‘A standard human’s data definition is realised in flesh and blood, in structures of carbon-water biochemistry. I am realised in patterns in computer cores, and in shapings of light. You could project an equivalent human definition into any medium that will store the data - any technological medium, alternate chemistries of silicon or sulphur, anything you like from the frothing of quarks in a proton to the gravitational ripples of the universe itself. And then your post-humans, established in the new medium, can get on and breed.’ He saw their faces, and he laughed. ‘I’m shocking you! How delicious. Two thousand years after the Coalition imploded, its taboos still have a hold on the human imagination.’

‘Get to the point, Virtual,’ Tahget snapped.

‘The point is,’ Mara put in, ‘there are people in the black hole air. Out there. Those ghostly shapes you see are people. They really are.’

‘It’s certainly possible,’ Poole said. ‘There’s more than enough structure in those wisps of magnetism and plasma to store the necessary data.’

Futurity said, ‘But what would be the point? What would be the function of these post-humans?’

‘Weapons,’ Poole said simply.

Even when Greyworld was ripped away and destroyed by Chandra’s tides, the satellite black hole would sail on, laden with its accretion disc and its atmosphere - and carrying the plasma ghosts that lived in that atmosphere, surviving where no normal human could. Perhaps the ghosts could ride the satellite hole all the way into Chandra itself, and perhaps, as the small hole was gobbled up by the voracious central monster, they would be able to transfer to Chandra’s own much more extensive atmosphere.

‘Once aliens infested Chandra,’ Poole said. ‘It took us three thousand years to get them out. So the Ideocrats decided they were going to seed Chandra with humans - or at least post-humans. Then Chandra will be ours for ever.’

Captain Tahget shook his head, grumbling about ranting theorists and rewritings of history.

Futurity thought all this was a wonderful story, whether or not it was true. But he couldn’t forget there was still a bomb on board the ship. Cautiously, he said to Mara, ’And one of these - uh, post-humans - is your daughter?’

‘Yes,’ Mara said.

Tahget was increasingly impatient with all this. ‘But, woman! Can’t you see that even supposing this antiquated Virtual is right about pantropy and post-humans, whatever might have been projected into the black hole atmosphere can no more be your daughter than Poole here can be your son? You are carbon and water, it is a filmy wisp of plasma. Whatever sentimental ties you have, the light show in that cloud has nothing to do with you.’

‘Not sentimental,’ she said clearly. ‘The ties are real, Captain. The person they sent into that black hole is my daughter. It’s all to do with loyalty, you see.’