“No, it doesn’t really have a taste. It’s the texture.”

“Yeah, sort of . . . oily.” Steve stuck his tongue out.

“I didn’t want to say anything earlier,” Iona laughed, “because I was worried about offending them.” She indicated the figures who continued with the conversion work, paying them no attention at all.

Steve also laughed. “Don’t be daft. They don’t care, they’re not like us.”

“They don’t seem like us. That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

“They’re just looking for someone to give them orders. They’d do anything if that decider told them to.”

Iona was only half-listening by this point. She was thinking about the journey and what she’d said about “decades on end.” During her time in the city she had forgotten how old she was, both in linear terms and physically. The figures’ medical assessment had informed her that, physically, she was sixty-four years old. She wasn’t sure how long humans usually lived but she knew she was not young. While she was in the city she’d frequently thought of her impending retirement that never arrived, and had been perfectly happy in that situation, doing something she enjoyed with nothing much left to prove. She’d given no thought to her time being limited because it wasn’t. Things were different now. It was good to be free, but thinking of the future gave her a cold, anxious dread she’d never felt in the cage.

Steve was still talking about the figures in the same dismissive terms when Iona turned to him and said, “How long’s the journey again?”

“What?” said Steve.

“The journey back to Earth.”

“Dunno—sixty years, something like that?”

“That’s not what you said the other day.”

“Oh,” said Steve, rubbing his eyes, “yeah—”

“It was more than that.”

“Yeah, I think I might have gotten it wrong. I need to work it out again.”

Iona nodded. “It could be fairly crucial,” she said with a small laugh. “Make sure you get it right.”

They stayed out there for a couple more hours, talking over the events of the last few days. Iona guided the conversation with care and listened to Steve’s answers with keen interest.

* * *

By the evening the craft was ready and one of the figures invited Steve to come aboard and learn how to fly it. Iona decided to join him: “I mean, god forbid anything should happen to you,” she said, “but if it does—”

“If it does you’ll probably be best off trusting the autopilot to get you home,” Steve said as they walked over to the craft. “I’m not even sure how much use I’ll be—I can’t even remember flying a ship.”

“Muscle memory might come back.”

“Let’s hope so.”

For over an hour Iona sat behind Steve and a figure, watching them go over the controls and everything that might go wrong. The controls were a mixture of slick touch panels and clunky tactile levers and switches—the more basic they were the less there was to malfunction.