It didn’t help his mood to reflect that just beyond the floor beneath his feet the host planet’s atmosphere raged: a perpetual hydrogen storm, laced with high-frequency radiation and charged particles.

Absently he reached into his drab monastic robe and touched his chest. He stroked the cool, silvered Planck-zero epidermis, sensed the softly gurgling fluid within, where alien fish swam languidly. Here in this dismal swamp, immersed in the primeval, he could barely sense the mood even of Arles, who stood right next to him. He longed for the cool interstellar gulf, the endless open where the merged thoughts of Commissaries sounded across a trillion stars . . .

‘Hama, pay attention,’ Arles Thrun snapped.

Hama focused reluctantly on the soft round faces of the drones, and saw they betrayed agitation and confusion at his behaviour.

‘Remember this is a great day for them,’ Arles murmured dryly. ‘The first Commission visit in a thousand years - and it is happening in the brief lifetime of this creature.’ His silvered hand patted indulgently at the bare head of the drone before him. ‘How lucky they are, even if we will have to order the deaths of so many of them. There is so little in their lives - little more than the wall images that never change, the meaningless battle for position in the cadre hierarchies . . .

And the dance, Hama thought reluctantly, their wild illegal dance. ‘They disgust me,’ he hissed, surprising himself. Yet it was true.

Arles glanced at him. ‘You’re fortunate they do not understand.’

‘They disgust me because their language has devolved into jabber,’ Hama said. ‘They disgust me because they have bred themselves into over-population.’

Arles murmured, ‘Hama, when you accepted the burden of longevity you chose a proud name. I sometimes wonder whether you have the nobility to match that name. These creatures’ names were chosen for them by a random combination of syllables.’

‘They spend their lives on make-work. They eat and screw and die, crawling around in their own filth. What need has a candle-flame of a name?’

Arles was frowning now, sapphire eyes flickering in the silver mask of his face. ‘Have you forgotten the core tenet of the Doctrines? A brief life burns brightly, Hama. These creatures and their forebears have maintained their lonely vigil, here beyond the Galaxy - monitoring the progress of the war - for five thousand years. We have neglected them; isolated, they have - drifted. But these drones are the essence of humanity. And we Commissaries - doomed to knowledge, doomed to life - we are their servants.’

‘Perhaps. But this “essence of humanity” is motivated by lies. Already we understand their jabber well enough to know that. These absurd legends of theirs—’