The light flickered and darkened. Glancing out of the cell, Hama saw that the great Birthing Vat was drifting away from its position at the geometric centre of the Post. Soon it would impact the floor in a gruesome moist collision.

‘I should have gone with Arles,’ he moaned. ‘I don’t know why I delayed.’

La-ba stood over Hama and grabbed his arm. With a grunting effort, the two drones hauled him to his feet.

La-ba said, ‘Why do you death us?’

‘It is the war. Only the war.’

‘Why do we fight the war?’

In desperation Hama said rapidly, ‘We have fought the Xeelee for ten thousand years. We’ve forgotten why we started. We can see no end. We fight because we must. We don’t know what else to do. We can’t stop, any more than you can stop breathing. Do you see?’

‘Take us,’ said La-ba.

‘Take you? Take you where? Can you even imagine another place?’

Perhaps she couldn’t. But in La-ba’s set face there was ruthless determination, a will to survive that burned away the fog of his own weak thinking.

The Doctrines are right, he thought. Mortality brings strength. A brief life burns brightly. He felt ashamed of himself. He tried to stand straight, ignoring the clamouring pain from his smashed stomach.

The girl said, ‘It is un-Doctrine. But I have deathed your fish. Nobody will know.’

He forced a laugh. ‘Is that why you killed the Squeem? . . . You are naïve.’

She clutched his arm harder, as if trying to bend his metallic flesh. ‘Take us to Earth.’

‘Do you know what Earth is like?’

Ca-si said, ‘It is a place where you live on the outside, not the inside. It is a place where water falls from the sky, not rock.’

‘How will you live?’

La-ba said, ‘The We-ku helped the Old Man live. Others will help us live.’

Perhaps it was true, Hama thought. Perhaps if these two survived on some civilised world - a world where other citizens could see what was being done in the name of the war - they might form a focus for resistance. No, not resistance: doubt.

And doubt might destroy them all.

He must abandon these creatures to their deaths. That was his clear duty, his duty to the species.

There was a crack of shattering partition. The Post spun, making the three of them stagger, locked together.

Ca-si showed his fear. ‘We will be deathed.’

‘Take us to Earth,’ La-ba insisted.

Hama said weakly, ‘I would have to hide you from Arles. And you broke my link to the Commission. I may not be able to find my way. The link helps me - navigate. Do you see?’

‘Try,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes, and pressed her cheek against the cold of his silvered chest.

Hama’s flitter floated in vacuum.