‘Corrado?’ Ramiro swayed sideways so he could open the door fully without banging his head. ‘You should have warned me, I would have prepared a meal—’

‘I’m not here for your cooking,’ his uncle replied brusquely. He glared at Ramiro impatiently, waiting for him to move down the ladder so he could pass through the hatch.

When they were both on the floor, Ramiro gestured towards the couch. He knew the gravity was hard on his uncle; before the engines had started up, Corrado’s apartment had been in near-weightlessness.

Corrado made himself comfortable, but then wasted no time on pleasantries. ‘In three days, your sister will be a dozen and nine years old,’ he announced.

‘It’s that soon, really? I lost track.’

‘I understand that you need to supervise the turnaround to the end,’ Corrado conceded. ‘So you won’t be free of that commitment for more than a year. But this is the right time for you to come to an agreement with Rosita. You need to tell her that as soon as the Peerless is spinning again, she can shed a daughter and you’ll be promised to the child.’

Ramiro examined the floor beside the couch. There was a hole that had once held a peg supporting a bookshelf; he’d left it empty in the hope of reusing it, but it was filling up with dust and food crumbs.

‘We should wait and see what happens,’ he suggested. ‘There might be some kind of technical problem that will prolong the turnaround. I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.’

‘Your sister’s too easy on you,’ Corrado replied flatly. ‘That’s the only reason I’m here: someone has to speak up on her behalf.’

‘What makes you so sure that she’s desperate to start shedding?’ Ramiro countered.

‘She’s been fertile for a long time,’ Corrado said. ‘If she divides, do you want that on your conscience?’

‘Of course not,’ Ramiro said. ‘But the holin is so pure now, and they take such high doses—’

Corrado cut him off. ‘That’s no guarantee. Imagine your sister gone, and four children to feed. Do you want to be the one who kills two of them?’

Ramiro covered his face – unmoved by the preposterous scenario, but unwilling to reveal just how angry he felt at being cornered this way. For as long as he could remember, his uncle had been assuring him that it was in his nature to want to raise a child. That lesson had come second only to the other glorious message about manhood: if he ever succumbed to his urge to touch a woman in the wrong way – as the Starvers did – it would annihilate her. His duty as he approached maturity was to quash that terrible, lingering compulsion – while also joyously coveting a role that, in nature, could only have followed his failure at the first task.

When the turnaround was finished he’d have no more excuses, no more reasons to delay. The only tactic left was honesty.