin, nor had she ever known what they were for—and as Victor had said, she’d never queried this.

“But who made the first one?” Iona said, referring to the citizens. She turned to Alyssa. “You?”

“What?” said Alyssa. “No. They did it.” And she pointed to a two-seater sofa that had been placed against the wall.

At first Iona thought the sofa had two citizens sitting on it but as she walked closer she realized they were something different. They had a very similar shape to the citizens but were made of different materials—predominantly metal. They were old and corroded and parts of them were missing: both had exposed areas on their torsos, one was missing the lower part of its arm, the other had lost a leg. Wiring and circuitry could be seen through the holes. They had both clearly been inactive for a long time.