At the age of twenty-two Luru was already done with childbirth. She had donated to a birthing tank; it was a routine service performed by all healthy women before they left their late teens, and she had thought nothing of it. Now, thinking of the families of Mell Born, she looked at the swarms of youngsters scrambling to their new cadres, excited, all their bare scalps shining like bubbles on a river, and wondered if any of these noisy children could be hers.

Gemo Cana said, ‘I read your report. You’re right to question why Suvan needs to manufacture his strange elements. He’s obviously planning something, some kind of rebellious gesture. ’ She looked up from her data slate, as if seeing Luru for the first time. ‘Ah. But you aren’t interested in Symat Suvan and his grubbing in the dirt, are you?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Cana put down the slate. ‘It got to you. The outside. I can see it in you. I knew it would, of course. The only question is what difference it’s going to make. Whether you will still be useful.’ She nodded. ‘You have questions, Luru Parz. Ask them.’

Luru felt cold. ‘Symat Suvan told me that the Qax’s ultimate intention—’

‘Is to cauterise the past. I suppose he talked about our identity being dissolved, and so forth? Well, he’s right.’ Cana sounded tired. ‘Of course he is. Think about what you’ve done. What did you think was the purpose of it all? The Extirpation is an erasing of mankind’s past. A bonfire of identity. That is the truth.’

‘But—’

‘There are further plans, you know,’ Cana said, ignoring her. ‘For example: the Spline starbreakers penetrate only the first few tens of metres of the ground, to obliterate shelters, archives and other traces. But the Qax intend to perform a deeper ploughing-up. They have a nanotech replicator dust, which - Well. You see, with such tools, even the fossils will be destroyed, even the geology of the Earth itself: never to be retrieved, the wisdom they contain never to be deciphered.

‘Another example. The Qax intend to force mass migrations of people, a mixing, a vast melting pot.’ She touched her chest. ‘Then even this will be lost, you see, in a few generations - the differences between us, the history embedded in our bodies, our genes, our blood types. All mixed up, the data lost for ever. There is a simpler proposal to replace our human names with some form of catalogue numbers. So even the bits of history lodged in our names will be lost. It will only take two or three generations before we forget . . .’

Luru was shocked at the thought of such cultural vandalism.