‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Greeneye took a pinch of Bernice’s hair in his fingers and sniffed it. ‘We are what we eat, as I’m sure you were about to observe. Haven’t you ever looked in the mirror and wished to be different: thinner, stronger, more beautiful? Or met somebody and wanted to be whatever they needed, old or young, man or woman?’

Benny looked at him cheerfully. ‘Sounds like hard work. I wouldn’t change one lovely inch of me.’ She glanced at the strand of hair in his fingers. ‘You know, if you eat that, you’ll have terrible trouble with split ends.’

Greeneye let go.

Benny glanced at Alexander standing beside her. He had a solid look of anger about his face, his gaze fixed ahead, as if he were waiting for a chance to express his rage. It might not be a good time to ask this next question, but she wanted to know.

‘Did I ever meet the real Constance?’

Greeneye concentrated, then nodded. ‘Yes. In the teashop, that was her.’ He licked his lips. ‘She was delicious.’

‘You bastard!’ shouted Alexander suddenly, his face reddening.

‘Hardly,’ said Greeneye. ‘August’s my father.’

‘Father to all of them, actually,’ August explained, clicking a button on the wall.

Alexander opened his mouth to shout again and found that he couldn’t. ‘Aubertides bud. I produced Greeneye from a pouch that had grown on my back. He then gave birth to one of our family who didn’t come with us, who in turn produced Serif. Serif produced Aphasia⁠ —’

‘With certain… improvisations of my own,’ whispered Serif.

‘And Aphasia produced Hoff, the baby of the family. That was a difficult birth, I can tell you.’

‘It was yucky!’ Aphasia spat.

‘Now, normally, that would be it for an Aubertide. The genetic material gets drawn too thin, and six family members is all you get. The Grand Circle on Aubis was made up of thirty-six members, for example, six complete families. That’s not really enough for us, which is why we’re here. We’ve devoted our lives to the pursuit of power and pleasure⁠ —’

‘Thrown off of Aubis, conquered six solar systems in the local area using biological weapons, used the proceeds of their economies to fuel new weapons research and conquered several more,’ Greeneye explained, as if reeling off an old story. ‘The trouble is, a sort of lethargy sets in.’

‘We have no political or sociological goals beyond our own pleasure,’ Serif hissed.

‘Which means that we swiftly reached a point where we had no goals left at all. There are only six of us. We have already returned to Aubis to conquer it and slaughter our former tormentors. It does not take a dozen planets to serve our greatest desires⁠ — even Greeneye’s perverted sexual appetites.’

‘Oh yes?’ Benny raised an eyebrow.

‘I have… an attraction to other species,’ Greeneye told her.