‘We cannot save the Earth from the Qax, Luru. They will complete this project, this Extirpation, whatever we do, we jasofts. And so we must work with them, accept their ambiguous gift of life; we must continue to implement the Qax’s project, knowing what it means. For then - when everything else is gone, when even the fossils have been dug out of the ground - we will still remember. We are the true resistance, you see, not noisy fools like Symat Suvan, we who are closest of all to the conquerors.’

Luru tried to comprehend all of this, the layers of ambiguity, the compromise, the faintest flicker of hope. ‘Why me?’

‘You are the best and brightest. The Qax are pleased with your progress, and wish to recruit you.’ She smiled thinly. ‘And, for exactly the same reasons, I need you. So much moral complexity, wrapped up in a single tiny tablet!’

Luru stood. ‘You told me you remembered how it was, before the Qax. But Symat said all the old pharaohs died during the Occupation. That nobody remembers.’

Cana’s face was expressionless. ‘If Suvan said that, it must be true.’

Luru hesitated. Then she closed her hand around the tablet and put it in a pocket of her tunic, her decision still unmade.

When she returned to Mell Born she found it immersed in shadow, for a Spline ship loomed above the ruins. The Spline rolled ponderously, weapon emplacements glinting. There was a sense of huge energies gathering.

Her flitter skimmed beneath the Spline’s belly, seeking a place to land.

The crude shanty town was being broken up. She could see a line of Directorate staff - no, of jasofts - moving through the ramshackle dwellings, driving a line of people before them, men, women and children. Beetle-like transports followed the line of the displaced, bearing a few hastily grabbed belongings. The jasofts were dressed in skinsuits, their faces hidden behind translucent masks; the raw surface of Earth was not a place where inhabitants of the great Conurbations walked unprotected.

A small group lingered near the electric blue walls of the Qax facility, robes flapping, their stubborn defiance apparent in their stance. One of them was Symat, of course. She ran to him.

‘I didn’t think you would return.’ He waved at the toiling, fleeing people. ‘Are you proud of what is being done to us?’

She said, ‘You are manufacturing superheavy elements, here in this facility. What is the real reason? Have you lied to me, Symat?’

‘Only a little,’ he said gently. ‘We do understand something of the creatures of the rocky forest that has flourished beneath our feet.’

‘Yes?’

‘We know what they eat. We have tried to provide them with food, to get their attention—’