“She was somewhere out there, too. I knew. I could feel it. They’re weird in the Outer System, worshipping dark gods. They believe in entities out in the Oort who manipulate events from a distance, who ride people like the Loa of old were said to do. They speak of the Nine Billion Hells. But I had no time for that. These stories belonged in the digitality.

“She was there, though. I was sure of that. In a street market in Polyport I bought a strange, disturbing clay idol that had her signature as plain as day. Nasu, she had called herself. It is the name of a Zoroastrian demon, the manifestation of the decay and contamination of corpses.

“I should have hated her for what she did. But all I found in myself, curiously, was a sort of longing. It had been so long since I left, the years had just slipped by. I realised I missed the sun, the heat, the whisper of the sand against my metal. Things you take for granted, Nasir: an open sky and air, the right gravity. On Titan it rains methane, and the sea is shallow. You can fly a light aircraft there, though.

“So there you have it. I went back. It isn’t, when I look back on it, much of a story, much of a life. I made nothing. I left no mark. But then I thought, maybe I can still do something. So I got a flower and went back into the desert and I dug up the hole.”

The robot looked across the table at Nasir.

“Now here we are,” the robot said.

“Here we are,” Nasir said.

14. The Offer

Mariam, meanwhile, was out late. She had volunteered at the shelter again before going on to clean an apartment downtown, which she did twice a week; then she visited her mother at the nursing home with a bunch of flowers. Then, instead of going back to her flat, she went to the promenade near the pier where the ferries from Egypt came to dock.

She was alone and content with being alone, and seeing as she was by the water and there was only a thin crowd by the pier, she lit a cigarette—it was a Ubiq, high-density with data-loaded particles that hit the lungs and went straight to the brain. They helped her think. Sometimes they helped her not to.

She watched the water. The sea was calm. The sun had set. An airship cruised sedately at a height. Mariam thought about Nasir and how they’d gone out to dinner together. It hadn’t been awkward—well, maybe a little at first—but it was strange how comfortable she was with him.