Before he died, her father often spoke of going to the Down and Out, seeking a new life in the underwater cities of the deeps. He would speak of it when he returned from trucking, the hot desert wind had scorched his face and he smelled of dust and oil and sweat. He’d hold her in his lap and tell her of the Spiral and the Float, of dolphins and deep-water squid, of the Water Bedouin who travelled in the trenches of the ocean in their submarines. Her father, doomed to desert, loved the sea.

There were no habitats in the Red Sea. The war had left it filled with bio-weapons like Leviathans and militarised coral colonies and globsters. Sentient mines still dreamed lethal dreams deep underwater. Then her father died in a road accident and Mariam had no time for dreams. She had to work.

She watched over the city now. The sea was in the distance. The air was hot, dry, still. She wished there’d be a storm, something to herald change. In other cities on the planet there was rain and snow; lightning storms that threw jagged javelins across the skies; not here. She watched drones fly between the buildings like so many flies. The sea in the distance, the stars in the sky, cargo craft taking off into low Earth orbit.

When she looked back inside, both boy and jackal were fast asleep. She wondered what they’d been through. She went in, tucked the blanket round the boy. He stirred and sighed. She went to the hob, made herself a tea and carried it into her bedroom.

All about her people lived their people’s lives. She could hear water gurgling in the pipes, a neighbour singing from across the wall, the calls of seagulls outside, a baby crying, a barking dog. Beyond the block the city stretched, and people shopped, dined, walked, danced, jogged, made love and fought. Beyond the city lay the desert where the UXOs waited; beyond that lay the world, down to the cities of the deep and up to orbit; and from there to Lunar Port and Tong Yun City, Ceres Prime and Tereshkova Port—all of the Inner System. And then again beyond that, too, spreading out from the sun, beyond the Great Crossing: Io, Ganymede, Titan, Dragon’s World and Jettisoned, and to the Oort, and whatever lay beyond. Only the Exodus ships, making their slow patient way out of the solar system, would in time find out.

Mariam fell asleep and dreamed of stars.