Dolo’s smile was cruel. ‘I have come to a decision. I will visit the site of this Doctrinal infringement. And you, Novice, will come with me.’

‘Commissary - you want me to go to the Core?’ It was all but unheard of for a novice to travel so far.

‘I have no doubt it will help you fulfil your fitful promise, Luca. Make the arrangements.’

Suddenly he was dismissed. Luca stood, bowed to the Commissary and Captain, and turned to leave.

Emotions swirled in Luca: embarrassment, surprise, fear - and a strange, unexpected grain of hope. Of course this was all just some game to the Commissary; Dolo had spotted Luca’s reaction to Teel and had impulsively decided to toy with him. Dolo was hugely arrogant. You could hardly expect to become one of the most powerful members of a bureaucracy that ruled the disc of a Galaxy without learning a little arrogance along the way. But for Luca it was a good opportunity, perhaps an invaluable building block for his future career.

And none of that mattered, he knew in his heart, for whatever the wider context Luca was now going to be in the company of this intriguing young Navy officer for weeks, even months to come, and who could say where that would lead?

At the door he glanced back. Teel and Dolo continued to talk of this uninteresting Doctrinal problem at the Galaxy’s Core; still she didn’t look at him.

They were to climb to orbit in a small flitter, and there join the Navy yacht that had brought Teel to Earth.

Luca had only been off Earth a couple of times during his general education, and then on mere hops out of the atmosphere. As the flitter lifted off the ground its hull was made transparent, so that it was as if the three of them were rising inside a drifting bubble. As the land fell away Luca tried to ignore the hot blood that prickled at his neck, and the deeply embarrassingly primeval clenching of his sphincter.

He tried to draw strength from Teel’s stillness. Her eyes were blue, Luca noticed now. He hadn’t been able to make that out before, in the shifting light of the Library.

As they rose the Conurbation was revealed. It was a glistening sprawl of bubble-dwellings blown from the bedrock. The landscape beyond was flat, a plain of glistening silver-grey devoid of hills, and there were no rivers, only the rectilinear gashes of canals. The only living things to be seen, aside from humans, were birds. It was like this over much of the planet. The alien Qax had begun the transformation of the land during their Occupation of Earth, their starbreaker beams and nanoreplicators turning the ground into a featureless silicate dust.

They spoke of this. Teel murmured, ‘But the Qax were here only a few centuries.’