Or maybe her own morbidity was polluting her thinking. Projecting the cancer that was eating her up onto the whole damn universe.

They talked further, and the speculation, mostly led by Alfred, got wilder.

Perhaps, it was posited, in all this evolution, the imperatives of the Moonseed had got lost, or warped beyond recognition.

Perhaps the Moonseed was actually a message, of some kind. Perhaps it would rebuild the Solar System, if it was allowed, into some new information-bearing form. Perhaps the Moonseed was trying to reconstruct the world it came from, or the people who lived there. “Like a transporter beam,” said Alfred. A distorted beam, with the information it contained lost or transmuted, into which Earth had strayed. “I think this is just an accident,” Alfred said. “We are lucky—”

That was too much for Bromwich; she snorted. “Lucky? You scientists really are fuckers.” She picked up her papers. “I’ll tell you this, though. If this is what we meet the first time we put our foot out the farmhouse door, we’re going to find it a tough old universe out there.”

David Petit shook his head, disgusted.

The meeting broke up.

11

The day began badly, and got worse.

Ted even had trouble putting on the thick heat-resistant suit Blue Ishiguro lent him. When he bent to haul on the tight trousers and boots, and wriggled into the one-piece tunic, the stitched-up hole in his chest seemed to gape wide open. And when he pulled on his gloves and the hood with its big glass faceplate, the heat immediately began to gather.

Blue — already suited up, a heavy pack of equipment strapped to his back, cameras fixed to his hood and chest — was watching him sceptically.

“Kind of hot,” Ted said.

“Yeah. Here.” Blue handed him a heavy box, the size and shape of a cat box.

Ted tested the weight. “What’s this?”

“For samples. This is science, remember. How many can you carry?”

Soon Ted was laden with four of the boxes, suspended over his shoulder on leather straps; where the straps dug into him he could feel the heat build up further.

Blue was still watching him doubtfully. Questioning his strength, or commitment.

Ted glanced up at the sun, which was climbing the sky. “Are we going, or what?”

Blue hoisted his pack, picked up tools and sample boxes of his own, and set his face to the north, towards the centre of Edinburgh, the city of ash.

As he toiled over the rubble-strewn ground, Ted kept re-running his last encounter with his daughter. Their last argument.

“…What are you talking about, Dad?”

“They say there are still a few hundred people alive in there. Maybe more.”

“Dad.” It was hard for her to say it, he sensed, as if saying it might make it true. “Dad, Mike is dead. You know Mike is dead. You just want revenge. But revenge against what? The Moonseed?”