He looked around. The city was unprepossessing. You could clearly see the usual circular tracings, but the structures they had supported were razed to the ground. Amid these ancient foundation arcs stood only a small, shabby cluster of more recent glass buildings.

There was nobody about. The Ascendent was quiet as she wandered around the circular profile of one vanished wall.

Symat asked, ‘Luru, why have you brought us here?’

‘I think this place means something to her,’ Mela said. She guessed, ‘Did you grow up here, Luru? Were you born here?’

Luru’s face remained impassive, but she nodded. ‘Yes, I was born here, or rather in the ruins of a still older city on this site - born in a tank, actually, for that was the way in those days.’

Symat found it hard to imagine Luru Parz ever having been young, ever being born.

‘The whole of the Earth was in the grip of alien conquerors. They built this city, erasing the ruins. They called it Conurbation 5204. These circles you see were the bases of domes of blown rock. The place was beautiful, in its way. There were plenty of places to play, for me and my cadre siblings.’

‘It was home,’ Mela said.

‘Oh, yes. Even a prison becomes a home.’

The Curator looked at her almost with compassion. ‘You never told me any of this.’

‘You were told what you needed to know,’ Luru said harshly. ‘I worked here, for an agency called the Extirpation Directorate. My job was to erase the human past. We humans were useful to our conquerors, but troublesome. To detach us from our history, to strip away our identity, was their strategy to control us.’

Symat felt disgusted. ‘And you did this work for them?’

‘I had no choice,’ she murmured. ‘And the work was challenging, intellectually. To eradicate is as satisfying as to build, if you don’t think beyond the act itself. Of course we failed. Look around you!’ She laughed and spread her arms; it was a grotesque sight. ‘Since the great levelling of those days, more cities have been built on the foundations of the old, only to fall into ruin, over and over. History just keeps on piling up, whatever you do.’

Mela asked curiously, ‘Did you have children, Luru Parz?’

‘Not that I knew of. If I had I wouldn’t have lived so long. There is a logic in immortality.’

‘Lovers, then,’ Mela said. ‘You must have had lovers.’

Luru smiled. ‘Yes, child. One lover. But we fell out. He was a ragamuffin. He escaped the conquerors’ cities, preferring to live wild. We were on opposite sides of the argument on how to deal with the Occupation, you see. He died well, though. He died for what he believed in.’ She said this neutrally, her face blank.

Mela asked softly, ‘What was his name?’

Luru took a rattling breath. ‘Suvan. Symat Suvan.’

Symat’s mouth dropped open.