She seemed to understand; she nodded.

They completed a circuit of the villa and found Symat’s parents. Hektor and Pelle sat in the grandest of the villa’s living rooms, while a small, silent bot, glass-hulled in sympathy with the architecture, laid out food and drink on a table.

Hektor stayed seated, but Pelle, Symat’s mother, stood up, a hopeful smile on her lips. ‘You two. Come and sit down. Are you still hungry?’ She waved her hand over the table; some of the dishes shimmered and broke up. ‘We have something for you too, Mela.’

Mela smiled. ‘Thank you.’ She selected a seat and, cautiously, sat down. The smart environment gave her a surface that matched the real-world seat flawlessly. She reached forward, picked a piece of fruit, and began to eat.

Symat sat too. Back home, he felt as if he had been reduced to a child once more. But it was obvious his mother, at least, was making an effort to reach him; she was even being considerate to Mela. And somehow with Mela here it wouldn’t have been right to show his resentment. So he accepted a drink.

As he had grown, Symat had often felt uncomfortable around his parents. They were so different from him, both tall and slender, matching the architecture of their Martian villa, while Symat was dumpy, squat, thick-set. Today Pelle was casually dressed, but Hektor wore the orange robe of a scholar, and his head was shaven. Both Symat’s parents had dedicated their long lives to archiving the human past on Mars, participating in a community act of remembrance to be completed before the final transfer through the booths. But in this domestic environment the robe made Hektor look formal, severe, the contrast with his son only more accentuated.

When he spoke, however, Hektor’s tone was mild. ‘So where do we go from here?’

‘We just want to know what you’re feeling,’ Pelle said to Symat. ‘What made you—’ She faltered.

‘Run away?’

‘You don’t have to say sorry, son. We just want to understand. ’

His father leaned forward. ‘What I want to know is, where did you think you were going? You know your geography. There’s nowhere to go.’

Pelle snapped, ‘Hektor. He’s fourteen years old. What kind of plans do you expect him to make?’

Hektor said, ‘This is all about the booths, isn’t it? Everybody else goes through happily enough. All your little friends have gone.’ He ticked off names on his fingers. ‘Jann. C’peel. Moro—’

‘I don’t want to go into a booth,’ Symat said testily.

As always his father seemed genuinely mystified. ‘Why not?’

Symat waved a hand at the shining glass walls. ‘Because this is my home. My world. My universe! I hardly know anything about it. Why would I want to walk into nothing?’

‘Not nothing,’ Hektor said. ‘A pocket universe, connected to our own by an umbilical of—’