As time passed, the Elders withdrew further from the crew. They requisitioned their own sealed-off living area. It was close to the Ship’s axis where the artificial gravity was a little lower than further out, a sop to muscles and bones expected to weaken with the centuries. Andres humorously called this refuge the ‘Cloister’. And the Elders were spared the routine chores, even the cleaning, to which the rest of the crew were subject. Soon it was hard to avoid the feeling that the crew were only there to serve the Elders.

Of course it was all part of Andres’s grand social design that there should eventually be an ‘awe gap’, as she put it, between Elders and transients. But Rusel wondered if a certain distancing was inevitable anyhow. The differential ageing of transients and Elders became apparent surprisingly quickly. When an Elder met a transient she saw a face that would soon crumble with age and vanish, while the transient saw a mysteriously unchanging figure who would see events that transpired long after the transient was dead. Rusel watched as friendships dissolved, even love affairs evaporated, under this stress.

However the increasingly isolated Elders, thrown on each other’s company, were no chummy club. They were all bright, ambitious people; they wouldn’t have been filtered out for Andres’s inner circle otherwise, and there was always a certain tension and bickering. Doctor Selur remarked sourly that it was like being stuck with a bunch of jealous academics, for ever.

But the Elders were also cautious of each other, Rusel thought. Always at the back of his mind was the thought that he would have to live with these people for a long time. So he strove not to make any enemies - and conversely not to get too close to anyone. Eternity with a lover was one thing, but with an ex-lover it would be hellish. Better that things were insipid, but tolerable.

Life settled down. In the calm of the Cloister, time passed smoothly, painlessly.

One day a boy came knocking timorously, asking for Rusel. He was aged about sixteen.

Rusel thought he recognised him. He had spent a long time on his own, and his social skills were rusty, but he tried to focus and greet the boy warmly. ‘Tomi! It’s so long since I saw you.’

The boy’s eyes were round. ‘My name is Poro, sir.’

Rusel frowned. ‘But that day I came to visit - you made us all a meal, me and Diluc and Tila, while little Rus played . . .’ But that was long ago, he told himself, he wasn’t sure how long, and he fell silent.

The boy seemed to have been prepared for this. ‘My name is Poro,’ he said firmly. ‘Tomi was—’

‘Your father.’

‘My grandfather.’

So this was Diluc’s great-grandson. Lethe, how long have I spent inside this box?