‘Yes. A human Galaxy was just a dream. Earth is the home of man, and as long as Earth exists, man will endure.’

‘But it isn’t enough,’ Symat said.

‘No. Because the Xeelee are here.’

‘People are fleeing. The booths—’

Her face, a mask of imploded skin, crumpled a little, showing disgust. ‘The booths. A solution for cattle bred for defeat, beaten before they are even born. Have you ever heard of Original Sin?’

‘No.’

‘Child, you know there is a better way. And that is why you must go to Saturn.’

His mind was reeling. ‘I don’t know anything about Saturn. What must I do there?’

‘You will know,’ she said. She fell back on her pillow, her eyes closing, but she kept hold of his arm. ‘It is why I made you, after all . . .’

Symat, electrified, astonished, could only stare at her.

IV

Port Sol fell away into the dark. Symat and Mela were travelling ahead of the ice moon on its endless cycling trajectory between the spheres of Earth and Saturn, but where Port Sol took years to complete a single orbit, the flitter would take only days.

And now the flitter had a third passenger. The Curator wore his antique robe with its tetrahedral sigil, and his broad face was fixed with his habitual smile. But as Port Sol dwindled to a point of crimson light Symat thought he saw fear in his Virtual eyes.

It had been Mela’s idea to bring him. ‘You might be able to help us,’ she had told him. ‘You know this Luru. You might be able to figure things out.’

‘I’m a Curator,’ he had protested. ‘I keep these human museum pieces alive. I’m not designed to interpret their mad ramblings.’ But Mela had kept on, pressing him to come.

Symat was reluctantly fascinated by this exchange. He reminded himself that they were both expressions of a much vaster interlinked awareness. As the Curator and Mela argued it was as if he was listening to the internal debate of a single mind.

They certainly weren’t human, not even Mela; Symat was the only human here. And as the darkness closed in on the ship he felt increasingly alone, and far from home.

The flitter had internal partitions you could turn opaque, and he shut himself up inside a little boxy room. He didn’t want to deal with the Curator and his resentful wittering, and he didn’t much even want to be with Mela.

After a day of this Mela asked to see him. He wouldn’t let her in, so she just walked through the walls, protocol warnings sounding. She shook her arms and flexed her fingers until all her rogue pixels had settled back into place. ‘That hurt.’

Symat was lying on a pallet. ‘Then don’t do it.’

She sat down uncertainly. ‘What are you doing?’