‘I don’t know. I’d have to ask my political officer.’ The Hero let the weapon drop. ‘I’m not changing my decision. I’m just postponing its implementation.’

Rala nodded sagely.

After that, as the weeks passed, she saw that the patch she had cultivated was spreading, a stain of a richer dark seeping through the ground. Her replicators were now turning soil and sunlight not just into food but into copies of themselves, and so spreading further, slowly, doggedly. The food she got from the ground became handfuls a day, almost enough to stave off the hunger that nagged at her constantly.

Ingre said to her, ‘You have a child. I knew they wouldn’t hurt you because of that.’

‘It’s OK, Ingre.’

‘Although betraying you was doctrinally the correct thing to do.’

‘I said it’s OK.’

‘The children are the future.’

Yes, thought Rala. But what future? We are insane, she thought, an insane species. As soon as the Qax get out of the way we start to rip each other apart. We rule each other with armbands, bits of rag. And now the Million Heroes are prepared to starve us all - they might still do it - for the sake of an abstract doctrine. Maybe we really were better off under the Qax.

But Ingre seemed eager for forgiveness. She worked in the dirt beside her cadre sibling, gazing earnestly at her.

So Rala forced a smile. ‘Yes,’ she said, and patted her belly. ‘Yes, the children are the future. Now here, help me with this sieve.’

Under their fingers, the alien nano seeds spread through the dirt of Earth.

During the churning of the post-Qax era, we undying, our actions during the Occupation misunderstood, were forced to flee.

The Interim Coalition of Governance consolidated its power, as such agencies do, and proved itself to be rather less than interim.

But from the ranks of the Coalition’s stultifying bureaucracy emerged one man whose strange genius would shape human history for twenty thousand years.

REALITY DUST - AD 5408

REALITY DUST

AD 5408

An explosion of light: the moment of her birth.

She cried out.

A sense of self flooded through her body. She had arms, legs; her limbs were flailing. She was falling, and glaring light wheeled about her.

... But she remembered another place: a black sky, a world - no, a moon - a face before her, smiling gently. This won’t hurt. Close your eyes.

A name. Callisto.

But the memories were dissipating. ‘No!’

She landed hard, face down, and was suffused by sudden pain. Her face was pressed into dust, rough, gritty particles, each as big as a moon to her staring eyes.