“We need them to give us a ship,” Iona said. “That’s the bottom line.”

“We need more than just a ship,” said Steve. “We can’t use the wormhole, obviously, and I worked out the journey time. The kind of propulsion their ships use, you’re looking at eighty-seven years.”

“Okay, so we also need a suspension system to get us there alive. Considering the technology we’ve already seen, they must have something like that.”

“But they won’t give us any of it,” said Victor. “They’re wedded to their protocols and giving us a ship acts against the interests of their operation.”

“It’s so stupid,” said Steve. “It’s so obvious these deciders are all dead. This disease that killed off their boss probably carried off the others too.”

“That’s all supposition—” Iona began.

“But for the purposes of argument,” Saori interrupted, “it is overwhelmingly likely they’re all dead. Those guys have sent multiple reports saying things aren’t right here—and in return, no visit, not even any guidance on how to deal with it. And these deciders seem like they love giving out instructions, so yeah, I’m going with ‘they’re all fucking dead.’”

Iona wondered if Saori had always been this abrasive or if life in the city had made her this way.

“But if they are all dead,” Iona said, “what difference does that make to us?”

“If we can make the figures see what they’re doing here is pointless—”

“So you want to undermine the entire underpinnings of their existence.”

“Well, their existence is—”

“I think that’s an incredibly risky thing to do.”

“It might be the kindest thing to do,” said Victor. “They’re working their arses off, tearing this planet to pieces for nothing. Everything they’ve mined is probably just piling up back on their homeworld.”

“But we’ve no idea how they might react,” said Iona. “It could be like proving to someone their god doesn’t exist. They might treat it like blasphemy and put us to death.”

“Or they might go totally nihilistic, and I dunno, kill us and go on a rampage across the galaxy,” said Steve.

“Exactly,” said Iona, grateful for the support. “I don’t think it helps us at all.”

“Confronting someone with the truth,” said Saori, “is never the wrong thing to do.”

“That just isn’t true.”

“So you’d rather Alyssa hadn’t told you the truth, back in the city?” asked Victor.

This argument was still going on (and Iona was worried she was losing it) when a group of figures urgently entered the facility. Iona’s first thought was this was it, the figures had made their decision and were putting them back in their cage. But it quickly became clear the humans were not the focus of this activity. In fact it seemed as if the humans had been forgotten entirely.

* * *

The figures had gathered in one of the rooms of the medical facility: rather a lot of them, in fact. The room was heaving as the figures jostled for a view of what was happening at the other side of it, where the bed was. They chattered urgently and some at the front seemed to be admonishing the others, demanding to be given space. Iona had never seen them act like this: they were neither calm nor cautious.