‘I’ve read books as well,’ I put in, while Prozor looked on with tolerant amusement, as if we were the entertainment she’d paid for. ‘It’s true that they go back to the year zero. But that’s not the start of things. That’s just the point where people were sufficiently settled that they could start numbering years and writing things down. It’s 1799 now. But the Thirteenth Occupation started a lot longer than eighteen hundred years ago.’

‘Proper little scholar, ain’t you,’ Surt said.

‘Least she’s read a book or two,’ Prozor said. ‘Instead of pretending to.’

‘By the time the histories start,’ I went on, ‘people were already spread out across dozens of worlds. They had primitive ships, spacesuits, and some means of communicating – probably something not too different from our own squawk. They’d worked out how to live off the things left behind after the last Occupation. They were probably as clever as us. The only difference was, they’d had such a struggle just to survive until then that they hadn’t had the luxury of keeping a record of anything that wasn’t essential. Probably they thought it wouldn’t be forgotten, since they all knew it and kept it going in stories they told each other. But at some point the thread was broken, and we lost the knowledge of how they got started.’ I gave a nod to Tindouf. ‘So the idea of a ship isn’t that silly. Perhaps some people went out into the Empty during some earlier Occupation, or even before the old worlds got sundered. Maybe that’s how every Occupation got started – some old, old ship limping its way back from the stars. If it takes a ship like the Monetta months to sail from one side of the Congregation to the other, it would have taken a ship centuries to get across the Empty. Maybe a lot more than that – thousands or millions of years. And the Swirly isn’t something you travel to. We’re already in it. It’s just that we can’t see it properly, because the stars are too tiny and cold and our minds shrivel up when we try and wrap ’em ’round the distances.’

‘What’s the Monetta?’ Surt asked.

‘Just another ship,’ I said, trying not to sound flustered. ‘So many of them, so many names, I get them jumbled up sometimes.’

‘There was someone called Prozor on the Monetta’s Mourn,’ Drozna rumbled out thoughtfully. ‘Not our one, obviously.’

Prozor shrugged. ‘It’s a good name. I ain’t ashamed of it.’

But when the others weren’t looking she settled her gaze on me, saying: one more mistake, and we were done. She was right. With a single lapse I had made a terrible, unforgivable error.

I swore it would be my last.