Around the Conurbation the land was a plain that shone silver-grey, like a geometric abstraction. Canals snaked away to the horizon, full of glistening blue water. Human bodies drifted down the canals, away from the Conurbation to the sea. That wasn’t unusual, just routine waste management. But there did seem to be many bodies today.

At last Rala reached the front of the queue.

The stranger probably wasn’t much older than she was, she realised, no more than thirty. ‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘The drone who understands the nature of power.’

She bristled. ‘I am not a drone.’

‘You are what I say you are.’ He had a data slate before him, obviously purloined from a Conurbation workstation. He worked it slowly, as if unfamiliar with the technology. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘Rala.’

‘Rala, my name is Pash. From now on you report to me.’

She didn’t understand. ‘Are you a jasoft?’ The jasofts were human servants of the Qax who, it was said, were granted freedom from death in return for their service.

He said, ‘The jasofts are gone.’

‘The Qax—’

‘Are gone too.’ He glanced upwards. ‘At night you can see their mighty Spline ships, peeling out of orbit. Where they are going, I don’t know. But we will go after them one day.’

Could it be true - could the centuries-old Occupation be over, could Luru Parz and the other jasofts really have melted away, could the framework of her whole world have vanished? Rala felt like a lost child, separated from her cadre. She tried not to let this show in her face.

‘What was your sin?’ It turned out he was asking what job she did.

She had spent her working life in vocabulary deletion. The goal had been to replace the old human tongues with a fully artificial language. It would have taken a few more generations, but at last a great cornerstone of the Extirpation, the Qax’s methodical elimination of the human past, would have been completed. It was intellectually fascinating.

He nodded. ‘Your complicity with the great crime committed against humanity—’

‘I committed no crime,’ she snapped.

‘You could have refused your assignments.’

‘I would have been punished.’

‘Punished? Many will die before we are free.’

The word shocked her. It was hard to believe this was happening. ‘Are you going to punish me now?’

‘No,’ he said, tiredly. ‘Listen to me, Rala. It’s obvious you are smart, you have a high degree of literacy. We were the crew of a starship. A trading vessel, called Port Sol. While you toiled in this bubble-town, I hid up there.’ He glanced at the sky.

‘You are bandits.’

He laughed. ‘No. But we are not bureaucrats either. We need people like you to help run this place.’

‘Why should I work for you?’

‘You know why.’

‘Because food is power.’

‘Very good.’