Kard ignored the Academician; he had what he wanted. He turned to the people of the village, muddy, exhausted, huddled together on their rooftop. ‘What of you? You are the citizens of the Expansion. There are reformers who say you have had enough of colonisation and conflict, that there are enough people in the sky, we should seek stability and peace. Well, you have heard what we have had to say, and you have seen our mighty ships. Will you live out your lives on this drifting rock, helpless before a river of mud - or will you transcend your birth and die for an epic cause? War makes everything new. War is the wildest poetry. Will you join me? ’

Those ragged-ass, dirt-scratching, orthodoxy-busting farmers hesitated for a heartbeat. You couldn’t have found a less likely bunch of soldiers for the Expansion. But, would you believe, they started cheering the Admiral: every one of them, even the kids. Lethe, it brought a tear to my eye.

Even Xera seemed coldly excited.

Kard closed his Eyes; metals seams pushed his eyelids into ridges. ‘We are just a handful of people in this desolate, remote place. And yet here a new epoch is born. They are listening to us, you know - listening in the halls of history. And we will be remembered for ever.’

Tilo’s expression was complex. He clapped his hands, and the data desk disappeared in a cloud of pixels, leaving his work unfinished.

We mere fleshy types had to stay on that rooftop through the night. We could do nothing but cling to each other as the muddy tide rose slowly around us, and the kids cried from hunger.

When the sunsats returned to the sky, the valley was transformed. The channels had been gouged sharp and deep by the lahar, and the farms had been smothered by lifeless grey mud, from which only occasional trees and buildings protruded. But the lahar was flowing only sluggishly now.

Lian cautiously climbed to the edge of the roof and probed at the mud with her booted foot. ‘It’s very dense.’

Tilo said, ‘Probably the water has drained out of it.’

Lian couldn’t stand on the mud, but if she lay on it she didn’t sink. She flapped her arms and kicked, and she skidded over the surface. Her face grey with the dirt, she laughed like a child. ‘Sir, look at me! It’s a lot easier than trying to swim or wade . . .’

So it was, when I tried it myself.